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Exam Questions Johns Hopkins Swarthmore Undergraduate

Swarthmore. Honors Examinations. Economic Theory and Social Economics, 1934.

 

It is not quite clear whether the following exams that had been prepared for Swarthmore College’s honors economics degree were simply misfiled with Johns Hopkins’ political economy department exams or whether those exams had been been recycled expressly for examining Johns Hopkins’ economics majors. In any event we can add Broadus Mitchell’s two exams for Swarthmore here to those of later external examiners  Paul Samuelson (1943), Wolfgang Stolper (1944), and Richard Musgrave (1946).   The Swarthmore department exam for 1931 was also posted earlier.

A 90 page transcript of an oral history interview with Broadus Mitchell from August 14 and 15, 1977 can be found in the Southern Oral History Program Collection at the website Documenting the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Selections from that oral history will be added later.

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Abstract from the Oral History Interview with Broadus Mitchell
August 14 and 15, 1977

John Broadus Mitchell was born in Georgetown, Kentucky, in 1892 into a family with roots in religion and education. Mitchell describes his upbringing and the strong influence of both his parents. Mitchell discusses his father’s education and career as a professor of history, his parents’ liberal political leanings, and their community involvement. Mitchell also describes his perceptions of race while growing up in Kentucky, Virginia, and South Carolina. Mitchell became an economic historian; he describes in detail how the textile industry shifted its base of power from New England to the southern states in the late nineteenth century, and he talks at length about the impact of industrialization on southern communities. Mitchell became particularly interested in the politics of labor and race. He explains the purposes of labor education programs—notably the Summer School for Women Workers at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and the Southern Summer School for Women Workers in North Carolina—and his participation in those endeavors. In the 1920s, Mitchell moved to Baltimore to teach at Johns Hopkins University. In the 1930s, he came under the administration’s scrutiny when he publicly spoke out about a lynching in Salisbury, Maryland, advocated for the admittance of an African American graduate student to the university, and began to embrace socialist politics. He resigned in 1939. During the years of World War II, he worked briefly at Occidental College and New York University before finding a tenured position in the economics department at Rutgers University. Mitchell continued to be involved in leftist politics during the 1940s, and in the 1950s he participated in a movement at Rutgers to combat McCarthyism in academia. Throughout this interview, Mitchell emphasizes the influence of his upbringing on his political beliefs, and he relates his own experiences to those of his siblings who also were engaged in activism related to labor and race. Towards the end of the interview, Mitchell’s wife, Louise, joins the interview and discusses her career in teaching, her own community involvement, and her efforts to balance the demands of work and family.

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Swarthmore College
DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
HONORS EXAMINATION: ECONOMIC THEORY
May 17, 1934 at 8:30

Examiner: Professor Broadus Mitchell, Johns Hopkins

Please answer any five.

  1. What are the relative importances today of production, exchange, distribution, and consumption of wealth?
  2. “The business cycle is inherent in the capitalist economic system.” Discuss this statement.
  3. How do “pure profits” arise? Under what circumstances did the enterpriser, as a distinct functionary, enter economic life? What are some of the means of avoiding economic risk?
  4. Under what economic circumstances was the differential or Ricardian theory of rent announced? Explain the use made of this theory by Henry George.
  5. Discuss as many theories of interest as you can, indicating which seems to you to be the most reasonable.
  6. Explain (with the use of schedules and diagrams if you choose) how market price is determined under conditions of perfect competition. Discuss briefly monopoly price and class price.
  7. What was the Wage Fund Theory and why was it abandoned?
  8. Discuss the relationship between the Malthusian theory of population and socialism.
  9. Give your definition of money.
  10. What are the main arguments for and against fiat money inflation?
  11. How would you provide a cure for “technological unemployment”?
  12. What are some of the limitations upon conscious economic planning within the capitalist system as these have appeared during the present depression?

 

Swarthmore College
DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
HONORS EXAMINATION: SOCIAL ECONOMICS
May 18, 1934

Examiner: Professor Broadus Mitchell, Johns Hopkins

Answer the questions marked with an asterisk and any four (4) others.

  1. *What do you consider to be the chief economic desire of the mass of the people of the United States? Explain.
  2. What would you say is the major thesis of the majority of text books in the principles of political economy? Is it accurate to say that these books are practically invalidated by the events of the past four or five years?
  3. Make an argument for the continuance of capitalism.
  4. Indicate the chief wastes of the competitive system.
  5. What is R.H. Tawney’s criticism of an acquisitive society?
  6. From the standpoint of probable future change, what have been the principal economic and political tendencies in the United States?
  7. *Discuss the effect of the present business depression upon the problem of economic reform in the United States.
  8. Give your judgment of the sufficiency of the single tax as a scheme of social reform.
  9. *Distinguish between “utopian” and “scientific” socialism.
  10. What are some of the relative advantages in compulsory unemployment insurance of the “company reserve” plan and the “pooled fund” plan?
  11. In your opinion, is widespread organization of labor indispensable to radical social reorganization in this country?
  12. If you consider that there is a theory of social reform running through the recovery measures of the present Administration, give your critical appraisal of it.
  13. *What would you recommend as next steps in the “New Deal”.
  14. In what respects can the experiment of Soviet Russia be taken as a guide for the United States? In what respects is it not a guide for us?
  15. *What book in the College library, no matter what the character or subject, has interested you most? Why?

Source:  Johns Hopkins University.  The Ferdinand Hamburger, Jr. Archives. Department of Political Economy Records.Series 6, Curricular Materials and Exams, Box 2, Folder “Exams, 1930-35”.

Image Source:  Broadus Mitchell in his office, ca. 1938. From the Johns Hopkins university graphic and pictorial collection.

Categories
Economists Michigan Research Tip Teaching

Michigan. Henry Carter Adams and School of Applied Ethics, 1891. With Biography.

 

Scavenging in digitized archives is certainly no less important an activity than risking the dust in conventional archival folders found in boxes to seek paper receipts of history. Last night I stumbled into the wonderful digitized archives of the University of Michigan’s daily newspaper (see link below). Like a kid in the proverbial candy store, I was riding a sugar high for most of the evening. This morning after a couple of cups of coffee, I put together the following material: biographical/career information about Professor Henry Carter Adams and a report of an interdisciplinary summer school he helped to establish in applied ethics (in 1891!).

I was well aware of Adams’ reputation as an expert in public finance, but I hadn’t noticed that he had been fired from Cornell for a lecture he gave on the Great Southwest railroad strike of 1886. “This man must go, he is 
sapping the foundations of our society.” We shouldn’t ever take our academic freedom for granted!

Other posts at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror dealing with the economist Henry Carter Adams:

Research Tips:

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HENRY CARTER ADAMS
(31st December, 1851—11th August, 1921)

The following memorial to the late
 Professor Henry C. Adams was present
ed to the University Senate at a recent
 meeting. It was prepared by a commit
tee of which R. M. Wenley; Professor of 
Philosophy was the chairman. The other 
members were S. Lawrence Bigelow, 
 Professor of Chemistry and I. Leo 
Sharfman, Professor of Economics.

An obvious drawback of academic life is 
that titles tend to obscure persons: and when, 
as with our colleague Henry Carter Adams, 
 the man dwarfs the title, liability to misjudge
 or overlook becomes serious. Not till too
 late, death prompting inquiry or reflection, do
 we grow aware of the true reasons for the
 magnitude of our gain and loss. Even so, 
 when we attempt a fit Memorial, the Odyssey
 of the spirit is all too apt to evade our tardy 
heed. The career of Professor Adams furn
ishes a typical case in point.

Henry Carter Adams was born at Daven
port, Iowa, December 31, 1851. He came of
 old New England stock; his forebears had
 made the great adventure oversea in 1623. His
 mother, Elizabeth Douglass, and his father, 
 Ephraim Adams, were a like-minded pair, 
 representative of the soundest traditions of 
New England character and nurture. Ephraim 
Adams, one of a small band of missionaries
 from Andover Theological Seminary who for
sook everything for Christ’s sake, arrived on 
the open prairies of Iowa in 1842—the goal
 of three weeks’ hard journey from Albany, New York. Their mission it was to kindle 
and tend the torch, not merely of religion, but
 also of education, among the far-flung pioneers. 
 Consequently, it is impossible to understand
 why Henry Adams was what he was, became
 what he became, unless one can evoke sympa
thetic appreciation of the temper, which de
termined his upbringing. For example, it may
 well astonish us to learn that his nineteenth 
birthday was but a few months off ere he
 received his first formal instruction. The
 reasons thereof may astonish us even more. 
 The child had been sickly always, physicians 
informing the parents that he could not survive the age of fourteen. The “open prairies” 
proved his physical salvation. Given a cause 
and a gun, the boy roamed free, passing from
 missionary home to missionary home, some-
times bearing parental messages to the scat
tered preachers. In this way he outgrew 
debility and, better still, acquired a love for
 nature, and an intimacy with our average 
citizenry, never lost. Meanwhile, the elder
 Adams taught him Greek, Latin, and He brew
 as occasion permitted. At length, in 1869, he
 
entered Denmark Academy whence, after a
 single year, he was able to proceed to Iowa
 College, Grinnell, where he graduated in 1874. During these five years, the man whom we 
knew started to shape himself.

In the home and the wider circle of friends, the impressionable days of childhood had been 
moulded by Puritanism. God’s providence, 
the responsibility of man, the absolute distinc
tion between right and wrong, with all result-
ant duties and prohibitions, set the perspective. 
Fortunately, the characteristic Yankee interest 
in education—in intelligence rather than learn
ing—contributed a vital element. An active
 mind enlarged the atmosphere of the soul. De-
spite its straight limitations as some reckon 
them; here was a real culture, giving men in
ner harmony with self-secure from disturbance
 by the baser passions. As we are aware 
now, disturbance came otherwise. To quote
 Adams’ own words, he was “plagued by doc
trines” from the time he went to the Academy. 
 The spiritual impress of the New England
 home never left him; it had been etched upon 
his very being. But, thus early, Calvinistic 
dogma aroused misgivings, because its sheer 
profundity bred high doubt. As a matter of 
course, Ephraim Adams expected his son to 
follow the Christian ministry, and Henry him
self foresaw no other calling meantime. Hence, when scepticism assailed him, he was destined
 to a terrible, heart-searching experience, the
 worse that domestic affection drew him one
 way, mental integrity another. His first years 
at Grinnell were bootless; the prescribed stud
ies held no attraction and, likely enough, sick
ness had left certain lethargy. But, when 
he came to history, philosophy, and social
 questions, he felt a new appeal. His Junior
 and Senior years, eager interest stimulating, 
profited him much. Still dubious, he taught
 for a year after graduation at Nashua, Iowa. Then, bowing to paternal prayer and maternal 
hope, he entered Andover Theological Semi-nary, not to prepare for the ministry, however, 
 but “to try himself out”—to discover whether 
preaching were possible for him. In the Spring 
of 1876, he had decided irrevocably that it was 
not. Adams’ “first” education—education by
 the natal group—ended here. It had guaran
teed him the grace which is the issue of 
moral habit, had wedded him to the convic
tion that justice is truth in action. For, al-
though he abandoned certain theological for
mulae, the footfall of spiritual things ever 
echoed through hrs character. The union of 
winsome gentleness with stern devotion to 
humanitarian ideals, so distinctive of Professor Adams, rooted in the persistent influ
ence of the New England conscience.

The Second Education

Turning to the “second” education, destined 
to enroll our colleague among economic lead
ers, it is necessary to recall once again conditions almost forgotten now. When, forty-five
 years ago, an academy and college-bred lad, 
 destined for the ministry, found it necessary 
to desist, he was indeed “all at sea.” For 
facilities, offered on every hand today by the
 Graduate Schools of the great universities, 
 did not exist. The youth might drift—into 
journalism, teaching, or what not. But drift
ing was not on Adams’ programme. He wrote 
to his parents who, tragically enough, could 
not understand him, “I must obtain another 
cultural training.” His mind had dwelt already upon social, political, and economic prob
lems: therefore, the “second” education must
 be non-theological. Whither could he look? At this crisis his course was set by one of 
those small accidents, which, strange to tell, 
 play a decisive part in many lives. By mere
 chance, he came upon a catalogue of Johns
 Hopkins University, so late in the day, more-
over, that his application for a fellowship, 
 with an essay enclosed as evidence of fitness, 
arrived just within time limits. Adams was 
chosen one of ten Fellows from a list of more 
than three hundred candidates, and to Balti
more he went in the fall of 1876. His letters
 attest that the new, ampler opportunities at
tracted him strongly. He availed himself of 
concerts, for music always moved him. Here 
he heard the classics for the first time. Hither-
to he had known only sacred music. Sometimes 
he played in church and, as records show, he
 sang in our Choral Union while a young pro
fessor. We find, too, that he served as assistant in the Johns Hopkins library, not for 
the extravagant salary, as he remarks humor
ously, but on account of access to books—”I
 am reading myself full.” His summers were
 spent in his native State, working in the fields. 
 In 1878 he received the doctorate, the first 
conferred by the young and unique university.


