The Barbara Wertheimer Prize

To recognize serious study in labor and work history among undergraduate students, the New York Labor History Association awards the Barbara Wertheimer Prize of $250.00 for the best research paper written during a given academic year. With permission, an abstract of the winning paper is posted on the NYLHA website. Please encourage your best undergraduate students to submit their work.

Papers on any aspect of labor or work history will be considered. Entries will be evaluated on the basis of scholarship and literary merit.

Entrants should send one copy of their paper to:

Brian Greenberg,
Department of History and Anthropology,
Monmouth University,
West Long Branch, NJ 07764
bgreenbe@monmouth.edu.

The winner for 2012, Ryan Tate, of Hamline University, submitted an essay entitled "A House Divided: Women's Activism in the Minnesota Labor Movement, 1900-1935."

Abstract: This case study of Minnesota outlines three female identities that each strived to improve labor conditions during the Progressive and Inter-war Era: working and middle-class wage earners, housewives, and social reformers. In addition to the external circumstances marginalizing women's role in the labor movement, this study acknowledges conflicts within the female dominion. As a gendered analysis it is less honed on the interactions between the sexes, and more mindful of those struggles taking place among women themselves. It argues that real and perceived cross-class differences impeded women's potential for unity. These networks of women remained isolated and lacked cohesive action, inhibiting each from gaining sufficient power to define the labor movement, and marginalizing their influence in the state. It pays particular attention to activist behaviors, such as unionized strikes and protests, consumer and auxiliary organizing, and settlement house reform efforts.

Read about past winners of the prize.