Author: Irwin Collier

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Exam Questions Harvard Undergraduate

Harvard. Exams for Introductory and Advanced Political Economy. Dunbar and Laughlin, 1878-1879

 

Like the previous post, this one plugs a gap (1878-79) in the time series of Harvard political economy exams from the 19th century. Charles Dunbar was still at the top of his game and the young Dr. James Laurence Laughlin enters the picture. 

__________________________

Political Economy [first course].

Course Enrollment

[Philosophy] 6. Political Economy. — J. S. Mill’s Political Economy. — Financial Legislation of the United States. Three times a week. Prof. [Charles Franklin] Dunbar and Dr. [James Laurence] Laughlin.

Total 121: 1 Graduate, 45 Seniors, 71 Juniors, 1 Sophomore, 3 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1878-79, p. 60.

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PHILOSOPHY 6.
Mid-year Examination, 1878-79

(Do not change the order of the questions.)

  1. State the argument for raising the whole of the supplies of state by taxation within the year. Illustrate by the experience d England from 1793 to 1817, and of the United States in the recent war.
  2. Examine the assertion that, if the rich increase their unproductive expenditure, the now unemployed working classes will be benefited.
  3. If all land were of equal fertility, and all required for cultivation, would it pay Rent? Give the reasons for your answer.
  4. By what reasoning, irrespective of value or price, does Mr. Mill arrive at the law of Rent?
  5. State the general laws of value, and show what modifications are necessary for articles produced in foreign countries. Complete the whole theory by any peculiar cases of value.
  6. (1) Show that capitalists cannot secure themselves against a general increased cost of labor by raising the prices of their goods. (2) On what does Cost of Labor depend?
  7. Illustrate Gresham’s Law by the causes which led to the Suffolk Bank System, and the Coinage Act of the United States in 1834.
  8. Point out the fallacy in the theory that an increase of the currency is desirable because it quickens industry.
  9. When our imports regularly exceed our exports, what will be the rate charged in New York for sight bills on London? What is the par of exchange between Paris and London?
  10. What is to be said as to the doctrine that the advantage to a country from foreign trade is found in the surplus of exports over imports?
  11. Explain the system of the Bank of Amsterdam, and the reasons for establishing it.
  12. Arrange the following resources and liabilities of the Bank of England in the proper form, separating the Issue and the Banking Departments:
Notes Issued £41.5 Government Securities £14.2
Other Deposits 27.9 Reserve 9.4
Other Securities (Loans) 27.9 Public Deposits 5.6
Coin and Bullion 26.5 Rest 3.2
Government Debt., &c. 15.0 Seven-day Bills 0.3
Capital 14.5
  1. Having arranged the account, show what changes would be made in it, if the Bank increased its loans by 3 millions and sold 1 million of government securities, and depositors at the same time withdrew 2 millions to be sent abroad.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination papers, 1873-1915. Box 2, Bound Volume 1878-79, Papers Set for Mid-Year Examinations in Rhetoric, Logic, Philosophy, Political Economy, History, Music, Fine Arts in Harvard College, February 1879, pp. 8-9.

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PHILOSOPHY 6.
Year-End Examination, 1878-79

  1. What is the cause of the existence of profit? And what, according to Mr. Mill, are the circumstances which determine the respective shares of the laborer and the capitalist?
  2. Explain the statement that “high general profits cannot, any more than high general wages, be a cause of high values. . .. In so far as profits enter into the cost of production of all things, they cannot affect the value of any.”
  3. On what does the minimum rate of profit depend? What counterforces act against the downward tendency of profits?
  4. State the theory of the value of money (i.e. “metallic money”), and clear up any apparent inconsistencies between the following statements: (1) The value of money depends on the cost of production at the worst mines; (2) The value of money varies inversely as its quantity multiplied by its rapidity of circulation; (3) The countries whose products are most in demand abroad and contain the greatest value in the smallest bulk, which are nearest the mines and have the least demand for foreign productions, are those in which money will be of lowest value.
  5. What is the error in the common notion “that a paper currency cannot be issued in excess so long as every note represents property, or has a foundation of actual property to rest on?”
  6. What are the conditions under which one country can permanently undersell another in a foreign market?
  7. On whom does a tax on imports, if not prohibitory, fall?
  8. Discuss the following:—
    “A man with $100,000 in United States bonds comes to Boston, hires a house …; thus he lives in luxury… I am in favor of taxing idle investments such as this, and allowing manufacturing investments to go untaxed.”
  9. If depositors in the Bank of England withdraw £3,000,000 in specie and send it abroad, how does this withdrawal of gold from the vaults of the Bank affect the currency in actual circulation?
  10. Describe the plan on which a national bank of the United States is organized, the security for its notes, the provision for their redemption and the extent to which the law makes them receivable.
  11. When were the legal-tender, compound interest notes issued, and what was their peculiar characteristic as a currency? How did their action as currency differ from that of the other issue of interest-bearing legal-tender notes?
  12. Describe the Resumption Act of 1875. What circumstances have promoted its success?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination papers, 1873-1915. Box 2, Bound Volume 1878-79, Papers Set for Annual Examinations in Rhetoric, Logic, Philosophy, Political Economy, History, Music, Fine Arts in Harvard College, May 28 to June 4, 1879, pp. 13-14.

__________________________

Advanced Political Economy.

Course Enrollment

[Philosophy] 7. Advanced Political Economy. Cairnes’s Leading Principles of Political Economy. — McKean’s Condensation of Carey’s Social Science. — Lectures. Three times a week. Prof. Dunbar.

Total 36: 2 Graduates, 31 Seniors, 3 Juniors.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1878-79, p. 60.

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PHILOSOPHY 7.
Mid-year Examination, 1878-79

(Write your answers in the same order as the questions.)

  1. Give a careful and logical summary of the laws determining the values of all commodities, monopolized or free, domestic or foreign, using the corrected definition of Cost of Production. [Forty minutes]
  2. As a new country fills up, what changes may be expected in the normal prices of meat, timber, grain and wool?
  3. Why is it unlikely that any formula will be devised, embracing in one statement the law of the value of commodities and the law of the value of labor, i.e. the law of wages?
  4. Give a summary of Mr. Cairnes’s restatement of the wages-fund theory.
  5. Analyze this statement:
    “An article which a farm laborer has produced in a day does not exchange for one which a watchmaker has spent an equal time in producing, because the latter is a more skilful operative.”
  6. Explain the statement that “the high scale of industrial remuneration in America, instead of being evidence of a high cost of production in that country, is distinctly evidence of a low cost of production.”
  7. What effects upon foreign trade have general changes in the rates of wages, and what have partial changes? Give the reasons.
  8. What effect has the existence of a large debt payable to foreigners, upon the ability of a country to keep up a metallic circulation?
  9. The Governor of M. is informed,
    “That the longer continuance of the provisions of the treaty with Great Britain, permitting the free importation of fish from the Provinces, will be most disastrous to the fishing interest; and that the permanent maintenance of this policy will insure its complete destruction. This would involve the decay of our fishing ports and the loss of millions of capital, and drive from their occupation thousands of deserving citizens. … This class has been the nursery of the navy of the Union. It has manned our mercantile marine.”
    Discuss the suggestion that for these reasons the provisions of the treaty referred to should be abrogated.
  10. Give some account of the Economistes and of their doctrines.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination papers, 1873-1915. Box 2, Bound Volume 1878-79, Papers Set for Mid-Year Examinations in Rhetoric, Logic, Philosophy, Political Economy, History, Music, Fine Arts in Harvard College, February 1879, p. 10.

