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Cambridge Exam Questions

Cambridge. Economics Tripos, 1933

 

Examination questions for the Cambridge Economics Tripos from 1921, 1931 and 1932 have been posted earlier. Today we add the 1933 Economics Tripos for good measure.

Economics Tripos Part I (1933)

General Principles I
Social Problems
General Principles II
Essay Subjects
English Economic History
Economic Structure

Economics Tripos Part II (1933)

Economic Principles
Industry
Money
Essay Subjects
Labour
Principles of Politics
Public Finance
The Economic Development of the United States
Statistics
International Law

______________________________

 

PART I.

Monday, May 29, 1933.  9—12.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES I.

  1. “Economics may be described as a scientific study of the best means of avoiding waste.” Discuss.
  2. “Value in all cases tends to equal cost.” Consider the most important ways in which this dictum requires modification or amplification, and bring out clearly what is meant by “cost.”
  3. Is it possible for a community to save and invest too much for its own welfare?
  4. “Since it is evident that any industry is liable in the course of expansion to flood the market with its products and find its profits falling to zero or below zero, it seems pointless to pick out particular industries, such as agriculture, as being special cases requiring the use of the classificatory term ‘Diminishing Returns.'” Comment.
  5. What effects would you expect a great increase in the income of all classes to have upon (a) the rate of interest, (b) the size of the population?
  6. How far is it true to say that capital is free to migrate from declining to expanding industries?
  7. In what way does the true rent of land either resemble or differ from (a) the rent of buildings, (b) the high incomes of successful professional men?
  8. “The rate of interest tends to equality with the marginal net yield on the capital in use.” How does this come about? Is it an adequate explanation of the forces governing the rate of interest?
  9. Why do the prices of some commodities fluctuate much more than others?
  10. What are the chief benefits that might accrue to the community as a whole if a highly competitive industry were compulsorily converted into a monopolistic corporation?

 

Monday, May 29, 1933. 1½—4½
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.

  1. What evidence, if any, is there that poverty has diminished during the present century?
  2. Discuss the difficulties involved in abolishing or modifying the “means test.”
  3. Can relief of unemployment be dealt with on an insurance basis?
  4. Would a uniform national reduction of wages increase employment?
  5. Is England over-populated?
  6. Discuss the proposal to build a million houses in five years and pay for them with new bank credits and notes.
  7. By what chief methods are industrial disputes settled in Great Britain?
  8. Could a general strike improve the position of the wage- earning class?
  9. How do you account for the growing use of piece-rates in Russia since they seem inconsistent with the communist principle, “From each according to his capacity, to each according to his needs”?
  10. Would you support the proposed international convention for a 40-hour week?

 

Tuesday, May 30, 1933. 9—12.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES II.

A.

  1. Discuss the more important ways in which the world with which Economics is concerned differs from that of real life.
  2. Explain what you mean by “the supply of labour” and discuss how far it is affected by changes in the rates of remuneration offered.
  3. What do you understand by the phrase “the representative producer”? For what purposes is the idea useful?
  4. Two commodities are produced under conditions of joint supply. A given tax per unit is laid upon the output of one. Consider the effect upon the price of the other.
  5. What conditions are most favourable to the success of a combination of workpeople in order to raise the price of their labour?
  6. In what ways is the burden of risk in production and trade distributed under present-day conditions?

B.

  1. Give an account of the factors influencing the value of money.
  2. Discuss the difficulties involved in the construction and use of index numbers of the cost of living.
  3. How is the rate of exchange determined between two inconvertible paper currencies?
  4. Describe the working of the London Discount Market and indicate where its importance lies for the student of monetary conditions.
  5. Expand the statement that “the ability of any one bank to extend credit depends partly at least on the policy of the others.”
  6. How far is “the stabilisation of the level of prices” likely to promote the stability of general business conditions?

 

Tuesday, May 30, 1933. 1½—4½.
ESSAY SUBJECTS.

Write an essay on one of the following subjects:

  1. The final goal of society.
  2. “A little college is a dangerous thing.”
  3. Statesmanship and economics.
  4. Hoarding.
  5. The future of the English village.

 

Wednesday, May 31, 1933. 9—12.
ENGLISH ECONOMIC HISTORY.

  1. “Until the end of the seventeenth century England’s economic position was only of secondary importance.”
    Account for this and for the change which took place in the ensuing century.
  2. What was the “yeoman class”? When and why did it decline in importance?
  3. What was the influence of the wars of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period on the economic development of England?
  4. Outline the events and the discussions which preceded the Bank Charter Act of 1844 and consider the settlement then achieved.
  5. Give a brief account of the “humanitarian movement” and indicate its rôle in the economic and social life of this country.
  6. Give some account of the principal factors which influenced the history of British shipping in the second half of the nineteenth century.
  7. What were the main features of the financial policy of Gladstone?
  8. Indicate and account for the principal changes in the general level of gold prices between 1821 and 1873.
  9. What is meant by “economic imperialism”? What forms did it take in this country in the generation preceding the outbreak of the World War?
  10. Contrast the structure and general situation of British agriculture in 1850 and in 1914.

 

Wednesday, May 31, 1933. 1½—4½.
ECONOMIC STRUCTURE.

  1. “A shift in the geographical distribution of industrial activities is usually associated with technical changes.” Discuss this, giving examples from recent changes in Great Britain.
  2. How do you explain the rapid growth in the proportion of the population employed in the distributive trades?
  3. “In expanding industries productive capacity can be created far more rapidly than of old.” Consider this statement, giving illustrations.
  4. If to-morrow you were appointed dictator of the Lancashire cotton industry for ten years, what would you do? Give your reasons.
  5. Give some account of recent developments in retail trading in this country.
  6. Under what conditions will an increase in the total output of an industry be secured most cheaply (a) by the expansion of existing plants, (b) by the opening of branches, (c) by the establishment of new firms?
  7. In what ways do you consider that public control over the provision of capital for industrial purposes can be improved?
  8. In what circumstances will organised restriction of output in any one industry be in the public interest?
  9. “It may be a true instinct which foresees the decadence of national prosperity in any special change of industry.” Comment.
  10. “Business is becoming a profession which requires a professional training and outlook.” Discuss the truth of this, and its possible effect on the efficiency of management.

 

______________________________

 

PART II.

Monday, May 29, 1933. 9—12.
ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES.

  1. State and criticise the case for the view that the conception of Utility is superfluous in economic theory.
  2. With what qualifications is it legitimate to suppose that the quantity of a commodity demanded at a given place and time is a function of the price of that commodity only?
  3. “The specious symmetry of the expressions ‘law of diminishing returns’ and ‘law of increasing returns’ conceals differences of fundamental importance.” Explain.
  4. What part, if any, do the principles governing the increase of population play in the modern theory of value? If you hold that they play no part, show precisely how population theory has been extruded.
  5. “Collective bargaining can only secure wage advances at the price of unemployment.” Discuss.
  6. Is there any respect in which the laws which govern the rent of land differ from those which govern the value of other factors of production in equilibrium?
  7. On what principles should a socialist state determine the optimum rate of saving for the community?
  8. Construct, if possible, a general definition of normal profit that will cover the cases both of perfect and of imperfect competition. Or, if that is impossible, give specific definitions appropriate to each case. Justify your procedure.
  9. On what grounds would you decide whether a practice of price discrimination was to be condemned?
  10. If a particular factor of production is not fully employed in a community, its employment can normally be increased by a reduction in the price at which it is offered. What relevance has this for the problem of raising output in a community in which none of the factors is fully employed?
  11. What facts would you need to know in order to measure the advantage which a country derived from its foreign trade?
  12. “Monetary theory is destined soon to swallow up the general theory of value.” Discuss.

 

Monday, May 29, 1933. 1½—4½.
INDUSTRY.

  1. How do you account for the increase since the War in the proportion of the occupied population engaged in the distributive trades? Is this increase to be deplored from the economic standpoint?
  2. Do you think it is correct to regard the last quarter of the nineteenth century as a period of stagnation for British industry, and the early years of the present century as a period of recovery? What evidence is available in support of or in opposition to this view?
  3. How would you explain the spread of international industrial combinations since the War? Do the post-War international combinations differ in any important respect from the pre-War international combinations? Have they contributed to economic stability?
  4. It is said that the State regulation of railway charges and services has been developed on the assumption that the railway companies are monopolists. Discuss this contention, and consider how State regulation affects the present distribution of traffic between railways and roads.
  5. What are “secret reserves”? Does the provision of “secret reserves” afford any advantages to business concerns? Can they be justified from the standpoint of the investor and the public?
  6. What is the economic significance of the recent extension of instalment selling? Has this development had an adverse or a favourable effect on the stability of economic life?
  7. Discuss the broad changes in industrial localization within Great Britain during the last hundred years, and their bearing on the theory of industrial localization.
  8. Do you think that the State is ever justified in enforcing rationalization on an industry? What evidence should the State regard as relevant in considering action of this kind?
  9. It is said that certain costs which are variable or prime costs from the standpoint of the employer are overhead costs from the standpoint of the community. Discuss this contention, and consider its bearing on the question of State interference in industrial affairs.
  10. Account for the progressive decline in the British cotton industry during the last decade.
  11. Discuss the causes of the extension of valorization schemes in world agriculture during the post-War period. Estimate the main economic effects of these schemes.

 

Tuesday, May 30, 1933. 9—12.
MONEY.

  1. What light, if any, does the experience of the last three years throw on the comparative merits of the British, German and American systems of deposit banking?
  2. Examine the view that an index number of prices must be differently weighted according as to whether the forces determining the value of money are analysed with the aid of the conception of velocity of circulation or with the aid of the conception of a demand for “real balances.”
  3. How do you account for the popular notion that money, to serve its purpose well, must be “backed by” some particular kind or kinds of asset? Give instances of the expedients which have been adopted to satisfy this notion in times of crisis.
  4. Examine, with special reference to the course of events in the United States in 1922-29, the theory that economic crises are brought about by a deficiency of saving.
  5. “The controversy which culminated in the Bank Act of 1844 was simply an episode in the agelong warfare between inflationist and deflationist.” Discuss.
  6. Examine the nature, and estimate the strength, of the forces which, in the absence of pressure from a central bank, will tend to bring about adjustment in a country’s balance of payments.
  7. Some people hold that, if productivity per head is increasing, the stabilisation by a world monetary authority of an index number of wholesale prices of raw materials would have seriously inflationary consequences. Do you agree with this view? Can you propose any better objective of international banking policy?
  8. The present slump has been compared with that of the early ‘nineties. Explain the main points of resemblance and difference.
  9. If a Government in a slump spends £100 million, raised by loan, on public works, would you expect the “indirect employment” created to last only as long as the “direct employment,” or to outlast it?
  10. You are Finance Minister of an “off gold” country which has decided to re-adhere to an international gold standard. What considerations would you take into account in deciding upon the new parity of exchange?
  11. “Foreign investment on a generous scale by the creditor countries was the root cause of the world crisis: it is also the only possible remedy.” Discuss.
  12. Discuss the influence of central banking operations on the relation between long and short interest rates, with special reference to the maxim that a central bank should endeavour to secure the equality of natural to market rates of interest.

 

Tuesday, May 30, 1933. 1½—4½.
SUBJECTS FOR AN ESSAY.

  1. Japanese Expansion in Asia.
  2. Rivers.
  3. The Economic Background of the Present Situation in Germany.
  4. The Place of Technological and Psychological Factors in Economic Analysis.
  5. Graft.
  6. The Creative Artist in a Socialist State.
  7. The Colour Problem in Africa.
  8. Class War.

 

Wednesday, May 31, 1933. 9—12.
LABOUR.

  1. Compare broadly the standard of comfort attained by the mass of the people in Great Britain with the standards attained in Germany and the United States of America; and briefly account for the differences.
  2. “Unless drastic action is taken to effect a change in the ownership of property, no substantial advance can be made in the direction of equalizing incomes.” Discuss the grounds for this opinion.
  3. Did the legislation passed by Parliament between 1832 and 1850 on balance promote or retard the material progress of the working class? Give reasons for your opinion.
  4. Explain how the volume of employment in Great Britain would probably be affected if the hours of work for all manual workers in industry and commerce were reduced to 40 per week, without any reduction in weekly wage-rates, (a) in this country only, (b) in all countries.
  5. “Experience shows that, while sickness is an insurable risk, unemployment is not, and ought therefore never to have been brought within the scope of social insurance.” Discuss this view.
  6. In a recent enquiry into the Sheffield cutlery trade, relating to the period July—December 1931, information was obtained from 67 manufacturing firms (approximately one-third of those known to be engaged in the trade) selected at random, from the outworkers employed by them and from a number of other outworkers. It showed the following results for men and women of 21 years and over:
Earnings per Hour
(Pence)		 Earnings per Week
Upper Quartile Median Lower Quartile Upper Quartile Median Lower Quartile
Time Workers:
Men 15.7 13.7 11.5 61s. 1d. 54s. 10d. 45s. 0d.
Women 6.7 5.9 5.5 26s. 0d. 23s. 0d. 21s. 0d.
Piece Workers:
Men 18.2 14.1 11.1 — — —
Women 8.4 6.9 5.4 — — —

Of the 2,926 workpeople covered by the enquiry, 61.1% were males and 38.9% females. According to figures supplied by representatives of the trade unions, it would appear that in 1932 less than 20% of the workers in the trade were organized in trade unions. If you had been Minister of Labour, would you have regarded this information as affording sufficient ground for applying the Trade Board Acts to the trade? And how would you have defended your decision?

  1. “To show that wages in a depressed industry with an international market are higher than those paid for similar work in the same industry abroad does not afford sufficient reason for thinking that a reduction of wages is an appropriate remedy for its depression: in order to establish that conclusion it must be shown also that they are higher than those paid for the same skill and efficiency in other industries at home.” Examine this contention.
  2. It has been proposed that a national authority, constituted similarly to the railways’ National Wages Board, should be established to regulate wages and conditions of work in coal mines throughout the country. Discuss the merits of this proposal.
  3. “The differences of structure and policy between the trade union movements of England and the United States are to be traced to historical accidents rather than to any differences in the present character or organisation of the industries of those countries.” How far is this true?
  4. What statistical or other scientific evidence is there as to the effect of (a) noise, (b) rest-pauses, (c) temperature upon output?
  5. Explain, with reference to the history and the underlying economic conditions of the two industries, why the “sliding-scale” principle of wage-settlement worked successfully in the iron and steel trade, but failed to preserve industrial peace in the coal trade.

 

Wednesday, May 31, 1933. 1½—4½.
PRINCIPLES OF POLITICS.

  1. “The Nation, by its power and its duration, is an organism, with an existence, ends and means of action superior to that of the individuals, separate or grouped, who compose it.” (Italian Charter of Labour, 1927. ) Discuss this view.
  2. “The normal course of improvement starts from origination by pure social invention, and passes subsequently, if at all, into adoption by the State” (Bosanquet). Discuss the view of the relation between Society and the State which is implied in this statement.
  3. What are the limits, if any, to the application by the State of the principle of Equality among its members?
  4. “Liberty is not one, but many, and its various forms may contradict one another.” Discuss this statement.
  5. Discuss the idea that law is the enforcement by the community upon its members of a moral minimum of conduct.
  6. How far can an international sovereign authority co-exist with national State-sovereignty?
  7. Would you agree with the view that a system of representative institutions for the economic world ought to be placed by the side of representative political institutions?
  8. On what principles may the State seek to regulate or control the freedom of thought of its members?
  9. On what grounds would you seek to justify the necessity of party and party-organisation for the proper working of Government?
  10. The French Declaration of Rights of 1789 includes the right of resistance among les droits de I’homme et du citoyen. In what sense, if any, can a citizen have a “right” to resist the State?
  11. Discuss, with reference to your general conception of rights, the idea of a “right to work.”
  12. Would you agree that the “separation of the powers” (or functions) of government is a necessary principle of politics?

 

Thursday, June 1, 1933.  9—12.
PUBLIC FINANCE.

  1. Consider the attempts that have been made to frame general rules for Expenditure analogous to those established for Taxation. Account for the relatively backward condition of the former division of Public Finance.
  2. Examine the views that have been put forward concerning the principle according to which motor-vehicle owners should be taxed, and consider the principle or principles to which the present taxes on motor-vehicle owners tend to conform.
  3. Discuss the extent to which the main differences between the various theories of taxation may be attributed to divergent views of the functions and the nature of the State.
  4. What is there to be said for and against having a quinquennial instead of an annual budget?
  5. On what considerations is the maxim that a government should not issue loans below par based? Does the maxim admit of exceptions?
  6. Discuss the view that the Government should spend the revenue derived from death duties on capital purposes.
  7. As a means to increasing prosperity, it has been proposed (a) to reduce taxation without reducing government expenditure, or, alternatively, (b) to increase government expenditure without increasing taxation. Compare the probable effects of these two policies.
  8. “The law of diminishing utility is sound enough when applied to a particular commodity, but it cannot be extended to wealth in general: consequently all the elaborate arguments and formulae for tax-graduation are without logical foundation.” Comment.
  9. Explain exactly what is meant by Most Favoured Nation treatment, and examine the view that its prevalence constitutes an obstacle to the recovery of world trade.
  10. Discuss, with reference to the practice of other countries, possible alternatives to the methods of local taxation at present in force in England.
  11. Is there any foundation for the view that inter-governmental war-debts are more harmful to trade than (a) other debts owed by governments to foreigners, (b) internal war-debts?
  12. Compare the effects, (a) on home producers, (b) on consumers, of an import duty and an import quota.

