Selig Perlman (1888–1959)

Selig Perlman was born to a Jewish family in Bialystok, Poland. His parents Mordecai and Pauline Perlman were active in the Zionist and labor movements of Eastern Europe. He received both religious and secular education in local schools. He was blocked from higher education in the Russian Empire because he was Jewish, and enrolled at the University of Naples, Italy, where he studied medicine. He struck up a friendship with the American socialists William English Walling and Anna Strunsky, who arranged for him to emigrate to the USA in 1908. After spending some time in New York City, he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned a BA in economics in 1910 and a PhD in 1915. He became a research assistant and then associate of his teacher, labor historian John Rogers Commons, although the two were not friends. From 1911 to 1915, Perlman worked as a special investigator for the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations. In 1912, he married Eva Shaber, his second cousin, with whom he had two sons. When the situation of his parents and sibling back in Poland dramatically worsened, he was able to bring them to the USA. Perlman tried to obtain an academic position and interviewed at several universities, but anti-Semitism among trustees and administrators kept him from an appointment. Finally, in 1918, Perlman was named an assistant professor at UW-Madison. He rose to become full professor in 1927 and remained at UW-Madison until his retirement in 1959. Prof. Perlman became one of the leading scholars of the labor movement, and his teaching and writing made a permanent mark on the field. Among his published works were a section of the monumental History of Labor in the United States, with John R. Commons (1918-1935, 10 volumes); A History of Trade Unionism in the United States (1922); and A Theory of the Labor Movement (1928).