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PHILOSOPHY 7.
Year-end Examination, 1878-79

  1. What are Mr. Cairnes’s reasons for doubting whether any great improvement can be made in the condition of the laboring class, so long as they remain mere receivers of wages?
  2. How is the statement that “a rise or fall of wages in a country, so far forth as it is general, has no tendency to affect the course of foreign trade” to be reconciled with the fact, that in the last two or three years the United States have been able to export certain manufactured goods in increased quantities, in spite of competition?
  3. What is the explanation of the statement that “what a nation is interested in is, not in having its prices high or low, but in having its gold cheap”?
  4. How does Mr. Shadwell’s definition of value differ from that adopted by the school of Ricardo?
  5. Discuss the following extract:—
    “As a cause must precede its effect, increase of population cannot be the cause of an increase of food, nor of its increased dearness, which is consequent on the resorting to poorer soils in order to raise a larger quantity. If, then, the cost of food has any tendency to increase as society advances, it must be because farmers are prompted by some motive or other to resort to poorer soils, while richer ones are to be had. But such a supposition is contrary to the principle that every one desires to obtain wealth by the least possible labor, and is therefore inadmissible. Poor land is taken into cultivation not because the population has increased, but because some discovery has been made which renders it possible to obtain as much profit as from the worst previously cultivated, and this discovery enables the quantity of food to be increased, and an increase of population is the effect and not the cause.”
  6. Also the following :-
    “Agricultural profits cannot fall unless recourse is had to poorer land, but such land will never be cultivate, since capitalists can never be willing to submit to a fall of profit; and the very meaning of the expression that some land is not worth cultivating, is, that it will not yield the ordinary profit to the farmer who should attempt to reclaim it. It appears, then, that the rate of profit is stationary in agriculture, and, consequently, in all other trades; and that whatever rate be established in an early stage of society, it must remain the same throughout its subsequent development.”
  7. “Why then should we suppose that the supply of paper substitutes for coin (like the supply of corn) would not be best maintained by allowing bankers and their customers to bring them into circulation in whatever quantities, and at whatever times, they find to be mutually convenient?”
  8. In what forms was the French indemnity finally received by Germany (bills of exchange being a mere instrument of transfer)? How did the payment probably affect Austria and the United States?
  9. A considerable party in England now propose “Reciprocity,” — that is, the admission without duty of the goods of such countries only as in turn admit English goods without duty. What practical objections and what theoretical ones can be urged against this proposition?
  10. “No act of Parliament,” it is said, “or convention of nations can prevent (between gold and silver) changes in value resulting from variations in the conditions of production, or of the action of demand and supply.”
    To this M. Cerunschi replies, — “You confound money with merchandise. To speak of merchandise is to speak of competition, supply and demand, purchase and sale, price. To speak of money is nothing of the kind.
    “Whether he produces little or much at a profit or at a loss, no miner can ever sell his metal money either dearer or cheaper than other miners, for the simple reason that the metal money is not sold or bought; it is itself its price…
    “When the monetary law is bi-metallic, therefore, no competition [is] possible between the producer of gold and the producer of silver, no purchase and sale, no discount, no price between one metal and the other. Without their being offered, without their being demanded, the circulation absorbs them both at the legal par, and cannot refuse them. When the monetary law is everywhere bi-metallic, neither gold nor silver, coined or uncoined, is merchandise. That is the secret.”

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination papers, 1873-1915. Box 2, Bound Volume 1878-79, Papers Set for Annual Examinations in Rhetoric, Logic, Philosophy, Political Economy, History, Music, Fine Arts in Harvard College, May 28 to June 4, 1879, pp. 14-15.

Image Source: Harvard Library, Hollis Images. Charles F. Dunbar (left) and James Laurence Laughlin (right). Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Exams for Introductory and Advanced Political Economy. Dunbar, 1877-1878

 

This post plugs a gap in the time-series of Harvard economics exams back in the day when economics was still called political economy and political economy was just another moral science among the philosophy department’s course offerings. Two courses, that was all in 1877-1878.

Texts from John Stuart Mill, Walter Bagehot, John Elliott Cairnes, Henry Charles Carey were assigned readings.

_______________________

Political Economy [first course].

Course Enrollment

[Philosophy] 6. Political Economy. — J. S. Mill’s Political Economy. — Bagehot’s Lombard Street. — Financial Legislation of the United States. Three times a week. Prof. [Charles Franklin] Dunbar and Mr. [Silas Marcus] Macvane.

Total 108: 25 Seniors, 72 Juniors, 9 Sophomores, 1 Freshman, 1 Other.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1877-78, p. 59.

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PHILOSOPHY 6.
Mid-year Examination 1877-78

  1. How does the meaning of the following terms, when used in scientific discussion, differ from that which they have in popular discourse? — Wealth, Capital, Rent, Value of Money.
  2. What is the reason that rears of great unproductive expenditure e.g. years of war, are often years of great apparent prosperity? Illustrate by the cases of England and France during the wars of Napoleon.
  3. What is the objection to the “Allowance System” of poor relief, by which insufficient wages are made good by a contribution from public funds?
  4. How is the alleged tendency of profits to equivalence in different employments to be reconciled with the notorious difference in the profits of different individuals?
  5. Explain the reason for the statement that “if it were the fact that there is never any land taken into cultivation for which rent is not paid, it would be true, nevertheless, that there is always some agricultural capital which pays no rent.”
  6. Explain carefully the reason for the proposition that high wages do not make high prices.
  7. What causes determine the value of money?
  8. In the markets of the world gold bullion is worth more than seventeen times as much as silver bullion. What will be the effect on the currency of a country which establishes the double standard, makes each metal a legal tender for any amount, but adjusts the weight of the coins upon the assumption that the values of gold and silver are in the ratio of 16 to 1? What further effect will be produced if, after this has taken place, another country adopts the same measure, but with the assumed ratio of 15½ to 1?
  9. What will determine the value of an inconvertible currency which is a legal tender?
  10. What are the arguments against the possibility of general over-production, or “excess of supply”?
  11. The following are the items [in £ millions] in the Bank of England account for November 11, 1857:—
Bullion, £6.6 Private deposits, £12.9
Capital, 14.5 Notes, 21.1
Gov. Debt. & sec. 14.5 Reserve, 1.4
Gov’t. securities, 9.4 Rest, 3.4
Public deposits 5.3 Seven-day Bills 0.8
Other securities, 26.1

Arrange these items in the proper form, separating the Issue and Banking Departments, and then show the changes required by the following operations:—

An increase of loans amounting to… £4 millions
A sale of Government securities amounting to… 1 million
The withdrawal by depositors of… 3 millions

the act of 1844 being suspended.