Study in Europe

The day after graduation President Oilman
 sent for him, and told him, “You must go to
 Europe.” The reply was typical—”I can’t, I 
haven’t a cent.” Oilman continued, ”I shall
 see what can be done,” with the result that the benefactor to whom Adams dedicated his 
first book found the requisite funds. Brief
 stays at Oxford and Paris, lengthier at Berlin
 and Heidelberg, filled the next fourteen
 months. The journalistic bee still buzzing in 
his head, Adams had visited Godkin before
 leaving for Europe, to discuss the constructive
 political journalism he had in mind. Godkin 
received him kindly, but as Adams dryly re-
marks, had a long way to travel ere he could
 understand. In the summer of 1878, President
 Andrew D. White, of Cornell, traveling in 
Germany, summoned Adams, to discuss a 
vacancy in this university. To Adams’ huge
 diappointment, as the interview developed, it
 became apparent that White, with a nonchalance some of us remember well, had mistaken H. C. Adams, the budding economist, 
 for H. B. Adams, the budding historian. The
 vacancy was in history, not in political science 
or economics. Expectation vanished in thin 
air. But Adams was not done with. Return
ing to his pension, he sat up all night to draft 
the outline of a course of lectures which, as
 he bluntly put it, “Cornell needed.” Next day 
he sought President White again who, being
 half persuaded by Adams’ verbal exposition, 
 kept the document, saying he would communicate with Cornell, requesting that a place be
 made for the course if possible. Writing from
 Saratoga, in September 1879, Adams tells his 
mother that all is off at Cornell, that he must
 abandon his career and buckle down to earn
ing a livelihood. A lapse of ten days trans
formed the scene. The Cornell appointment
 had been arranged, and he went to Ithaca 
forthwith. So meagre were the facilities then 
offered in the general field of the social sci
ences that Adams gave one semester, at Cornell and Johns Hopkins respectively, to these
 subjects in the year 1879-80. The same ar
rangement continued till 1886, Michigan be
ing substituted for Johns Hopkins in 1881. As 
older men recall, Dr. Angell taught economics, 
 in addition to international law, till the time
 of his transfer to Pekin as Minister to China. 
 At this juncture, Adams joined us, forming a 
life-long association. He himself says that he
 “gave up three careers, —preaching, journalism, 
 and reform—to devote himself to teaching”
 where he believed his mission lay.

Dismissal from Cornell

There is no better index to the enormous 
change that has overtaken the usual approach
 to social questions than the circumstances
, which caused Adams’ expulsion from Cornell
 University. The Scientific American Supple
ment (p. 8861) of date August 21st, 1886, con
tains the substance of an address, “The Labor 
Problem.” We quote Adams’ comments, inscribed beside the clipping in his personal
 scrapbook.

“This is the article that caused my dismissal 
from Cornell. This article was given on the
 spur of the moment. Professor Thurston had 
invited a man from New York to address the
 engineering students, but the lecturer failed
 to come. I was asked to come in and say a
 few words on the Gould Strike. It was said 
to me that other members of the Faculty 
would speak, and that I might present my
 views as an advocate.

“The room was crowded for, besides the 
engineering society, my own students, getting 
word of it, came over to the Physical Laboratory room where the addresses of the society
 were given. A more inspiring audience no 
man could have, and I spoke with ease, with
 pleasure and, from the way my words were 
received, with effect. The New York papers 
reported what I said and, three days after, Mr. 
Henry Sage, than whom I know no more 
honest hypocrite or unchristian a Christian, 
 came into the President’s office and, taking
 the clipping from The New York Times out
 of his pocket said, “This man must go, he is 
sapping the foundations of our society.” It
 was not until then that I thought of putting
 what I said into print, but I then did it, fol
lowing as nearly as possible what I said and
 the way I said it.

“The effect of this episode upon myself was 
to learn that what I said might possibly be of
 some importance.

“Of course, there is a good deal of secret 
history connected with the matter, but I am 
not likely to forget that.”

This echo of old, far-off, unhappy things is 
most suggestive, because more than any other
 man, perhaps, Adams mediated the vast, silent 
change marking these last thirty-five years. 
 As has been aptly said, “he had a most roman
tic intellectual career.”

Appointment at Michigan

In 1887, he was appointed to the Michigan
 chair, which he greatly graced till death. At
 this time, too, on the urgent request of his
 close friend, Judge Thomas M. Cooley, then
 Chairman, he joined the Interstate Commerce
 Commission, much against his own inclination. 
 When he founded the Statistical Department, 
 he had the assistance of a single clerk; when
 he resigned, in 1911, the personnel numbered 
two hundred and fifty. Mutatis mutandis, a
 parallel expansion overtook our Department
 of Economics under his leadership.

It must suffice merely to mention his services with the Eleventh Census, the Michigan
 Tax Commission, and the Chinese Republic, 
 pointing out that such positions come only to
 men of high distinction and proven authority. 
 More than a quarter of a century has elapsed
 since his election to the Presidency of the
 American Economic Association, which he
 helped to found; nearly as long since he was
 presiding officer of the American Statistical
 Association. In short, he ranked among the
 most important and influential leaders in his
 chosen field. His Alma Mater honored her-
self in honoring him with the degree of LL.D 
twenty-three years ago; Wisconsin followed suit in 1903; Johns Hopkins in 1915. Needless 
to say, he had many offers, some most tempt
ing, to leave Michigan. But, entertaining pro
found confidence in the State University, be
lieving that it was destined to be instrumental 
in the diffusion of those opportunities in high
er education indispensable to a free democracy, 
he refused to move. In attachment to this
 University, like not a few men whom she has 
imported, he outdid many alumni.

His Original Work

Naturally, Adams produced a mass of orig
inal work. Upon two fields of economic investigation, particularly—public finance and
 public control—he imposed a durable imprint. 
His interest in public finance dated from his 
doctoral dissertation, Taxation in the United
 States, 1789-1816. In Public Debts, an Essay 
in the Science of Finance, later translated into
 Japanese, and in The Science of Finance, an 
Investigation of Public Expenditures and Pub
lic Revenues, he not only manifested wide
 economic grasp and remarkable power of an
alysis, but exhibited the principles of public 
finance as a scientific unity, in their manifold 
relations to social, political, and economic progress. His memorable essay, The Relation of the State to Industrial Action, marked his initial, and most significant, contribution in the 
field of public control. He subjected the preva
lent doctrine of laissez-faire to searching analysis, and, with profound appreciation of the
 demands of a dynamic world, formulated basic 
principles for the guidance of industrial leg
islation. His emphasis on the function of the
 State in moulding the plans of competitive ac
tion, in realizing for society the benefits of
 monopolistic control, and in restoring condi
tions of social harmony to the economic order, 
 foreshadowed much of the theoretical dis
cussion and practical reorganization of a later 
day. His subsequent achievements in the de
velopment of public control, especially over 
railroad transportation, are incorporated in the 
accounts and classifications which he slowly 
evolved as statistician of the Interstate Com
merce Commission. The universal acceptance 
today of statuted accounting and statistical 
practice as an indispensable instrument for the 
effective regulation of railroads and public
 utilities remains a lasting monument to the 
intelligence and validity of his pioneering ef
forts. It is a distinct loss to economic scholarship and to historical tradition that his Ameri
can Railway Accounting published seven years
 after his resignation from the Interstate Com
merce Commission, was but a commentary on 
these accounts and classifications rather than 
that graphic picture of their origin and de
velopment such as he alone was competent to
 produce.

The Social Philosopher

Throughout life, Adams’ intellectual ap
proach was that of a social philosopher rather 
than of a technical economist. This is plain 
throughout his published work. Intuitive yearn
ing for social justice, prompted by a Puritan
 conscience, stimulated by an analytical intel
lect, colored all his writings. Human rela
tions uniformly served as his point of depar
ture, and humane amelioration was ever the 
horizon toward which he moved. Such was
 the spirit of his Relation of the State to In
dustrial Action, and of his fundamental stud
ies in public finance. His papers on the social
 movements of our time, and on the social 
ministry of wealth, contributed to The Inter
national Journal of Ethics; his discussions, in 
the economic journals, of economics and jur
isprudence, publicity and corporate abuses, and 
of many of the more technical aspects of rail-
road taxation; of the developments of the
 Trust movement, budget reform, and foreign 
investments as a crucial element in international maladjustments, were moulded by a similar
 insight into primary human relations, and by 
a like desire to contribute to the realization of 
human betterment.

Accordingly, it was the more remarkable
 that Professor Adams proved himself so ef
fective a public servant in the formulation of 
practical and concrete machinery for the regulation of transportation agencies, in this 
country and in China. The reason for this 
success is to be found in his consistent adher
ence to the conception of accounts and sta
tistics as mere instruments of social control 
rather than as fields of inquiry for their own
 sake. From first to last, then, he remained the
 social philosopher. His plans for the future 
promised a return to the synthetic intellectual
 activity of his early career. Death overtook 
him with his labors unfinished, but the direc
tion of his interests was clear and unmistak
able.

In sum, then, remarkable as was the career, 
 formative as were its results, the personality 
overtopped all else, mainly because Adams’
 austere judgment of self, his nigh innocent 
attitude toward his great attainments, won
 upon others. Indeed, no one would have been
 more surprised than he at the words we have 
addressed to you this evening, —partly on ac-
count of his innate modesty, partly thanks to 
his very reticence, which prevented us from making known to him how we esteemed his
 deep, pervasive glow.

S. LAWRENCE BIGELOW

I. LEO SHARFMAN

R. M. WENLEY, Chairman

 

Source: The Michigan Alumnus 520-524. Transcribed at the  Henry Carter Adams page at the University of Michigan Faculty History Project.

______________________

School of Applied Ethics, 1891.
First Dean, Henry C. Adams of the 
University of Michigan

In this article we give a brief sketch of the school of Applied Ethics and Prof. Henry C. Adams’ work in connection with it.

The following, taken from the secretary’s report, describes the origin and purposes of the institution:

“The School of Applied Ethics held its first session at Plymouth, Mass., from July 1 to August 12, 1891. This was an experimental undertaking, and the first step towards the carrying out of a large and important educational project, the founding of a fully-equipped School of Applied Ethics in connection with some large university. It is proposed, not to found another school similar to and is as a rival of any schools already existing, but to meet a real educational need by furnishing systematic instruction in a field of investigation not especially provided for in established institutions.

The experiment of last summer proved so successful that it has been decided to hold a similar session another year at the same time and place, and the managers hope that not only the summer school, but also the permanent school referred to will be successfully established, and occupy in time an important place among educational institutions.

The proposition to establish a School of Applied Ethics, either independently or in connection with some large university, has been under discussion for several years. Attention was first called to the need of such a school, in a public address in Boston, by Prof. Felix Adler, during the May anniversary week of 1879. The project was afterwards discussed in the Index and other papers; but the plans were still too indefinite and public interest was not sufficiently awakened to the importance of the undertaking.

The subject was next brought to public notice, and in a more definite shape at the third convention of the Ethical Societies, held in Philadelphia, January, 1889. It was the topic of a special public meeting, and addresses were made by Prof. Adler, Mr. Thomas Davidson, Professor Royce, Rev. Wm. J. Potter, and others. Numerous letters endorsing the proposed school were received from distinguished representatives of different professions in various parts of the country. At the next convention of the Ethical Societies, held in New York, December, 1890, the project was again brought forward and endorsed at a public meeting by President E. Benj. Andrews, Rev. Lyman Abbott, Professor Daniel G. Brinton, Rev. R. Heber Newton, Dr. A. S. Isaacs, and Professor Adler. Definite action towards the realization of the project was taken in the following resolution, passed by the convention:

Resolved, That the Executive Committee be empowered to raise $4000 to establish a Summer School of Ethics for one year, and to hand over its management to a committee of nine, three of whom shall be lecturers of the Ethical Societies.

In consequence of this resolution a committee was appointed, which met in New York, March 2, 1891. There were present Professor H. C. Adams, of the University of Michigan, Professor C. H. Toy, of Harvard University, Professor Felix Adler, of New York, President E. Benjamin Andrews, of Brown University, Professor Morris Jastrow, Jr.,of the University of Pennsylvania, and Mr. S. Burns Weston, of Philadelphia. The trust implied by the above resolution was accepted by the committee, and plans were presented and adopted for a summer session of six weeks with the three departments of Economics, History of Religions, and Ethics. Professor Henry C. Adams was made director of the department of Economics, Professor C.H. Toy, of History of Religions, and Professor Felix Adler, of Ethics proper. It was decided that the office of Dean should be filled in rotation by the heads of the departments in the order given, and Prof. Adams became Dean of the school for the first year.

The first session opened July 1, at Lyceum Hall, Plymouth, Mass., with public addresses by Professors Adams, Toy, and Adler on the work to be done in their respective branches. The regular daily lectures began Thursday, July 2, with a good attendance.

In the department of economics the main course consisted of a series of sixteen lectures by Professor Adams, on the History of Industrial Society and Economic Doctrine in England and America, in which special attention was given to the gradual rise of those practical problems in the labor world, which cause so much anxiety and discussion today. The subjects of the lectures in this course were as follows:

The Modern Social Movement, and the True Method of Study. The Manor considered as the Unit of Agricultural Industry in Feudal Times. The Town considered as the Unit of Manufacturing Industry in Feudal Times. The Black Death and Tyler’s Rebellion considered in their Industrial Consequences. The Times of Henry VIII and Elizabeth considered as foreshadowing Modern Ideas of Capital. The Spirit of Nationalism as expressed in Industrial Legislation of the 17th and 18th’s Centuries. Liberal Writers of the Eighteenth Century, considered with Especial Reference to the Industrial Liberalism of Adam Smith. Industrial and Social Results of the Development of Textile Machinery. Critical Analysis of the Effect of Machinery on Wages. Industrial and Social Results of the Development of Steam Navigation. Mill’s Political Economy, considered as the most Perfect Expression of the Industrial Ideas of the Middle Classes. Changes in Economic Ideas since Mill; (a) Fundamental Economic Conceptions, (b) Relation of Government to Industries. Trades-Unions considered as the Workingman’s Solution of the Labor Question. Public Commissions considered as a Conservative Solution of the Monopoly Question. An Interpretation of the Social Movement of Our Time.”

