 During his earliest years as a labor historian, Gutman's thesis was that "workers derived their strength from their small-town milieus and from alliances with class elements unsympathetic to the rising industrialists ..." But, as Gutman later admitted, this conclusion was wrong.Gutman then took a position teaching history at the State University of New York at Buffalo beginning in 1963.At SUNY-Buffalo, Gutman began adapting more statistical and quantitative methodologies to the study of American history.