 

Thursday, June 1, 1933. 1½—4½.
THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

  1. “America is really a federation of sections rather than of States.” Consider this statement from the economic point of view as applied to American conditions in 1789, 1850 and to-day.
  2. Examine, in the light of the first half century of American history after 1789, the economic powers which the constitution gave to the National Government.
  3. Discuss the policy of the United States Government in dealing with the Public Lands down to the Homestead Act of 1862.
  4. Criticize the methods used by the North to finance the Civil War.
  5. “Southern experience before and since the Civil War condemns slavery as an economic institution.” Discuss this statement.
  6. Illustrate the influence of the westward movement within the continent on the economic outlook of the American.
  7. What problems were created by the consolidation of the railways and what measures were taken as a consequence to protect the public interest?
  8. Account for the leading position acquired by the United States in the iron and steel industry.
  9. Explain the change that has taken place in the twentieth century in the American attitude towards immigration.
  10. To what extent have economic motives influenced the oversea expansion of the United States?
  11. “America has no national economic history, in the sense in which France or England has, until the generation after 1880.” Discuss this statement.

 

Thursday, June 1, 1933. 1½—4½.
STATISTICS.

Part A.

  1. Estimate the average, mode and median for the group of rents in Table A. Criticise the use of the formula skewness = (average—mode) \div standard deviation in this case, and suggest or calculate an alternative measurement.

Table A. Three-roomed tenements.

Rent Number
Under 2s. 6d. 1
2s. 6d. to 5s. 3
5s. to 7s. 6d. 14
7s. 6d. to 10s. 29
10s. to 12s. 6d. 27
12s. 6d. to 15s. 13
15s. to 17s. 6d. 11
17s. 6d. to 20s. 2
100

 

  1. Fit a straight line by least squares or any other method to the series of index-numbers in Table B.

Table B. Index of Production.

Years
Quarters 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931
1st 110 105 108 109 84
2nd 107 103 110 100 80
3rd 105 95 107 90 80
4th 107 104 114 92 90
Average 100

Make a graph of the figures, marking in (1) the straight line found and (2) moving averages based on eight successive quarters.
Comment on the results.

  1. If \bar{x},\,\bar{y} are the averages of n observations of (x, y) pairs, and in the array \bar{x}+{{x}_{s}} at there are ns cases with average \bar{y}+{{y}_{s}}, show that r=\frac{\sum{{{n}_{s}}{{x}_{s}}{{y}_{s}}}}{n{{\sigma }_{x}}{{\sigma }_{y}}}.

Work out r and the correlation ratio for the figures in Table C.

Table C.

Number of earners Number of families Average number
of dependents
x ns \bar{y}+{{y}_{s}}
0 8 1.5 \bar{x}=1.6
1 54 2.1 \bar{y}=2.0
2 19 1.8 {{\sigma }_{x}}=1.13
3 11 2.0 {{\sigma }_{y}}=1.42
4 5 2.2
5 3 2.5
100

Make a graph of the averages showing the regression line. Comment on the utility of the procedure in this case.

  1. From a large population 100 workmen are selected at random and are classified thus:
Occupation
Birthplace Skilled Unskilled
Town of residence 30 38
Elsewhere 10 22

Do you find any relationship between skill and birthplace? Table D may be used if needed.

Table D. Values of P.

{{\chi }^{2}}
Number of Compartments 0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0
2 1 0.48 0.32 0.22 0.16
3 1 0.78 0.61 0.47 0.37
4 1 0.92 0.80 0.68 0.57

 

Part B.

  1. What data are used for forecasting the future trend of population and what assumptions are made? Consider also the more limited question of determining whether a population is self-productive or is tending towards diminution.
  2. Among the statistics used for studying the change of the industrial position are (a) an index of physical production, (b) the number of insured persons in employment, (c) an index of wage-rates, (d) occasional accounts of average earnings. What relationships do you expect to find between these statistics in a period of increasing depression or in a period of recovery?
  3. Explain in some detail the construction of index-numbers of average prices and of volume of trade from statistics of exports and of imports. Describe some of the purposes for which these figures are used and consider whether they are sufficiently accurate for these purposes.
  4. Examine carefully the question whether index-numbers of wages and of cost of living can be combined so as to show the relative movements of real wages in different countries.
  5. Describe one of the mathematical methods of constructing “demand curves” from existing data, and consider in what sense they can be called demand curves.

 

Friday, June 2, 1933. 9—12.
INTERNATIONAL LAW.

  1. Comment upon the international status (if any) of the following:

(a) The Dominion of Canada;
(b) The Saar Basin;
(c) The State of California;
(d) Switzerland.

  1. What are the main legal consequences that flow from the independence of States?
  2. Show in what respects a mandated territory differs from (a) a colony, (b) a protectorate. What (if any) is the sanction for the enforcement of the terms of a mandate?
  3. Describe the constitution and purpose of the International Labour Organisation and the method of the composition of the delegations sent by members to its Conferences. Mention any two of the Labour Conventions adopted by it and now in force.
  4. How far has the process of codification been applied to international law? What are the difficulties in the way of further codification?
  5. Describe the three principal methods for the settlement of disputes prescribed by the Covenant of the League.
  6. Discuss the lawfulness and the effectiveness of an economic boycott,

(a) when applied by the nationals of one State against the commerce of another;
(b) when applied by the international community against a wrongdoing State.

  1. Summarise the effect of the outbreak of war upon

(a) treaties to which all the belligerents and no neutrals are parties, and
(b) contracts between the nationals of opposing belligerents.

  1. How much of the Declaration of Paris, 1856, has in your opinion survived the developments of maritime warfare in the Great War?
  2. In what respects do you consider that the Covenant of the League, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and the Convention on Financial Assistance (1930) have modified the law of neutrality?

 

Source:  Cambridge University. Economics Tripos Papers 1931-1933. Cambridge, UK: University Press, 1933, pp. 53-70.

Image Source: King’s College, Cambridge, England. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard Socialism

Harvard. Labor Movement in Europe, Final Exams. Meriam, 1924 and 1925.

 

Harvard’s semester course “The Labor Movement in Europe” was introduced by Professor William E. Rappard in 1912-13 and 1913-14 but then not offered again until 1923-24 and 1924-25 when it was taught by Richard Stockton Meriam. The course was then once again bracketed in the annual course announcements until 1930-31 when it was “reintroduced” by Dr. William Thomas Ham.

Judging from the examination questions below, Meriam appears to have dedicated about a third of his course to socialist economics and socialist labor movements.

___________________

Meriam’s Harvard Ph.D. record, 1921

Richard Stockton Meriam, A.B. 1914.

Subject, Economics. Special Field, Social Ethics. Thesis, “Trade Unions in Germany, 1865-1914.” Instructor in Economics, and Tutor in the Division of History, Government, and Economics, Harvard University.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1920-21.Page 62.

___________________

Course Announcement

6b2 hf. The Labor Movement in Europe. Half-course (second half-year). Tu., Th., Sat., at 10. Asst. Professor Meriam.

This course will deal primarily with the development of trade unionism, of the coöperative movement, and of the political labor movement in Europe from the beginning of the nineteenth century and with the trend of opinion concerning their significance. Special attention will be given to the theories of the relations of labor to industry in the state which have gained adherents among wage earners or have influenced the labor policies of European states. The development of labor legislation and of social insurance prior to the war and the labor problems of the war and reconstruction periods will also be examined.

Candidates for distinction will be given an opportunity to write theses.

Source:  Division of History, Government, and Economics 1924-25. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXI, No. 22 (April 30, 1924), page 69.

___________________

Course enrollment
2nd semester 1923-24

[Economics] 6b2 hf. Dr. Meriam.—The Labor Movement in Europe.

Total 30: 3 graduates, 12 seniors, 11 juniors, 1 sophomore, 3 others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1923-24. Page 106.

___________________

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Economics 6b2
Final examination 1924

I. (One hour)

  1. Write a critical review of the Webbs’ The Consumer’s Coöperative Movement, discussing in particular
    1. the Webbs’ interpretation of the movement;
    2. their comparison of the coöperatives with private enterprise;
    3. their comparison of the coöperatives with government enterprise.

 

II. (One hour)
Answer 2 and either 3 or 4.

  1. What do you consider the most important single step to be taken in the United States either (a) to obtain for this country the benefits of the labor movement in Europe, or (b) to avoid its dangers?
  2. Do you accept Sombart’s thesis that “there is a distinct tendency in the social movement to uniformity”?
  3. Answer two.
    1. Compare the characteristics of the German labor movement in 1875, 1890, in 1913.
    2. Compare the position of trade unionism within the labor movement in France and Great Britain in the period 1905-13.
    3. Account for the peculiarities of the French labor movement prior to 1900.

 

III. (One hour)

Explain and criticize four of the following quotations.:

  1. “The books on socialism deal largely with controversies which do not proceed to the heart of the matter. This seems to me to hold of K. Marx, Das Kapital, the most famous and influential of socialist books.”
  2. “Property is theft.”
  3. “Though it (the program of the British Labor Party) lacks a single constructive feature, though it is made up exclusively of scraps of Marxian jargon, catchphrases, and shibboleths, nevertheless it is the kind of program which any class is likely to adopt in its own interest when it for the first time concludes that it can outvote other classes and controlled the state.”
  4. “Even if the state of affairs characterized by peasant protectorship is destined by fate to disappear, socialism does not have to precipitate its disappearance. Its role is not to separate property and labor, but on the contrary to reunite in the same hands these two factors of production, whose division results in the servitude and poverty of the workers who have fallen to the state of proletarians.”
  5. “All this (the schemes of guild socialists) is quite different from producers’ coöperation.”

Source: Harvard University Archives.  Examination Papers. Finals 1924.(HUC 7000.28, vol. 66). Papers Printed for Final Examinations. History, History of Religions,… , Government, Economics, Anthropology,… , Psychology, Social Ethics. (June 1924).

 

___________________

Course enrollment
2nd semester 1924-25

[Economics] 6b2 hf. Asst. Professor Meriam.—The Labor Movement in Europe.

Total 34: 10 graduates, 8 seniors, 12 juniors, 1 sophomore, 3 others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1924-25. Page 75.

___________________

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Economics 6b2
Final examination 1925

(Avoid duplication in selecting questions)

I. (One hour)

  1. Write an essay on one of the following subjects:
    1. Marxian socialism and the labor movement.
    2. “Democracy has forced one concession after another from the pure theory of individualism.”
    3. “Violent political passions have but little hold on those who have devoted all their faculties to the pursuit of their well-being. The ardour which they display in small matters calms their zeal for momentous undertakings.”

II. (One hour)
Answer 2 and either 3, 4, or 5

  1. (20 minutes for a or b.) What are the obstacles to the formation in the United States of the Labour Party like either (a) the British Labor Party or (b) the German Socialist Party?
  2. Does a comparison of the characteristics of the labor movement in various European countries in the period 1865-1875 with those in the period 1905-1914 support Sombart’s thesis on The Tendency to Uniformity?
  3. Do you agree with the conclusion of the following quotation from an article on the “labor banks” recently established in the United States? –

“The labor movement in America is far in advance of that in any other country. This will sound strange to ears which are tuned to the current phrases regarding labor movements. They who are still thinking in terms of the primitive tactics of class war will, of course, repudiate it at once. The labor movement of this country is passing out of the primitive fighting stage in which leadership concerned itself chiefly with the immediate tactics of battle. It is passing into a stage in which it is concerning itself with the higher strategy of maneuvering for permanent advantage. The leaders of labor in no other country show any sign of being aware of the first principles of this higher strategy, nor, for that matter, do the more vociferous self-appointed champions of labor in this country. They are fighting capital either directly or politically. They are not even encouraging laborers to become their own capitalists, or to get possession of the machinery of production by the one effective method of purchase.”

  1. Account for:
    1. The comparative results of consumers’ and producers’ coöperation.
    2. The comparative strength of consumers’ coöperation in the United States and Great Britain.
    3. The persistence of the ideal of producers’ coöperation among the wage-earners.

III. (One hour)

Explain and criticize four of the following quotations:

  1. “The final goal is nothing; the movement is everything.”
  2. “Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work!’ they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system!’”
  3. “Universal suffrage considered by 89 to 96 per cent of the population as a question of the belly and spread throughout the entire national body with the belly’s warmth! Have no fear, gentlemen. There is no power that could withstand it long. Universal suffrage is the standard you must raise. This is the standard which will give you victory.”
  4. “We do not regard Co-operation particularly as a method by which poor men may make savings and advance their own position in the world.… To us the social and political significance of the Co-operative Movement lies in the fact that it provides a means by which, in substitution for the Capitalist System, the operations of industry may be….carried on under democratic control without the incentive of profit-making, or the stimulus of pecuniary gain.”
  5. The Bolsheviki are followers of Karl Marx, in their experiment was based upon his teachings.”
  6. “If the Co-operators would guarantee to the Trade Unionists in their employment distinctly preferential terms, and if the eight million Trade Unionists would, in return, give, not merely all their custom to the Co-operative Societies, but also absolute continuity of service, even when striking against profit-making employers, and an actual superiority in conscientiousness and skill in Co-operative employment, this ‘Direct Action’ would… transfer trade after trade to the joint control of the democracy of consumers in alliance with the democracy of producers without the necessity of paying any compensation to the capitalists.”

 

Source:Harvard University Archives.  Examination Papers. Finals 1925.(HUC 7000.28, vol. 67). Papers Printed for Final Examinations. History of Science, History,… , Government, Economics, Philosophy,… , Anthropology, Military Science. (June 1925).

Image Source: Robert Stockton Meriam in the Harvard Class Album 1925.

Categories
Chicago Columbia Economists Gender Northwestern Social Work

Chicago. Economics Ph.D. Alumna, Helen Fisher Hohman, 1928

 

We have just met Helen Fisher Hohman’s husband Elmo Paul Hohman by way of his Northwestern reading list on labor problems that somehow found its way into the Harvard course syllabi archives. Helen herself went on to get a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1928 (Elmo was teaching at Northwestern) and her dissertation won the distinguished Hart, Schaffner and Marx competition over Simon Kuznets’ dissertation that was given honorable mention. 

One wonders what Helen Fisher Hohman’s career path might have looked like had she been born to a later cohort. It would be nice if we could find a picture of her, maybe some descendent will stumble upon this page and share with Economics in the Rear-View Mirror.

_____________________

Helen Fisher Hohman

1916. B.A. University of Illinois.

1919. A.M. Columbia University.

1919. New York School of Social Work (completed two year program).

1920. Assistant in the economics department, Vassar College.

1921-22. Instructor of economics at Simmons College.

1928. Ph.D. University of Chicago. Thesis: The Trade Board Acts and the Social Insurance Acts in Relation to a Minimum Standard of Living in Great Britain: A Study in Attitudes toward Poverty and Methods of Dealing with It, 1880-1926.

Received first prize in the Hart, Schaffner and Marx competition in 1928 (honorable mention went to Simon S. Kuznets for his “Secular Movements in Production and Prices”)

1931. Edited Essays on Population and other papers by James Alfred Field. (Chicago: University of Chicago).

1933. The Development of Social Insurance and Minimum Wage Legislation in Great Britain: A Study of British Social Legislation in Relation to a Minimum Standard of Living. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

1940.  Old Age in Sweden: A Program of Social Security. U.S. Social Security Board.

Source:  Kirsten Madden. Women economists of promise? Six Hart, Schaffner and Marx Prize winners in the early twentieth century. Chapter 13 in Kirsten Madden, Robert W. Dimand (eds). Routledge Handbook of the History of Women’s Economic Thought. London: Routledge, 2018.
Also: Simmons College yearbook Microcosm 1922, p. 38.

_____________________

1940. Helen Fisher Hohman was listed as Consultant, Bureau of Research and Statistics [Social Security Board]; and Lecturer in the Division of Social Work, Northwestern University.

Source:  Helen Fisher Hohman. Social Democracy in Sweden. Social Security Bulletin, Vol.3, No. 2. February 1940, pp. 3-10

_____________________

Obituary of Helen Hohman (nee Fisher)
August 2, 1894 – December 18, 1972

Mrs. Helen Fisher Hohman, 78, of 606 Trinity Ct., Evanston, former professor of economics at Northwestern University and an authoress, died yesterday in the infirmary of Presbyterian Home, Evanston.

Mrs. Hohman, who taught at N. U. during World War II, wrote the book “British Insurance and Minimum Wage Legislation in Great Britain,” which won a Hart, Schaffner and Marx prize in 1928. Survivors include her husband, Elmo; a daughter, Mrs. Rene Wadlow; and two grandchildren. Private services will be held.

Transcribed from Chicago Tribune, December 19, 1972 by Marsha L. Ensminger

Source:  Genealogy Trails History Group for Washington County, Illinois.

 

 

 

Categories
Economists Harvard Northwestern

Harvard. Economics PhD alumnus, Elmo Paul Hohman, 1925

 

In the previous post Economics in the Rear-View Mirror salvaged part of a reading list for a course on labor problems from a new assistant professor of economics at Northwestern University who would go on to complete his economic history dissertation at Harvard on the American whaling industry (1785-1885). 

Below we add to our record some biographical and career information on this economics Ph.D. alumnus of Harvard.

Elmo Hohman’s wife, Helen Fisher Hohman,  was herself an economics Ph.D. alumna of the University of Chicago. Her post in our series “Get to know an economics Ph.D.” immediately follows.

____________________

Pre-Harvard history theses at the University of Illinois

Hohman wrote his B.A. thesis in history at the University of Illinois:  “The Ku Klux Klan: Its Origin, Growth, and Disbandment” (1916).  His M.A. thesis in history at the University of Illinois is also available: “The Attitude of the Presbyterian Church in the United States Towards American Slavery” (1917).