 

The following, clipped from the article by Rev. W. H. Johnson in the Christian Register, shows that Prof. Adams sustained his well-merited reputation as a political economist of the first rank:

“The chief interest of the school seems to have centered in the Department of Economics, testifying to the growing appreciation of the profoundly vital manner in which the great social topics of the times touch us all. Here were numbers of people gathered together who had become tired of the cure-alls offered by narrow-minded enthusiasts, not less than heartsick of the social wrongs and miseries which bring this class into existence, and intensely anxious for some teaching which would point out clear landmarks. Only the existence of this feeling of earnest longing for some measure of authoritative exposition can account for the enthusiasm which has attended the economic course. In Prof. Adams, this department has had for its director and chief expositor a mastermind. Apart from the interest of the subject, it would be impossible to listen without keen satisfaction to his rigid analysis and lucid explanations of a subject which is, for the most of us, wrapped in “chaos and perpetual night.” Prof. Adams’ final lecture, summing up the economic teaching of the school during the six weeks’ course, was one of rare merit. He was at once overwhelmed with requests for its publication, to which he has consented.”

 

Source: The U. of M. Daily.Vol. II, No. 51 (December 3, 1891), p. 1.

Image Source: From the Henry Carter Adams page at the University of Michigan Faculty History Project.

 

Categories
Exam Questions Johns Hopkins Undergraduate

Johns Hopkins. Comprehensive Exams on Reading List for Economics Majors, 1933-40

 

 

The exam questions transcribed below come from two folders of economics examinations at Johns Hopkins University from the 1930s in the Ferdinand Hamburger, Jr. Archives at the university. The folders are mostly filled with individual course final examinations at mid-year (Jan/Feb) and end-year (May), but the following exams are not associated with any particular course and, considering the breadth of the topics addressed,  we may presume that these exams had the function of serving as comprehensive tests (see the May 11, 1935 exam below).

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EXAMINATION ON READING LIST FOR A.B. MAJORS IN BUSINESS ECONOMICS
May 24, 1933

  1. Discuss the more important abuses in corporation management in recent years.
  2. Indicate some of the more important departures from the laissez-faire doctrine in recent years in the United States.
  3. What were the ideas of Adam Smith as to the desirability of state interference in economic activity and as to the proper sphere of state activity.
  4. Distinguish between Socialism and philosophical Anarchism.
  5. What is meant by a planned economic system? Discuss its feasibility.
  6. Distinguish between the statistical method, the historical method, and the theoretical method in the study of business cycles.
  7. What has been the policy of the United States as regards the protection of American investments abroad?

[Examination on the reading list in political economy (May 1934) was not in folder]

COMPREHENSIVE EXAMINATION FOR MAJORS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
May 11, 1935

  1. Contrast, as to structure and methods, the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor.
  2. Contrast “Utopian” and “Scientific” Socialism.
  3. How would G. D. H. Cole make the transition from Capitalist to Cooperative Society?
  4. Describe in brief outline the mechanics of setting up a “code of fair competition”.
  5. Contrast the position of the journeyman under the Guild System and the average American wage-earner today.
  6. What does Mr. George Soule mean by saying that we are now passing through an economic and social revolution?
  7. “Economic behavior” constitutes an attempt to work out an institutional approach to the study of economics. Discuss this statement.
  8. What are the effects of the corporate system on fundamental economic concepts?
  9. Who were the leading members of the Austrian School of economists? What in general was the contribution of this group?
  10. What has been the contribution of the statistical method upon the study of business cycles?
  11. What is meant by the open door as an international economic policy? What has been the policy of the United States in this respect?

 

EXAMINATION FOR MR. HOWELL ON READING FOR MAJOR IN POLITICAL ECONOMY
October 5, 1935

  1. What have been the main policies of the American Federation of Labor?
  2. What where the chief contentions of Karl Marx?
  3. How would Mr. G. D. H. Cole use social control of credit to bring about a cooperative commonwealth?
  4. Describe the organization of rural life in England in, say, the 12th and 13th centuries.
  5. What are the economic consequences of “the Power Age”?
  6. What is an institution? Illustrate. What is the institutional approach to economics?
  7. What is Ricardo’s place in the history of Economic thought?
  8. Discuss the dispersion of stock ownership.
  9. Professor Wesley Mitchell says: “We do not say that a business economy has developed in any community until most of its economic activities have taken on the form of making and spending money.” What is the meaning of this statement? What is its significance in the theory of business cycles?
  10. What is the meaning and purpose of the “most favored nation” clause in commercial treaties? What has been the history of the American interpretation of this clause?

Source:  Johns Hopkins University. Ferdinand Hamburger, Jr. Archives. Department of Political Economy Records, Series 6. Curricular Materials; Exams, 1924-29; Exams, 1951-55. Box 2, Folder “Exams, 1930-1935”.

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[Examination on the reading list in political economy (May 1936) was not in folder]

EXAMINATION ON THE READING LIST IN POLITICAL ECONOMY
May 17, 1937

  1. What can you say of the relationship between trade restrictions in the world depression?
  2. What where the similarities of the Statute of Apprentices, 1563, and the NRA?
  3. Contrast the general character of the economic doctrine of John Stuart Mill with that of Karl Marx.
  4. Characterize briefly the factory acts movement, Chartist, cooperative, labor union, and Socialist movements of 19th century England.
  5. Discuss administrative prices.
  6. What is meant by quasi-rent?
  7. Discuss Lutz’s requisites for a sound tax system.
  8. What is the “most-favored-nation clause”? What are its consequences? What has been the American policy with respect to this clause?
  9. Give an explanation of what seems to you the most reasonable theory of business cycles.
  10. What does Veblen mean by Business Enterprise? What economic consequences does he ascribe to a system of business enterprise?

 

EXAMINATION ON THE READING LIST IN POLITICAL ECONOMY
May 2, 1938

  1. What does G. D. H. Cole say as to the causes and consequences of present-day protectionism in the world?
  2. Give some account of the Factory Acts Movement in England in the 19th century.
  3. “Modern industry has produced a set of conditions radically different from those in which laissez-faire principles apply. It has introduced new types of industrial and business organization whose operations impede or distort the process of automatic adjustment.” Discuss.
  4. Should tax-exempt securities be abolished in the United States?
  5. Comment upon the various methods of commercial diplomacy that have been employed by the United States in order to promote the export business of the country.
  6. Discuss the theory that the explanation of the business cycle is to be found in the capitalistic process of production.
  7. What are Veblen’s ideas concerning the causes of the business cycle? His suggested remedies?
  8. What does Marshall mean by the phrase “the representative firm”? How does he employ the concept?
  9. Contrast the doctrines of Friedrich List and Adam Smith.
  10. Given the following figures concerning the cost and the demand for the output of a single firm operating under the conditions of “Imperfect” competition, determine the price. Explain and discuss briefly your answer. Construct the demand schedule for the product of this firm under the condition of “perfect” competition, using as one figure in the schedule a price of 19 for an output of 11. What would be the price under “perfect” competition and how many articles would be sold? (Remember that the demand schedule for the product of a single firm is different from the general demand schedule for all firms operating under perfect competition.”

Output

Total cost at given output Demand price for given output
9 183

21

10

188 20
11 195

19

12

205 18
13 220

17

14

239 16
15 263

15

 

[Examination on the reading list in political economy (May 1939) was not in folder]

 

EXAMINATION ON THE READING LIST IN POLITICAL ECONOMY
May 10, 1940

  1. To what extent does the present Federal corporation income tax conform to the requisites of a sound tax system set forth by Lutz?
  2. What lines of government policy seem to you most likely to succeed in reducing unemployment? Explain why.
  3. What are the principal methods used by producers to stabilize the prices of their products? Discuss the probable economic consequences of private price fixing.
  4. Explain clearly and fully Professor Marshall’s concept of the “representative firm”. What place does this concept have in Marshall’s exposition of the process of price-determination? Do you think that the concept is useful as an instrument in the elaboration of value-theory under modern conditions of industrial organization? Why or why not?
  5. Explain the relationship between money and the business cycle. In what ways can monetary control affect the business cycle?
  6. What is meant by the “open-door” and the “closed-door” in international economic relations? Explain the policies which the United States has pursued as respects these doctrines.
  7. In respect to the theory of economic development, compare David Ricardo and Karl Marx. In your answer take note of (a) theory of value, (b) theory of distribution, (c) relation of state to industry, (d) method of analysis, (e) degree of realism of each (give your opinion as to the validity of their doctrines).
  8. Contrast the English reform movement before 1860 with that after 1860. (In your answer indicate the motives that prompted the reforms; mention also what in your opinion were the two most important reforms in each period.)

Source:  Johns Hopkins University. Ferdinand Hamburger, Jr. Archives. Department of Political Economy Records, Series 6. Curricular Materials; Exams, 1924-29; Exams, 1951-55. Box 2, Folder “Exams, 1936-1940”.

 

Source: Gilman Hall, Johns Hopkins University. Hullabaloo 1924.

Categories
Economists Gender Harvard Transcript

Harvard/Radcliffe. Economics PhD alumna and Wharton professor, Anne C. Bezanson, 1929

 

The materials in this post are presented in the opposite order that they were actually assembled. I began with three pieces of correspondence and a transcript of economics courses for a Radcliffe graduate who was ABD (= “all but dissertation”) and still interested in submitting a thesis more than a decade after her last course work at Harvard. The economics department chairman, Harold H. Burbank, made no fuss and we can see from the record that Annie Catherine Bezanson was indeed awarded an economics Ph.D. in 1929.

After I filled in the course titles and professors for her transcript, I then proceeded to gather biographical/career information for Bezanson. It of course did not take very long to discover that shortly after being awarded her Ph.D. she was promoted to a  professorship with tenure, the first woman to have cleared that professional hurdle at the University of Pennsylvania. What turned out to be more challenging was to find any photo whatsoever. Fortunately I stumbled upon a genealogical site that posted a picture of Anne Catherine Bezanson along with the obituary that begins the content portion of the post…

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Obituary from Bezansons of Nova Scotia

Died, Feb. 4, 1980, Dr. Anne Bezanson bur. Riverside Cemetery, Upper Stewiacke. Professor Emeritus, Wharton School of Finance & Commerce, U. of Pennsylvania, d… Hanover, Mass.

Born Mt. Dalhousie, N.S. daughter of the late John and Sarah (Creighton) Bezanson. Dr. Bezanson went to the United States in 1901, where she received her A.B. degree, A.M. & PhD. from Radcliffe…member of the Phi Beta Kappa…awarded an honourary doctor of science degree from University of British Columbia and from the University of Pennsylvania…served as Director of the Industrial Research Dept., Wharton School of Finance and Commerce; was professor at the Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania…served on the staff of the U.S. Coal Commission..member of Conference of Price Research, advisor to the Social Services Research Project, Rockefeller Foundation…wrote numerous articles in various professional economic journals …member American Economic Associationn; Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Economic History Association., serving as President from 1946-1948; American Statistical Association; Econometrics Society; Vice-President Delta Chapter Phi Beta Kappa, University of Pennsylvania.

Source: From the Website: Bezansons in North America

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PIONEER IN ACADEMIC BUSINESS RESEARCH
ANNE BEZANSON, PROFESSOR

ANNE BEZANSON had not yet completed her PhD in economic history in 1921, yet she was about to make history herself. At Wharton, the young Canadian helped establish the first business school research center, the Industrial Research Unit (later known as Industrial Research Department or IRD), with Professor Joseph Willits. The founding marked Wharton’s shift toward becoming an academic business research hub — defining a new role for business schools that continues today.

Bezanson’s 1921 article on promotion practices became the first product of the IRD. Bezanson continued her practical research in the early 1920s, writing a series on personnel issues, focusing on turnover, worker amenities, and accident prevention.

Willits and Bezanson designed an ambitious research program to explore and help civilize industrial working conditions, with the goal of social change. In 1922, Bezanson and Willits spent a year studying the earnings of coal miners at the U.S. Coal Commission. Employer associations, government agencies, and international organizations continued to look to the IRD for timely and practical knowledge.

In 1929, Bezanson finished her Harvard PhD and became the first female faculty member of Penn’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Under her leadership as co-director (which continued until 1945), the IRD had many women on its team and pursued research into the economic status of workers, revealing for the first time hard proof of the disparities in salaries and promotions for women and minorities across many industries.

Bezanson became the first woman to get full tenure at Penn, and in the 1930s sat on the National Bureau of Economic Research Price Conference. From 1939 to 1950 Bezanson was a part-time consultant at the Rockefeller Foundation, where she organized the first-ever roundtable on economic history in 1940. As a result of this involvement, Bezanson played a crucial role in the creation of the Economic History Association in the early 1940s, serving as president between 1946–1947. She died in 1980.

Source:  University of Pennsylvania. The Wharton School.Wharton Alumni Magazine, 125th Anniversary Issue (Spring 2007).

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Harvard/Radcliffe Academic Record

A.B. magna cum laude in economics.

 Source:  Report of the President of Radcliffe College for 1914-1915, pp. 10,13.

 

A.M. Annie Bezanson….Southvale, N.S. [Nova Scotia]

Source:   Report of the President of Radcliffe College for 1915-1916, p. 12.

 

June 1929 Doctor of Philosophy

Annie Catherine Bezanson, A.B. (Radcliffe College), 1915; A.M. (ibid.), 1916. Subject, Economics. Special Field, Labor Problems. Dissertation, Earnings and Working Opportunity in the Upholstery Weavers’ Trade.

Source: Report of the President of Radcliffe College 1928-29, p. 321.

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Economics Coursework

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
(Inter-Departmental Correspondence Sheet)

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Miss Anne Bezanson, A.B., Radcliffe 1915; A.M., 1916.

1911-12

Ec 1….B [Principles of Economics, Prof. Taussig et al.]
Ec 5….B, A- [Economics of Transportation, half course. Prof. Ripley]

1912-13

Ec 23….A- [Economic History of Europe to the Middle of the Eighteenth Century. Dr. Gray]

1913-14

Ec 11….B [Economic Theory. Prof. Taussig]
Ec 24….A [Topics in the Economic History of the Nineteenth CenturyProf. Gay]

1914-15

Ec 7….. [Theories of Distribution. Prof. Carver, Excused for Generals.]