  1. Why does the suspension of the act of 1844 give relief to the money market?
  2. How far can the Bank of England control the market rate of interest?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination papers, 1873-1915. Box 2, Bound Volume 1878-79 (sic), Papers Set for Mid-Year Examinations in Rhetoric, Logic, Philosophy, Political Economy, History, Music, Fine Arts in Harvard College, February 1878, pp. 11-12.

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PHILOSOPHY 6.
Year-end Examinations 1877-78

[Let the answers given in your book stand in their proper order. Take either 8 or *8. Take care not to omit the last four questions.]

  1. Why are the wages of skilled labor so much higher than those of unskilled?
  2. Are improvements in production ever injurious to the laboring classes?
  3. Why is it that a potential change of the supply of other commodities is enough to make their value conform to any change in their cost of production, but that in the case of gold and silver the change of supply must be actual?
  4. When it is said that improvements tend to counteract the increasing cost of production from land, what sort of improvements are meant?
  5. What effect is produced upon rents, profits and wages, respectively, in a country where population is stationary and capital advancing, like France?
  6. Explain what effect, if any, will be produced on the price of corn by,
    1. a tax upon rent;
    2. a tithe;
    3. a tax of so much per acre, irrespective of value;
    4. a tax of so much per bushel.
  7. In the theory of an ultimate stationary state of society, what is implied as to the well-being of the laboring classes when that state is reached?
  8. State and examine Mr. Wakefield’s theory of a “limited field of employment” for capital as explaining the fall of profits.

*8. “There are two senses in which a country obtains commodities cheaper by foreign trade: in the sense of Value and in the sense of Cost.”

  1. What effect does an annual payment of interest to foreign creditors have upon the imports and exports of a country? If the interest is payable in gold, will it necessarily cause gold to be sent out of the country? Why, or why not?
  2. Criticise the following statement made by a well-known member of Congress:—
    “Bank of England notes have been interchangeable with money since 1844, with three brief intervals, when the system of promising gold redemption and of issuing notes based on gold deposits in excess of £14,000,000 brought about crises.”
  3. What was the provision made by the National Bank Act as to reserves for the protection of circulation and deposits, and what reserves are now required by law?
  4. What was the amount of greenbacks outstanding in the period 1868-73, and what were the changes by which the amount settled to its present figure, $346,000,000?
  5. State briefly the history of our gold and silver coins as found in the coinage acts of 1792, 1834, 1853, 1873, and 1878.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination papers, 1873-1915. Box 2, Bound Volume 1878-79, Papers Set for Annual Examinations in Rhetoric, Logic, Philosophy, Political Economy, History, Music, Fine Arts in Harvard College, May 27 to June 20, 1878, pp. 13-14.

_______________________

Advanced Political Economy.

Course Enrollment

[Philosophy] 7. Advanced Political Economy. Cairnes’s Leading Principles of Political Economy. — McKean’s Condensation of Carey’s Social Science. — Lectures. Three times a week. Prof. Dunbar.

Total 28: 1 Graduate, 22 Seniors, 5 Juniors.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1877-78, p. 59.

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PHILOSOPHY 7.
Mid-year Examination, 1877-78

  1. What reasons make a revision of the usual definition of Cost of Production necessary? How do Mill and Ricardo use the term?
  2. What effect has the existence of “non-competing groups” on the exchange of commodities, each of which is the product of several classes of labor, as e.g. a steam engine and cotton cloth?
  3. What is the argument in favor of Mr. Cairnes’s position that the price of corn, in the progress of society, reaches a certain maximum, beyond which it cannot advance?
  4. When a permanent increase of currency occurs, what will be the difference in the effect on the prices of manufactured goods, vegetable products, and animal products, respectively?
  5. Criticise the following statement of the wages-fund doctrine:—
    “There is supposed to be, at any given instant, a sum of wealth which is unconditionally devoted to the payment of the wages of labor. This sum is not regarded as unalterable, for it is augmented by saving, and increases with the progress of wealth; but it is reasoned upon as at any given moment a predetermined amount. More than that amount it is assumed the wages-receiving class can not possibly divide among them; that amount, and no less, they can not but obtain. So that the sum to be divided being fixed, the wages of each depend solely on the divisor, the number of participants.”
  6. What is to be inferred from Mr. Cairnes’s reasoning as to a probable fall of prices in the United States, with respect to the recovery of prices after confidence shall have been restored and industry shall have revived?
  7. What is the reason for rejecting the common notion that high general wages hinder the extension of the foreign trade of a country like this?
  8. Discuss the bearing of the reasoning involved in the last question, on the theory of protection.
  9. Discuss the common argument that the national debt ought to be held at home, because if held abroad it compels the payment of a “tribute” to foreigners, and tends so far to check our prosperity.
  10. Explain the fact that only about one-ninth of the French Indemnity was paid in coin.
  11. In the progressive development of political economy as a logical system, what are the relations of Malthus, Ricardo, and Mill, respectively?
  12. Give some account of Colbert, J.-B. Say, Storch.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination papers, 1873-1915. Box 2, Bound Volume 1878-79 (sic), Papers Set for Mid-Year Examinations in Rhetoric, Logic, Philosophy, Political Economy, History, Music, Fine Arts in Harvard College, February 1878, p. 13.

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PHILOSOPHY 7.
Year-end Examination, 1877-78

[Let the answers given in your book stand in their proper order.]