____________________

Traces from Harvard graduate school

“The Ricardo Prize Scholarship in Economics has been awarded to Elmo P. Hohman 1G. of Nashville, Ill” (Harvard Crimson, 4 June 1920).

“Among the men appointed tutors in History, Government, and Economics for next year is James W. Angell ’18, son of president-elect Angell of Yale. The other newly-appointed tutors are James Hart, William A. Berridge ’14, Karl W. Bigelow, Elmo P. Hohman, and Norman J. Silberling ’14.” (Harvard Crimson, 17 June 1921).

____________________

Harvard Ph.D. awarded 1925

ELMO PAUL HOHMAN, A.B. (Univ. of Illinois) 1916, A.M. (ibid.) 1917, A.M. (Harvard Univ.) 1920.

Subject, Economics. Special Field, Labor Problems. Thesis, “The American Whaleman: A Study of the Conditions of Labor in the Whaling Industry, 1785-1885.” Assistant Professor of Economics, Northwestern University.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1924-25. Page 100.

____________________

Career of Elmo Paul Hohman

Assistant and tutor, department economics, Harvard, 1920-1923. Instructor economics, Northwestern University, 1923-1925, assistant professor, 1925-1931, associate professor, 1931-1938, professor since 1938. Special referee, division of unemployment compensation, Illinois Department of Labor, 1939-1942.

Regional price executive, OPA, Chicago, 1942, district price executive Chicago Metropolitan office, 1942-1944. Vice chairman, shipbuilding commission National War Labor Board, 1944, war shipping panel, 1945. Chairman advising committee, Yale Fund for Seamen’s Studies since 1946.

Observer, visiting scholar, International Labor Office, 1928-1929, 1936-1937, 1946, 1958-1959. National panel arbitrators Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. Member maritime division International Labor Organization, Geneva.

Student, 3d R.O.T.C., Camp Grant, Illinois, 1918. Commander Second lieutenant infantry, 1918. Associate field director, American Red Cross transport service, 1919.

Source:  Prabook entry for Elmo Paul Hohman.

____________________

Obituary of Elmo Paul Hohman
August 2, 1894 [in Salem,Washington County, Illinois]– January 1, 1977 [Evanston, Illinois]

Services for Elmo Paul Hohman, 82, professor emeritus of economics at Northwestern University, were pending. Mr. Hohman, of 606 Trinity Ct., Evanston, died last Saturday in Evanston Hospital. He joined the faculty of Northwestern in 1923 as an instructor of economics and retired as a professor in 1962. He wrote several books on the American Merchant Marine, among them, “The American Whale Man,” Seamen Ashore,” and “The History of American Merchant Seamen.” He is survived by a daughter, Mrs. Eleanore Wadlow, and two grandchildren. His late wife, Mrs. Helen Fisher Hohman, was also a professor of economics at Northwestern.

Transcribed from Chicago Tribune January 5, 1977 by Marsha L. Ensminger

Memorial service for Elmo Paul Hohman

A memorial service for Elmo Paul Hohman, professor emeritus of economics at Northwestern University, will be at 1:30 p.m. Sunday in the Presbyterian Home Chapel, 3131 Simpson St., Evanston. Mr. Hohman died Jan. 1. He retired as a professor at Northwestern in 1962 after 39 years on the faculty. His late wife, Helen Fisher Hohman, who died in 1972, also was a professor of economics at Northwestern. He is survived by a daughter, Mrs. Eleanore Wadlow, and two grandchildren.

Transcribed from Chicago Tribune February 26, 1977 by Marsha L. Ensminger

Source:  Genealogy Trails History Group for Washington County, Illinois

Image Source: Photo of Elmo Paul Hohman from his passport application dated 30 January 1919. Hohman applied for a passport to join the Transport Service of the American Red Cross in France and England.

 

 

 

Categories
Harvard Northwestern

Northwestern [?]. Partial reading list for labor problems. Hohman [?], 1924

 

 

The following artifact was found all alone, an orphan in a folder in the Harvard University archives marked “Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics 1923-24”. The course outline is obviously incomplete since the second semester of the academic year 1923-1924 at Harvard ran from the second week of February through  the end of April 1924. Also peculiar is the fact that the course number “B3”  on the outline does not correspond to an economics course at Harvard. The only clue we have is the handwritten (and crossed out) name Hohman in the upper right corner of the page.

It turns out that Elmo Paul Hohman (Harvard Ph.D. 1925) was appointed at Northwestern University as an assistant professor of economics in 1923-24. I have also been able to confirm that “B3” is consistent with the course numbering system used at Northwestern at that time. Based on the handwritten additions and underlining noted in the transcription below, one can reasonably conclude that someone teaching a labor economics course at Harvard added the items on British labor experience from Hohman’s outline.

Since the reading list at Northwestern was for the second semester of 1923-24, it seems likely that the reading list was forwarded to the Harvard library reserve desk for either the second semester of 1923-24 or 1924-25. The second semester of the two Harvard labor economics courses, “The Labor Movement in Europe”, was taught by Richard Stockton Meriam (Harvard, Ph.D. 1921) who briefly overlapped with Elmo Hohman as an economics tutor. Exams from 1913-1932 for the first semester labor course (Trade-Unionism and Allied Problems) taught by W. Z. Ripley have been posted earlier. Since one finds an examination question about British trade-unions in Ripley’s course, it is also possible that some of Hohman’s readings were included for Ripley’s course.

In subsequent posts I’ll provide biographical and career information for Harvard Ph.D. alumnus Elmo Paul Hohman and for his wife, Chicago Ph.D. alumna, Helen Fisher Hohman.

______________________

Links to Items on Homan’s Labor Problems Reading List

Watkins, Gordon S. An Introduction to the Study of Labor Problems. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1922.

Douglas, Paul H., Curtice N. Hitchcock, and Willard E. Atkins. The Worker in Modern Economic Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923.

Hammond, J.L. and Barbara Hammond. The Town Labourer, 1760-1832. The New Civilisation. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1920.

Blanshard, Paul. An Outline of the British Labor Movement. New York: George H. Doran Company, 1923.

Perlman, Selig. A History of Trade Unionism in the United States. New York: Macmillan, 1922.

______________________

[handwritten] British
[handwritten] Hohman

ECONOMICS B3.—LABOR PROBLEMS.
(Second Semester, 1923-1924)
OUTLINE OF SUBJECT-MATTER OF COURSE, WITH ASSIGNED READINGS.

I.—Historical Development of the Labor Movement in England and the United States.

1.—English Background Up to and Including the Industrial Revolution.

Feb. 11 Readings:

Watkins, 9-23.
Douglas, 89-96;101-111;121-129.
Hammond, 17-36; 144-150; 156-163; 172-182.

2.—Recent British Experience. [underlined in pencil]

Feb. 18 Readings:

Douglas, 706-718.
Blanshard[underlined in pencil with added note in margin:“look up”], 22-31; 49-90; 100-107; 156-163.

3.—Early American Labor Conditions.

Feb. 25 Readings:

Watkins, 24-40.
Perlman, 3-66.

4.—Modern development of American Labor.

Mar. 3 Readings:

Perlman, 68-80; 106-128; 130-145; 163-166; 235-261; 279-284.

 

II.—The Various Types of Activity Which Have Played a Part, Effective and Ineffective, in the Development of the Labor Movement.

A.—Self-Help; Methods Springing from and Controlled by the Laborers Themselves.

5.—Trade Unionism.

Mar. 10 Readings:

Watkins, 298-324; 330-338; 351-387; 438-444.

6.—Mutual Insurance; Demand for a Larger Share in the Control of Industry; Political Action; Workers’ Education.

Mar. 17 Readings:

Watkins, 366-369; 449-473.
Douglas, 667-668; 719-739; 761-765.
Perlman, 285-294.
Blanshard, 137-145. [underlined in pencil]

 

B.—Public and Governmental Activities.

7.—Labor Legislation.

Mar. 24 Readings:

Watkins, 592-602; 609-620; 120-144; 146-186.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Box 1, Folder “Economics, 1923-1924”.

Image Source: Cigar box label from the collections of the Museum of the City of New York.

Categories
Funny Business M.I.T.

M.I.T. Robert Solow’s last skit “Dr. Rudi Tells You How”, late 1980s

 

 

The following skit by Robert Solow has been transcribed from his original handwritten text in the Economists Papers Archive at Duke University and shared with Economics in the Rear-View Mirror by Roger Backhouse.

It is identified in its upper-right hand corner on the first page as “Solow’s Last Skit”. The manuscript bears no date, but there are two clues that point to its having been written sometime in the late 1980’s.

  • The short-lived currency unit of Argentina, the Austral [b. June 15, 1985; d. December 31, 1991], is mentioned at the end of the skit.
  • The late 1980s also marked the heyday of the petite radio and television therapist, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who spoke with a charming German accent about issues surrounding sexual health. One supposes nothing could have been more or less natural than imagining Rudiger Dornbusch, born in Krefeld, Germany, to be the Dr. Rudi dispensing professional advice to fellow economists.

Robert Solow has received much ribbing for the following remark from his 1966 “Comments.” Guidelines: Informal Controls and the Market Place, eds. George P. Shultz and Robert Z. Aliber. Chicago: University of Chicago, pp. 62-66.

“…everything reminds Milton [Friedman] of the money supply. Well, everything reminds me of sex, but I try to keep it out of my papers”.

Now read the text below and you will see that Robert Solow was definitely no prude when it came to joking about economists (still clearly “A Man’s World”):

  • “Ed Presspott”: time inconsistency as analogue to hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD);
  • “Dr. Rudi”: not consistently overshooting (I apologize if you cannot unread this);
  • “Bob Barrell”: completely predictable routine, needing to spice up his act;
  • “Tom Corporal”: obsessed with finding the right technique;
  • “Larry Winters” as a compulsively promiscuous co-author.

From a comment left (15 Feb 2022) at Tyler Cowen’s Assorted Links (includes this post).

“I attended that skit party! Stan Fischer played Bob Barrel, and Jeff Wooldridge played Tom Corporal.”

_______________________

Solow’s Last Skit

Doctor Rudi Tells You How

(A) We present, in person, the world-famous author of the best-selling book “How to Repudiate Your Debts and Blame the Lender.” Dr. Rudi has been telling people how to run their—NO, NOT WHAT YOU EXPECTED—how to run their professional lives ever since he discovered that they would pay to listen. For a happy, uninhibited professional life, for fun-filled trips to Rio, for the pleasure of striking terror into the hearts of international bankers and making them pay, just listen to Dr. Rudi. Remember that Dr. Rudi swings like a pendulum do. Now for our first seeker after help with his professional life. Please state your name.

(P) [Edward C. Prescott] I’m Ed Presspott.

(R) And what is your problem, Mr. Presspott. Don’t be shy. Dr. Rudi has heard everything. Nothing shocks him.

(P) I feel so ashamed. I can barely bring myself to look in the mirror.

(R) Ah, you look in the mirror. The mirror is in the ceiling, no doubt?

(P) No, my regular shaving mirror, in the medicine cabinet.

(R) In the medicine cabinet? That’s a brand new one. Even Dr. Rudi has never heard of that before. There is no end to perversion. How does he get that mirror off his ceiling and into the medicine cabinet? Must ask [Stanley Fischer] Dr. Stan. Well, then, Mr. Presspott, why are you ashamed to look into the mirror—chuckle, chuckle,–that you keep in the medicine cabinet?

(P) I’m dynamically inconsistent. I didn’t think I could bring myself to say it. You’re wonderful, Dr. Rudi. Yes, let’s face it, I’m dynamically inconsistent.

(R) All the time?

(P) Yes. No. Yes. No. A lot, anyway. It just comes over me.

(R) You better tell me about it. Everything. Hold nothing back.

(P) Take last week. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday were just routine. Of course my tastes and technology changed a couple of times, the way they always do. I adjusted, the way I always do. Kept the old markets cleared, the old prices flexible. Told everyone I was going to the movies on Thursday. Seemed like the best thing to do. Really did. Often go to the movies on Thursday. I really do. I really do. I really do. No, I don’t. I’ve got to tell someone, Dr. Rudi. I don’t go to the movies on Thursday. I don’t really go to the movies. Hardly ever. Somehow on Thursday I don’t feel like going to the movies. On Monday it seemed like the best thing to do. So I told everyone I would. But most Thursdays, I don’t know, it just comes over me that going to the movies might not be the best thing to do after all. Sometimes I make myself go, but most of the time I don’t. I know it’s wrong, but I don’t go. I’ve never told this to anyone before, Dr. Rudi, not even to [Finn Kydland] Kid Finland.

(R) So when you don’t go to the movies on Thursday, what do you do? I have to know if I’m going to help you.

(P) I just sit there in a sweat, even though it’s Minneapolis at 200° below zero. I just sit there in a sweat and worry about what the other people are thinking.

(R) Maybe they don’t know.

(P) Of course they know. It’s common knowledge. I can practically hear them whispering that old Presspot has lost his dynamic consistency. And they laugh, they laugh. I even tried telling them on Monday that I wouldn’t go to the movies on Thursday. But you know how it is, on Monday morning, with all that market clearing ahead of me, I really feel like going to the movies on Thursday. How do I know what I’ll feel like on Thursday? Help me, Dr. Rudi, help me.

(R) You just have to stop feeling guilty, Pressport. Lost of people are dynamically inconsistent. Even Dr. Rudi. Do you think I overshoot every time? Of course not. Sometimes I just can’t be bothered to overshoot. Dynamic consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds as dear Ralph Waldo Mundell used to say. No guilt, Presspott. No guilt. If it feels good, it feels good. Render unto Thursday what is Thursdays, as Jesus Mundell used to say. No guilt.

(P) Thank you, Dr. Rudi, thank you. I feel better already.

(R) And one more thing, Presspott.

(P) Yes, Dr. Rudi?

(R) Get that mirror out of the medicine cabinet and back on the ceiling where it belongs. Next client, please.

(A) You, sir, you look troubled. What is your name?

(B) [Robert Barro] Barrel, Bob Barrel, and I am sorely troubled.

(A) Tell it to Dr. Rudi, Barrel. You’re as good as cured.

(R) Let it hang out, Barrel. Well, maybe it would be better if you just told me about your problem.

(B) It’s simple. Dr. Rudi. Everything I do is anticipated. I am so predictable that everything I do is anticipated by everyone. Well, you know what happens.

(R) What happens?

(B) Nothing. That’s the problem of course. Nothing real happens. I’m death[?] on the price level, of course, but there’s no fun in that. Anyone can screw up the price level. I want to do something real.

(R) Sneak up on them. Barrel. Surprise them.

(B) I’ve tried. I wait until the last minute and then I try something completely out of character. Sometimes I smile, or make a joke. But nothing real happens. Nominal, nominal, nominal. So then I ask people on the street: how come nothing real happened? Didn’t I do something surprising? And they all say the same thing: We figured you would try to do something unanticipated, so we were waiting. You’re lucky you even have a nominal effect, Barrel. You’re predictable, Barrel, predictable. Before I can even say I resent that, they say you resent that. It’s obscene.

(R) No, it’s not obscene, Barrel. Nothing is obscene. Everything is OK. It’s OK to be predictable. It’s OK to be boring. It’s OK to be sober. Sometimes even the great Mundell is…boring. Maybe your grandchildren will be unpredictable.

(B, R together)  B: I’ve already taken them fully into account.
R: You’ve already taken them fully into account.

(B) See what I mean. Am I doomed to leave no real effects behind me?

(R) Yes (Thank God). You must learn not to care. Think nominal. Nominal is beautiful. Real is ugly. Real is Keynesian.

(B, R together)  There are no Keynesians.

(R) Stick with the price level, my boy, and the price level will stick with you. And one more thing—

(B) Yes, Dr. Rudi?

(R) No more boring predictable papers, please. Next sufferer.

(A) Here is a lost-looking soul. What is your name, sir, and are you seeking advice from Dr. Rudi?

(C) [Thomas Sargent] Corporal is my name, Tom Corporal. Science is my game. But yes, I have a bit of a problem. I’m sure there’s a theorem somewhere that will take care of it. If worst comes to worst we can always change the problem.

(R) Tell Dr. Rudi about it.

(C) Well, I might as well. I told you that science is my game. Control theory. Stochastic processes. See a sum of squares, minimize it.

(R) Small is beautiful as good old Kurt[?] Mundell used to say.

(C) Never heard of him, but if he was a minimizer he was OK.

(R) So what is the problem?

(C) Learn a new technique every month.

(R) Every month! What do you need me for?

(C) It’s my life. I perfect my technique. I am obsessed with doing it right, exactly right. I bring all my technique to bear on it, and I find I can’t do it at all.

(R) Well, this sounds more like my kind of problem.  Not at all, eh?

(C) Oh I turn out the papers and the books all right. But nobody believes any of it. Neither do I. I try to work up some conviction.

(R) Conviction is better than guilt, as old Judge Mundell used to say. You gotta have conviction.

(C) Sometimes I can’t even work up a simple declarative sentence. But at least I’m doing it right.

(R) I thought you weren’t doing it at all.

(C) Maybe it’s the same thing. Anyway, I have another math book at home and I bet the key to the universe is in it somewhere. If I could only find a well-posed question I’m sure I could find a well-posed answer.

(R) My boy, listen to Dr. Rudi. One or two techniques is all you need. The great Mundell got by with no technique at all. Solow with even less.

(C) You mean it’s done with mirrors?

(R) On the ceiling, yes.