1914-15

Ec 13….A [Statistics: Theory, Method and Practice. Asst. Prof. Day]
Ec 34….A [Problems of Labor. Prof. Ripley]
Ec 12….B+ [Scope and Methods of Economic Investigation. Half-course. Prof. Carver]
Ec 33….B [International Trade and Tariff Problems in the United States. Half-course. Prof. Taussig]
Ec 20….A- [Course of Research. Probably Economic History with Prof. Gay]
Ec 14….A [History and Literature of Economics to the year 1848. Prof. Bullock]

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics. Correspondence & Papers 1902-1950. Box 3.

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Handwritten letter from Bezanson to Burbank

January 2, 1928 [sic]

My Dear Prof. Burbank:

A long time ago, I talked with Professor Young, as well as Professors Carver and Gay about submitting one of my studies in part fulfillment of the requirement for a doctor’s thesis. This request is the result of the difficulty of leaving my present work to complete the study upon which I was at work from 1915 to 1918 on the Industrial Revolution in France. This month when I completed the first analysis of the Earnings of Tapestry Weavers, I sent it to Professor Gay with the hope that it would be, or could be, made acceptable to the Department of Economics.

All this discussion has been informal and, of course, unofficial. I am now writing to you for advice about the official steps: should I apply to the Dean of the Graduate School for permission to change the thesis subject? or should this request go from you? Do you advise such a request and if so can it be made without changing my field of concentration?

Briefly my difficulty is that though I passed the General Examination in October, 1916, I have since not completed the thesis and final examination requirements. A degree seems to have some value in promotion here. Yet, I am engaged on studies which I cannot drop and go back to a subject as remote as French conditions. Dean Gay has been in touch with the progress of Tapestry Earnings and I am acting upon his suggestion in asking for an opinion upon the possibility of offering that study as a thesis.

Very sincerely yours
[signed]
Anne Bezanson

Industrial Research Department
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pa.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics. Correspondence & Papers 1902-1950. Box 3.

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Copies of responses by H.H. Burbank to Bezanson

 

January 7, 1929

Miss Anne Bezanson,
Index Research Department,
University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, Pa.

Dear Miss Bezanson:

I see no reason why the program which you have offered for the Ph.D. cannot be changed to allow you to present your study on “Earnings in the Upholstery Weavers Trade”.

There will be some red tape about it. I expect I shall have to secure the consent of the Dean of the Graduate School and of the Department, but I foresee no difficulties in either direction.

I will write you as soon as there is a definite decision.

One question that is certain to be raised is whether or not the research is entirely your own work or whether it was carried on by an organization. I should like to have your reply to this as soon as possible. Your preface throws some light on this. I note that you say: “All analysis and interpretation of material has been made by the Index Research Department”. Does this mean that your own work was strictly limited to the writing of the report in the preparation of the material on which the investigation was based?

Very sincerely,
[H.H. Burbank]

 

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

January 9, 1929

Miss Anne Bezanson,
Index Research Department,
University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, Pa.

Dear Miss Bezanson:

This is more or less a continuation of the note I sent to you yesterday. Last evening I talked to the members of the Department regarding your request. I think something can be worked out for you without very much trouble.

For your General Examination you presented Theory, Statistics, International Trade, Labor, and American History, reserving Economic History as your special field. It is my guess that you have done very little indeed with the literature of the field of Economic History during the last ten years, and that to prepare this field for a special examination would involve an inordinate amount of work. Further, it would require quite a stretch of the imagination to include your study of “The Upholstery Weavers” as Economic History.

Would it not be more within your general field of interest to present Labor problems as the subject for intensive examination. In spite of the fact that you presented this subject in your General Examinations it could be included as a special field. By a stroke of good fortune the Department put into effect this fall a ruling whereby candidates for the PhD may present an honor grade in an approved course in lieu of an oral examination in a subject. Ordinarily you would be required to stand for examination in Economic History as well as in Labor Problems, but under this new ruling we are able to accept the grade of A in Economics 24 taken in 1915.

Briefly then, it is my suggestion that your special field be Labor Problems, within which the dissertation which you are now presenting naturally would fall.

Please let me know if this meets with your approval.

Very sincerely,
H. H. Burbank.

HHB:BR

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics. Correspondence & Papers 1902-1950. Box 3.

Image Source: Website Bezansons in North America.

 

 

 

Categories
Columbia Economist Market Salaries Teaching

Columbia. Due to exploding graduate economics enrollments, Stigler hired as visiting professor, 1946

 

 

The graduate economics courses at Columbia University were swamped by registrations one year after the end of the Second World War. Over 160 students were registered for the two graduate economic theory courses offered by A.G. Hart and William S. Vickrey. The executive officer of the economics department, Carter Goodrich, requested the central university allow the department to hire a visitor to ease the burden on Hart and Vickrey. That victory won with the visiting appointment for George Stigler (then a professor at Brown), Goodrich next pushed for an increase in the general budget for teaching assistants as well as for hiring Dorothy Fox assist him in his U.S. economic history class.

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Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Faculty of Political Science

September 30, 1946

Dr. Frank D. Fackenthal
Acting President, Columbia University
Low Memorial Library

Dear Mr. President:

The extremely heavy enrollment for the graduate work in economics raises serious questions for the future staffing of the Economics Department. I should very much appreciate the opportunity to discuss these with you when the final figures are in, and when we can assess the situation more fully.

Meanwhile, however, there is one question on which emergency action at once seems essential. We advise the great majority of our students to take a general, systematic course in economic theory or economic analysis. We offer this year two such courses: Economics 153-4, given by Prof. A.G. Hart; and Economics 159-60, given by Mr. William S. Vickrey. Prof. Hart and Mr. Vickrey have between them over one hundred and sixty students registered. The work in these courses cannot be given on a mass lecture basis in a way that would meet the standards of any first-rate institution. It would not serve the purpose for which the Department intends it if there were not at least some degree of individual instruction.

I wish, therefore, to request an additional man to take one section of this basic course. I should like authority to approach Prof. Arthur Smithies, who taught Economic Theory at the University of Michigan, but who is at present in the Bureau of the Budget, at Washington. The proposal would be that the class should meet for two hours one day a week. I suggest $2500 for the year as the appropriate compensation. If preferred, $500 of this might properly be described as traveling expenses.

The money is available in the present budget, partly from the salary allotted for the professor of international economics on which only a half-time appointment was made for the present year, and from the money available for the unfilled position on economic history. Both these salaries, I should add, will be needed next year.

I should be most grateful if you would give me a decision on this at once, since the step must be taken immediately if it is to bring effective relief.

Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Carter Goodrich

CG:jg

______________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Faculty of Political Science

October 14, 1946

Dr. Frank D. Fackenthal
213 Low Memorial Library.

Dear Mr. President:

This time the report is not wholly negative. Following our conversation of Thursday afternoon, I invited Prof. George J. Stigler, of Brown University, to come to help us in the emergency situation in Economic Theory. Prof. Stigler has agreed to come for the first semester, but is not as yet prepared to commit himself for the entire year. I am therefore enclosing a form for his appointment for the Winter Session on the terms agreed. The salary for the first semester is available from the unused portion of the salary of Professor A.F. Burns.

I hope that we may be able to persuade Prof. Stigler to continue the work throughout the year. If not, there is a possibility that Prof. Smithies may be able to come for the second semester.

Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Carter Goodrich

______________________

[Carbon Copy]

October 18, 1946

Professor Carter Goodrich
Fayerweather

Dear Professor Goodrich

I have your letter of October 14 in regard to the appointment of Stigler as Visiting Professor and will see that the appointment goes through the next meeting of the Trustees.

Maybe I had better point out that there is no money available in Prof. Burns’ position. In addition to his own half pay, the salaries of Vickrey ($2000) and Alexander ($1700) have already charged against that. However, we will make the appointment against the balance remaining in the vacant professorship.

Very truly yours

Frank D. Fackenthal
Acting President

VS

______________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Faculty of Political Science

October 22, 1946

Dr. Frank D. Fackenthal, Acting President,
213 Low Memorial Library.

Dear Mr. President:

I very much appreciate your action on the Stigler appointment.

The second paragraph of your letter of October 18 puzzled me, since I had never heard of Alexander. We have tracked the matter down and it appears to be an appointment in Contemporary Civilization, chargeable to a budget of Dean Carman’s. It should not be a charge on the Department of Economics.

Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Carter Goodrich
Executive Officer, Department of Economics.

______________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Faculty of Political Science

October 24, 1946

Dr. Frank D. Fackenthal, Acting President,
213 Low Memorial Library,
Columbia University

Dear Mr. President:

In my letter of September 30th I spoke of the problems raised for the Economics Department by the extremely heavy enrollment in the graduate school. Now that the final enrollment is in, I wish to recommend two further measures, in addition to the emergency adjustment in Theory which you have been good enough to authorize. The total registration in the graduate courses borne on the budget of the Department of Economics for this session is double that for the Spring Session of 1946, which in turn was very much larger than that for the Winter Session of 1945. In 22 courses last spring there were 788 registrations; in 24 courses this session there are 1578. 7 of these courses have enrollments of more than 100 students (Angell, 112; A. R. Burns, 127, 153; Bergson, 142; Goodrich, 141; Nurkse, 130; Wolman, 140.)

To meet this situation I request, first, that the appropriation for Assistance be raised from $1,000-$1,500. Prof. Taylor estimates the needs of the College department, which has in the past used the greater part of the Assistance fund, as $500. Professors Angell, Bergson, A.R. Burns, Nurkse, and Wolman have all asked this year for reading assistance and will certainly need it in these courses.

Second, I request the appointment of Mrs. Dorothy G. Fox as an assistant in Economics to aid in my own course Economic history of the United States, so that a part of the time may be given to discussion in sections of a reasonable size. Mrs. Fox is at present an instructor in Economic principles in University Extension. I propose a salary of $700 for the academic year.

Money for these adjustments may be taken, if necessary, from what remains in the salary allotted to the vacant professorship. I should add, however, that these adjustments are made necessary solely by the extraordinary enrollment and that making them would not in any way diminish the long-run needs of the Department.

Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Carter Goodrich
Executive Officer of the Department of Economics.

______________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Faculty of Political Science

January 15, 1947

Dr. Frank D. Fackenthal, Acting President,
Columbia University

Dear Mr. President:

I beg to request the appointment of Dr. Moses Abramovitz as Visiting Lecturer in Economics for the Spring Session, at a compensation of $1,000. This is a further adjustment to meet the emergency situation in economic theory. As indicated in my letter of October 14th, 1946, Professor Stigler, of Brown University, agreed to come for the first semester, but was not prepared to commit himself for the entire year. He has informed us, much to our regret, that he cannot continue and I am therefore proposing a substitute. Dr. Abramovitz is one of the very best of the recent Ph.D.’s in this Department and holds a responsible research position with the National Bureau of Economic Research. He taught the same course in this Department during 1940-1941 and 1941-1942.

The total compensation for Professor Stigler, as you recall, was $1,250, of which $250 was counted as traveling expenses. The $1,000 requested for Dr. Abramovitz is available, $500 from the unused portion of the salary of Professor Arthur F. Burns and $500 from the funds for the vacant professorship.

I am enclosing the form for Dr. Abramovitz’ appointment and I very much hope you will be able to make it.

Respectfully yours,
[signed]
Carter Goodrich
Executive Officer, Department of Economics.

 

Source:  Columbia University Archives. Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Central Files 1890-. Box 406, Folder “Goodrich, Carter. 1/1”.

Image Source: Low Memorial Library, Columbia University from the Tichnor Brothers Collection, New York Postcards, at the Boston Public Library, Print Department.

Categories
Harvard Suggested Reading Syllabus Undergraduate

Harvard. Syllabus and assigned readings for interdisciplinary course, Social Sciences 2, 1970-71.

 

Regular followers of this blog will have noticed a recurring theme of economics education within a broader historical/social scientific curriculum. This post looks at a long-time staple of Harvard’s undergraduate General Education course offerings, Social Sciences 2 “Western Thought and Institutions” that was conceived and taught by government professor Samuel H. Beer over three decades assisted by a changing stable of “section men”[sic! Theda Skocpol was a section leader in 1970-71]. 

I am a firm believer in the virtues of building a broad interdisciplinary foundation before allowing (compelling?) economics majors and graduate students to turn their attention to the technical methods of the discipline. The former promotes the capacity to pose interesting questions and the latter creates a capacity to seek solutions to those questions. 

Following the two Harvard Crimson articles on Professor Beer and his course, Economics in the Rear-View Mirror is delighted to provide the course syllabus with its reading assignments from the academic year 1970-71. Students had to write three papers each term and according to the source for this syllabus (see below), he spend “as much work for SocSci 2 as [he] did for the other three courses combined”.

__________________

Beer’s Soc Sci 2 Comes to A Close With Last Lecture
by Jaleh Poorooshasb
The Harvard Crimson, May 5, 1978

A chapter of Harvard history ended yesterday as Samuel H. Beer, Eaton Professor of the Science of Government, delivered his last Harvard lecture before retiring.

Beer spoke before a packed hall of about 300 students, admirers and colleagues, some of whom had come as far as a thousand miles to hear the grand finale of Social Sciences 2, “Western Thought and Institutions.”

Although Beer will take advantage of retirement regulations that allow him to teach on a half-time basis, Soc Sci 2, which Beer has taught for 30 years, will be gone from Harvard forever.

“In this case, the man made the course and we would not presume to replace him,” John H. Harvey, assistant director of General Education, said yesterday.

In the lecture, which received thunderous applause and a standing ovation, Beer discussed Nazi Germany and ended with a quote from a prison camp survivor saying good and bad people exist everywhere.

Then, before the audience realized the lecture was over, and began clapping and cheering, Beer bounded out the door. He was halfway down Divinity Ave. before Michael Walzer, professor of Government and a former sectionman for Soc Sci 2, caught up with him and invited him to the Faculty Club, where more than 20 former sectionmen attended a luncheon in Beer’s honor.

The list of former sectionmen in Soc Sci 2 includes such notables as Henry A. Kissinger ’50 and James R. Schlesinger ’50.

