Macarthur, Mary Reid

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Mary Reid Macarthur, 1880–1921, British labor organizer, b. Glasgow, Scotland. Working in her father's draper's shop, she became prominent in the shop assistants' union. As the representative of the women chain makers of Cradley Heath, she secured (1909) a minimum wage and led a strike to compel employers to pay the increase without delay. She visited the United States in 1920 as a British representative in the first labor conference convened under the League of Nations. She married (1911) William Crawford Anderson, chairman of the Independent Labour party.

See M. A. Hamilton, Mary Macarthur (1925).