(C) Angle of incidence equals angle of reflection, eh.

(R) Any angle you like, Tom baby. Forget the technique and start to believe. That will get their attention. And then…

(C) And what then, Dr. Rudi?

(R) Tell them to repudiate their debts and blame the lenders.

(C) I believe, Dr. Rudi, I believe.

(R) But stay out of Brazil and Argentina, that’s my territory.

(C) It’s the Austro-Hungarian Empire for me. Wait till I tell [Neil Wallace] Neil.

(R) Next sinner, please.

(A) Here is a distinguished looking gentleman. Dr. Rudi rarely sees patients who seem so self-possessed yet so youthful. Sir, it is hard to believe that you have any problem at all, let alone the sort of thing that Dr. Rudi could help you with. What is your name, Sir?

(W) [Larry Summers] Larry Winters, but don’t ask me to spell it. Spelling is not my thing.

(A) Ah you don’t have to spell it. Everyone knows Larry Winters. But surely you don’t have any problems. When could you squeeze them in?

(W) Well, I’d rather talk to Dr. Rudi.

(R) Come in, tell me in complete confidence what brings you here. No one will know but our world-wide audience.

(W) Dr. Rudi, to tell you the truth I can’t stop writing. Every day I write like one possessed. Since January 1 I have written 89 articles and that doesn’t count National Bureau Working Papers. I don’t even have time to think.

(R) Ah, so you have discovered the Fundamental Secret?

(W) You mean that you don’t have to think in order to write?

(R) So wise, so young!

(W) I learned it from my teachers.

(R) Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.

(W) Those who can’t teach, teach economics.

(R) You know that too?

(W) I learned it from my teachers.

(R) So you can’t stop writing. Compulsive promiscuity. As the late Dr. Sigmund Mundell said, the sins of the children are visited upon the fathers. Perhaps it was not Mundell. Perhaps it is not even true. Have you tried to understand this compulsion? The famous Bishop Mundell used to say that when he felt the impulse to write he would lie down until it went away.

(W) When I lie down I just keep writing.

(R) We must locate the source of this compulsion. Think.

(W) No time.

(R) What do your friends say about this? Sometimes they have insights denied to oneself.

(W) Some of them think I’m trying to catch up with [Martin Feldstein] Feldstein. Some of them think I’m trying to stay ahead of [N. Gregory Mankiw] Mankiw.

(R) You see—those are both difficult but sound objectives. I myself try mostly to emulate the great Gustave Mundell who always wrote one chapter before and another chapter after.

(W) Before and after what?

(R) What a pleasant surprise for you when you find out.

(W) Must go. I have three NBER Working Papers to finish today.

(R) But if we talked some more, I might find a way to cure you of this obsession.

(W) Cure? I don’t want to be cured. I like writing.

(R) But then why did you come to see Dr. Rudi?

(W) I thought we might get a joint paper out of it.

(A) And so we come to the end of another session with Dr. Rudi. If you have a question you would like to put to Dr. Rudi, write it down and send it to this station together with 5 billion Austral [Argentinian currency unit between June 15, 1985 and December 31, 1991], or better yet a box top, any box top. Thank you for your support.

 

Source:  Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archive. Papers of Robert M. Solow. Box 83.

Image Sources:  Robert Solow from the Library of Economics and Liberty; Rudiger Dornbusch from FAZ, April 12, 2014; Dr. Ruth Westheimer from the Encyclopedia of Jewish Women.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard Suggested Reading Syllabus Undergraduate

Harvard. Reading list and final exam for course “Conflict, Coalition and Strategy”. Schelling, 1970

 

 

There are undergraduate courses, and then there are great undergraduate courses. Today we have the 49 item course bibliography for Thomas C. Schelling’s “Conflict, Coalition and Strategy” along with its ten-page final examination. This material comes to Economics in the Rear-view Mirror from one of the students who took that course, then Harvard undergraduate, Robert Dohner. I am  generally not jealous of Bob’s Harvard undergraduate education, but I’ll admit there are a good half-dozen economics and politics courses in my own Yale training that I would have gladly traded for that single Schelling semester in 1970. You can all thank Bob Dohner for sharing this memory!

The teaching assistant for the course, James T. Campen, was born 1943. He received an A.B. from Harvard in 1965, M.A. at St. John’s College, University of Cambridge in 1971 and Ph.D. from Harvard in 1976. Campen was active early on in the Union for Radical Political Economics and was on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts at Boston from 1977 where he worked up into his emeritus years.

_____________________

Economics 1030
“Conflict, Coalition and Strategy”
Prof. Thomas C. Schelling
Mr. James T. Campen
Fall 1970

(*Contained in Coop package)

Introduction (13 pages)

  1. *Schelling, T. C., “Strategic Analysis and Social Problems,” Social Problems, Vol. 12 (Spring 1965), pp. 367-379.

 

I. Personal Incentives and Social Organization (56 pages)

  1. Hardin, Garrett, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science, Vol. 162, No. 3859, pp. 1243-1248.
  2. Olson, Mancur, Jr., The Logic of Collective Action (Harvard University Press, 1965), pp. 1-3,9-16, 53-57,86-87, 132-141.
  3. Luce, R. Duncan and Howard Raiffa, Games and Decisions (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1957), Chapter 5.4, “An Example: The Prisoner’s Dilemma,” and Chapter 5.5, “Temporal Repetition of the Prisoner’s Dilemma,” pp. 94-102.
  4. Demsetz, Harold, “Toward a Theory of Property Rights,” Papers and Proceedings of the American Economic Association, American Economic Review, Vol. 57 (May 1967), pp. 347-359.

 

II. Rules, Restraints, and Conventions (296 pages)

  1. Schelling, T. C., “Some Thoughts on the Relevance of Game Theory to the Analysis of Ethical Systems,” in Ira R. Buchler and Hugo G. Nutini (eds.), Game Theory in the Behavioral Sciences (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1969), pp. 45-60.
  2. Lorenz, Konrad, On Aggression (Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1966), pp. 68-84, 109-138. NOTE: Different pages in Bantam paperback, pp. 64-80, 104-132.
  3. Piaget, Jean, The Moral Judgment of the Child (The Free Press, 1965, and Collier Books, 1962, same translator and identical pagination in both versions), pp. 65-76, 94-100, 139-174, 197-232. NOTE: Hardcover editions dated 1932 and 1948 have these pages instead: pp. 56-69, 89-95, 135-171, 195-231. To check: the first selection begins, “Consciousness of Rules: II Third Stage.”
  4. Jervis, Robert, The Logic of Images in International Relations (Princeton University Press, 1970), pp. 18, 90-110, 147-152, 197-205, 216-223.
  5. Schelling, T. C., The Strategy of Conflict (Harvard University Press, 1963), Chapter 3, pp. 53-80, and Chapter 4, pp. 89-108.
  6. Lewis, David K., Convention: A Philosophical Study (Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 5-8, 36-51, 83-107, 118-121.

 

III. Contests and Disputes (123 pages)

  1. Moore, Omar K. and Alan R. Anderson, “Puzzles, Games, and Social Interaction,” in David Braybooke, Philosophical Problems of the Social Sciences (The Macmillan Company, 1965), pp. 68-79.
  2. Langholm, Sivert, “Violent Conflict Resolution and the Loser’s Reaction,” Journal of Peace Research, 1965-4, pp. 324-347.
  3. Galtung, Johan, “Institutionalized Conflict Resolution,” Journal of Peace Research, 1965-4, pp. 348-383.
  4. Goffman, Erving, Interaction Ritual (Anchor Books, 1967), pp. 239-270, “Where the Action Is.”
  5. Skolnick, Jerome H., “Social Control in the Adversary System,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. XI, No. 1 (March 1967), pp. 52-70.

 

IV. Formal Processes of Collective Decision (133 pages)

  1. *Steinhaus, Hugo, “The Problem of Fair Division,” Econometrica, Vol. 16 (January 1948), pp. 101-104.
  2. *Farquharson, Robin, “Sincerity and Strategy in Voting,” mimeograph, February 5, 1955, 7 pages.
  3. Schelling, T. C., “What Is Game Theory?” in James C. Charlesworth (ed.), Contemporary Political Analysis (The Free Press, 1967), pp. 212-238.
  4. Buchanan, James M. and Gordon Tulloch, The Calculus of Consent (The University of Michigan Press, 1962), pp. 43-62, 131-145, 249-262.
  5. *Schelling, T. C., “Voting Schemes and Fair Division,” multilith, September 1970.
    [Handwritten note: 23 10th line 12th 1.27 s.b. 1.55. A gets 295 instead of 241. B gets 85]
  6. Leiserson, Michael, “Game Theory and the Study of Coalition Behavior,” in Sven Groennings, E. W. Kelley, and Michael Leiserson (eds.), The Study of Coalition Behavior (Holt, Reinhardt and Winston, 1970), pp. 255-272.
  7. Farquharson, Robin, Theory of Voting (Yale University Press, 1969), Appendix 3, pp. 77-80.

 

V. Individual and Collective Bargaining (266 pages)

  1. Schelling, T. C., The Strategy of Conflict (Harvard University Press, 1963), Chapter 2, pp. 21-52, and Chapter 5, pp. 119-161.

[Handwritten note: Hour Exam]

  1. Fisher, Roger, International Conflict for Beginners (Harper & Rowe, 1969), Chapter 3, “Making Threats Is Not Enough,” pp. 27-59.
  2. Walton, R. E. and R. B. McKersie, A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations (McGraw-Hill, 1965), pp. 4-6, 67-125, 310-340.
  3. Ross, H. Laurence, Settled Out of Court (Aldine, 1970), Chapter IV, “Negotiation.” NOTE: Pending appearance of book, mimeograph copy on reserve, entitled “Negotiation.”
  4. *Schelling, T. C., “Communication, Bargaining and Negotiation,” Arms Control and National Security, Vol. 1 (1969), pp. 69-71.
  5. *Rapoport, Anatol and Melvin Guyer, “Taxonomy of 2 x 2 Games,” Papers, Vol. 6, 1966, Peace Research Society (International), pp. 11-26.

 

VI. Violence and Nonviolence (191 pages)

  1. Sibley, Mulford Q., The Quiet Battle (Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1963), pp. 9-10, 55-66.
  2. Hubbard, Howard, “Five Long, Hot Summers and How They Grew,” The Public Interest, No. 12 (Summer 1968), pp. 3-24.
  3. Nieburg, H. L., “Violence, Law and the Informal Polity,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 13, No. 2 (June 1969), pp. 192-209.
  4. Schelling, T. C., Arms and Influence (Yale University Press, 1966), pp. 1-18, 92-105, 116-125.
  5. Roberts, Adam (Ed.), Civilian Resistance as a National Defense (Stackpole Books, 1968), or The Strategy of Civilian Defense (Faber & Faber Ltd., 1967) (the two versions are identical), pp. 9-13, 87-105, 205-211, 302-308.
  6. Walter, Charles W., “Interposition: The Strategy and Its Uses,” Naval War College Review, Vol. XXII, No. 10 (June 1970), pp. 72-84.
  7. Nozick, Robert, “Coercion,” in Sydney Morgenbesser, Patrick Suppes and Morton White (eds.), Philosophy, Science and Method (St. Martin’s Press, 1969), pp. 440-472.
  8. Shure, Gerald H., Robert J. Meeker and Earle A. Hansford, “The Effectiveness of Pacifist Strategies in Bargaining Games,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. IX, No. 1 (March 1965), pp. 106-117.

 

VII. Interactive Models: Large Groups (89 pages)

  1. Penrose, L S., On the Objective Study of Crowd Behavior (H. K. Lewis & Company, Ltd., 1952), Chapter 6, “Panic Reactions,” pp. 28-35.
  2. Boulding, Kenneth E., Conflict and Defense (Harper & Brothers, 1962), Chapter 6, “The Group as a Party to Conflict: The Ecological Model,” pp. 105-122.
  3. Schelling, T. C., “Neighborhood Tipping,” Harvard Institute of Economic Research, Discussion Paper No. 100, December 1969.
  4. *Schelling, T. C., “Models of Segregation,” The American Economic Review, Vol. LIX, No. 2 (May 1969), pp. 488-493.

 

VIII. Interactive Models: Two Parties (145 pages)

  1. Boulding, Kenneth E., Conflict and Defense (Harper & Brothers, 1962), Chapter 2, “The Dynamics of Conflict: Richardson Process Models,” pp. 19-40.
  2. Goffman, Erving, Interaction Ritual (Anchor Books, 1967), pp. 97-112, “Embarrassment and Social Organization.”
  3. *Valavanis, Stefan, “The Resolution of Conflict When Utilities Interact,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 2 (June 1958), pp. 156-169.
  4. Schelling, T. C., The Strategy of Conflict (Harvard University Press, 1963), Chapter 9, pp. 207-229.
  5. Boulding, Kenneth E., Conflict and Defense (Harper & Brothers, 1962), Chapter 12, “International Conflict: The Basic Model,” and Chapter 13, “International Conflict: Modifications,” pp. 227-273.
  6. Schelling, T. C., “War Without Pain, and Other Models,” World Politics, Vol. 15, No. 3 (April 1963), pp. 465-487.

 

IX. Randomized Decision (55 pages)

  1. *Schelling, T. C., “Zero-Sum Games,” multilith, September 1970.
  2. Schelling, T. C., The Strategy of Conflict (Harvard University Press, 1963), pp. 175-190, 201-203.

 

Total pages: 1,367

Reading period: To be assigned later [see question 6 in final examination below]

 

Economics 1030
Final Exam
January 22, 1971

There are altogether six questions. The sixth contain several alternatives, according to your choice of reading-period assignment. You are not to answer any five questions out of the six. You may not choose more than one among the alternate forms of question six. Specifically, you may answer the first five questions; you may instead answer any four among the first five and one of the alternates in question 6.

The five questions you answer will be given equal weight and are intended to require about equal time.

  1. Each of the terms, concepts or principles listed on the next page is to be identified by reference to a matrix. Several matrices are provided and are adequate, but you may prefer to construct your own. (There may be more than one matrix shown that illustrates a particular concept; some of the matrices shown may illustrate several concepts. You need not make reference to more than one–your own, or one of those shown.)
    In some cases–marked by an asterisk–you need only identify an appropriate matrix; if, for example, one of the terms were “prisoners’ dilemma,” it would be sufficient to indicate Matrix #1. In other cases–where there is no asterisk–you will have to state clearly just what it is about the indicated matrix that exemplifies the concept; for example, if “promise” were one of the terms listed, you could state that in Matrix #1, if Column had first move, Row could promise first row on condition Column choose column 1, improving the expected outcome from payoffs of 1 apiece to 2 apiece in the upper left cell.

Here are the items to be identified:

    1. warning
    2. inducing move
    3. altruist’s dilemma*
    4. zero-difference game*
    5. Pareto equilibrium
    6. convention*
    7. randomized commitment
    8. dominated strategy
    9. threat-vulnerable equilibrium
    10. social contract*
    11. [a first] alternative concepts of “arms agreement”
    12. [a second] alternative concept of “arms agreement”
    13. Insurance as a bargaining advantage or disadvantage

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

  1. Explain the concept of interposition (Charles Walters, “Interposition: The Strategy and Its Uses”), and compare it with non-violent intervention (Gene Sharp, “The Technique of Non–Violent Action,” or Howard Hubbard, “Five Long Hot Summers and How They Grew”), then examine the strategic similarities and differences between (a) naval-force interposition and (b) tactics used to blockade, occupy or immobilize a campus building.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

  1. John Stuart Mill argued that even

…if it may possibly be doubted whether a noble character is always the happier for its nobleness, there can be no doubt that it makes other people happier, and that the world in general is immensely a gainer by it. Utilitarianism, therefore, could only attain its end by the general cultivation of nobleness of character, even if each individual were only benefited by the nobleness of others, and his own, so far as happiness is concerned, were the sheer deduction from the benefit.

Assuming that the hypothesis which Mill discusses is true (that nobleness in itself detracts from individual happiness), under what conditions would you expect individuals to choose to develop noble characters? Discuss with reference to readings and lectures concerning interplay of individual incentives, social organization and moral codes.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

  1. One of the questions on a makeup examination which you will take tomorrow will be based on either an article by Smith or an article by Jones. Your limited time in the library’s rules make it impossible for you to study both articles. If the exam question is based on the Smith article, you will have a 90 percent chance of answering it correctly if you read Smith, but will surely fail to answer correctly if you read Jones; if the exam question is based on Jones, you will have a 60 percent chance of getting it right if you study Jones, no chance otherwise. You will get the question either right or wrong; no partial credit will be given.
    You want to use your study time to maximize the probability of answering the question correctly. Your examiner will choose the exam question in such a way as to minimize the same probability. Both you and she know all of the information in this paragraph, and both of you are familiar with the basic theory of two-person zero-sum games.

A.

    1. Draw a payoff matrix to illustrate the situation, letting your payoffs be represented by the probability of getting the correct answer.
    2. What will be your strategy in this situation?
    3. What will be the teacher’s strategy be?
    4. If you use the strategy which you indicated in A2, what is the probability that you will get a correct answer?

B.

You suddenly recognize that the librarian whom you will be asking for one of the articles is also your teacher’s secretary, and knows which article the question will be based on.

    1. If you could get the secretary to tell you truthfully which article you should read, what would be your probability of getting the correct answer be? (That is, you are to estimate this probability before asking for the article, on the assumption that the librarian will know the answer and answer truthfully.)
    2. If you felt that the librarian/secretary would answer your question truthfully six chances out of 10 but there was a 40 percent chance the examiner would be told that you tried to cheat, resulting in your receiving an automatic zero on this question (but with no other negative consequences), would asking the library and increase your overall probability of getting credit for the question?