Old Soldiers?

“Good courses never die,” Walzer said yesterday, adding that Beer’s influence will continue through his former students.

Beer, who is best known for his work in British politics and federalism in America, will continue to study and write books in both fields, Beer said yesterday.

He will teach two government courses at Harvard next fall and will repeat them during the winter quarter at Dartmouth, he added. One course is entitled “American Federalism” and the other “Modern British Politics and Policy.”

One of a Kind

Beer, former chairman of the Government Department at Harvard and author of several major works, “is a rich scholar of the type that is not created any more,” in a world geared toward specialization,” Sidney Verba ’53, chairman of the Government Department, said yesterday.

Beer said he is “quite content to terminate Soc. Sci. 2.”

“My father took it when he was here but I didn’t sign up because he told me it’s too hard,” one freshman, who wished to remain anonymous, said yesterday.

Beer made no personal observations during the lecture. He began by saying, “I really have changed my lectures over the years. I’ve even changed the jokes. But this lecture I haven’t changed. There’s such an air of finality about it.”

Beer has long been considered one of the foremost American experts on the theory of federalism. His writings include “The Modernization of American Federalism.”

Sam Beer, Legendary Gov Prof, Dies at 97
By Huma N. Shah
The Harvard Crimson, April 14, 2009

Last year, when the Harvard government department organized a meeting for alumni, current professors were asked to give a presentation on their projects and research. One participant was former professor and department chair Samuel H. Beer, who gave a short statement about the nuances of political science during his tenure at Harvard from 1946 to 1982.

“He completely stole the show,” said government professor Stanley Hoffmann, a former student of Beer’s. “[The current professors] were all preempted by the master, who spoke without notes, remembering everyone and everything. No one believed the man was 96 years old at the time.”

Beer, a noted scholar of British and American politics, passed away on April 7, at the age of 97.

“He was a spectacularly good teacher because his classes were all in the form of questions he addressed to himself and his students, for which he had all sorts of arguments before coming to his own conclusion,” said Hoffman. “It was very different from the typical top-down sort of lecturing. It was as if he was struggling with his own opinions.”

Beer, the chair of the Harvard government department from 1954 to 1958, served as the Eaton Professor of the Science of Government for years before moving to Boston College in 1982 to be a professor of American politics.

Receiving his B.A. from the University of Michigan, Beer went to England on a Rhodes Scholarship before receiving his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard in 1943. He was later granted an honorary doctorate from the University in 1997 in recognition of “his scholarship and [the] enormous impact his teaching had on undergraduates for over three decades,” said Peter A. Hall, Beer’s former student, who is currently a European studies professor at Harvard.

Beer was most famous for his self-designed course Social Studies 2: “Western Thought and Institutions,” which he taught for 30 years. Students studied six key moments in the development of Western Civilization, and “used theoretical lenses to understand the historical process,” said former teaching fellow Judith E. Vichniac, the current director of the fellowship program at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

“Everywhere he went he was stopped on the streets by people who have taken that course,” Hall said. “It was one that inspired thousands of Harvard students.”

The teaching fellows who worked with Beer often went on to careers as academics or public service officials. Some of his famous students included Henry A. Kissinger ’50, Michael Walzer, and Charles H. Tilly ’50.

Before studying at Harvard, Beer was a staff member of the Democratic National Committee, and occasionally wrote speeches for former President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 and 1936.

Active in American politics, Beer was chairman of Americans for Democratic Action during his tenure at Harvard from 1959 to 1962. He also actively opposed student rebellions at Harvard during the late sixties.

Beer was elected president of the American Political Science Association in 1977, and was also appointed as a fellow of the British Academy in 2000.

After earning his Ph.D., Beer earned a Bronze Star fighting with the U.S. Army in Normandy. During his time at Oxford in the 1930s, he travelled to Germany, where he saw Hitlerism first hand, according to Government professor Harvey C. Mansfield ’53, another of Beer’s former students.

“He wanted to know how Germany could have fallen so far to embrace these vicious totalitarian ideas,” Mansfield said. “His courses were often directed to that subject.” Beer described the influence of these travels on his graduate work at Harvard in the Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions.

“By the time I came to Harvard in the fall of 1938, I was a fierce anti-communist, a fervent New Dealer, a devotee of Emerson, and ready to try to put it all together….[in] a defense of liberalism against the totalitarian threat,” Beer wrote. Many of his former students praised Beer’s engaging personality and dedication to teaching.

“He had a very good eye for the most important questions in politics and was intensely engaged with the thinkers over the ages who had worked with those questions,” Hall said. “When you talked to Sam Beer you were engaging in a dialogue with Marx, Weber, or Augustine. He had read an enormous amount, and he thought deeply about the big social and political questions throughout his life.”

“He would come to class wearing his military outfit and pump his fist, and tell us what to think about,” Mansfield said.

__________________

SOCIAL SCIENCES 2
READING LIST
Fall Term 1970-71

The work of the Fall Term consists of three essays, one for each topic, and the mid-year examination. Section men will make specific assignments and suggest additional reading for these essays.

Books for Purchase

Students should own the following books, available at the Harvard Coop, or elsewhere as announced:

  1. Bunyan, John, THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS
    Paperback: New American Library: Signet Classics
  2. DOCUMENTS FOR CLASS USE (Assize of Clarendon, Writs from the treatis called “Glanville” Magna Carta, and the Constitutions of Clarendon). Pamphlet: University Printing Office. On sale in General Education office, 1737 Cambridge St., Rm. 602.
  3. Hill, Christopher, THE CENTURY OF REVOLUTION 1603-1714
    Paperback: W. W. Norton
  4. Marx and Engels, BASIC WRITINGS ON POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY
    Edited by Lewis S. Feuer. Paperback: Doubleday (Anchor)
  5. Marx and Engels, COMMUNIST MANIFESTO
    Edited by Samuel H. Beer. Paperback: Appleton-Century-Crofts (Crofts Classics)
  6. SOCIAL CONTRACT: ESSAYS BY LOCKE, HUME, AND ROUSSEAU
    Introduction by Ernest Barker. Paperback: Oxford (Galaxy Books)
  7. Tierney, Brian, THE CRISIS OF CHURCH AND STATE 1050-1300
    Paperback: Prentice-Hall (Spectrum)
  8. Weber, Max, THEORY OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION, translated by A. Herderson and T. Parsons.
    Paperback: MacMillan Free Press.
  9. Walzer, Michael, THE REVOLUTION OF THE SAINTS
    Paperback: Atheneum

 

Attention of members of the course is directed to the new book written by former section men in Social Sciences too, Melvin Richter (Ed.), Essays in Theory and History: An Approach to Social Sciences (Harvard University Press 1970)

Assigned Reading

Everything on the following list is on “closed reserve” in Lamont and Hilles Libraries. The date suggested here will vary during the semester; lectures and section discussions should be your guides.

TOPIC 1: TRADITIONALISM AND THE MEDIEVAL POLITY

  1. Week of September 28: THE SOCIOLOGY OF AUTHORITY
    Weber, Max, THE THEORY OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION, pp. 324-392.
  2. Weeks of October 5, 12, and 19: FEUDAL MONARCHY IN ENGLAND
    Bloch, Marc, FEUDAL SOCIETY, pp. 59-92, 103-120, 270-274.
    Poole, Austin Lane, FROM DOMESDAY BOOK TO MAGNA CARTA 1087-1216, chaps, I, II, V, X-XIV.
    Jolliffe, J.E.A., THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL ENGLAND, pp. 139-263.
    John of Salisbury, THE STATEMAN’ S BOOK (from the POLICRATICUS), translated by John Dickinson, Introduction, Text: IV:1, 2, 3, (pp. 9-10), 4, 11; V:1, 2, 5; VI:18, 20, 21, 24; VII:17-19; VIII:17 (pp. 335-9), 18, 20, 23, (pp. 398-9; 405-10)
    DOCUMENTS FOR CLASS USE: Assize of Clarendon, Writs from the Treatis called “Glanvill,” Magna Carta.

Optional: ENGLISH HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS 1042-1189 (Vol. II of series) edited by David C. Douglas and George W. Greenaway. Nos. 1 (years 1135-154), 10, 12, (pp. 322-4, 331-3, 335-8), 16, 19, 58-9, 268.

TOPIC II: DYNAMICS OF MEDIEVAL DEVELOPMENT

  1. Week of October 26: THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
    Weber, Max, FROM MAX WEBER: ESSAYS IN SOCIOLOGY, edited by H. Gerth and C. W. Mills, “THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF WORLD RELIGIONS,” pp. 267-301.
    Weber, Max, THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION, edited by Talcott Parsons, chaps. VIII, XI, XIII.
  2. Weeks of November 2: THEORIES OF SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL POWER.
    Lovejoy, Arthur O., THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING, A STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF AN IDEA, pp. 24-77.
    Tierney, Brian, THE CRISIS OF CHURCH AND STATE 1050-1300, pp. 1-95, 127-138.
    Brooke, Z. N., LAY INVESTITURE AND ITS RELATION TO THE CONFLICT OF EMPIRE AND PAPACY (article listed separately in the libraries)
    Tellenbach, Gerd, CHURCH, STATE, AND CHRISTIAN SOCIETY IN THE TIME OF THE INVESTITURE CONTEST, Introduction, chap. 1 (sections 1 and 3), chap. 2, chap. 5 (section 3) and Epilogue.
  3. Week of November 9: THE GREGORIAN REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND
    Duggan, Charles, “From the Conquest to the Death of John,” THE ENGLISH CHURCH AND THE PAPACY IN THE MIDDLE AGEs, edited by C. H. Lawrence, pp. 65-115.
    Poole, A. L., FROM DOMESDAY BOOK TO MAGNA CARTA, chaps. VI, VII.
    DOCUMENTS FOR CLASS USE: Assize of Clarendon.
    Knowles, David, THE EPISCOPAL COLLEAGUES OF ARCHBISHOP THOMAS BECKET, chap. V.

TOPIC III: RELIGIOUS REVOLT AND POLITICAL MODERNIZATION

  1. Weeks of November 16 and 23: Analytical Perspectives
    Marx and Engels, Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, edited by Louis S. Feuer, pp. 1-67, 82-111.
    Marx, Karl, CAPITAL, Modern Library edition, pp. 784-837 (chaps. 26-32). In some editions this is chap. 24, entitled, “Primary Accumulation.”
    Beer, Samuel H., Introduction to Marx and Engels, COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, pp. VII-XXIX,.
    Weber, Max, THE PROTESTANT ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM, translated by Talcott Parsons, pp. 35-c. 62, 79-128, 144-183.
  2. Weeks of November 30, and December 7, 14: THE PURITAN REVOLUTION
    Hill, Christopher, THE CENTURY OF REVOLUTION 1603-1714, chaps. 1-11.
    Bunyan, John, THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS, portions of the First Part: in Signet edition, pp. 17-30, 66-110, 131-148.
    Hexter, J.H., “Storm Over the Gentry,” in Hexter’s REAPPRAISALS IN HISTORY.
    Walzer, Michael, THE REVOLUTION OF THE SAINTS, chaps. I, II, IV, V (pp. 148-171), and IX.
    Walzer, Michael, “The revolutionary uses of repression,” in Richter (Ed.), ESSAYS IN THEORY AND HISTORY.
    Locke, John, AN ESSAY CONCERNING…… CIVIL GOVERNMENT, chaps. 1-9, 19. Available in SOCIAL CONTRACT: ESSAYS BY LOCKE, HUME AND ROUSSEAU.

 

SOCIAL SCIENCES 2
READING LIST
SPRING TERM 1971

Students are asked to buy the following books, which are available at the Harvard Coop, or, in the one case, at the General Education Office.

  1. BRIGGS, Asa, The Making of Modern England
    Paperback: Harper Torch books. Hardcover title: The Age of Improvement.
  2. BURKE, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France
    Paperback: Bobbs-Merrill: The Library of Liberal Arts
  3. HOBBES, Thomas, Leviathan
    Paperback: Penguin
  4. MILL, John Stuart, On Liberty
    Paperback: Appleton-Century-Crofts: Crofts Classic
  5. NIETZSCHE, Friedrich, The Genealogy of Morals
    Paperback: Vintage
  6. RUDÉ, George, Revolutionary Europe, 1783-1815
    Paperback: Harper Torchbook
  7. de TOCQUEVILLE, Alexis, The Old Regime and the French Revolution
    Paperback: Anchor Books

Everything on the following list is on “closed reserve” in Lamont and Hilles Libraries. The date suggested here will vary during the semester; lectures and sections should be your guides.

TOPIC IV: IDEOLOGY AND REVOLUTION

Weeks of February 8 & 15

HOBBES, Thomas, Leviathan, esp. Intro., Chaps. 11, 13-15, 17-21, 26, 29-30, and Review and Conclusion.
ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques, The Social Contract, especially Book I; Book II; Book III, chaps. 1-4, 12-18; and Book IV, chaps. 1-2, 7-8 (in the Galaxy paperback edition used for Locke’s SECOND TREATISE in the Fall Term).
BEER, Samuel, “The Development of the Modern Polity,” chap. 3 (Typescript on reserve).

Weeks of February 22 & March 1

RUDÉ, George, Revolutionary Europe, pp. 65-241
de TOCQUEVILLE, Alexis, The Old Regime and the French Revolution, Forward, pp. 1-211.
RICHTER, Melvin, “The uses of theory: Tocqueville’s adaptation of Montesquieu” in Richter, Essays in Theory and History, pp. 94-102.
TILLY, Charles, The Vendee, chaps. 1, 2, 4, 9, 13.

TOPIC V: MODERNIZATION WITHOUT REVOLUTION

Week of March 8:

BURKE, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France, especially 3-4, 18-129, 138-144, 169-200, 233-266, and 286-291 (Page citations to the Library of Liberal Arts paperback edition).