  1. In what way does skill affect the cost of the products of skilled labor?
  2. Give Cairnes’s statement of the Wages Fund doctrine. “It will perhaps strike the reader that our reasoning has conducted us into a vicious circle.” Is the circle real or apparent? Why?
  3. Cairnes says that “an alteration in the reciprocal demand of two leading nations will act upon the price, not of any commodity in particular, but of every commodity which enters into the trade.” Is this statement broad enough to cover all the effects of such an alteration?
  4. How are we to explain the fact that, while cost of production is generally the ultimate condition governing international exchange, it is seldom, if ever, the proximate or immediate cause of exchange?
  5. It has been remarked that “the object of taxation is to make all property bear its equitable share.” Is this a correct statement of the principle to be followed? Why, or why not?
  6. Criticise the following passage from a thesis on Reciprocity with Canada:—
    “Unless there is a good deal of uniformity in excise it will be difficult to maintain reciprocity between the two countries… Suppose that an income tax should be laid on in the United States, as has been proposed. Such a measure would place all United States industries at a disadvantage as regards Canadian and perhaps as regards foreign.”
  7. How does a pressure in the money market here, where paper currency is used, tend to bring gold from London to New York?
  8. What reasoning is there for or against the statement that “the balance of trade must be against the countries which export raw produce, that the precious metals must flow from these countries, and that they must, while continuing in that course of policy, abandon the idea of gold and silver as a standard of value.”
  9. Discuss this statement:
    “Interest is the compensation paid for the use of the instrument called money, and for this alone. In countries in which that is high, the rate of profit is necessarily so, because the charge for the use of his money enters so largely into the trader’s profits.”
  10. What is Mr. Carey’s theory as to the tendency (1) to decline in the value of commodities, and (2) to rise in the value of land; and how is this reconciled with his principle that the law of value is universal, embracing everything, «”whether land, labor, or their products”?
  11. What logical necessity drove Mr. Carey to the invention or discovery of a new law of population? In what does his conception of an ultimate stationary state necessarily differ from that of Ricardo and Mill?
  12. The existence of much vice and misery is ascribed by Malthus to an economic law. How far is it the result of this to “relieve the governing classes of the world from any possible responsibility for the welfare of those below them”?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination papers, 1873-1915. Box 2, Bound Volume 1878-79, Papers Set for Annual Examinations in Rhetoric, Logic, Philosophy, Political Economy, History, Music, Fine Arts in Harvard College, May 27 to June 20, 1878, pp. 14-15.

Image Source: “Charles Franklin Dunbar: Second President of the American Economic Association, 1893.” The American Economic Review, vol. 31, no. 3, 1941.
JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1805801.
Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Categories
Econometrics Exam Questions Johns Hopkins

Johns Hopkins. Final Exams for “Econometrics”. Christ and Harberger, 1951-1952

 If you have ever wondered why the journal Econometrica has always published much content with next to no “econometrics” (in the sense of mathematical statistics with special application to economics), the final exams for the Johns Hopkins graduate course “Econometrics” taught by Carl Christ and Arnold Harberger in 1951-52 provide us with a ready explanation. We can see that their course offered a combination of mathematical modeling and econometrics, narrowly defined. At mid-20th century economists regarded “econometrics” as the union of mathematical economics and mathematical statistics rather than as the intersection of the two fields.

Fun fact: Marc Nerlove, who entered the Johns Hopkins graduate program in economics in 1952, was in Carl Christ’s econometrics course. This fact and the photo of Christ and Harberger come from Nerlove’s note included on the In Memoriam page for Carl Christ (1923-2017).

________________________

EXAMINATION
ECONOMETRICS

Friday, January 25, 1952 — 2-5 p.m.

Dr. Christ
Dr. Harberger

  1. A monopolist produces Z goods, X1 and X2, under constant unit costs C1 and C2 respectively. The demands for his products are

x1 = x10 – a11 (P1 – C1) – a12 (P2 – C2)
x2 = x20 – a21 (P1 – C1) – a22 (P2 – C2)

Find the Outputs of X1 and X2 which the monopolist will produce in order to maximize profits. What condition on the a’s must be satisfied if your solution is to reflect a true maximum?

  1. Prove Euler’s theorem for homogeneous functions of the first degree.
  2. Consider the utility functions

(1) U1 = ху
(2) U2 = logex + logey

For each function state:

      1. whether the marginal utility of each good is increasing, decreasing, or constant.
      2. whether the marginal utility of one good is independent of the amount of the other good consumed.
      3. the demand functions of a person having a fixed income.

What conclusions do your results suggest?

  1. Two countries. A and B, produce export commodities XA and XB at constant cost in local currency. Income in each country is stabilized by government policy, and the demand for imports depends solely on the local-currency price of imports. The exchange rate is normally fixed, but is subject to change by policy action. Assume Country A, in an initial equilibrium of the system, does not receive as much foreign currency as it has to pay for the imports its citizens demand. What are the conditions under which the gap between its receipts and expenditures of foreign currency can be decreased by devaluation? Do these same conditions apply to the gap between receipts and expenditures expressed in its own currency?
  2. Factor A is the only factor used by a monopolist, who produces good X. The suppliers of factor A always demand a constant percentage of the product price p as their unit price. At, this price they are willing to supply unlimited amounts of A.
      1. Assume returns to scale are constant. What output will the monopolist produce? Is thin output any different from that he would produce if A were free good.
      2. Assume returns to scale are decreasing. What output will the monopolist produce? Compare your present result with your answer to (a).

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ECONOMETRICS 633-34
Final Examination

Thursday, May 22, 1952
  1. Define
      1. exogenous variable
      2. overidentified equation
      3. consistency
      4. likelihood function
      5. condensed likelihood function
  2. Suppose the actual supply and demand equations for 2 goods X1 and X2 are as follows (where p1 and p2 are their respective prices, and income Y and wage rate w are exogenous):

S1:           X1 = 3p1 – 6w + 1

D1:           X1 = 2p1 – 5p2 + Y + 2

S2:           X2 = 7p2 – 8w +3

D2:           X2 = 4p1 – 4p2 + 2Y +4

State whether each equation is identified.

  1. Given that y = ax + b + u, where a is an independent variable, u is a random normal disturbance with mean 0 and constant variance σ2, and a and b are parameters. Derive the maximum likelihood estimates of a, b, and σ2 based on N observations on the pair of variables x and y.
  2. What assumptions must you make and what data do you need in order to obtain limited-information maximum-likelihood estimates of the following equation:

C= α Y + β C-1 + γ

where C and Y are real consumption and disposable income, respectively.

  1. The output of each of n industries (excluding households) is produced by a given process requiring fixed proportions of inputs of the other n-1 commodities. If these proportions are known and if a final-demand bill of goods is specified, how are the total outputs of the n industries determined?
  2. It has been asserted that the materials restrictions imposed on durable goods manufactures after Korea, while limiting the output of durable goods well below the level of 1950, did not reduce the quantities sold to a point below what they would have been in the absence of the restrictions. This assertion is supported by empirical evidence is the form of the observed accumulation of manufacturers’ and dealers’ inventories and of some price-cutting in 1951-52. Can you think of any way whereby back in 1950 you could have anticipated these developments? To answer this question, what empirical data would you seek and how would you use it, with respect to consumer durables generally or to any particular durable good?