C.

If you knew (and the teacher knew that you knew) that the teacher believed that you would have .7 chance of answering either question, given that you studied the right article, but you alone knew that the chances were 90 percent and 60 percent for the two articles as mentioned above:

    1. What would your strategy be?
    2. What would be your probability of getting the question right?

D

Now consider the situation where you might be able to get the question correct even if you chose the wrong article. The chances of this are 1/5 if the question is based on Smith and 2/5 if the question is based on Jones. (Both you and the teacher correctly understand the situation.)

    1. What is your strategy in this case?
    2. What is the teacher’s strategy?
    3. What are your chances for getting the correct answer?

E.

Consider the same problem as in Part D with one change: you and the teacher both know that he wants you to do as well as possible on the exam.

    1. What is your strategy?
    2. What is the teacher’s strategy?
    3. What is your probability of getting the correct answer?

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

  1. You are one of two students in a small class who have arranged to write a paper in lieu of a final exam. You are certain that the grade your paper receives will depend not only on how much time you spend on it but also on how much time the other student spends on his. Even if the examiner tries to judge your paper on its merits alone he will be unconsciously influenced by how it compares with the other student’s paper.

You estimate…

    1. …that you will lose about 3 grade points on other exams for every 10 hours you spend on this paper;
    2. …that your grade on this paper will be:
      1. 5, 9, 12, 14 or 15 points according as you spend 10, 20, 30, 40 or 50 hours on it,
      2. plus 3, 5 or 6 points if you spend 10, 20 or 30 hours more than your rival, and minus 3, 5 or 6 points if you spend 10, 20 or 30 hours less than your rival.

When you plot a smooth graph of your overall grade, taking all three factors into account–quality of your paper, quality of the competing paper, time taken away from your other courses–you get the following “contours” of your overall net score as a function of the time you both devote to your papers.

The graph is interpreted this way. If you work 30 hours and he does nothing, you get a net score of 9 (i.e., a gross score of 12 for your paper on its merits, plus 6 for superiority, less 9 for the 30 hours taken from other courses). If you both work 30 hours you get 3 (the same 12 on your own paper, less 9 on other courses, and did nothing for superiority). If you work 20 hours and he works 10, you get 6. Every point on the graph denotes a combination of your work time and his; every point has an associated net score for you; points of equal score can be connected by “contour lines” is in the graph. (The dotted lines at 45 degrees represents equal time for the two of you.)

You are quite sure that your rival, whoever he is, has a nearly identical graph when he considers his own grade in relation to the time you both spend on your papers.

  1. Draw your “reaction curve” (otherwise called in Boulding, “partial-equilibrium curve” or “reaction function”), and explain what it means.
  2. Drawing on your knowledge that your rival reaches identical estimates with respect to his own grades, draw his reaction curve.
  3. Locate and characterize any equilibria that occur.
  4. Discuss the likely amounts of work the two of you will do on each of the following alternative assumptions:
    1. Each of you can see the other work–in the library, for example–and can keep count of each other’s time, but you are unacquainted and not permitted to consult each other.
    2. You have no idea who the other student is and no way to monitor the amount of work he does, nor does he know who you are.
    3. You do not know who he is, but are sure that he can recognize you and watches you work in the library, keeping track of how much work you do.
    4. You are well enough acquainted to get together and talk the situation over, reaching an understanding about how much work you intend to do, perhaps reaching a bargain on restraining your competition; but you are not close enough friends to be unselfish toward each other and furthermore you do not know how badly each other may need grade points.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

  1. This question is based on the reading period assignment. If you chose one of the following four books answer Part A:

Edward C. Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society
J. H. Dales, Pollution, Property and Prices
H. L. Nieburg, Political Violence: The Behavioral Process
Carl M. Stevens, Strategy and Collective Bargaining Negotiation

If you chose James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent, answer Part B.

If you chose Erving Goffman, Interaction Ritual, answer Part C.

If you chose Robert Jervis, The Logic of Images in International Relations, answer Part D.

If you chose Mancur Olson, Jr., The Logic of Collective Action, answer Part E.

  1. Identify one or more major themes or propositions in the book which you chose is the reading period assignment. Discuss what you consider to be the most more interesting and/or important ways that these themes illuminate the body of Economics 1030 and are in turn illuminated by it. Be specific.
  2. Buchanan and Tullock
    1. Using their concept of “cost,” explain the roles ascribed by the authors to unanimity rule, majority rule, and any other competing alternatives rules.
    2. On what conditions, if any, or with what reservations, would you accept their point of view?
  3. Goffman

Goffman’s book contains the word, “ritual,” in its title, and every chapter involves some analysis of ritual in phase-to-face behavior even though the chapters were originally independent essays. Explain what “ritual” means in this context and identify its role in the following topics of Economics 1030:

      1. Personal incentives and social organization
      2. Rules, restraints and conventions
      3. Contests and disputes
      4. Formal processes of collective decision
      5. Individual and collective bargaining
  1. Jervis
    Define signals and indices, then illustrate the manipulation of indices, and the veracity and ambiguity of signals, by reference to any one of the following sources of signals and indices, which you should examine in some detail:

    1. An advertising campaign
    2. A student’s essay on a final examination
    3. The public relations involved in the year-long process of selecting a Harvard president
  2. Olson
    Most of Olson’s book is devoted to an analysis of the behavior of large groups. How important is group size? In what ways does the behavior of small groups differ systematically from that of larger ones? What are the most important reasons for this?
    With reference to college courses, speculate briefly on the location and significance of the boundary between “small” and “large.”

Source: Personal copy of course syllabus and final examination shared for transcription at Economics in the Rear-View Mirror by Robert Dohner (Harvard, 1974; M.I.T., 1980).

Image Source: From Schelling testifying before a Senate subcommittee on national security in 1966. New York Times, Dec. 13, 2016.

Categories
Agricultural Economics Economists Harvard Suggested Reading Syllabus Undergraduate

Harvard. Syllabus for “Consumption, Distribution and Prices” taught by PhD (1952) alumnus, Richard H. Holton, 1954-55

 

 

The Harvard course “Consumption, Distribution and Prices” was an odd amalgam. The first semester was a course in marketing and the second semester was a course in the theory of micro- and macroeconomic consumption and saving functions with an added dash of advertising economics and agricultural economic policy thrown in. The instructor for 1954-55 was an assistant professor of economics, Richard Henry Holton who had completed his Ph.D. at Harvard in 1952.  Holton went on to a successful economic policy and academic administrative career culminating in the Deanship of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. His biography is sketched in the memorial piece reproduced below.

The syllabus for Economics 107 “Consumption, Distribution and Prices” completes this post.

_________________________

Ph.D. in Economics awarded by Harvard University in 1952

Richard Henry Holton, S.B. in Bus. (Miami Univ.) 1947, A.M. (Ohio State Univ.) 1948.

Special Field, Consumption, Distribution, and Prices. Thesis, “The Supply and Demand Structure of Food Retailing Service: a Case Study.”

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1951-1952, p. 176.

_________________________

IN MEMORIAM
Richard Holton (1926-2005)
E. T. Grether Professor of Marketing, Emeritus
Dean, Haas School of Business
Berkeley

Richard H. Holton was the E. T. Grether Professor of Marketing, Emeritus and, from 1967 to 1975, dean of the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. Dean Holton, who joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1957, was a leader in the fields of marketing, international business and entrepreneurship and left a lasting imprint in these areas at the Haas School. Throughout his career, Dean Holton focused on teaching, campus leadership and public service. On leave from the campus from 1963 to 1965, he served as U.S. assistant secretary of commerce. He was thoughtful, considerate, self-effacing, devoted to the greater good of the school and the University, and always alert toward the welfare of colleagues, friends, and family. He was also known for his good stories to liven an occasion, and to soften conflict in an organizational setting.

Holton grew up in the small town of London, Ohio. He attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1947 with honors in economics. At Miami, he met Constance Minzey, whom he married in 1947. The couple moved to Columbus, Ohio, where he earned a master’s degree in economics at Ohio State University. He then enrolled in the doctoral program in economics at Harvard University. He was a resident tutor in Adams House at Harvard, with Constance (Connie), during several years of his graduate studies.

From 1951 to 1952, Holton was assistant director of marketing projects at the Social Science Research Center at the University of Puerto Rico. His work there led to his 1955 monograph, “Marketing Efficiency in Puerto Rico,” written with the late J. K. Galbraith and others. He also was coauthor, with Richard Caves, of another study, “The Canadian Economy: Prospect and Retrospect” (1959).

He was assistant professor of economics at Harvard from 1953 to 1957, and in 1957 he came to UC Berkeley as an associate professor in the School of Business Administration (later renamed the Haas School of Business). Holton became director of the Berkeley campus’s Institute of Business and Economics Research in 1959. He reorganized it to reflect the growing interest in business science. His own research resulted in a steady flow of publications in marketing policies and competition.

From 1962 to 1963, he served as special assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. President John F. Kennedy appointed him assistant secretary of commerce in February 1963, and he served until February 1965. Holton’s continuing interest in consumer protection resulted in a year’s appointment by President Lyndon B. Johnson as chairman of the President’s Consumer Advisory Council. He also served from 1968 to 1972 as chairman of the Public Advisory Committee on Truth in Lending Regulations of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

In 1967, Holton became dean of the School of Business Administration at UC Berkeley. During his tenure, he fostered stronger relationships with business leaders, and served on numerous advisory boards of business organizations. He is widely credited with launching some of the current distinctive capabilities of the Haas School in entrepreneurship and international affairs, and its part-time M.B.A. program. As dean, he also initiated a system of student ratings of all courses at the Haas School, a practice still used today to gauge teaching effectiveness and improve courses over time.

In 1970, Holton started a course in entrepreneurship and business development, one of the first such courses at any business school, enlisting a widely-experienced entrepreneur and Haas School alumnus, Leo Helzel, to co-teach the course. This association led to new support for research and teaching in entrepreneurship, and the formation, with contributions from Williams-Sonoma Chairman Howard Lester, of the Haas School’s Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. His work with the program in entrepreneurship and innovation helped to generate the school’s immensely popular annual business plan competitions. He is also credited with developing the school’s first curriculum for international business studies, another key element of the school’s current academic programs.

To reach an important new group of students, in 1972 Dean Holton initiated a part-time M.B.A. Program in San Francisco to serve qualified candidates who wanted to gain the benefits of a management degree but were not able to leave their jobs for a full-time M.B.A. program. That program has since evolved into the Berkeley Evening & Weekend M.B.A. Program, which now enrolls more students than does the full-time M.B.A. program; it is now offered on the Berkeley campus and in Silicon Valley. It has accommodated the steadily growing demand by students for a top-ranked management education on a part-time schedule.

In 1981, Holton expanded on a longtime personal interest in international business when he became dean of visiting faculty of the newly established National Center for Industrial Science and Technology Management Development, which was part of the Dalian Institute of Technology in the People’s Republic of China. Holton and his wife commuted between Berkeley and Dalian for the following five years, while he continued his regular faculty duties at UC Berkeley. Between 1980 and 1992, Holton wrote a number of articles on the emergence of a modern, market-based economy in China, writing about international joint ventures and their financing, China’s state planning as compared to market-driven behavior, economic reform of the distribution sector of China, and China’s prospects as an industrialized country. He also coedited a book, United States-China Relations (University of California Press, 1989). Holton traveled extensively in China and led California Alumni Association-sponsored Bear Trek trips there.

Holton was awarded the Berkeley Citation, the campus’s highest honor, at his retirement in 1991. Even after his retirement, for three years until spring of 2005, when his health began to fail, he taught a freshman seminar, “The Economic Development of Modern China”.

Holton kept taped to his desk lamp at home a quote from Thomas Carlyle, reflecting Holton’s belief in his calling as an educator: “There is nothing more fearsome than ignorance in action.” Holton’s love for the campus community was expressed in his enthusiasm for Cal Bears football, his participation in a campus photography club, and his membership in the all-male Monks Chorus, a group of faculty, alumni and others with campus ties who, clad as Franciscan monks, perform at The Faculty Club Christmas feast. Holton joined the Monks (whose history goes back to 1902) in the early 1960s, and sang bass.

Holton loved the mountains, and took every opportunity to take backpacking trips in the Sierra Nevada. He often made these trips with his friend and colleague of more than 40 years, Fred Balderston, an emeritus UC Berkeley professor at the Haas School.

A generous philanthropist and devoted member of public interest organizations, within a year of moving to Berkeley Holton joined the board of directors of the Consumers Cooperative of Berkeley. His board membership with Alta Bates Hospital spanned nearly four decades. He was to be named a 2006 recipient of the Distinguished Service Award from the Alta Bates Summit Foundation. He also served on the board of the Berkeley Public Library Foundation, the Council of Better Business Bureaus, The World Affairs Council of Northern California, and the board of trustees at Mills College. He and his family shared a longtime commitment to the Point Reyes peninsula and the village of Inverness, California.

As his health failed, he was surrounded by his wife and children. He died peacefully at home in Berkeley on Monday, October 24, 2005, after battling cancer and Parkinson’s disease. Holton is survived by Constance, his wife of nearly 60 years; brother, David, of Washington, D.C.; daughters, Melissa Holton, of Moss Landing and Inverness, and Jane Kriss, of Inverness; son, Tim, of Berkeley; and three grandchildren.

Raymond Miles
Frederick Balderston

Source: Senate of the University of California. In Memoriam—Richard Holton (1926-2005).

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Course Enrollment
1954-55

[Economics] 107. Consumption, Distribution and Prices. Assistant Professor Holton. Full course.

(F) Total 38: 11 Seniors, 22 Juniors, 3 Sophomores, 1 Freshman, 1 Other.
(S) Total 36: 11 Seniors, 23 Juniors, 1 Sophomore, 1 Freshman.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1954-55, p. 89.

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Economics 107
Consumption, Distribution and Prices
Fall Term, 1954-55

Texts:

Converse, Huegy and Mitchell, Elements of Marketing, Prentice-Hall, 5thedition
Clewett, Marketing Channels, Irwin

  1. Survey of the distributive sector. September 28-October 7.

Compass of the distributive sector; its quantitative importance in the economy; capital coefficients and value added in the distributive sector; the problem of measuring “efficiency” in distribution in contrast with manufacturing; pressures increasing and pressures decreasing distribution costs; distribution and economic growth.

Converse, Huegy and Mitchell, Chapter 1
Stewart and Dewhurst, Does Distribution Cost Too Much? Chapters 1, 2, 5, 10, 11
Black and Houston, Resource-Use Efficiency in the Marketing of Farm Products, pp. 22-47
Westing, Readings in Marketing, Readings 1, 2, 3.

  1. The nature of marketing channels. October 14-October 26.

Alternative types of marketing channels; factors affecting the nature of the channel; vertical integration and quasi-integration; recent changes in distribution channels.

Converse, Huegy and Mitchell, Chapter 4, 5, 13, 15-20, 23, 24.
Clewett, Chapters 2-17
Westing, Readings in Marketing, 19-21, 23, 25
McNair and Hansen, Problems in Marketing: General Mills, p. 199; Whalen, p. 215; National Rock Drill Co., p. 225; Atlas, p. 254.

OCTOBER 28—MID-TERM EXAMINATION

  1. Costs and products of firms in distribution. November 2-November 30.

Empirical cost studies of retail firms; a priori analysis of cost conditions in retailing and wholesaling; selling costs and the advertising budget; cost allocation and cost control in distribution; the nature of the product in distribution; the problem of selecting the product “mix”; the product mix and price discrimination.

Converse, Huegy and Mitchell, Chapter 27, 28, 29, 31, 32.
Clewett, Chapters 18 and 19
Dean, Managerial Economics, Chapters 3 and 6 (pp. 351-375)
Chamberlin, The Theory of Monopolistic Competition, Chapter 7
Cary Company case (on reserve in Lamont)
McNair and Hansen, Problems in Marketing: Richwell, p. 117

  1. Price policy of firms in distribution. December 2-December 18.

Retailers’ pricing practices; role of cost in distributors’ price policy; the determination of trade discounts; price discrimination under the Robinson Patman Act; resale price maintenance.

Converse, Huegy and Mitchell, Chapter 26
Q. F. Walker, “Some Principles of Department Store Pricing,” Journal of Marketing, January 1950
O. Knauth, “Considerations in the Setting of Retail Prices,” Journal of Marketing, July 1949
R. Alt, “The Internal Organization of the Firm and Price Formation,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, February 1949
Dean, Managerial Economics, Chapter 9
S.D. Rose, “Your Right to Lower Your Prices,” Harvard Business Review, September 1951
E. R. Corey, “Fair Trade Pricing, A Reappraisal,” Harvard Business Review, September-October 1952
McNair and Hansen, Problems in Marketing: Dewey and Almy, p. 575; Canners’ League, p. 581; Boothby, p. 608

Reading Period: Margaret Hall, Distributive Trading, Hutchinson’s University Library

 

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Economics 107
Consumption, Distribution and Prices
Spring Term, 1954-55

It is suggested, but not required, that students buy Heller, Boddy and Nelson, Savings in the Modern Economy.

  1. The demand for consumer goods; Feb. 3-Feb. 24
    1. Consumption expenditures in the aggregate: consumption expenditures and savings in the national income data; the consumption function, long run and short run; determinants of the savings to income ratio; consumer demand, economic growth, and the business cycle.