Weeks of March 15, 22, & 29:

BRIGGS, Asa, The Making of Modern England (Hardcover title, The Age of Improvement), chaps. I, II (sections, 2-3), III (section 5), IV-VI, VIII (sections 1-3, through p. 416), and IX (section 3).
DICEY, A. The Lectures on the Relations Between Law and Opinion in England During the 19th century, Lectures 4, 6, 9, 12 (pt. 1).
BEER, Samuel H., British Politics in the Collectivist Age, Introduction, Chaps. I-II, Epilogue (391-409).
MILL, John Stuart, On Liberty, chaps. 1-2, 4

TOPIC VI: THE CRISIS OF MODERNITY

Week of April 12:

NIETZSCHE, Friedrich, The Genealogy of Morals (trans. W. Kaufmann; Vintage paperback).

Weeks of April 19, 26, & May 3:

PINSON, Koppel S., Modern Germany: Its History and Civilization, chaps. 15-21 (First or Second Edition).
EPSTEIN, Klaus, “Three Types of Conservatism” in Richter, Essays in Theory and History, pp. 103-121.
BULLOCK, Alan, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, chaps. 1-4, 7.
REICHSTAG, Election Statistics, 1919-1933, Mimeographed. To be distributed.
PARSONS, Talcott, “Certain Primary Sources and Patterns of Aggression in the Social Structure of the Western World”, Mimeographed. (This essay also appears in Parsons, Essays in Sociological Theory).
VIERECK, Peter, Metapolitics: From the Romantics to Hitler (Capricorn paperback subtitle: The Roots of the Nazi Mind), Prefatory Note (or, in paperback, “New Survey,” sections 3-4, & chaps. 1-2, 5-7, 11-13).
ERIKSON, Erik H., “The Legend of Hitler’s Childhood” in Childhood and Society, chap. 9.
ECKSTEIN, Harry, A Theory of Stable Democracy.

Reading Period Extra: Nazi Films
Wednesday, May 12, at 7 p.m., Lowell Lecture Hall

FINAL EXAMINATION June 4

Source: Personal copy of course syllabus shared for transcription at Economics in the Rear-View Mirror by one my longest, dearest economics and personal chums, Robert Dohner (Harvard, 1974; M.I.T., 1980).

Image Source:  Samuel H. Beer, 1953 Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. J.S. Mill’s Principles of Political Economy. Laughlin and Taussig, 1882-83

 

 

James Laurence Laughlin and Frank William Taussig were both appointed at the rank of “Instructor in Political Economy” for 1882-83. The final exams for the first and second terms of the course come from Taussig’s personal scrapbook that he kept of his printed final examinations at Harvard. Reading assignments for the course almost certainly came from the following three books in one form or other.

Here is an earlier post that describes the content of Political Economy 1 taught in the 1884-85 academic year.

____________________

Published texts where Course Readings Can Probably Be Found

Principles of Political Economy by John Stuart Mill, abridged and edited by J. Laurence Laughlin. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1884.

Charles F. Dunbar (ed.) Extracts from the Laws of the United States Relating to Currency and Finance. Cambridge: 1875.

Charles F. Dunbar. Chapters on Banking. Cambridge: 1885. [First four chapters as bases of a short course of lectures on banking, written 1882, given annually to classes in the elements of political economy.]

____________________

Course Announcement

Political Economy.

  1. Mill’s Principles of Political Economy.—Lectures on Banking and the Financial Legislation of the United States. Mon.,Wed., Fri., at 9. Mr. Taussig and Dr. Laughlin.

Source:  The Harvard University Catalogue 1882-83p. 89.

____________________

Course Enrollment

Elective Studies
Political Economy

Instructors

Course of Instruction Hours per week.

Students

Dr. Laughlin and
Mr. Taussig

1. Mill’s Principles of Political Economy.—Lectures

3

Total 155:
1 Graduate, 22 Seniors, 113 Juniors, 13 Sophomores, 6 Other.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1882-83, p. 66.

____________________

Course Examinations

POLITICAL ECONOMY 1.
Mid-year. Feb. 9, 1883.

I.
(Answer briefly all of the following.)

  1. What distinction does Mill draw between productive and unproductive labor? Discuss the value of this distinction. Distinguish between productive and unproductive consumption.
  2. What is the distinction between fixed and circulating capital? Is money part of the fixed or of the circulating capital of a country? Why?
  3. What are the classes among whom the produce is divided? Are these classes necessarily or usually represented in as many different acts of persons? How could you classify the peasant proprietor?
  4. Of what commodities are the values governed by the law of cost of production? Explain the process by which that law operates.
  5. “Rent does not enter into the cost of production of agricultural produce.” Explain.
  6. What regulates the value of an inconvertible paper currency? What causes it to depreciate? Discuss briefly the results of depreciation.
  7. Arrange the following items on the proper sides of the account:—
Circulation 315.0
Due to Banks 259.9
Legal Tender Notes 63.2
Loans 1,243.2
Bond for circulation 357.6
Due from Banks 198.9
Deposits 1,134.9
Specie 102.9

Compute just how much circulation is permitted by our laws; and give in figures both the (1) reserve required at 25%, and the (2) difference between the actual and required reserve, on the basis of the above account.

  1. Compare the plans of our National Bank system with those of the Bank of England and the Imperial Bank of Germany in regard to the security of note-issues.

 

II.
(Answer more fully three of the following.)

  1. What are the constituent elements of what Mill calls “profits”? Explain what is meant in common language by the word “profits,” and discuss the nature of profits in this sense.
  2. “The laws of the production of wealth partake of the nature of physical truths….It is not so with the distribution of wealth. That is a matter of human institution solely.” Explain the distinction, and show its connection with the subjects of communism and socialism.
  3. Mention the methods by which it is attempted to keep gold and silver concurrently in circulation. Explain why “a double standard is alternately a single standard.” Does this tend to be the case now in the United States?
  4. Distinguish between real and proportional wages, and illustrate the distinction. In what sense is the word wages used when it is said that the profits depend on wages, rising as wages fall, and falling as wages rise?
  5. It is not a difference in the absolute cost of production which determines the international cost of exchange, but a difference in the comparative cost.” Explain this proposition, and apply it to the trade between the United States and European countries. Is the trade between tropical and temperate countries based, in the main, on a difference of absolute or of comparative cost?

    ____________________

POLITICAL ECONOMY 1.
Final examination. June 15, 1883.

I.
(Take all of this group.)

  1. Explain what is meant by a bill of exchange. What causes bills on a foreign country to be at a premium or discount? Show in what way the premium (or discount) is prevented from going beyond a certain point.
  2. Is there any connection between the rate of interest and the abundance or scarcity of money? Explain and illustrate the following: “The rate of interest determine[s] the price of land and of securities.”
  3. Describe the three different kinds of cooperation, and say something of the success attained by each. What are the two classes of distributive coöperation, and wherein do they differ?
  4. Show under what circumstances the increase of capital brings about the tendency of profits to fall. What influences counteract this tendency?
  5. Explain what is meant by the rapidity of circulation of money. What is the effect of great rapidity of circulation on prices and on the value of money? What is the effect of the use of credit? Mention the more important methods in which credit is used as a substitute for money.

II.
(Omit one of this group.)

  1. Discuss the effect of the introduction of a new article of export from a given country on the course of the foreign exchanges in that country, on the flow of specie, and on the terms of international trade (i.e. on international values).
  2. What are the causes which enable one country to undersell another? Do low wages, or a low cost of labor, form one of those causes?
  3. Discuss the immediate and the ultimate effects on rents of the introduction of agricultural improvements. Do those ultimate effects which Mill describes necessarily take place?
  4. What is the immediate and what the ultimate incidence of a tax on houses? Show in what manner the incidence of a tax on building-ground differs, according as the tax is specific (so much on the unit of surface), or rate (so much on the value).

III.
(Omit one of this group.)

  1. Describe the situation which caused the banks in the United States to suspend specie payments in 1861.
  2. What is the difference between bonds and Treasury notes? Name and explain the different kinds of bonds issued during the war.
  3. Explain the causes which made possible the great sales of five-twenty bonds in 1863.
  4. What arguments were advanced for the continuance of the National Bank System in 1882?

 

Source:  Harvard University Archives. Examination Papers in Economics 1882-1935. Prof. Frank W.Taussig Scrapbook, pp. 2-3.

Image Sources: J. Laurence Laughlin (left) from Marion Talbot. More Than Lore: Reminiscences of Marion Talbot, Dean of Women, The University of Chicago, 1892-1925. Chicago: University of Chicago (1936). Frank W. Taussig (right) from E. H. Jackson and R. W. Hunter, Portraits of the Harvard Faculty (1892).

Categories
Exam Questions Fields Harvard Undergraduate

Harvard. Three Undergraduate Economic Field Exams, 1942

 

The Harvard undergraduate economics departmental exam and the essay topics for 1942 were transcribed for the previous post. Below we have three field exams for money & finance, market organization & control, and labor economics & social reform from the same year. In the Randall Hinshaw papers at Duke I did not find field exams for statistics & accounting or economic history that I suspect would have also been offered (judging from Part II of the economics departmental exam).

________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS
Department of Economics
May 6, 1942

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
Money and Finance
(Three hours)

PART I
(About one hour)

  1. Write an essay on ONE of the following topics:
    1. monetary conditions of full employment equilibrium,
    2. the functions and importance of the Federal Reserve System in the 1920’s, the 1930’s, and today,
    3. investment banking by commercial banks – theory and practice in the past and future,
    4. international monetary problems after the last war, and after this war,
    5. modern improvements on the classical theory of international trade,
    6. ideas for post-war liberation and control of international trade – conditions of progress in respect of justice to all nations and prosperity for all,
    7. modern federal taxation in peace and war times – functions, and types of taxes and tax programs required,
    8. ways of mitigating the undesirable future consequences of our mounting national debt,
    9. effects of the war on financial problems of state governments,
    10. the background of the modern vogue of monetary management and deficit finance, in fundamental economic changes over recent decades,
    11. prospective war-time and immediate post-war changes in America, in demand and supply conditions for investment funds and real capital,
    12. post-war problems and prospects in Anglo-American economic relations.

 

PART II
(About one hour)

All students must answer TWO questions. If you are a candidate for honors, at least ONE of these two must be a starred question.

  1. (*) “The spectre of ‘secular stagnation’, which threatened the capitalist world of the 1930’s, is being exorcised by this war and will probably not return after it, at least for some decades.”
  2. (*) Outline succinctly, and explain and discuss as fully as your time allows, what you regard as the best analysis – either one writer’s or your own compilation – of the fundamental causes of the business cycle.
  3. Explain, and discuss critically, several different concepts of “velocity” and “hoarding” found in the modern literature of monetary theory.
  4. “Just as banking policy was unable, in the 1930’s, to play any important part in producing recovery, it is now unable, for opposite and parallel reasons, to play any important part in combating war inflation.”
  5. (*) Discuss the economic and other causes of the world-wide growth of new nationalistic restrictions on international trade, in the interval between the last war and the present war.
  6. (*) “As a stabilizer of the monetary basis of international trade, nothing short of one world currency under the management of a central, international authority, can be an effective substitute for the 19 century’s international gold standard.”
  7. Discuss the effects which the “lend-lease” arrangements through which this country is aiding its allies in the war, are likely to have on our foreign trade, economic relations with the outer world, and economic position in the post-war period.
  8. “If country A has strong labor unions which force up and hold up wage-costs in all its industries, while country B enjoys cheap labor together with industries as modern and well mechanized as those of A, progressive depreciation by A of the external value of its currency is its only means of maintaining competition with B in world markets.”
  9. (*) Discuss the relative merits of compulsory savings plans, a further lowering of exemptions from the personal income tax, and a general sales tax, as methods of diverting a larger share of war-time wages from consumption expenditure to investment in the war effort.
  10. (*) “Federal expenditures on welfare projects, or benefaction’s to the under-privileged, are a national luxury which must be sacrificed to the war effort.”
    “No; on the contrary, the war increases our obligation to all we can for the well-being of our poorest citizens; for in relation to the war effort, their morale is more important than are all economies, which would benefit only the over-privileged – whose patriotism, we hope, will stand the strain.”
  11. Discuss the merits of the view that in wartime the income tax should be supplemented by a special, progressive tax on all increases of individual incomes above the average levels of the same incomes in a group of pre-war years.
  12. “The chief danger in severe taxation of business profits in wartime is that of causing under maintenance of industrial plant, to the extent of making the country pay for the war to largely by consuming its capital.”

