Margaret Pryor
1894-1972
Instructor of Economics
Pryor served as one of the first members of UW Credit Union's Board of Directors.
Pryor was born in Luling, Texas on March 19, 1894. She attended the University of Texas at Austin and earned a B.A. in 1916. She completed her M.A. in Economics in 1918, and was hired as an instructor in the economics department at Vassar College. That same year, she conducted research for the War Industry Commission. In 1921, she entered graduate school at the University of Wisconsin as a Fellow in Sociology. From 1922 to 1923, she was an Assistant in Economics, and from 1924 to 1927, she was an Instructor in Economics. In 1927, she completed her Ph.D. Her thesis was titled "The Place of Consumption in Economic Theory."
She is considered a pioneer in her work developing the field of consumer economics, and her course "Economics of Consumers" helped break new ground in its focus on the practical point of view of the spender. She became Assistant Professor in 1927 and continued in that position until she left in 1936, due to her marriage to another member of the faculty. While she continued to be active in the campus community, a policy at the time permitted only one member per family to be a University employee.
In 1929, Pryor helped investigate and prepare a report in support of John R. Commons' study on the impact of the 1927 Uniform Small Loan Law, which many sought to repeal. As a result of Pryor's research and analysis, Commons was persuaded against outright repeal of the law, but favored some reforms and the promotion of credit unions. These informed findings were reflected in bills introduced in the 1931 legislative session by Assemblyman Groves.
Pryor was an energetic teacher and frequent public speaker. She was an active member of the Madison League of Women Voters and served on the League's Radio Committee. She was known as "Madge" to her friends who recalled, "Her interest in economics was always connected with the direct help that it could be in bettering the lot of the less fortunate members of society, but she believed that this could best be done by hard thinking rather than by soft emotion. Thus it was natural that her scholarly interests should center around the problems of the consumer and the role of consumption in economic theory."