Readings:

(Review Samuelson, Economics, Ch. 13)
Richard Ruggles, National Income and Income Analysis, Ch. 4, pp. 67-78
Heller, Boddy and Nelson, Savings in the Modern Economy, contributions by Goldsmith, Woodward and Bryce, pp. 133-155; Duesenberry, pp. 195-203; Morgan and Reid, pp. 213-220; Hansen, pp. 47-55; and Slichter, pp. 64-72.
Arthur Burns, The Instability of Consumer Spending, 32nd Annual Report of the National Bureau of Economic Research, pp. 3-20
James S. Duesenberry, Income, Saving and Consumer Behavior, Ch. 3

    1. The theory of consumer demand and the demand for classes of consumer goods: The theory of consumer demand reviewed; the utility approach and the indifference curve approach evaluated; income elasticity, budget studies and Engel’s law; psychological analysis of consumer behavior; trends in U.S. consumption.

Readings:

(Review Samuelson, Ch. 23 and Appendix)
Ruby Norris, The Theory of Consumer’s Demand, Ch. 3
Converse, Huegy and Mitchell, Ch. 2
Talcott Parsons, Essays in Sociological Theory, Ch. 3, “The Motivation of Economic Activity.”
George Katona, Psychological Analysis of Economic Behavior, Ch. 5
Lerner and Lasswell (ed), The Policy Sciences, Ch. 12, “Expectations and Decisions in Economic Behavior,” by G. Katona
“The Changing American Market,” Fortune, August, 1953

Section Meetings:

Feb. 8: National income and the consumption function reviewed
Feb. 15: Consumption function in the current literature
Mar. 1: Marginal utility; indifference curves

  1. The demand for producer goods; March 1-March 8

Investment expenditures and the theory of income determination; investment expenditures in the national income data; the determinants of investment expenditures; fluctuations in inventory investment; the firm’s demand for producers’ goods; the determinants of corporate savings.

Readings:

R.A. Gordon, Business Fluctuations, Ch. 5
Tinbergen and Polak, The Dynamics of Business Cycles, Ch. 13, pp. 163-182
Joel Dean, Managerial Economics, Ch. 10, pp. 549-600
Heller, Boddy and Nelson, Savings in the Modern Economy, contribution by John Lintner, pp. 230-255

Section Meetings:

March 8: Producer demand

  1. Identifying demand conditions for the individual firm; March 10-March 15

Survey of market research and sales forecasting methods

Readings:

Dean, Managerial Economics, Ch. 4, pp. 141-220 only

Section meetings:

March 15: Market research; read Canner’s League of California case in McNair and Hansen, Problems in Marketing, p. 581

  1. Marketing and public policy issues; March 17-March 24

Economic effects of advertising; the problem of consumer information; FTC and FDA control of labeling, standards, and truth in advertising; consumer research and consumer cooperatives as solutions; resale price maintenance and advertising.

Readings:

L. Gordon, Economics for Consumers, Ch. 24 and 26
Neil Borden, Economic Effects of Advertising, Ch. 28, pp. 837-882

Section meetings:

March 22: Review
March 29: Economic effects of advertising

MARCH 29: MID-TERM EXAMINATION

  1. Marketing of farm products; March 31-April 14

The impact of imperfect markets in agriculture; fluctuations in marketing margins over time; futures market; the functioning and control fo futures markets.

Readings:

Converse, Heugy and Mitchell, Ch. 21 and 22
G. Shepherd, Marketing Farm Products, Ch. 9 and 10
W. H. Nicholls, Imperfect Competition within Agricultural Industries, Ch. 4 to p. 81

Section meetings:

April 12: Impact of price support operations on the marketing of farm products

  1. Federal farm policy; April 21-May 3

The goals of an agricultural policy; predecessors of the present program; details of the present policy; advantages and disadvantages of the present policy; the alternatives

Readings:

T. Schultz, Production and Welfare of Agriculture, Ch. 5, 7, 8
Schickele, Agricultural Policy, Ch. 3, 9-17

Section Meetings:

April 26: Mechanics of parity and price supports
May 3: Review

Reading Period Assignment: Ruth Mack, “Economics of Consumption,” in Survey of Contemporary Economics, Vol. II, plus readings to be assigned; and Editors of Fortune, Why Do People Buy, Ch. 1.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003, Box 6, Folder “Economics, 1954-1955”.

Image Source:  “Happy 120th Birthday, Berkeley Haas!” Webpage from Summer 2018.

Categories
Columbia Seminar Speakers Socialism Undergraduate

Columbia. Socialist speakers and undergraduate debates on socialism, 1910-11

 

In the current political times younger citizens see the pathology of centrally-planned, authoritarian socialism à la Stalin as being as distant as the pathology of authoritarian manifestations of capitalism.  “Democratic socialism” has become again a rallying cry, a progressive, small-d “democratic” alternative to the mixed capitalist economy status quo. This is not unlike the debate about socialism on campus and at the ballot box in the years before the first world war. With this in mind, I thought it would be interesting to trawl through the Columbia Spectator for a few years (1910-11) to read articles in which the word “socialism” appears. These articles can be read below.

My own favorite item in this post is the description of an invited speaker, a graduate of Barnard College’s (first) class of 1893,  the suffragette  Jessica Garretson (later “Finch” and then “Cosgrave”), as “the woman of Carnegie Hall fame who is responsible for the statement that ‘Rich girls turn to Socialism as flowers to the sun'”–not quite an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez backstory but times have changed.

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SOCIALISM LECTURE FRIDAY INSTEAD

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIII, Number 141, 6 April 1910, p. 2.

Instead of lecturing yesterday as Spectator announced he would, Mr. Eugene V. Debs will talk Friday. As candidate of the Socialist Party for President in 1908, Mr. Debs is well fitted for his subject, Socialism. Seats in Earl Hall will be reserved until 4 o’clock, after which the public will be admitted.

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DEBS CHAMPIONS SOCIALISM
Twelve Hundred People Greet Famous Socialist at Lecture in Horace Mann Auditorium

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIII, Number 144, 9 April 1910, pp. 1,5.

Before the largest audience that has listened to a lecture at Columbia University since Professor James of Harvard delivered the first of his famous lectures on pragmatism and before the most enthusiastic audience that has crowded a Columbia lecture room in many a day, Eugene V. Debs three times candidate for President of the United States on the Socialist Ticket spoke yesterday for an hour and a half on the work to which he has dedicated his life —Socialism.

The lecture was scheduled to take place in Earl Hall, but long before 4 o’clock it became evident that the auditorium in that building would be altogether too small. It was crowded by half past three. At the last moment, therefore, the lecture was changed to the Horace Mann Auditorium which seats between one thousand and twelve hundred people. It was none too large. When Mr. Debs entered, promptly at 4 o’clock, there was scarcely a seat to be had. His entrance was greeted with an enthusiastic burst of applause that lasted several minutes, and which was renewed a moment later, when, after being introduced by G. T. Hersch ’10L, president of the Socialist Society, the speaker rose to begin his address. Mr. Debs presents a striking figure—tall with a large, narrow very bald head, keen eyes and long, bony arms and fingers which he uses with great effect. His simplicity and sincerity were apparent from the outset.

The speech itself was a memorable one, and one which those who heard it will not soon forget. Mr. Debs began, almost academically with an account of Industrial Era which succeeded the Age of Feudalism, but presently warming to his subject he swept on, carrying with him an audience that listened attentively to every word. Although the speech was essentially a serious one and reached at times depths of pathos hard to surpass, it was relieved ever and again by touches of a dry, quaint humour of which Mr. Debs is a master —a humour so keen that it not only caused the audience to laugh but provoked several times spontaneous bursts of applause.

“Socialism,” said Mr. Debs, “is a scientific analysis of present and past conditions, and a forecast of what, from those conditions, is bound to come. We are not endeavoring to foist Socialism on Society, and we are merely preparing it for its peaceful entrance.” The account of present day conditions was forceful without oratory. Debs told of having seen father carrying the dinner pail to the child who worked in the factory, because the present system of production demands cheap labor. Coming from a man who at thirteen was working on a railroad, and at sixteen was firing a freight engine, the facts seemed all the more forceful.

The Socialist leader related his experience with the “Four Hundred,” some of whom he once had occasion to address. “They wanted to see what kind of an animal I was,” he said. I had great notoriety at the time —and they had great curiosity. They were all attired in evening dress. The ladies wore what, for some mysterious reason, they called full dress. As I looked into their empty faces, I thought, ‘How artificial they seem.’ If you would have perfect social standing you must be useless.”

After a summary of the unfavorable conditions with which the workingman is now oppressed, including child labor, disinterestedness of the employer, and the prevalent desire for cheap labor, Mr. Debs outlined the hopes of Socialism. Under this system he declared that every man and woman would be given the opportunity to work for the common good. Education and cultivation of the arts would be taken up by every individual. This would be possible because by co-operation instead of competition, the child would not be forced to work, and the workingman not ground under the heel of the individual capitalist. The exploitation of the minority at the expense of the majority would thus give place, by a common awakening, to a state where co-operation, instead of competition would be an economic rule.

Most interesting was the speaker’s comparison of the Socialists of today with the men who led the agitation for the American Revolution. “Undesirable Citizens,” then, all of them—Samuel Adams, the arch incendiary—Tom Paine, vilified as a destroyer of Society —Jefferson, branded as a traitor. “I wonder,” said the speaker, “if the aristocratic Daughters of the Revolution could by some miracle come face to face with their revered forefathers as they were in their own time, whether they would not disown them. Those visionary agitators were disreputable then. They are only respectable now because they are dead, and because the world moved up to where they stood. John Brown and the other abolitionists he cited as a further example—as people with a vision of better things who stood up for their convictions and were despised in their generation. “When John Brown was hung they called him a monster, ten years later he was a fanatic, ten years more and he was misjudged, and now only recently the State bought the old John Brown homestead and the Governor, on the occasion of its dedication, said that ‘the spot where his dust reposes is the most sacred in this commonwealth.'”

“One word,” said Mr. Debs, “I want to leave with you young men and women. It is this, Nothing is more glorious than to stand up for convictions, when the world disagrees with you. If your last friend deserts you, you will be in better company than you were before.”

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DEBATING IN CLASSROOM
Novel System to be Inaugurated Under Auspices of Barnard Literary Association

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIII, Number 144, 9 April 1910, p. 1.

Barnard Literary Association in [col]laboration with Dr. Agger of the Economics Department has formulated a plan of compulsory participation in debating; this experiment to become immediately effective in certain economics classes. In conjunction with Drs. Agger and Mussey, the project has been evolved, including all members taking Economics 2. The system will work as follows: A subject for debate will be chosen, probably on some aspect of socialism. Then during class hours every member of the class will have to speak extemporaneously for five minutes on the subject selected. The individual men will not be told beforehand on what side they will talk, so the speeches will be entirely impromptu. These five minute talks will be so to speak, the preliminaries. All the members of the class will act as judges, and at the conclusion of the trials they will vote for the four best men to comprise the team.

This arrangement will be conducted in both, Dr. Aggers and Dr. Mussey’s classes and after each section has chosen its team, a formal debate will be held, probably in Earl Hall. The whole affair will be conducted under the auspices of Barnard Literary Association. A committee on arrangements has been appointed, consisting of C.J.W. Meisel ’11, R.R. Stewart ’11, R.C. Ingalls ’12, and E.W. Stone ’11, ex-officio. To further stimulate student interest, the society has made appropriations in order to present prizes to the winning team.

Dr. Agger is very enthusiastic about the new plan, and predicts great results for the future. It is a most happy circumstance that a debating society should take charge of this undertaking, and by the co-operation of faculty and the undergraduates, student interest in debating cannot fail to be evoked. A new era for debating is dawning. If this experiment proves as successful as it is expected to, it will undoubtedly be extended to other courses in economics and politics, and will become a permanent feature of the curriculum.

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INTERSECTION DEBATE SOON
Both Teams Selected Yesterday

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIII, Number 164, 3 May 1910, p. 1.

Arrangements for the intersection debate which is being conducted by the Barnard Literary Association, are rapidly progressing. The subject, as the poster on the society’s bulletin board in Hamilton Hall announces, is Socialism.

Yesterday, Dr. Agger’s morning and afternoon sections each selected a team. Ten men spoke before each class and five were chosen by vote of the class. The morning section picked the following men: L.K. Frank ’12, W.M. Delerick ’12, S.R. Gerstein ’11, C.J.W. Meisel ’11, W.W. Pettit (Pg), while the other section is to be represented by I.[?] J. Levinson ’12, W.A. Scott ’11, S.M. Strassburger ’11, W. MacRossie ’11, J. Levy ’11. All these men must meet in 205 West Hall at 11:55 today in order to choose sides for the semi-finals to be held tomorrow. The team that wins will debate the same subject with Professor Mussey’s section.

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DO WE WANT SOCIALISM?
Students in Economics 2 to Decide Question in Debate Held Under Auspices of Barnard Lit.

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIII, Number 168, 7 May 1910, p. 3.

Those who are interested in Economics will have an excellent opportunity of hearing a debate on Socialism next Monday at 3 p.m. in 301 Hamilton Hall. The question reads, “Resolved that the common ownership of all the means of production will promote social welfare.” The debaters are all members of the classes in Economics 2. As the course is a very popular one, it is given in three sections, two of which are conducted by Dr. Agger and the other by Professor Mussey. Last Monday Dr. Agger’s sections held their preliminaries and each selected a team. On Wednesday these two teams met, and the judges unanimously decided in favor of the negative team, which consisted of S. M. Strasburger ’11, G. W. Scott ’11, and S. J. Levinson ’12, of the afternoon section. The team representing the morning section was composed of the following men: L. K. Frank ’12, S. R. Gerstein ’11, W. W. Pettit (T. C.), and W. M. Dederick ’12. The decision was based upon the preparation shown, and skill in delivery. The judges also selected Strassburger, Pettit and Levinson as the best speakers, and these men will represent Dr. Agger’s sections against Professor Mussey’s next Monday. Professor Mussey’s section has also chosen a team consisting of S. I. Fried ’12, E. V. Broderick ’12, and W. S. Dakin (T. C.)

The debate next Monday promises to be one of the most interesting ever heard on the Campus. It is the first time that debate has ever been introduced into the class-room as part of the work. The planning, and the making of arrangements for this debate was done by Barnard Literary Association in collaboration with Professor Mussey and Dr. Agger. The members of the winning team are to receive appropriate prizes donated by the association. An invitation to be present has been extended to the students taking Economics 2, in Barnard College. The debate will be open to any one in the University.

Not only have the men on the teams shown unusual interest in the contest but all the men in the various sections are very enthusiastic as to the undertaking. Professor Beard of the Politics Department thinks the scheme is an admirable one, and is anxious to extend it to his field. It may also be possible to introduce class-room debate into the various courses in Philosophy.

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SOCIALISTS RESUSCITATED
Open Meetings Planned

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIV, Number 16, 15 October 1910, p. 6.

Earl Hall yesterday afternoon was the scene of the Socialist Club’s meeting.

The work for the present year was decided upon, and it was planned to hold a series of open meetings, similar to those of last year, which were addressed by such men as Charles Edward Russell, the present Socialist candidate for Governor, Lincoln Steffens and Eugene V. Debs. There will also be the regular club meetings, with speakers of equally independent ideas but of less wide reputation.

The study and discussion of the principles of Socialism necessary for the formation of an intelligent opinion upon this world-wide movement, will also be continued in the hope that the student body’s interest in public affairs may not only be stimulated, but also educated

The next meeting of the club will be on Wednesday, October 19, at 4:15 p m., in room A, Earl Hall. All those who are interested in the radical political thought of the present day are cordially invited to co-operate with the club, while those who are interested it the investigation of social problems are urged to become members.

Mrs. Florence Kelly, in all probability, will speak in the auditorium of Earl Hall on Thursday, November 10.

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INSTRUCTION IN SOCIALISM
Series of Essays Planned

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIV, Number 20, 20 October 1910, p. 1.

Something which is both novel and valuable was adopted by the Socialist Club at its meeting yesterday afternoon. This is a scheme for instructing the members in the fundamental principles of Socialism by having a graded series of essays read at the respective meetings.

Plans were also laid to have Mr. Russel, the Socialist Gubernatorial candidate make a campaign speech at the University sometime before election day and also to get Mrs. Finch up on the Campus. Mrs. Finch is the woman of Carnegie Hall fame who is responsible for the statement that “Rich girls turn to Socialism as flowers to the sun.”

On account of the unavoidable detention of N. Levey ’10L, who was to have read a paper entitled “The Original Intention of the Framers of the Constitution,” J. H. Henle ’12 spoke for a short time on the same topic with which he was thoroughly familiar. He pointed out that, while the Radicals in the colonies dictated the Declaration of Independence, it was the Conservatives who controlled the Constitutional Convention. He said in part: “Authentic reports show that behind closed doors, under a pledge of secrecy, they deliberately planned to protect the wealthy and those of higher understanding. Hamilton, in James-fashion, said in convention, that the constitution proposed would be almost impossible of amendment and, in the Federalist papers, that it was easy of amendment. The Supreme Court was effectively put in absolute control by an arbitory vetoing power and the entire government was made as indirect as it could possibly be—the House of Representatives being the only rope thrown out to the Radicals. The main point of interest is the striking contrast between the unpublished speeches of all the members in the convention with the stated views of the same men in the Federalist papers.”

An open discussion followed. The next meeting of the club will be in Earl Hall, room L, on Friday, October 28.