 

PART III
(About one hour)

(Answer TWO questions)

  1. “Future alternations of prosperity and depression are unlikely to occur with the nearly exact regularity or periodicity, which has made the term ‘business cycle’ appropriate in the past. The ‘cycle’ in that sense was one of the regularities peculiar to a quasi–automatic, laissez-faire capitalism.”
  2. “Money and finance are of no importance in modern war; only physical resources and production count. The Axis countries are already bankrupt, but it makes no difference. And we, in order to win the war, will have to give our physical production experts – not our monetary and fiscal experts – a free hand.”
  3. “America is sure to have, before the war ends, an inflation that will largely wipe out the real incomes and wealth of all its professional people and small savers – the backbone of the middle-class – and divide the spoils between rich speculators and skilled, industrial wage-earners. And that will make impossible the future maintenance of the country’s conservative-liberal, political tradition.”
  4. “The effort to knit the Latin American economies into ours, and make the Western Hemisphere a largely unified and self-sufficient, regional economy, cannot succeed in any large and lasting way. Our principal, natural economic ties are with Europe, and so are those of the Latin American countries; and these old, natural tendencies will reassert themselves after the war.”
  5. “By ending the imperialism of the white race in the Orient, the war is ending what have been essential factors in the prosperity of England, Holland, and America – exploitation of cheap Oriental labor and rich natural resources acquired at little cost, and a market for ‘dumping’ industrial surpluses, so as to make something near to full employment in the Western countries compatible there with excessive prices for the same industrial products.”
  6. “The spread of industrialism throughout the world does not merely alter the incidence everywhere of ‘comparative advantage’, and the international division of labor; it increases the diversity of productive powers and the self-sufficiency of every country, and thus radically diminishes the total importance of international trade.”
  7. “Financial, or monetary and fiscal manipulations cannot save capitalism. They could, if the right manipulators could work freely and not be defeated by a ‘strike’ on the part of Capital. But every attempt, in a time of depression, to redistribute money income and thus restore consumption and employment, always will be defeated by the further decline of investment due to the fears of the capitalists, who fear what immediately attacks their positions more than they fear the eventual, socialist revolution that is certain to result in time from an unrelieved, severe depression.”
  8. “In opposition to the nineteenth century orthodox explanation and defense of interest as a payment necessary to induce, through saving, enough creation of real capital, Keynes in effect revives the basic idea and resulting attitude of Aristotle and the medieval writers against ‘usury’. Like them, he sees in the demand for interest only the reluctance of the rich to part with their money hoards, and thus makes it the villain of the economic drama.”
  9. “In the economic world, the ‘real’ in contrast with the ‘monetary’ factors do indeed determine, as the older economists thought, what everyone must do in order to reach true equilibrium. Where they went wrong was in supposing that everyone always does fairly soon reach true equilibrium, that is, adjustment to realities; that deceptive, monetary changes have only very brief, transitional, or ‘short run’ consequences. Money is much more important than they thought it was, because the truth is that activities supported only by illusions, of monetary origin, prolong and aggravate those illusions and themselves in a cumulative fashion until unreality, or non-adjustment to reality, becomes so drastic that it collapses violently and then gives way, only, to a like, prolonged departure from reality in the opposite direction.”

________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS
Department of Economics
May 6, 1942

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
Market Organization and Control
(Three hours)

PART I
(About one hour)

  1. Write an essay on ONE of the following topics:
    1. corporate profits,
    2. the problem of converting plants to war production,
    3. some recent developments in the study of costs of production,
    4. the war and American agriculture,
    5. why farmers are poor,
    6. the “parity” concept in agricultural policy,
    7. a wartime plan for the railroads,
    8. the future of private and public ownership in the public utility field,
    9. public utility rate-making: science or art?
    10. the relation of price control and rationing to fiscal policy,
    11. bureaucracy in industry and government,
    12. the Supreme Court and the regulation of economic life.

 

PART II
(About one hour)

All students must answer TWO questions. If you are a candidate for honors, at least ONE of these two must be a starred question.

  1. (*) Select any two American industries and compare their respective pricing methods and policies. Which seems to you more desirable from a public standpoint? Explain.
  2. Suppose you were put in charge of a trust fund with the duty of investing funds in corporate stock. What factors would you take into account in deciding which stocks to buy? Why?
  3. (*) Explain the relation, if any, between industrial price policies and the size of the national income.
  4. “The recent downward trend in the stock market is an utter absurdity from an economic point of view.” What facts and theories underlie this statement? Do you agree with it? Explain.
  5. (*) “We are now experiencing an agricultural revolution no less profound than the industrial revolution of 150 years ago.” Do you agree? Why or why not?
  6. (*) Discuss the chief problems of public policy connected with the growing and marketing of cotton.
  7. Discuss critically the recent agricultural policy of one foreign country.
  8. What are the principal changes that have been introduced in the methods and living conditions of American farmers by the internal combustion engine?
  9. (*) “Whenever you tried to define a public utility you will always come down finally to one and only one factor: discriminating monopoly.” What is a discriminating monopoly and what conditions favor its existence? Do you agree that discriminating monopoly is the distinguishing characteristic of public utilities? Explain.
  10. (*) What justification, if any, can be offered for the principle of railroad rate-making which attempts to equalize the competitive position of producers over a wide area?
  11. What conditions in the field of public utilities led to the passage of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935?
  12. Discuss the relative merits of water-power and steam-power in the generation of electricity. Should it be public policy to favor one against the other (a) as a war measure, (b) in the post-war period? Explain.

 

PART III
(About one hour)

Answer TWO questions

  1. “It is an odd circumstance that capital fought for the right to incorporate, while labor fights against the compulsion to incorporate.” Discuss.
  2. “From an economic standpoint there is little to be said for excess profits taxation. As a method of controlling inflation it is obviously quite inadequate. Hence the only important consequence is an undermining of the financial position of precisely those corporations which are most essential in war production.” Discuss.
  3. Discuss the methods which have been employed in financing plant expansion requirements necessitated by the defense and war efforts. Why were these methods adopted? What is their significance for the post-war period?
  4. “The technical and managerial classes are slated to succeed the owners in the sequence of ruling classes.” Discuss.
  5. Some experts believe there is likely to be a great increase in the number and importance of corporate farms in the relatively near future. What are the reasons for this belief? Explain why you agree or disagree.
  6. Do you think direct control over wages is necessary to effective price control? Why or why not?
  7. Sketch the traditional policy of our government toward participation by American businessmen in international cartels and combines. Discuss the reasons for this policy and its results.
  8. “From the standpoint of economic organization, the Nazi economy represents the uninterrupted continuation of trends in German society which reach back at least to the 1870’s.” Discuss.

________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS
Department of Economics
May 6, 1942

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
Labor Economics and Social Reform
(Three hours)

PART I
(About one hour)

  1. Write an essay on ONE of the following topics:
    1. wages and war inflation,
    2. the closed shop,
    3. should the 40-hour week be abolished during the war?
    4. the problem of migratory labor,
    5. an ideal system of unemployment insurance,
    6. a population policy for America,
    7. class struggle – reality or propaganda slogan?
    8. the probable effect of the war on American movements of social reform,
    9. can socialism be achieved by a gradual process of reform?
    10. labor and the anti-trust laws,
    11. trade unions and political action,
    12. labor in World War I.

 

PART II
(About one hour)

All students must answer TWO questions. If you are a candidate for honors, at least ONE of these two must be a starred question.

  1. (*) Discuss the benefits which one important C.I.O. union has won for its members, and the methods and policies by which it has won them.
  2. (*) Assume that a new industrial union enrolls all the workers in a particular industry, and succeeds in raising their wages. Make, and stayed clearly, your assumptions about all the main economic conditions (supply and demand conditions in the various markets) relevant to this problem; and on your assumptions, analyze the determination of the shares of the cost of paying for this wage-increase, which will be born in the end respectably by (1) the employers in the industry, (2) the consumers of the product, and (3) groups connected with other industries as workers, employers, or consumers.
  3. Discuss the history, methods, and achievements of union-management coöperation in one American industry where it has become established.
  4. What principles, as to policy and procedure, would you advise the federal war labor Board to adopt as its guiding principles in dealing with industrial disputes during the war period? Explain your reasons for each principal you propose.
  5. (*) Is the Malthusian theory of population wrong? If so, in what respects and why? If not, what is the evidence to support it?
  6. (*) Explain and evaluate the theory of non-competing groups.
  7. Can fascism (including Nazism) be called the “revolution of the middle class”? Explain.
  8. What, in your opinion, would be the chief economic effects of a cessation in population growth? Why?
  9. (*) Discuss critically Marx’s theory of capitalist crises.
  10. (*) What kind of a “new order” from an economic standpoint do the Nazis want to create?
  11. Discuss the main characteristics and results of economic planning in the Soviet Union.
  12. According to a number of economists, the price policy of a socialist society should be based on one single principle: equate price to marginal cost. Explain the meaning of this rule and argue for or against its general validity.

 

PART III
(About one hour)

Answer TWO questions

  1. Discuss the relative advantages and disadvantages, from the workingman’s standpoint, of the sales tax and a tax on wages deducted at the source as methods of closing the gap between outstanding purchasing power in the quantity of consumer goods available in the war economy.
  2. “Whether profit-sharing be but a slight modification of the ordinary capitalist system or contained within itself the germs of a true coöperative system need hardly be discussed in view of the fact that its history has been a record of repeated failure. The cause of failure in almost every case has been the apparent incompatibility of profit-sharing with trade unionism.” Discuss.
  3. What is to be said for stabilization of money wages as a goal of monetary policy?
  4. “Can even the most ardent free-trader doubt that in the post-war world American labor will continue to demand and deserve protection from cheap foreign labor?” Discuss.
  5. Discuss the economic problems of the construction industry, placing the kind of unionism which prevails there in its proper setting.
  6. Discuss the structure, problems and policies of the labor movement in backward or colonial countries.
  7. “There is no mistaking the economic foundations of race prejudice in the contemporary world.” Discuss.
  8. “Historically the connection between freedom of enterprise and freedom in other fields of thought and action is obvious. Must we not, then, assume that the destruction of free enterprise would likewise deprive us all our cherished liberties?” Discuss.

 

Source:  Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archive. Papers of Randall Hinshaw. Box 1, Folder “Schoolwork, 1940s”.

Image Source: Harvard Square from the Tichnor Brothers Collection of postcards. Boston Public Library, Print Department.

Categories
Exam Questions Fields Harvard Undergraduate

Harvard. Undergraduate Departmental Examination and Essay Questions, 1942

 

 

The next post will provide transcriptions of three division special (i.e. field) examinations from 1942.

The 1939 departmental examination and  essay questions have been posted earlier.

______________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS
Department of Economics
May 1, 1942

ESSAY PAPER
(One hour and a half)

Candidates for honors may write on ONE topic only. Others may, if they prefer, write on TWO topics. Please note on the front cover of the bluebook the number of each topic upon which you write.

  1. Economic imperialism.
  2. The pre-requisites of lasting peace.
  3. The economist who has most influenced your thinking.
  4. Some unsettled questions of economic science.
  5. Welfare economics.
  6. The relation of economics to sociology and political science.
  7. The distribution of wealth and income.
  8. The classical economists and their legacy.
  9. The nature and significance of general equilibrium analysis.
  10. Economic warfare.
  11. If Great Britain loses her empire.
  12. What killed laissez-faire?
  13. “The rise of political centralism is largely the product of economic centralism.”
  14. The relations and roles of the economic interests, and the social and cultural traditions, movements, and ideals, which are in conflict in the war.
  15. The American war effort and the profit system.
  16. Government controls which the American economy requires during the war, and those which it will require in the period of post-war adjustment.
  17. The applicability of traditional economic theory in explaining the course of economic life in totalitarian states.
  18. The future of capitalism.
  19. “The claim of economics to be a true science, like the modern physical sciences, must be given up as untenable.”
  20. Planned economies and human liberties.
  21. The value of training in economics, for success in business, and for good citizenship.
  22. “The physiologist’s task is not the physician’s; analysis and therapy are different; and economists, like physiologists, should confine themselves to explaining what happens, and leave the giving of advice to others.”

Source:  Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archive. Papers of Randall Hinshaw. Box 1, Folder “Schoolwork, 1940s”.

___________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS
Department of Economics
May 4, 1942

DEPARTMENTAL EXAMINATION
(Three hours)

Answer SIX questions; at least ONE question must be answered in each part, but not more than THREE questions may be taken in Part II. A senior may not take more than ONE question in that section of Part II which covers his special field.

PART I

  1. Define: elasticity of demand, unit elasticity, elastic demand, inelastic demand. Say weather, and explain why, you would expect the demand for each of the following commodities (in normal times) to be elastic or inelastic: automobiles, milk, tobacco, fur coats, window glass, oriental rugs, quinine, coal.
  2. Suppose that industries A, B, and C are all “purely competitive”, and that A has constant costs, B increasing costs, and C decreasing costs, for increasing outputs. If all three of these industries experience rapid, marked, and lasting increases of the public’s demands for their products, what will be (a) the immediate and (b) the ultimate effects upon the prices of the three different products? Explain your answers, and illustrate each case by the appropriate diagram. If now a cost-reducing invention (new method or machine) is generally adopted in each industry, show on your diagrams the effects of this on their cost conditions, outputs, and prices, and explain.
  3. Suppose a firm to be operating under these conditions:

Its total fixed cost is $1000 per day.
Its total operating cost for 1 unit output per day is $1000.00; for 2 units, $1800.00; for 3, $2550.00; 4, $3400.00; 5, $4500.00; 6, $6600.00. It can sell at price $1800.00, 1 unit; at $1500.00, 2 units; at $1250.00, 3 units; at $1100.00, 4 units; at $1000.00, 5 units; at $925.00, 6 units.

Infer from those figures, and draw on a diagram (as smooth curves) this firm’s average total unit cost, marginal cost, demand, and marginal revenue curves.
Now show on your diagram, and explain, the price and output required to maximize the firm’s profits.
Now assume “free entry” to the field, and that new competitors of this firm appear.
Show on your diagram, and explain, the ultimate effects of the new (increased) competition on this firm’s demand curve, output, average total unit cost, selling price, and profits.

  1. Explain as fully as you can, in terms of the relevant conditions of demand, supply, and marginal productivity, the present high wages of skilled workers in American war industries.
    To what extent, and how, do you think the efforts of trade unions make these wage-rates higher than they would be otherwise?
  2. In what principal ways do you think the war is affecting and likely to affect, while it lasts, the aggregate demand for and supply of capital and the level of interest rates within this country?
    What developments in the same respects do you think are most likely in the post—war period? Explain fully.
  3. Explain and discuss the significance of each of the following: total utility, law of diminishing utility, average and marginal utility, and consumers’ surplus.
  4. How would competition, if universally “pure”, tend to allocate resources, in a state of equilibrium of the whole economy?
    How is the equilibrium allocation altered by general prevalence of “monopolistic competition”?
    Explain concisely.
  5. Suppose that economic conditions in a country over a certain decade undergo the following changes. (1) The country’s population increases rapidly, while no additions are made to its territory or known natural resources. (2) Technological progress in all branches of production is steady and substantial; all innovations are capital-using, labor-saving inventions; physical outputs per man-hour of labor increase substantially. (3) A constant, rather high percentage of the national money income is annually saved and invested within the country. (4) Credit expansion is continually greater than the increase of total physical production, hence the price-level rises throughout the decade.
    Explain and discuss the probable, separate and joint effects of those developments on the absolute and relative shares of the national, real income respectively allotted, at the end as compared with the beginning of the decade, to (real) wages, economic rent, interest, and business profits. If you need to make assumptions more definite than those stated above, or additional assumptions, in order to reach definite conclusions, make clear the uncertainties in the problem as stated, and resolve them by explicit assumptions chosen as you please, at appropriate points in your discussion.

