Clara Mortenson Beyer

[3] She served as an instructor at UC Berkeley for one year before agreeing to teach labor economics at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania in 1917.

[1] While teaching at Bryn Mawr College, Beyer encouraged students to join picket lines and to investigate tenement sweatshops in Philadelphia.

Beyer also worked other part-time jobs at the same time, and served as the executive secretary of the Women's Joint Committee for the Minimum Wage and Hour Legislation, as well as a researcher for the American Federation of Labor.

[4] In 1934, Perkins and Dewson encouraged Beyer to take the freshly-minted position of associate director in the Division of Labor Standards, and take it she did; Beyer served as associate director there from 1934 to 1957, working on issues of apprenticeship, vocational education, programs for elderly and migrant workers, and other foundational American labor issues.

Also while serving at the Bureau of Labor Standards, Beyer worked closely with Perkins and Arthur Altmeyer to develop the provisions that went into the Social Security Act of 1935.

[2] Beyer's bureau helped Ben Cohen and Thomas Corcoran draft the legislation, and when Beyer herself was resisted by organized laborers who worried that minimum wage would lower wages overall, she worked with Congresswoman Mary T. Norton to lobby William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor.

[2] With his support, the law passed, and when the act was challenged and appealed to the Supreme Court, Beyer helped prepare the government's successful defense.

[1] In 1972, when Beyer retired, she was awarded a certificate of appreciation for her contributions to the social and economic development of people both in the United States and overseas.

[3] After her retirement, Beyer still served as a consultant for USAID and co-authored the Percy Amendment to the International Cooperation Assistance Act of 1973, which designated certain amounts of U.S. foreign aid to programs for women.