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About Jessica Garretson Finch

Source: Webpage History of Finch College

JESSICA GARRETSON earned her B.A. as one of the seven women in Barnard College’s first graduating class in 1893. Looking back on the four years she studied there, she said she considered them a waste of time, and observed that her college education had prepared her for one thing – to be a tutor in Greek! After marrying James Finch and receiving her law degree from New York University in the same month that she gave birth to a daughter, she decided to establish a post-secondary school for women that was “different,” and she did! The Finch School opened in 1900 with 13 students. Its curriculum was oriented toward the practical, with as many workshops, studios and practice rooms as classrooms. As enrollment grew, additional room was needed, and by 1904, with grants she had received and a hefty mortgage she arranged for the construction of the building on 78th Street known to many Finch women as the Academic Building. There, in addition to an academic faculty, most of whom were visiting professors from Columbia University, were actors from the New York stage, Seventh Avenue fashion designers, performing instrumentalists, singers, poets and politicians.

MEANWHILE, MRS. FINCH BECAME MRS. [John O’Hara Cosgrave in 1913] COSGRAVE. Her first marriage ended in divorce soon after the turn of the century. In 1913 she married the distinguished journalist, John O’Hare Cosgrave, who proposed to her during the intermission of a Carnegie Hall concert.

PREPARATION FOR THE “RECURRENT CAREER” was at the heart of Jessica Cosgrave’s educational philosophy, and along with her intense interest in “current events” (a term she coined), became the inspiration for the Finch curriculum. Women’s lives, she said, are unlike men’s lives; women’s lives have distinct phases. Therefore, a woman should be in school until she is 22; for the next three or four years she should launch into the first phase of her career; in her mid twenties she will marry, put aside her career and devote her energies to raising a family, four children was the ideal number. At about age 40, with her children in school, a woman should resume her career and, Mrs. Cosgrave advised, seriously consider entering politics.

IN ADDITION TO RUNNING WHAT WAS THEN TERMED “a fashionable school for girls,” Jessica Cosgrave worked energetically from 1900 on for two “causes”; Women’s Suffrage and Socialism. She was quoted in a NEW YORKER magazine “Profile” by Angelica Gibbons in 1946 as saying, “If there is any sensation more exquisite than walking up Fifth Avenue to music in a parade for an unpopular cause, I don’t know what it is.” She said that in one of the suffrage parades “People on the sidelines become impassioned to the point of throwing rotten vegetables and eggs at the ladies as they passed.” Angelica Gibbs goes on to note that this experience proved so invigorating to Jessica Cosgrave that after marching, most of the way up Fifth Avenue, she dropped out of line, took a cab back to the starting point, and “hoofed it all the way up again with another contingent.”

JESSICA COSGRAVE’S “SOCIALISM” may seem a bit incongruous considering how many of the young women from all parts of the United States, South America, Europe and Asia attending Finch came from wealthy families. In 1911, asked about her membership in the Socialist Party and the appearance as speakers at the Finch School of Upton Sinclair, Walter Lippman and other “radicals,” Mrs. Cosgrave said: “My chief object is to awaken Social Consciousness in the girls. I want my graduates to become powers in their communities, not idle fashionable women. I don’t teach these young girls actual Socialism, but Social Activism.” Thirty-five years later, in 1946, when a Finch student interviewed Mrs. Cosgrave, and asked about her politics, she said she stood “Just a bit left of center”!

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SOCIALISTIC LECTURE TODAY
Charles Edward Russell Socialist Candidate for Governor to Speak In Havemeyer

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIV, Number 35, 7 November 1910, p. 8.

Columbia men will have an unusual opportunity this afternoon to hear in interesting man talk about an interesting subject. Mr. Charles Edward Russell, the author and magazine writer who is running for Governor of this State on the Socialist ticket will talk to Columbia men about socialism as a remedy for the evils from which New York is suffering. The lecture will be delivered in 309 Havemeyer, at 4 o’clock and will be open to the public.

Mr. Russell did general reporting for a number of New York papers, including the Herald, and vas then sent all over the country on special articles for the Sunday papers. For a time he was managing editor of the Hearst newspapers in Chicago. Then he began writing for the magazines. His magazine writing has taken the form of vigorous protests against the sort of political corruption and economic injustice that he saw from the inside during his newspaper days. He has become a “muckraker,” and has recently said that he “intends to keep on raking muck until somebody removes the muck.”

Mr. Russell has written quite a number of books, including “Lawless Wealth,” [1908] “Soldiers of the Common Good,” [article series most of which revised and published in]  “The Uprising of the Many,” [1907] “The Heart of the Railway Problem,” “A Life of Chatterton,” [1908] and “Why I am a Socialist,” [1910] and he is now busy on a life of Wendell Phillips [1914].

This is the first time he has run for political office as a Socialist. The renewed interest in socialism all over the country, and the recent Socialist victory in Milwaukee, made it probable that Mr. Russell will poll a large vote tomorrow.

______________________

ECONOMISTS TO HEAR NOTED SOCIALIST

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIV, Number 106, 24 February 1911, p. 2.

Mr. John Spargo will deliver the address at the meeting of the Graduate Economics Club tonight. The subject of his talk is, “The Wider Aspects of Socialism.” Mr. Spargo is a well-known socialist. The meeting will be held in 510 Kent, at 8 tonight. All members and guests are requested to be on hand promptly. The club is made up of graduate students who are working for a Ph. D.

Following are other lectures scheduled:

Friday, March 10: Henry George’s Theory of Land Rent and the Single Tax. Paper by Mr. I. S. Adlerblum.

Friday, March 24: A detailed description and criticism of the provisions of Senator Aldrich’s Plan for Banking Reform in the United States. Paper by Mr. Oswald Knauth.

______________________

DISCUSSION OF SOCIALISM
Graduate Economics Club

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIV, Number 107, 25 February 1911, p. 1.

Mr. John Spargo the noted author and lecturer addressed the meeting of the Graduate Economics Club last evening in Kent Hall. About seventy-five members and guests were present. The lecture was followed by an informal discussion in which Mr. Spargo declared himself ready to answer any questions put to him.

The subject of Mr. Spargo’s lecture was in general socialism, but he confined himself for the most part to a consideration of the theories of Marx, Engel, and Riccardo. He said it was not from a man’s enemies but from his friends that the most was to be feared. In the case of these three economists their over enthusiastic followers had been responsible for much misrepresentation. A single bald statement, in a great many cases, had been made a slogan while all that qualified it had been forgotten.

From the statement of abstract theories Mr. Spargo went on to a consideration of the spread of socialism throughout the country and particularly in the West. “The State of Oklahoma,” he said, “has the greatest number of socialists in proportion to the population, of any state in the Union.” He accounted for this chiefly by the fact that those people who had emigrated to the West and had been persevering enough to face the hardships of pioneering were of a more liberal and unbiased turn of mind than the conservative Easterners. Socialism he said in part, offers them a theory of Social Progress, A Social Ideal, and not only that but an organized movement for the realization of that Ideal which appeals to their Western intellects.

______________________

SOCIALISTS TO STUDY SOCIALISM

Source:  Columbia Daily Spectator,Volume LIV, Number 108, 27 February 1911, p. 5.

The Socialist Club is planning to study socialism in a systematic way. Beginning with the next meeting, definite chapters in Mr. Edmund Kelly’s “Twentieth Century Socialism” will be assigned to the members for study. At succeeding meetings these will be discussed by the members and specially invited guests. President Trimble speaks very enthusiastically of the plan and considers this an excellent opportunity for everyone interested in socialism to increase their knowledge of the arguments for and against it.

* * * * * * * * * *

[Economics in the Rear-view Mirror attaches the following notes on Edmund Kelly:]

Kelly, Edmond (1851-1909). Educated at Columbia [Class of 1870?] and at Cambridge. “Lecturer on Municipal Government at Columbia University”. He had founded the City Club and the subsidiary Good Government Clubs. Political and professional activities in New York and in Paris.

Kelly, Edmond. Evolution and Effort and their Relation to Religion and Politics. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1895.

____________. Government or Human Evolution. Vol. I Justice. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1900.

____________. Government or Human Evolution.Vol. II Individualism and Collectivism. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1901.

____________. A Practical Programme for Working Men. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1906.

____________. The Unemployables. London: P.S. King & Son, 1907.

____________. The Elimination of the Tramp by the Introduction into America of the Labour Colony System already proved Effective in Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland, with the Modifications thereof Necessary to adapt this System to American Conditions. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908.

____________. Twentieth Century Socialism. What it is not; What it is; How it may come. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1911. [Forward by Franklin H. Giddings]

“Aware that he had not long to live, Mr. Kelly hastened to finish the first draft of the book [Twentieth Century Socialism], and indeed he survived that completion only two weeks. He knew that considerable editorial work was needed, and this he entrusted to Mrs. Florence Kelley, author of “Some Ethical Gains through Legislation” and translator of Marx’ “Discourse on Free Trade,” and of Friedrich Engels’s work on the “Condition of the Working Class in England.” She undertook and has fulfilled this trust, and has been aided throughout by the untiring labors of Shaun Kelly, the author’s son.”  Pp. xiv and xv.

______________________

STUDENTS OF SOCIALISM TO MEET TODAY

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIV, Number 110, 1 March 1911, p. 2.

In Earl Hall today, at 4:10, the Socialistic Club will hold an important meeting. The organization is taking up a systematic study of Socialism and today there will be discussion, at the meeting, of Edmond Kelley’s “Twentieth Century Socialism.” At the next meeting, March 8, the club will be addressed by some prominent Socialist, probably John Spargo. All students are invited to attend today’s meeting.

______________________

SOCIALISTS ELECT OFFICERS
Trimble Chosen President

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIV, Number 110, 1 March 1911, p. 8.

Election of officers of the Socialist Society for the coming term was held yesterday afternoon with the following results: R.J. Trimble, president; and G.G. Bobbe, secretary and treasurer. It was decided that the club would read several chapters of Kelly’s “Twentieth Century Socialism” for each meeting and assign a member to prepare a paper upon them. The next meeting will be held on March 1.

______________________

SOCIALISTS MAKE GIFT TO UNIVERSITY

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIV, Number 111, 2 March 1911, p. 3.

At the meeting of the Socialist club held yesterday afternoon, it was decided to present a copy of “Twentieth Century Socialism,” to the University. Mr. Fraenkel of the Law School gave an interesting explanation of the views expressed in the first few chapters of that book and a general discussion followed. The next meeting will be held the afternoon of Wednesday, March 3.

______________________

SOCIALISTS ON 20TH CENTURY SOCIALISM

Source:  Columbia Daily Spectator,Volume LIV, Number 117, 9 March 1911, p. 1.

At a meeting held yesterday afternoon in Earl Hall, the Socialist Club took up an interesting discussion on a paper read on Commissioner Edward [sic] Kelly’s “Twentieth Century Socialism” was also taken up, and resulted in a lively discussion about the respective merits of the evolutionary and revolutionary points of view on Socialism. The next meeting of the club will be held Wednesday, March 15 and if possible some prominent Socialist will be obtained to lead the discussion.

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“INCOME TAX” INTERESTS ECONOMISTS

Source:  Columbia Daily Spectator,Volume LIV, Number 118, 10 March 1911, p. 1.

Next Wednesday the Undergraduate Economics Club will meet in 510 Kent at 8 p. m. The main subject for discussion will be “The Federal Income Tax,” E. V. Broderick, ’12 will give a history of the income tax and its actual working up to 1895. After an informal discussion of this, there will be reports and outlines for the coming work in the following committee; Socialism; Tariff, Railroads, Banking, Trusts, Conservation of Natural Resources and Labor Problems. Those members who were present at the last meeting have been assigned to committees. Members desiring to work on any special committee should inform the chairman of that committee

The plans for the remaining semester include trips to the Stock Exchange, Clearing House, Plant of Bush Terminal Cos., in addition to an address by Mr. G. A. McAneny, borough President of Manhattan and several other prominent men of the day.

______________________

SOCIALIST SOCIETY MEETING
Mrs. Jessica Finch Speaks

Source: Barnard Bulletin (April 5, 1911), p. 3.

Mrs. Jessica Finch spoke on Wednesday, March 29, 1911, before the Barnard and Columbia Chapters of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. Her talk was extremely interesting. She spoke first on the need for getting rid of poverty in this world. Physical well-being is the basis for spiritual well-being. It is very easy for people who are materially well-off to point out people who live beautiful, inspiring lives under adverse conditions. But lack of the essentials of life, such as food, air, light and leisure, are bound to retard intellectual mental growth.

Poverty, moreover, is unnecessary in the world at present. Before the introduction of machinery, it is true that there was not enough of even the necessities of life to go around. But since the industrial revolution there is no need for any one to be without life’s necessities, for there is more than enough for all. To secure for all a fair share of the necessities of life, industry must be socialized. All unearned increments, that is, all profits not due to mental and physical labor, must go to society or equal distribution among those who spent themselves in the production thereof.

______________________

TO DISCUSS MODERN SOCIALISM

Source:  Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIV, Number 149, 20 April 1911, p. 8.

The Columbia Socialist Society will hold a regular meeting this afternoon at 4:10 o’clock in Earl Hall. The members will hold an open discussion on the third chapter of Kelly’s ““Twentieth Century Socialism.” All members of the University are invited to attend the meeting.

______________________

SOCIALISTS TO GATHER TOMORROW

Source:  Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LV, Number 14, 12 October 1911, p. 5.

As announced in yesterday’s issue, the year’s first meeting of the Socialist Society will be held in Earl Hall tomorrow afternoon at 3 o’clock. The society will be addressed by its president, S. S. Bobbe ’13, and an outline of the coming season’s work will be discussed. All members and students interested in Socialism should attend.

______________________

NOTED SOCIALIST TO TALK
Meeting of Club Today

Source:  Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LV, Number 25, 25 October 1911, p. 6.

Today at 4:00 P. M. the Socialist Club will hold its second meeting of the year in Room J, Earl Hall. The club will be addressed by the organizer of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, H.J. Laidler, Wesleyan ’07, who will explain the work he has been doing as organizer and what the Columbia chapter can do to help create an intelligent interest in Socialism at Columbia.

The Intercollegiate Socialist Society has lately increased its chapters to 30, an increase in the past year of over three hundred per cent. Mr. Laidler has been to a great extent responsible for this increase, and is, therefore, well qualified to give an interesting and encouraging talk to the society. He will also discuss with the club the matter of a course of lectures on radical subjects by prominent men. that is now being planned by the club. The Intercollegiate Society will aid the club in securing the speakers.

Besides Mr. Laidler, several of the members of the club will read papers on different aspects of Socialism. All those in the University interested in Socialism are invited to attend.

______________________

LAIDLER ADDRESSES SOCIALIST CLUB

Source:  Columbia Daily Spectator,Volume LV, Number 26, 26 October 1911, p. 2.

H. J. Laidler, the organizer of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society addressed the Columbia Socialist Club yesterday on the progress of Socialism in the United States during the past twenty and especially in the colleges. His work as organizer has brought him in touch with conditions all over the country, and he spoke of the grasp Socialism has taken on all forms of society.

“I have seen miners,” he said, “take up Karl Marx and study him into the night, and go from him to philosophy, to literature, art and science—all because of the new outlook they had received. If you really want to get the most out of life you should get the philosophy of Socialism; you should study it earnestly and with that sympathy that gives us insight. Socialism has been the means of moulding the lives of many. Further, we should compensate to society that which society has given to us.”

Following Mr. Laidler’s speech the club discussed the question of speakers on various live topics. These speeches are to be given by a number of prominent men and will form a series. They will not be confined to Socialism, but will take up all lines of radical thought. As soon as the speakers have all been secured, the club will publish the list with their various topics. The next meeting of the club will be held next Wednesday afternoon in Earl Hall.

______________________

TRUST PROBLEM DISCUSSED
Seager Addresses Economists

Source:  Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LV, Number 32, 2 November 1911, p. 8.

At the meeting of the Economics Club in Hamilton Hall yesterday afternoon Professor H. P. Seager gave a lecture on Trusts. A large audience was present when the president of the club introduced the speaker. Professor Seager began his lecture by giving a short history of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890. He praised the law very highly and said that better wording could hardly be framed to cover the situation so thoroughly. Until the term of Roosevelt, the law had not been properly enforced. Under McKinley, only three indictments were issued; under Roosevelt, however, there were twenty-five indictments against trusts and the same policy has been carried on under Taft, his record being eighteen, up to July 1, 1911.

The late decisions of the Supreme Court were next discussed by Professor Seager. He was not very sanguine about the probable efficacy of the court’s orders to the trusts to dissolve. The haze surrounding the court’s decisions must be cleared away in subsequent suits before the real meaning of the Anti-Trust Act is defined.

It was therefore the duty of the President to institute suit against the Steel Trust in order to clear up this vagueness. Industry must necessarily be dull until it is definitely settled whether business, as at present organized can exist or not.

He remarked in conclusion that the tendency seemed to be toward Socialism, but that he had grave doubts whether this tendency would go to that extent. It was his opinion that the present situation would produce a solution for the problems of today.

______________________

FOREIGN SOCIALISM STUDIED
Cooperation Discussed

Source:  Columbia Daily Spectator,Volume LV, Number 49, 23 November 1911, p. 5.

At a study meeting held in Earl Hall yesterday, R.J. Trimble ’12, addressed the Socialist Club on the cooperative movement in Belgium. This movement has spread into almost all of the retail business of the country, and the working people buy nearly all their goods at these stores obtaining not only a saving in price, but free insurance against unemployment, sickness and accident.

The next meeting of the club will be held on Wednesday, November 29th, when one of the members will give a talk on Edward R. Bellamy and his works. On Friday, December 8, Mr. John Moody, of “Moodys Magazine,” will give a lecture under the auspices of the club on “The Problem of Railroads.”

