Seventy-one-year-old Solomon Barkin was born, raised, and spent most of his adult life until 1963 in New York City. He received his undergraduate education at City College of New York (CCNY) and his graduate education at Columbia University. During his graduate studies he taught at CCNY and worked for the New York State Commission on Old Age Security. From there, with an economics Ph.D. in hand, he went to work for the Labor Advisory Board of the National Recovery Administration. Here he met Sidney Hillman, who hired Barkin in 1937 to serve as his right hand in the Textile Workers Organizing Committee (TWOC). With TWOC, Barkin assumed the title of Research Director, though his duties were much broader than the title suggests. Barkin continued as Research Director when the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) was formed in 1939. Under his direction the TWUA Research Department was considered the best in the field and involved itself in things other union research departments would never even consider. In 1963 he moved to Paris, France, to take up duties as Deputy Director of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. After about five years he returned to the United States and took a professorship at the University of Massachusetts, where he taught until his mandatory retirement at age seventy.
