The St. Cloud State Era

Beverly Stadum's career on the social work faculty at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota — the professional home from which her scholarship on poor women, child labor reform, and Travelers Aid reached a public audience.

Beverly StadumSt. Cloud, MinnesotaDepartment of Social WorkSocial Welfare History

A Professional Home in Minnesota

Beverly Stadum — daughter of Palmer and Signe, born in 1945 in Rugby, North Dakota — built her academic career on the faculty of the Department of Social Work at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on the banks of the Mississippi River.

Her academic journey led her into social work and history. From her faculty position at St. Cloud State, she established herself as a social welfare historian and scholar of women, families, and poverty — a historian who listened carefully to the voices of marginalized women in the archives.

The era connects the family's North Dakota roots to a Minnesota academic life: research grounded in Minneapolis charity case records, Duluth Travelers Aid programs, and the practical structures of family and community survival in the early twentieth century.

Scholarship from St. Cloud

From this base, Beverly published a landmark book and scholarly articles that examined poverty, casework, and the lives of urban women.

In 1992 she published Poor Women and Their Families: Hard Working Charity Cases, 1900–1930 (SUNY Press), a landmark study of early-century urban women in Minneapolis. Rather than treating charity cases as passive victims, her research documented how these women balanced motherhood and informal employment, relied on networks of female kin, and bargained with city charity agencies — showing that survival was an active, strategic process.

Her mid-1990s article on child labor reform examined how compulsory school attendance and child labor bans collided with poor families' reliance on children's earnings. Her 1997 study in Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work explored Duluth's Travelers Aid programs and the tension between female protection, social control, and empowerment in early twentieth-century social work.

Era Events

Timeline

1992

Poor Women and Their Families

SUNY Press publishes Beverly's book on poor women, family life, work, charity case records, and social-welfare systems in Minneapolis, 1900–1930.

1995

Child Labor Reform and Family Needs

Her Child Welfare article examines how compulsory school attendance and child labor reforms affected low-income families and exposed tensions between social workers and family economic survival.

1997

Travelers Aid Services

Beverly publishes Female Protection and Empowerment: Travelers Aid Services, 1919–1934 in Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work, on Duluth's Travelers Aid programs.