Clara Mortenson Beyer family name Beyer
Clara Mortenson Beyer (April 13, 1892 – September 25, 1990) was a pioneer in labor economics and workers rights. She worked under Frances Perkins at the United States Department of Labor during the New Deal era, and was instrumental in implementing minimum wage legislation via the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.Early life and education
Clara Mortenson Beyer was born on April 13, 1892,  in Lake County, California. She was the sixth child of nine. Her parents were Danish immigrants, Mary Frederickson and Morten Mortenson. Morten Mortenson was a carpenter and unsuccessful chicken farmer, and was killed in a freak trolley accident when Clara was young. The following hard times for the Mortenson family, during which both Clara and her mother worked as fruit pickers and domestic laborers, resulted in Clara's interest in labor politics.Clara supported herself through her undergraduate and master's degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. She received her undergraduate degree in 1915, and her master's degree on the subject of economics, specializing in labor issues, in 1916. 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.
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