 

PART II
A
Statistics and Accounting

  1. Is it possible to devise an “ideal”, all-purpose, formula for price index numbers? Why or why not?
  2. What, in your judgment, are the greatest dangers that have to be guarded against in applying statistical methods to the available data of economic life?
  3. “Currently practiced accounting methods lead almost invariably to either overestimation or underestimation of true net earnings.” Explain carefully, indicating what is meant by “true net earnings” and why accepted accounting principles may lead to their misrepresentation. Do you think that in wartime, net earnings are likely to be overstated or understated?
  4. Answer concisely the following questions: (a) A corporation issues $100,000 par value stock to the promoters for nothing. In order to make the totals of the balance sheet equal, an item of “goodwill $100,000” is placed on the asset side. Assuming there is no reasonable ground for considering the “goodwill” to be actually valuable, how would you correct the balance sheet? (b) The amount of fixed assets – buildings and machinery – is less at the end of the year than at the beginning. What other changes would you expect to find on the balance sheet? Why? (c) In case a reappraisal of fixed assets shows a value in excess of value and it is desired to bring the appreciation into the books, how may this be done?

B
Modern Economic History

  1. What role would you assign to the National Banking System in the pattern of American business fluctuations from 1870 to 1914?
  2. Describe and explain the development of American tariff policy during the 19th century.
  3. Argue for or against the proposition that the Nazi economy is no more than the logical outcome of German economic policy from the time of Bismarck on.
  4. “The depression (1876-86) is, indeed, the watershed between the era of British industrial supremacy in the era of international competition.” Discuss.

 

C
Money and Finance

  1. Imagine that someone with no knowledge of economics asks you to explain to him, fully and clearly, why as an element of war finance government borrowing from the banks is peculiarly “inflationary”; and write out the explanation you would give.
  2. “Since government spending has become the main regulator of the volume and tempo of economic activity, Federal Reserve policy has become an academic subject of no real importance.”
  3. In a world at peace, with international trade proceeding normally, but with all countries on independent “paper standards” and exchanges “free” (with no fixed parities”, a position of general equilibrium and stable exchange rates has been reached. Now country A embarks, alone, on an internal monetary expansion which raises its price level.
    Trace and explain what effects, if any, this will tend to have on the balances of payments of A and other countries, foreign exchange rates, international transfers of products, factors, and “purchasing power”, and price levels in other countries. At what point, and how, will a new position of equilibrium be reached?
  4. “In the development of trade between an industrial nation, A, and an agricultural nation, B, both nations will gain by the trade, but the division of the gain will become unequal, in favor of A. The elastic demand for A’s products in B, and the inelastic demand for B’s products in A, will cause the terms of trade to shift in favor of A, as production in both countries in the trade between them expand.”
    Give a full and careful explanation of the concepts, assumptions, and reasoning suggested, and state any criticisms or qualifications that occur to you.
  5. Discuss the meaning and validity of the statement that a general sales tax is “regressive”; and the principal arguments for and against the view that this type of tax, even if undesirable in peace times, is peculiarly appropriate in wartime.
  6. “Our immense and upward-zooming federal debt is a prelude either to national bankruptcy, or else to socialism.”

 

D
Market Organization and Control

  1. Sketch the background, provisions, and chief consequences of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
  2. Is it possible for a Board of Directors to pursue a dividend policy which will consistently harmonize the interests of the corporation, its stockholders, and society as a whole? Explain.
  3. What are the methods which may be adopted to control war-time profits? What policy do you favor in this respect and why?
  4. “In the pricing of electrical energy no case can be made out on economic grounds for differential charges unless they are likely to lead to an improvement in the load factor, i.e., To a more uniform distribution of demand through time.” State your reasons for agreeing or disagreeing with this proposition.
  5. “Only a socialist has a right to complain about crop-restriction and price-raising in the field of agricultural production.” Discuss.
  6. “There seems to be little doubt that the complete ‘trustification’ of the economy, with the relative stability of prices which would follow therefrom, would go a long way toward eliminating business fluctuations.” Discuss.
  7. “Price stability is prima facie evidence of monopoly.” Discuss.

 

E
Labor Economics and Social Reform

  1. Outline and defend what you would advocate as the best national war-time policy in regard to wages, and whatever else you think must be controlled in order to control wages effectively.
  2. What principal, lasting effects do you think the war is likely to have on the American labor movement – union structures, strength, status, and policies? Explain your predictions and the evidence and reasoning on which you base them.
  3. “The current outcry against federal centralization of unemployment insurance, and in favor of ‘states rights’ in this field, is without merit, and a mere device of employer interests to limit the development of unemployment insurance and keep it as innocuous as possible.”
  4. “American labor unions are deluding themselves in blaming only the false propaganda put out against them by unprincipled opponents, for the better anti-union feelings of some millions of middle and lower-middle-class Americans. Real faults of union leadership and policy have done a great deal to cause and justify this public hostility, and the unions in their own interests can and must assuage it by putting their own houses in order.”
    Discuss this, as far as you can, in terms of concrete, illustrative situations and evidence of which you have some knowledge.
  5. “The Marxian theory that all property-incomes, or non-labor incomes, originate in exploitation of labor, is entirely compatible with the ‘marginal productivity’ theory of income distribution.” Explain and discuss.
  6. Outline, and discuss critically, what you regard as the logical, Marxist explanation of the origins and issues of the present war.
  7. What do you think American Labor, in supporting the war-effort, should put first among its “peace aims”, or aims in respect of the post-war settlement? Explain and defend your answer.

 

PART III

  1. “Economics can either explain the quasi-automatic operation of a true free enterprise economy, or devise a blue-print for rational planning in the socialist economy. But in a half-way house like our present society, where both private and public decisions must respond more often to political than to economic facts, economics can neither explain events nor guide public policy.”
  2. “After the last war, the reaction of business and the public against the war-time government controls gave a new lease of life to laissez-faire, with disastrous results; and there is danger that a like relapse will occur at the end of this war.”
  3. “The proper work of the economists, in helping to solve the problems of industry and society, may be said to begin where that of the engineers or technicians ends.”
  4. “If the opportunity for the employment of idle men and idle money is to be found in a free, private enterprise system then, obviously, we must find a way to stimulate new, private enterprises by encouraging the investment of private savings in them.”
  5. “The causes which bring trade barriers into existence and produce centralism in every form of economic activity must be attacked if a real system of free enterprise is to be re-established.”
  6. “To maintain and improve labor’s position economically is the traditional task of the unions. Today, not only the growth but even the existence of the unions has become in large measure a political problem.”
  7. “The last war, in its impact on the American economy, produced war-time overexpansion and post-war depression chiefly in agriculture. This time, it is the industrial sector of our economy which is threatened with that sequence, on a much more disastrous scale.”
  8. “The patriots who denounce, in war-time, all self-interested demands or actions on the part of business, labor, or farm groups, generally do not recognize the fact that rivalry of all interest-groups over distribution of war-time prosperity is inevitable under our profit-system, and cannot be eliminated unless we are willing to replace that system entirely, while the war lasts, with a governmental dictatorship of all economic life as complete is that now practiced in Germany, Japan, and Russia.”

Source:  Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archive. Papers of Randall Hinshaw. Box 1, Folder “Schoolwork, 1940s”.

Image Source: John Harvard Statue from the Tichnor Brothers Collection of postcards. Boston Public Library, Print Department.

Categories
Columbia Socialism

Columbia. Seligman and Hillquit debate “Desirability of Socialism”. February, 1915

 

Economists have been debating the whats and hows of socialism from the earliest days of the socialist movement. As the term has taken on a renewed life in current political debate, from time to time Economics in the Rear-View Mirror will listen in to earlier debates in historical time. One sees that Seligman attempted to frame the debate for progress as striking the correct balance between individualism and socialism whereas Hillquit argued for the wholesale replacement of capitalism and its evils with socialism and its virtues.

________________________

“SOCIALISM A MERE VISION”—SELIGMAN
Charges Morris Hillquit With Failure to Produce Proofs of Its Practicability
LARGE CROWD HEARS DEBATE
[February 16, 1915 report]

            Before an audience that crowded the Horace Mann Auditorium to the doors, in spite of the bad weather, Prof. E. R. A. Seligman and Morris Hillquit debated the “Desirability of Socialism.” George Gordon Battle, the well-known lawyer, presided. While no decision was given, the sympathy of the audience seemed to go to Professor Seligman, who rested his argument, not on the perfection of the capitalist system, but on the failure of his opponent to show how Socialism would remedy the existing evils.

Mr. Hillquit opened the debate with an exposition of the principles of Socialism in which he defined the doctrine and showed its applicability to present-day civilization. The rest of his twenty-five minutes he spent in assailing the capitalistic system, which he asserted was responsible for every social evil now existing.

He outlined the development of the factory system which, according to his statement, took the tools from the workman and left him nothing. One hundred years ago the workman was independent, and he owed that independence not to the possession of capital but to his skill with his tools. The factory system substituted ten machines for the tools of a thousand workmen, but the workmen did not own the machines which took the place of their tools. The machines were owned and the workers were dependent upon the employer for their livelihood. Their employment was dependent solely upon the amount of profit resulting for the employer. This brought about the present conditions of widely prevalent unemployment, which was responsible for all the poverty, crime and vice now found in society.

Professor Seligman, in opening his speech, told his audience that far from being scientific, Socialism is an ideal. As an ideal, or religion, it deserves our gratitude, for it has been a spur to thought at all times.

He went on to say, in part: “The real point in the whole argument is this: We are told that conditions are bad. I grant you this, but the point is, is Socialism adequate to bring about better conditions?

“Let us come to this idea of Socialism being a ‘scientific and planful’ scheme, as Mr. Hillquit terms it. I think that Mr. Hillquit will agree that the ‘scientific’ Socialism is founded upon these bases: The labor theory of value, as advanced first by Carl Marx; the surplus labor theory of profits which was also also advanced by Carl Marx; and the generally accepted economic interpretation of history. It is upon these bases that ‘scientific’ Socialism stands—and yet not only has Marx been proven wrong in all these theories, but the foremost Socialists of today have refuted them.

“Here’s the way Carl Marx argued: He studied conditions about him, and he said, first, things are getting worse and worse; second, prices are getting worse and worse; third, therefore, things will get so bad that we will get to a cataclism of society, and all society will break up. And he said that this stage would be reached in five years at the most. But has it been reached, even though that was a century ago? I respect Carl Marx possibly more than any other economist, except Ricardo. Nevertheless, I think we can leave this ‘scientific’ Socialism there, flat on its back.”

In his rebuttal, Professor Seligman said, in part: “Capitalism, says Mr. Hillquit, is responsible for the present social evils; and he maintains that Socialism will do away with them. We have always had social evils, no matter what our state of society; and what reason is there for believing, beyond mere assertion and declaration, that Socialism will remove the social evils. We will all admit that civilization has progressed, and that we have from time to time remedied the evils of society; and I maintain that these social evils will be done away with in the course of progress, whether we have Socialism or no!

“I have shown you that competition and regulation, individualism and Socialism, have always been necessary to our progress; and I maintain that we shall need them for our progress, until the end of time. The Socialists say, individualism has certain evils, let us do away with individualism. No! for Socialism has even greater evils. What I want is socialized individualism, and that is what we are going to get. What we want is to preserve the good things of our society, and get rid of the bad things.”

Professor Seligman went on to say that it was absurd to condemn capitalism, before capitalism had fairly taken a start. He pointed out in elaborating this point, that it takes centuries to change systems. He said in conclusion: “Everyone is conscious of the mal-adjustment of society. We need light and guidement. We must not be blinded by the blatant light of capitalism, the press. And, on the other hand, we must not be misguided by the unreal vision that we can follow one principle to the exclusion of the other. Be sure that the foundation is solid, before you build upon it. In that way only can we hope to erect the lasting structure of social progress and social peace.”

Mr. Hillquit made his greatest stand in his rebuttal. He declared that his opponent had not controverted either of his main points that private or corporate capitalistic ownership was at the bottom of prevalent social ills and that social ownership would ameliorate these conditions. In reply to Professor Seligman’s assertion that the public schools and the Post Office were Socialism, Mr. Hillquit declared that they were only the forerunners of Socialism. He traced the growth of the early capitalism and its fight against feudalism and drew parallels between that and the conflict between capitalism and Socialism, incidentally stating that capitalism was beginning to show unpleasant and unmistakable signs of old age.

Taking up Professor Seligman’s main points, Mr. Hillquit waxed eloquent. Bringing his refutation to a conclusion, he said:

“My opponent states that production under Socialism will be less than at present, predicting his statement on the assertion that human beings are as lazy as they dare to be. Under the capitalistic system they are. Their work is not congenial or attractive. No man ever shirked work that he liked.

“In regard to distribution, let me say that we have no competition in distribution of wealth under the present system, and we will have under Socialism. Take the case of Mr. Harry K. Thaw. From what we know of the gentleman, we can hardly say that he is intellectual. But he has wealth because some ancestor bought stocks and bonds and passed them on to him. Under Socialism there will be no drain on productivity such as is furnished by the present abuses of capitalism. If we were to throw the wealth into the air and let the people race after it, we should have better distribution than at present.”

Source:  Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVIII, Number 105, 16 February 1915, pp. 1, 6.

Image Source: Morris Hillquit from Bain News Service (July 25, 1924) original glass negative, digitized by the Library of Congress.