______________________

ADDRESS ON CHILD LABOR
O. R. Lovejoy Gives Lecture

Source:  Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LV, Number 68, 19 December 1911, p. 3.

“Child Labor” was the topic of the third lecture in the series on “Modern Problems” held under the auspices of the Socialist Club given yesterday afternoon by Owen R. Lovejoy. Mr. Lovejoy drew largely from his own experience as secretary of the National Child Labor Committee. “As compared with the great problem itself, the effects of child labor on the child dwindle into insignificance. Really the most important aspect of the problem is its economic aspect. It means a menace to our economic interest from the standpoint of wages. Wherever child labor is employed the standard of wages in the community is lowered. Thus, in some New England towns men get only eight or nine dollars a week as a result of the competition from child labor.

“Child Labor” acts indirectly to destroy the family. No more faulty argument can be used against Socialism than to say it will destroy the family, it is already destroyed. The employment of children during the hours they should be under the influence of the home tends in this direction. But even worse, the lower standard of wages resultant on child labor makes it the duty of a man subject to those conditions not to attempt to raise a family.

“Legislation regulating this course has been secured in thirty-eight of the states, but the great fault is not that sufficient legislation has been had, but that there has not been sufficient enforcement of the legislation.”

“The main opposition to child labor regulation has come in the past from those most vitally interested —from the employers, from the parents of the children and even from the children themselves. It has actually been demonstrated by comparison of factories in New England where no child labor is employed and those of the South where it is employed that the employer suffers in economic loss by their employment—and yet the employers oppose us. The parents are against us either because they are ignorant or because they suffer the want of a larger income, whereas child labor itself acts to lower their own wages.

 

Image Source:  1912 U.S. presidential campaign poster for the Socialist Party ticket: Eugene V. Debs and Emil Seidel from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Categories
Curriculum Economics Programs Michigan

Michigan. Major Expansion of Economics Department, 1892

 

About a dozen years after the University of Michigan established its own department of political economy, a major expansion took place under the leadership of professor Henry Carter Adams in 1892. Below you will find the course offerings for the academic years 1891-92 and 1892-93 along with two U. of M. Daily reports about the department’s economics program.

Other links of interest regarding economics at the University of Michigan:

History of the University of Michigan economics department through 1940.

List of University of Michigan economics faculty up through 1980.

Memorial to Henry Carter Adams  (1851-1921) in the Journal of Political Economy, 1922.

Pictures of Henry Carter Adams’ home (interior and exterior photographs)

_________________________

POLITICAL ECONOMY.
A Letter From Dr. Adams.
(January, 1891)

Eds. U. of M. Daily,

Gentlemen: It gives me pleasure to comply with your request, and state the nature of the work which will be Undertaken in Political Economy during the Second Semester. The usual courses will be offered, but with some slight modification. They are as follows:

First: “Unsettled questions in Political Economy.” This course will comprise three lectures a week. It will embrace a study of the money question, statistics in relation to Political economy, development of economic thought, commercial crises, the railroad problem and the problem of emigration [sic].

Students who elect this course will have the privilege of listening to the Hon. Carroll D. Wright, who will give six lectures upon Statistics in their relations to the economic and social problems. Mr. Wright was for years at the head of the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, of Massachusetts and is now at the head of the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington. His first lecture will be given on March 9th.

Dr. E. R. A. Seligman, Professor of Political Economy, in Columbia college, New York City, will some time in the month of May deliver, as part of the same course, lectures [sic] on the History of Political Economy. Dr. Seligman is well known as one of foremost economists in this country and his lectures on this subject may be looked forward to with great interest.

Arrangements had been made with Dr. Edmund James, of the University of Pennsylvania, to deliver a few lectures in this general course, but a letter has just been received saying that his physician will not permit him to undertake any extra labor. The other topics in this course will be treated by myself.

Second: “Social and Industrial Reform.” This course of lectures will embrace the development of industrial classes, poor law legislation, labor problem and socialism will be given under my immediate direction.

Third: “Foreign Commercial Relations of the United States.” This course of lectures, which will be two hours a week, will be given by Dr. Frederick C. Hicks. Dr. Hicks has given a great deal of attention to this subject. He will treat in this course of the theories of foreign and domestic trade, of the industrial resources of the United States on which trade must rest, and of the possibilities of developing a foreign commerce for the United States. He will, also, speak of the principles of free trade and protection in connection with foreign trade. This course of lectures will be most interesting and instructive. The students who are prepared to elect it are earnestly recommended to do so.

Fourth: “Seminary in the Science of Finance.” This course will be limited to students who are prepared to take advanced work in the science of finance. The study undertaken will be either the Financial History of the United States or Taxing System in the United States. It will be conducted by myself, with some assistance from Mr. Hicks

I am, of course, very solicitous that the work in economics should not suffer on account of my partial absence during the year. I am sure it has not suffered at all under the proficient direction of Professor Taylor, and I think that the students will see from the above program that it is not likely to suffer during the second Semester.

Very respectfully,
HENRY C. ADAMS.

Source:  The U. of M. Daily, Vol. I, No. 75 (January 20, 1891), pp. 1.

_________________________

Courses of Instruction
1891-92

POLITICAL ECONOMY.

FIRST SEMESTER.

  1. Elements of Political Economy (short course). Text-book: Walker. M, W, F, Sec. I, 2-3; Sec. II, 3-4. Dr. HICKS.
    Course I is designed for those who desire to obtain a general knowledge of Political Economy. It embraces, in addition to a statement of fundamental principles, brief studies on practical economic problems.

 

  1. History of the Development of Industrial Society. Lectures and quiz. Lectures, Tu,Th, 11½—12½. Quiz, M, Sec. I, 11½—12½; W, Sec. II, 11½—12½. Professor ADAMS.
    Course 3 is designed to be introductory to all Courses in Political Economy except Course 1. It is desirable that it should be preceded by Course 1 in History. Students who intend to take all the work offered in economics should elect Course 3 the first semester of their second year of residence.

 

  1. Principles of the Science of Finance. Lectures and quiz. Lectures, M, W, F, 2-3. Quiz, Tu, Sec. I, 2-3; Th, Sec. II, 2-3. Professor ADAMS.
    Course 5 must be preceded by Course 4.

 

  1. Socialism and Communism. Recitations, with assigned readings. Text-books: Ely’s French and German Socialism; Adams’s Relation of the State to Industrial Action. Tu,Th, 11½—12½. Dr. HICKS.
    Course 7 must be preceded by Course 2.

 

  1. Theory of Statistics. Lectures, with practical work. Tu, Th, 4-5.
    HICKS.

 

  1. Industrial and Commercial Development of the United States. Lectures. Tu, Th, 3-4. Dr. HICKS.
    Course 11 must be preceded by Courses 2 and 4.

 

  1. Seminary in Economics. M, 4-6. Two-fifths Course. Professor ADAMS.
    Course 13 must be preceded by Courses 2 and 4.

 

  1. Current Economic Literature and Legislation. Once in two weeks, M, 7-9. One-fifth Course. Professor ADAMS and Dr. HICKS.
    Course 15 is designed for candidates for advanced degrees, or for students especially proficient in Political Economy.

 

SECOND SEMESTER.

  1. Elements of Political Economy. Text-book: Walker. M, W, F, Sec. I, 10½—11½; Sec. II, 11½—12½; Sec. III, 2-3. Dr. HICKS.

 

  1. Unsettled Problems in Political Economy. Lectures and quiz. Lectures, M, W, F, 2-3. Quiz, Tu, Sec. I, 2-3; Th, Sec. II, 2-3; F, Sec. III, 2-3. Professor ADAMS.
    Course 4 comprises lectures on commercial crises, immigration, free trade and protection, the labor question, and the monopoly question. It must be preceded by Course 2.

 

  1. The Railroad Problem. Lectures. Tu, Th, 11½—12½. Professor ADAMS.
    Course 6 must be preceded by Course 2.

 

  1. History of the Tariff in the United States. Lectures and text-book. Tu, Th, 3-4. Dr. HICKS.
    Course 8 must be preceded by Course 2; Course 11 is also desirable.

 

  1. History of Financial Legislation in the United States. Lectures and readings. Tu, Th, 4-5. Dr. HICKS.
    Course 10 must be preceded by Course 5.

 

  1. Critical Analysis of Economic Theories. Lectures and readings. W, 3-4. Professor ADAMS.
    Course 12 is intended for advanced students, who are making a special study of Political Economy.

 

  1. Seminary in Finance. M, 3-5. Two-fifths Course. Professor ADAMS.
    Course 14 must be preceded by Course 5.

 

  1. Current Economic Literature and Legislation. Once in two weeks, W, 7-9. One-fifth Course. Professor ADAMS and Dr. HICKS.
    Course 16 is designed for candidates for advanced degrees, or for students especially proficient in Political Economy.

 

Source: University of Michigan. General Register for 1891-92, pp. 62-64.

_________________________

WORK IN ECONOMICS.
(October 1892)

A Great Change Introduced into This Department.
A Daily Man Has a Talk With Prof. Adams. — Nine Men are After Advanced Degrees with Political Economy for a Major. — A Word About the New Instructors. — Both are Graduates of the University of Michigan.

A complete change has been brought about in the department of Political Economy. Its scope has been greatly enlarged, new courses have been added and many of the old ones have been revised. An assistant professorship has been created and two new instructors have been engaged. The course now offered is as complete as can be found in any American college. Prof. Henry C. Adams, when interviewed on the subject, said:

“Yes, the work in Political Economy has been entirely rearranged. Our primary object has been to adapt the courses as far as possible to the needs of all the various classes of students. We place in the first class those who desire to obtain a brief, general view of the subject, such as may be had in one semester’s work. The text-book course in Walker is designed to this end. In the next class come those students who wish to enter more fully into the work but still confine themselves to a general knowledge of the subject. For them the four lecture courses, known as the undergraduate work, are intended, viz: Industrial History Elements of Political Economy, Unsettled Problems and the Science of Finance. The third class consists of those undergraduates who wish to advance so far as to take those special studies known as the intermediate courses. The fourth class comprises the graduate students.”

“The changes in this department look toward the organization of a graduate school. It is my belief that when students have completed their third year in the University they are well prepared to enter upon a higher plane of work. That which is most valuable in an education can not be obtained in lecture and recitation courses. Above these, which are designed to give the mind breadth of grasp and general preparation, come the seminary courses in which specialization is sought. Text books are discarded and for them are substituted the general literature of Political Science, and statistics, the raw material of economics. From a wide range of reading the student is forced to construct for himself a clear and consistent idea of the subject in hand. The advantages of this system are two-fold. In the first place, the knowledge that the student gains is thorough, and he makes it his own as he could never do in a lecture or text-book course. Secondly, and what is of far greater importance, he gains an insight into methods of original research and becomes accustomed to the handling of unworked material.

“It will readily be seen that such results are not obtainable in large classes. Personal contact between the instructors and students are indispensable to the work. With this in view are given Courses 21 and 22 in which the graduate students and the four instructors meet one evening in two weeks for the discussion of current economic literature and legislation. To bridge over the chasm between professor and student it was determined to appoint two instructors on half time, who, as they are candidates for advanced degrees, belong in part to the student body, rather than appoint one full instructor. The changes in the course have proven eminently successful. There are already nine candidates for advanced degrees with Pol. Ec. for their major study. Five of them are for the degree of Ph. D. and the others for Master’s degrees.

“Every student should specialize before leaving college. Whether his subject be Political Economy or History or Literature or Philosophy or Languages, matters not. Let but his investigating powers be given exercise in the proper field and the benefit derived will be enormous.”

Assistant Professor Taylor is so well known to students of the U. of M. as scarcely to need an introduction. He is a graduate of Northwestern University, has studied at Johns Hopkins, and took the degree of Ph.D. at Michigan. Two years ago he took the place of Prof. Adams for one semester. Since then he has held the chair of History and Political Science at Albion College. His doctor’s thesis is a finished work and has received the highest commendation from the most eminent critics.

Mr. Cooley, a son of Judge Thomas Cooley, graduated from the U. of M. first as M.E., then as A.B. He has since studied in Germany and Italy. In the recent census he had charge of the statistics of street railways and published an exceedingly interesting monograph on the subject. He is a candidate for the degree of Ph.D.

Mr. Dixon is so recent a graduate of the U. of M. as to be well known to all readers of the Daily. He too is a candidate for the Ph.D. degree.

Source:  The U. of M. Daily, Vol. III, No. 6 (October 7, 1892), pp. 1, 3.

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Courses of Instruction
1892-93

POLITICAL ECONOMY.

The Courses in Political Economy are classified as undergraduate, intermediate, and graduate Courses. The undergraduate Courses, viz: Courses 1, 2, 3, and 5, may be taken by any student, but are not accepted as counting for an advanced degree. The intermediate Courses, viz: Courses 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13, may also be taken by any student; in the case, however, of students who are pursuing their work on the University system, and of graduate students, special instruction of one hour a week is given in connection with each Course. This extra hour is devoted to a more careful analysis and a more extended discussion than is possible in the lectures. The graduate Courses, viz: Courses 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, and 22, are not open to undergraduate students who pursue their work on the credit system, but may be taken by those who are working on the University system.

FIRST SEMESTER.

  1. Elements of Political Economy (short course). Text-book: Walker. M, W, F, Sec. I, at 2; Sec. II, at 3. Mr. C. H. COOLEY.
    Course 1 is designed for those who desire to obtain a general knowledge of political economy. It embraces, in addition to a statement of fundamental principles, brief studies on practical economic problems. It is not accepted as a substitute for Course 2 unless supplemented by Course 3.

 

  1. History of the Development of Industrial Society. Lectures and quiz. Lectures, Tu,Th, at 11½. Quiz, M, Sec. I, at 10½; Sec. II, at 11½; Tu, Sec. III, at 11½; W, Sec. IV, at 10½; Sec. V, at 11½. Professor ADAMS and Mr. DIXON.
    Course 3 is designed to be introductory to all Courses in Political Economy except Course I. It is not, however, required for admission to such Courses. It embraces a history of English industrial society from the twelfth century to the present time, and is designed to show how modern industrial customs and rights came into existence. It is desirable that it be preceded by Course I in History. Students who intend to take all the work offered in economics should elect Course 3 the first semester of their second year of residence.

 

  1. Problems in Political Economy. Lectures and quiz. Lectures, M, W, F, at 2. Quiz, Tu, Sec I, at 2; Th, Sec. II, at 2; F, III, at 3. Professor ADAMS and Assistant Professor F. M. TAYLOR.
    Course 5 treats in a cursory manner current problems in political economy. The problems studied are the following: The Railway Problem; Industrial Crises; Free Trade and Protection; Industrial Reforms; Labor Legislation; Taxation. It is designed as the supplement of Course 2, by which it must be preceded; and as introductory to Courses 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13, although it is not required for those Courses.

 

  1. History and Theory of Land Tenure and Agrarian Movements. M, W, at 4. Assistant Professor F. M. TAYLOR.

 

  1. History and Principles of Currency and Banking. Tu, Th, at 4. Assistant Professor F. M. TAYLOR.

 

  1. Industrial and Commercial Development of the United States. Tu, Th, at 11½. Assistant Professor F. M. TAYLOR.

 

  1. Theory of Statistics. Th, at 5. Mr. C. H. COOLEY.
    Courses 7, 9, 11, and 13 must be preceded by Course 2.

 

  1. Critical Analysis of Economic Thought. M, at 8¼. Professor ADAMS.

 

  1. Seminary in Finance. M, 9½—11½. Professor ADAMS.

 

  1. Current Economic Legislation and Literature. Once in two weeks. W, 7-9, P.M. Professor ADAMS, Assistant Professor F. M. TAYLOR, Mr. C. H. COOLEY, and Mr. DIXON.

 

SECOND SEMESTER.

 

  1. Elements of Political Economy. Lectures, M, W,F, at 3. Quiz; Tu, Sec. I, at 11½; Sec. II, at 3; Th, Sec. III, at 11½; Sec. IV, at 3. Assistant Professor F. M. TAYLOR.

 

  1. Principles of the Science of Finance. Lectures, M, W,F, at 2. Quiz, M, Sec. I, at 3; W, Sec. II, at 3; F, Sec. III, at 3. Professor ADAMS and Mr. DIXON.

 

  1. The Transportation Problem. Tu, Th, at 11½. Professor ADAMS.

 

  1. History and Theory of Socialism and Communism. Tu, Th, at 4. Assistant Professor F. M. TAYLOR.

 

  1. History of the Tariff in the United States. Text-book: Taussig. Tu, Th, at 10½. Mr. DIXON.

 

  1. History of Political Economy. Text-book: Ingram. M,W, at 10. Mr. C. H. COOLEY.
    Course 12, if taken by students who have passed Course 1, will be accepted as an equivalent for Course 2.
    Courses 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 must be preceded by Course 2.

 

  1. Critical Examination of the Labor Problem and of the Monopoly Problem. M, at 8¼. Professor ADAMS.

 

  1. Seminary in Economics. M, 9½ to 11½. Professor ADAMS.

 

  1. Social Philosophy, with especial reference to economic relations. Th, at 8¼. Assistant Professor F. M. TAYLOR.

 

  1. Current Economic Legislation and Literature. Once in two weeks. W, 7-9, P. M. Professor ADAMS, Assistant Professor F. M. TAYLOR, Mr. C. H. COOLEY, and Mr. DIXON.

 

Source: University of Michigan. General Register for 1892-93, pp. 69-71.

Image Source:   1891 photograph of the Michigan Wolverines football team. By J. Jefferson Gibson, Ann Arbor, Michigan – Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Public Domain,