Source: Johns Hopkins University. Eisenhower Library, Ferdinand hamburger, Jr. Archives. Department of Political Economy, Series 6, Series 7, Subseries 1, Box 3/1, Folder “Department of Political Economy, Graduate Exams 1933-1965.”

Image Source: Department of Economics, Johns Hopkins University. Webpage “In Memoriam – Carl Christ (1923-2017).” Carl Christ and Arnold Harberger at the Johns Hopkins conference in honor of Marc Nerlove, 2014.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard Social Work Socialism

Harvard. Readings and final exam for social ethics. Peabody, 1906-07

The field of social ethics was taught by the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and then Dean of the Harvard Divinity School, Francis Greenwood Peabody. It was a rather popular secondary field chosen for the graduate general examination by economics graduate students in the early 20th century.  In the spectrum of individualism through socialism, applied social ethics (poor-relief, family, temperance, and “the labor question”) were imported from philosophical/theological studies.

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Building blocks for Peabody’s course

Peabody’s short bibliography on the Ethics of Social Questions published in 1910.

Francis Greenwood Peabody. The Approach to the Social Question. New York: Macmillan, 1912. “The substance of this volume was given as the Earle Lectures at the Pacific Theological Seminary in 1907.”

__________________________

Course Enrollment
1906-07

Social Ethics 1. Professor Peabody and Dr. Rogers. — Social Ethics. The problems of Poor-Relief, the Family, Temperance, and various phases of the Labor Question, in the light of ethical theory.

Total 175: 6 Graduates, 41 Seniors, 54 Juniors, 50 Sophomores, 1 Freshman, 23 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1906-1907, p. 72

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Thick Course Description
1906-07

  1. Social Ethics . — The problems of Poor-Relief, the Family, Temperance, and various phases of the Labor Question, in the light of ethical theory. Lectures, special researches, and prescribed reading. Tu., Th., Sat., at 10. Professor Peabody and Dr. Rogers.

This course is an application of ethical theory to the social problems of the present day. It is to be distinguished from economic courses dealing with similar subjects by the emphasis laid on the moral aspects of the Social Question and on the philosophy of society involved. Its introduction discusses various theories of Ethics and the nature and relations of the Moral Ideal [required reading from Mackenzie’s Introduction to Social Philosophy, and Muirhead’s Elements of Ethics]. The course then considers the ethics of the family [required reading from Spencer’s Principles of Sociology (Volume 1; Volume 2; Volume 3)]; the ethics of poor-relief [required reading from Charles Booth’s Life and Labor of the People (links below)]; the ethics of the labor question [required reading from J. A. Hobson’s The Social Problem, Schäffle’s The Quintessence of Socialism, Adams and Sumner, Labor Problems]; and the ethics of the drink question [required reading from The Liquor Problem; a Summary of Investigations]. In addition to lectures and required reading two special and detailed reports are made by each student, based as far as possible on personal research and observation of scientific methods in poor-relief and industrial reform. These researches are arranged in consultation with the instructor or his assistant; and an important feature of the course is the suggestion and direction of such personal investigation, and the provision to each student of special literature or opportunities for observation.

            Rooms are expressly assigned for the convenience of students of Social Ethics, on the second floor of Emerson Hall, including a large lecture room, a seminary-room, a conference-room, a library, and two rooms occupied by the Social Museum. The Library of 1500 volumes is a special collection for the use of students of Social Ethics, with conveniences for study and research. The Social Museum is a collection of graphical material, illustrating by photographs, models, diagrams, and charts, many movements of social welfare and industrial progress.

Source: Announcement of the Divinity School of Harvard University, 1906-07, p. 22.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Charles Booth’s Life and Labor of the People:

(Original) Volume I, East London;
(Original) Volume II, London;
(Original) Appendix to Volume II;
Note: the previous three original volumes were re-printed as four volumes that then were followed by
Volume V, Population Classified by Trades;
Volume VI, Population Classified by Trades (cont.);
Volume VII, Population Classified by Trades;
Volume VIII, Population Classified by Trades (cont.);
Volume IX, Comparisons, Survey and Conclusions.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Note: Besides the changes in course number, a few minor changes in the course description from (Philosophy 5) 1902-03  Also in the course description Philosophy 5 (1904-05).

___________________________

SOCIAL ETHICS 1
Year-end Examination 1906-07

This paper should be considered as a whole. The time should not be exhausted in answering a few questions, but such limits should be given to each answer as will permit the answering of all the questions in the time assigned.

  1. Explain the significance of the titles:— “Past and Present” [by Thomas Carlyle]; “Unto this Last” [by John Ruskin]; and comment on the teachings involved.
  2. Statistics of wage-loss, employer’s loss, and assistance to employees, in the United States (1881-1900); and their lessons.
  3. The tendencies in contemporary life which appear to the scientific socialist to encourage his faith; with comments.
  4. “The normal relation of the antithesis of which I spoke,” [Socialism and Individualism, Economic and Moral] “is that of cross-correspondence”? (Bosanquet, Civilization of Christendom, p. 316). Comment on this suggestion.
  5. The effect of the growth of trade-unionism on the economic theory of wages. ( A. [Robert Archey] Woods.) [Probably Chapter 1 “The Labor Movement” in Woods’ English Social Movements (2nd ed., 1895), pp. 1-37.]
  6. Distinguish Arbitration, Conciliation, and Coöperation, and indicate the place of each in the Ethics of the Labor Question.
  7. Welfare work at Anzin, and the limitations of its usefulness.
  8. Employer’s Liability, Workmen’s Compensation Acts, and the social philosophy involved. (Adams and Sumner, pp. 478-488.)
  9. Distinguish “Profit-sharing,” “Gain-sharing,” and “Industrial Partnership,” and describe the method undertaken by the United States Steel Corporation.
  10. Compare the operation of the South Carolina liquor-law with that of the Scandinavian System. (The Liquor Problem, pp. 151-156.)

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 8, Bound volume: Examination Papers, 1906-07; Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1907), p. 59.

Image Source: Harvard University Archives.  Francis Greenwood Peabody [photographic portrait, ca. 1900], Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Categories
Germany Italy

Berlin. Germania docet. Adolph Wagner, 1896

Professor of Political Sciences [Staatswissenschaften] Adolph Wagner (1835-1917) of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin served as its Rector in 1895-1896. This post presents a nugget from that year which he shared about the value-added of German training in economics and statistics to Italians educated in Germany, but particularly in Berlin. Wagner was a leading German economist in his day and his name lives on in “Wagner’s Law” – a trend towards an absolute and relative expansion of the public sector. 

