Of six graduate courses taken for credit at Columbia University by Milton Friedman, one was taught by the Professor of Economic History, Vladimir Gregorievitch Simkhovitch — Economics 119. According to Friedman’s own listing of his coursework in economics found in his papers at the Hoover Institution Archives, he took Simkhovitch’s economic history course during the winter semester of the academic year 1933-34.
Simkhovitch was a multifaceted character and Universalgelehrter which can be loosely translated as an academic “utility infielder”. Because of his relative (or even absolute) obscurity now in the history of economics, here a bit of biographical information to chew on.
V. G. Simkhovitch was born in Russia in 1874, received his doctorate from Halle-Wittenberg (Germany) in 1898, and emigrated to the U.S. after completing graduate work where he began a fellowship at Cornell. He was hired by Columbia University in 1904 to teach economic history. Besides his economic history courses, Simkhovitch also regularly lectured on the subjects of socialist economics and Marxism until retiring from Columbia in 1942. Of considerably more note than himself was his wife Mary Melina Kingsbury, whom he met in Berlin during their student years. They married in New York City in 1899 with Mary Simkhovitch going on to become a prominent housing reform and neighborhood activist. Greenwich House, still in existence, was a model settlement house that she founded. Husband and wife were prominent enough, mostly thanks to her, to have their 50th wedding anniversary reported in the New York Times (January 6, 1949). Objects from Vladimir Simkhovitch’s art collections were reported in his obituary (New York Times, December 10, 1959) to have been displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Pierrpont Morgan Library in New York as well as museums in Boston, Cleveland and Philadelphia. It is not difficult to find objects once owned by him in art auction house listings today.
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Eli Ginzberg’s recollections of Simkhovitch
In his brief memoir essay “Economics at Columbia: Recollections of the early 1930s” [The American Economist, vol. 34, No. 2, (Fall, 1990), 14-19], Simkhovitch does not come off well, certainly not personally.
“The hard core of the old department in addition to Seligman, Seager and Moore included Vladimir G. Simkhovitch who offered courses on socialism and economic history. Russian by birth and German by education, Simkhovitch, even with the perspective of time is not easy to characterize and even harder to evaluate. A collector of Chinese art and a grower of delphiniums in Perry, Maine, he was recognized as an expert in both fields. Most students, the bright as well as the dull, considered his lectures somewhat tedious distraction from serious work on contemporary economics; they had little interest in his exhaustion of the soil explanation for the decline of Rome or his Edward Bernstein-modified critique of Karl Marx. But a few of us recognized V.G.’s insightfulness and over looked his failings, defects which included a proneness for character defamation and vindictiveness as well as immature behavior toward female students.” p. 14.
“If the relations between the Graduate Economics Department and the School of Business were close and for the most part friendly, this was not the case with respect to the Graduate Economic Department’s attitude to the economists who taught in the undergraduate department headed by Rexford G. Tugwell. Tugwell fancied himself to be an expert in agricultural economics which may have brought him into conflict with Simkhovitch who devoted much of his time and energy to creating and maintaining feuds. The tension may have been nothing more than snobbery run riot. Tugwell did not teach any course in the Graduate Department of Economics. But I can personally attest to the fact that Tugwell was sensitive about collegial relations.” p. 17
Ahem…“immature behavior toward female students”! Certainly not the first, nor regrettably the last…but definitely one of them. It was good for Eli Ginzberg to have put that in the historical record.
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[Course Description]
Economics 119—Economic history. 3 points Winter Session. Professor V. G. SIMKHOVITCH.
Tu., 2:10-3 in 401 Fayerweather and 4:10-5 in 302 Fayerweather.
A general survey of the chief phases of the economic development of classical antiquity, of the Middle Ages, and of modern times, as well as of historical approaches.
Source: History, Economics, Public Law, and Social Science: Courses Offered by the Faculty of Political Science for Winter and Spring Sessions, 1933-34. Columbia University, Bulletin of Information, 33rd Series, No. 26 (March 25, 1933)
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ECONOMIC HISTORY
V. Simkhovitch “Approaches to History”
I Political Science Quarterly, December 1929 S
II [ditto] December, 1930 S
III [ditto] September, 1932 R
Towards an Understanding of Jesus R
Rome’s Fall Reconsidered S
Hay and History S
Marxism v. Socialism Chapter on the Economic Interpretation of History
R Roth Clausing The Roman Colonate 5-62
R F. de Coulanges The Origin of Property in Land 1-73; 149-52
S Buecher Industrial Evolution 83-151
R Edward Meyer Entwicklungsgeschichte des Altertums in Kleine Schriften Vol. 81-160
R H. Bradley Enclosures in England 11-45; 72; 85; 105-7
S Seligman The Economic Interpretation of History 1-24; 146-186
R Schoenberg “Zunftswesen im Mittelalter” Jahrbucher fur Nationaloekonomie und Statistik 1867
R Renard Guilds in the Middle Ages 1-26; 32-67; 73 -115
R Brentano History and Development of the Guilds
R Cunningham Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Paragraphs 61, 72-7, 84, 103, 122, 128, 149-9
S Ashley Introduction to English Economic Theory and History, Volume I pp. 1-113
R Toynbee Industrial Revolution Chapters 7 and 8
R Toutain The Economic Life of the Ancient World Chapters 5-6
R Read S Study carefully
Source: Milton Friedman Papers. Hoover Institution Archives. Box 5, Folder 12, “Student years”.
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Image Source: Standing Royal Figure. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Helena Simkhovitch in memory of her father, Vladimir G. Simkhovitch.