Peacock, Alan, and Alex Scott. “The Curious Attraction of Wagner’s Law.” Public Choice, vol. 102, no. 1/2, 2000, pp. 1–17.
JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30026133.s

Adolph Wagner was held in high esteem at Harvard as can be seen in invitations to write for the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Both articles contain his insider views on the state of late 19th century German economics.

“Wagner on the Present State of Political Economy.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 1, no. 1, 1886, pp. 113–33.
JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1883115.

Wagner, Adolf. “Marshall’s Principles of Economics.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 5, no. 3, 1891, pp. 319–38.
JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1879612.

Previously posted at
Economics in the Rear-view Mirror

A wonderful comparison of Berlin and Vienna as centers of economic teaching written by Henry R. Seager (later an economics professor at Columbia University) published in the Journal of Political Economy in 1893.

Berlin University between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900 from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

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Bononia Docet

Source: From Wikimedia Commons: Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Felsina pittrice: vite de pittori bolognesi, vol II, 1678. Illustrazioni di Giovanni Francesco Cassioni, Carlo Cesare Malvasia o altri. Attached to the Italian Wikipedia article.

Adolph Wagner’s Words

Ich besuchte vor einigen Jahren auf den Wunsch eines italienischen Fachgenossen einmal in Rom den damaligen greisen Ministerpräsidenten Depretis. Wir kamen auf die deutschen Universitäten, auf Berlin zu sprechen. Mein Begleiter hob hervor, wie viele italienische Universitätslehrer der Nationalökonomie und Statistik in Deutschland, besonders in Berlin, ihre Studien gemacht „Ja, ja“, bemerkte mit der Ruhe des Alters, aber auch mit einer gewissen Wehmuth der greise Staatsmann: „hiess einst es Bononia docet [Bologna teaches], jetzt heisst es Germania docet  [Germany teaches],.“ Ein schönes, ein erhebendes Wort aus dem Munde eines urtheilsfähigen Ausländers, ein Wort, das stolz machen kann, aber auch — Pflichten auferlegt, nicht nur gegen unsere Heimath, unsere Nation, nein, gegen die Welt, die Menschheit —.

Source: Adolph Wagner, Die Entwicklung der Universität Berlin, 1810-1896. (Rektoratsrede vom 3. August 1896), pp. 18-19.

Adolph Wagner’s Words
à la Google translate + human tweak

A few years ago, at the request of an Italian colleague, I visited the then elderly Prime Minister Depretis in Rome. We came to talk about the German universities, about Berlin. My companion pointed out how many Italian university professors of economics and statistics had studied in Germany, especially in Berlin: “Yes, yes,” remarked the aged statesman with the calmness of age, but also with a certain melancholy: “One used to say Bononia docet [Bologna teaches], but now we say Germania docet [Germany teaches].” Beautiful, uplifting words spoken by a foreigner capable of judgement, words that can make one proud, but also — words that impose duties, not only on our homeland, our nation, but also, on the world, on humanity —

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Image Source: 1899 image included in the “Adolph Wagner” entry at Wikipedia. Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Categories
Economic History Economists Germany

Leipzig, Germany. Professor Karl Bücher, 1847-1930.

We encountered the name of the German economist and professor at the University of Leipzig, Karl Bücher (1847-1930) as the author of a German language quote for Harvard students to translate as part of their 1907 examination on German and French economists of the 19th century taught by Professor Edwin F. Gay. 

Bücher’s life and professional career were the subject of a long post [in German] for the 2012 exhibition dedicated to his Leipzig years by the University Library of Leipzig.

In this post Economics in the Rear-view Mirror offers visitors a few artefacts for Bücher from the turn of the 20th century.  

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From the translator’s Prefatory Note to the 3rd edition of Bücher’s Die Entstehung der Volkswirtchaft:

            The writings of Professor Bücher, in their German dress, require no introduction to economists. His admirable work The Population of Frankfurt in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, published in 1886, gave him immediate celebrity with economic historians, and left him without a rival in the field of historical statistics. In his treatment of economic theory he stands midway between the “younger historical school” of economists and the psychological Austrians.1 A full list of his writings need not be given.2 But I may recall his amplified German edition of Laveleye’s Primitive Property, his little volume The Insurrections of the Slave Labourers, 143-129 B.C., his original and suggestive Labour and Rhythm, discussing the relation between the physiology and the psychology of labour, his investigations into trusts, and his co-editorship of Wagner’s Handbook of Political Economy (the section Industry being in his charge) as indicating the general direction and scope of his researches. The present stimulating volume, which in the original bears the title Die Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft (The Rise of National Economy), gives the author’s conclusions on general industrial development. Somewhat similar ground has been worked over, among recent economic publications, alone by Professor Schmoller’s comprehensive Grundriß der allgemeinen Volkswirtschaftslehre, Pt. I. But the method of treatment and the results of the present work allow it to maintain its unique position.

            1A few facts and dates regarding Professor Bücher’s career may not be uninteresting. Professor Bücher was born in Prussian Rhineland in 1847. He completed his undergraduate studies at Bonn and Göttingen (1866-69). His rapid rise in the German scholastic world is evident from his academic appointments: special lecturer at Göttingen (1869-72), lecturer at Dortmund (1872–73), at Frankfurt Technical School (1873–78), and at Munich (1881); Professor of Statistics at Dorpat, Russia (1882) [now: Tartu, Estonia], of Political Economy and Finance at Basel (1883-90), at Karlsruhe (1890–93), and at Leipsic (1893 to present). From 1878 to the close of 1880 he was Industrial and Social Editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung.

            2This may be found in the Handwörterbuch d. Staatswiss. [Vol. II, 2nd edition. Jena, 1898. See below.]

Source: Karl Bücher, Industrial Evolution, third German edition (German title: Die Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft, Vorträge und Versuche. English translation by S. Morley Wickett, Lecturer on Political Economy and Statistics, University of Toronto. New York: Henry Hold and Company, 1907, pp. iii-iv.

__________________________

Bücher, Karl
Life and writinges 1847-98

geb. am 16.II.1847 zu Kirberg im jetzigen Reg.-Bez. Wiesbaden, studierte 1866-1869 zu Bonn und Göttingen Geschichte, Philologe und Staatswissenschaften und übernahm, nach 7 jähr. Lehrthätigkeit am Gymnasium zu Dortmund und an der Wöhlerschule in Frankfurt a.M., die Stelle eines Redakteurs für Wirtschafts- und Sozialpolitik an der „Frankfurter Zeitung“, die er bis zum 31.XII.1880 bekleidete. Im Februar 1881 habilitierte er sich an der staatswirtschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität München für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, von wo er im Sommer 1882 als ordentl. Professor für Statistik an die Universität Dorpat berufen wurde. Diese Stellung vertauschte er im Herbst 1883 mit der Professur der Nationalökonomie und Finanzwissenschaft an der Universität Basel. Hier blieb Bücher bis Herbst 1890, um welche Zeit er einem Rufe als Professor der Volkswirtschaftalehre an der technischen Hochschule in Karlsruhe Folge leistete. Ostern 1892 gab er diese Stellung auf zu Gunsten der Professur der Statistik und Nationalökonomie an der Universität Leipzig, an welcher er ausserdem seit 1893 das Amt eines Direktors des volkswirtschaftlich-statistischen Seminars bekleidet.

Er veröffentlichte von staatswissenschaftlichen Schriften in Buchform:

— De gente [aetolica] amphictyoniae participe, Bonn 1870, (Dissertation.)

— Die Aufstände der unfreien Arbeiter 143-129 v. Chr., Frankfurt a.M. 1874.

— Die gewerbliche Bildungsfrage und der industrielle Rückgang, Eisenach 1877.

— Lehrlingsfrage and gewerbliche Bildung in Frankreich, Eisenach 1878.

— Gutachten über das gewerbliche Bildungswesen in den Schr. d. V. f. Sozialp., Bd. XV.

— Das Ureigentum von E. de Laveleye. Deutsche Ausgabe, Leipzig 1879. (Die Kap. VI, IX, XIV u. XV sind Originalarbeiten des Herausgebers.)

— Die Frauenfrage im Mittelalter. Tübingen 1882.

— Die Arbeiterfrage im Kaufmannsstande. [D. Zeit- und Streitfragen XII), Berlin 1883.

— Die Bevölkerung von Frankfurt a.M. im XIV. und XV. Jahrh., I. Bd., Tübingen 1886.

— Von den Produktionsstätten des Weihnachtsmarktes (Vortrag), Basel 1887 (Oeff. Vorträge geh. in d. Schweiz, Bd. IX, Heft 9).

— Die soziale Gliederung der Frankfurter Bevölkerung im Mittelalter. (Berichte des Fr. Deutschen Hochstifts 1886/7, Heft III).

— Zur Geschichte der internationalen Fabrikgesetzgebung, Wien 1888.

— Frankfurter Buchbinder-Ordnungen vom XVI. bis zum XIX. Jahrh., Tübingen 1888.

— Basels Staatseinnahmen und Steuerverteilung 1878-1887. Publiziert vom Finanzdepartement, Basel 1888.

— Die Bevölkerung des Kantons Basel-Stadt am 1.XII.1888, Basel 1890.

— Die Wohnungs-Enquete in der Stadt Basel vom 1.-19.II.1889, Basel 1891.

—Die Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft, 6 Vorträge, Tübingen 1893; dasselbe, 2. Aufl., ebenda 1898.

— Arbeit und Rhythmus. Leipzig 1896. (Aus Abhandlungen der k. sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissensch.)

— Die Wirtschaft der Naturvölker. Vortrag, geh. in der Gehe-Stiftung zu Dresden, am 13.XI.1897, Dresden 1898.

— Die wirtschaftlichen Aufgaben der modernen Stadtgemeinde. Vortrag, Leipzig 1898. (Hochschulvorträge, Heft 10.)

Er veröffentlichte von Staatswissenschaftlichen Abhandlungen in Zeitschriften:

— 1. Arch. f. soz. Gesetzg., etc., Jahrg. I (1888): Das Basel-städtische Gesetz betr. den Schutz der Arbeiterinnen.

— 2. Jahrb. f. Nat. u. Stat., N.F., Bd. VIII (1882): Das russische Gesetz über die in Fabriken und Manufakturen arbeitenden Minderjährigen v. 1.VI.1882.

— 3. Preuss. Jahrb., Bd. XC (1898): Der wirtschaftliche Urzustand.

— 4. Ztschr. f. Schweiz. Statistik, Jahrg. XXIII (1887): Zur Statistik der inneren Wanderungen und des Niederlassungswesens.

— 5. Ztschr. f. Staatsw.,

Jahrg. XLIV (1888): Die wirtschaftliche Interessenvertretung in der Schweiz und die Schweizer Arbeiterorganisationen,
Jahrg. L (1894): Die diokletianische Taxordnung vom Jahre 301 (Artik. 1 u. 2),
Jahrg. LII (1896): Der öffentliche Haushalt der Stadt Frankfurt im Mittelalter.

In diesem „Handwörterbuch“ hat Bücher die Artikel [folgenden] geschrieben:

„Allmenden“ (Bd. I. 1. Aufl., S. 181 ff.; 2. Aufl. S. 255 ff.),
„Die Arbeiterschützgesetzgebung in der Schweiz“ (Bd. I, 1. Aufl. S. 448ff.; 2. Aufl. S. 588ff.),
„Die Arbeiterversicherung in der Schweiz“ (Bd. I, 1. Aufl. S. 551 ff.; 2. Aufl. S. 694 ff.) und
„Die Arbeitseinstellungen in der Schweiz“ (Bd. I, 1. Aufl. S. 651ff.; 2. Aufl. S. 842 ff.)

Source: Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, Vol. II, 2nd edition. Jena, 1898.

Image Source: From the poster for the temporary exhibition of the Archives of the University of Leipzig in 2012: Der Nationalökonom und Zeitungshändler Karl Bücher. Die Leipziger Jahre 1892–1930.

Categories
Exam Questions France Germany Harvard History of Economics Methodology

Harvard. Exam for 19th century French and German Economics, Gay, 1906-07

von Thünen and Le Play

Edwin Francis Gay (1867-1946) had spent over a decade studying history and economics in Europe before coming to Harvard in 1903. I am somewhat surprised that he could find even three students to take his graduate course that appears to have required a better-than-average reading knowledge of both German and French.

In 1902-03 Gay taught “Outlines of the Development of Economic Thought in Germany in the Nineteenth Century”.

In 1904-05 he then taught “German and French economists of the 19th century” but Harvard’s collection of printed economics exams for 1904-05 did not include Gay’s exam for the course.

Fortunately, the year-end examination from the academic year 1906-07 was printed and we have transcribed it below. Added bonus material: an English translation of the paragraph taken from a book written by the German economist Karl Bücher that students were expected to translate.

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Course Enrollment

Economics 22. Professor Gay. — German and French Economists of the Nineteenth Century.

Total 3: 3 Graduates.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1906-1907, p. 71.

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ECONOMICS 22
Year-end Examination, 1906-07

  1. Explain von Thünen’s wage theory. What is his contribution to economic method? How does it compare with Le Play’s?
  2. Compare the conceptions of distributive justice entertained by the French socialists with those of the Austrian school.
  3. Trace the development of the concept of pure profits in the German and French economists.
  4. Discuss the attack of the German historical school on the classical economists and its justification.
  5. Translate die following:
    “Zwei Dinge müssen auf diesem Gebiete den an den Kategorien der modernen Volkswirtschaft geschulten Kopf besonders befremden; die Häufigkeit, mit der unkörperliche Sachen („Verhältnisse“) zu wirtschaftlichen Gütern werden und dem Verkehre unterliegen, und ihre verkehrsrechtliche Behandlung als Immobilien. An ihnen ist so recht zu sehen, wie die beginnende Tauschwirtschaft den Spielraum, den ihr die damalige Produktionsordnung versagte, dadurch zu erweitern suchte, dass sie in täppischem Zugreifen fast alles zum Verkehrsgut machte und so die Sphäre des Privatrechts ins Ungemessene ausdehnte. Was hat man im Mittelalter nicht verliehen, verschenkt, verkauft und verpfändet! Die herrschaftliche Gewalt über Länder und Städte, Grafschafts- und Vogteirechte, Cent- und Gaugerichte, kirchliche Würden und Patronate, Bannrechte, Fähren und Wegerechte, Münze und Zoll, Jagd- und Fischereigerechtsame, Beholzungsrechte, Zehnten, Fronden, Grundzinsen und Renten, überhaupt Reallasten jeder Art. Wirtschaftlich betrachtet, teilen alle diese Rechte und Verhältnisse mit dem Grund und Boden die Eigentümlichkeit, nicht von dem Orte ihrer Ausübung entfernt und nicht beliebig vermehrt werden zu können.”

[Note: quote comes from Professor Karl Bücher, University of Leipzig. Die  Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft, Vorträge und Versuche, 3rd ed. (Tübingen, 1901), p. 153.]

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 8, Bound volume: Examination Papers, 1906-07; Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1907), pp. 43-44.

English translation of Question 5’s quote

There are two things in connection with this that must appear especially strange to a student of modern political economy, namely, the frequency with which immaterial things (relationships) become economic commodities and subjects of exchange, and their treatment under commercial law as real property. These show clearly how primitive exchange sought to enlarge the sphere denied it under the existing conditions of production by awkwardly transforming, into negotiable property, almost everything it could lay hold upon, and thus extending infinitely the domain of private law. What an endless variety of things in mediaeval times were lent, bestowed, sold, and pawned! — the sovereign power over territories and towns; county and bailiff’s rights; jurisdiction over hundreds and cantons; church dignities and patronages; suburban monopoly rights; ferry and road privileges; prerogatives of mintage and toll, of hunting and fishing; wood-cutting rights, tithes, statute labour, ground-rents, and revenues; in fact charges of every kind falling upon the land. Economically considered, all these rights and “relationships”” share with land the peculiarity that they cannot be removed from the place where they are enjoyed, and that they cannot be multiplied at will.

Source: Karl Bücher, Industrial Evolution, third German edition (German title: Die Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft, Vorträge und Versuche. English translation by S. Morley Wickett, Lecturer on Political Economy and Statistics, University of Toronto. New York: Henry Hold and Company, 1907, p. 131.

Image Source: Johann Heinrich von Thünen (Wikimedia Commons). Frédéric Le Play (Social History Portal)

Categories
Carnegie Institute of Technology Columbia Economists Tufts

Columbia. Economics PhD alumnus, Leonard Stott Blakey, 1912

In today’s edition of Meet an Economics Ph.D. alumnus we encounter a 1912 Columbia economics Ph.D. who had fallen through the cracks of my list of Columbia University economics graduates. Leonard Stott Blakey actually did manage to obtain an economics professorship at the Carnegie Institute of Technology for a couple of years. His Columbia thesis adviser was the sociologist Franklin Giddings at a time when the gap between academic economics and sociology was relatively small.

Blakey died at age 38 after a car ran into him in Chicago where he had found a job as economic advisor to the Benjamin Electric Company. So there is not much of a shadow cast into future economic research, but his story still possesses value as a one mosaic tile in the greater sweep of the history of economics. 

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Leonard Stott Blakey
(1881-1919)

1881. Born April 15 in Racine County, Wisconsin. Son of Charles and Ella Apple Blakey.

1883. Family moved to a farm near Spirit Lake, Iowa.

Family later moved to Estherville, Iowa where Leonard attended grade and high school.

1900. Graduated from high school.

1904. B.S. from Beloit College.

Taught in high school at Savanna, Illinois and Memorial University, Mason City, Iowa.

1907-08. University scholarship, Columbia University. Columbia Spectator (June 1, 1907), p. 1.

1908-09. Schiff Fellow, Columbia University.

1910. The Boston Globe (September 18, 1910), p. 56. Tufts hired Leonard Stott Blakey, a graduate of Beloit, as instructor in economics.

Courses taught by Blakey  at Tufts:  From the catalogues 1910-1912

1. Elements of Economics. Ely’s Outlines of Economics will be used as a guide
2. Modern Industrial History of Europe
22. Economic and Industrial History of the United States. Bogart’s Economic History of the United States is used as a guide.
4. Principles of Public Finance. The Elements of Public Finance, by Daniels, is used as a guide.
5. Money, Credit, and Banking. Dewey’s Financial History of the United States is used as a guide.
14. Theory of Statistics.
15. Social Statistics.

1911-12. Annual Report of the President of Tufts College 1911-12.  “The following gentlemen have severed their connection with the ‘College on the Hill,’ either through resignation or the expiration of their terms of office,…Leonard Stott Blakey, B.S., Instructor in Economics and Statistics” p. 4

1912. Ph.D. Thesis: The Sale of Liquor in the South: the History of the Development of Normal Social Restraint in Southern Commonwealths” by Leonard Stott Blakey, A.M., Sometime Schiff Fellow in Columbia University, Associate Professor of Economics and Sociology in Dickinson College
“This work owes its origin to a suggestion which came to the writer from his instructor, Professor Franklin H. Giddings of Columbia University, while pursuing graduate courses of study in that institution.”

1912-13. Assistant Professor of Economics and Sociology
Catalogue of Dickinson College 1912-1913. Carlisle, PA.

1913-14. Professor of Economics and Sociology
Catalogue of Dickinson College 1913-1914. Carlisle, PA

Dickinson College
ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY
Professor Blakey

In its course of instruction, the chief aim of the department of Economics and Sociology is to give a general view of the most important subject matter in the economic and sociological sciences, beginning with the elements of the science and passing by degrees to courses of an investigative order. In addition to this broad general outline the courses and the methods of study are arranged to give some specialized preparation to students looking forward to business careers.

A. ELEMENTS OF ECONOMICS.

This course will give the student a general survey of the fields of theoretical and practical economics. The first part deals with the principles of production, distribution, exchange and consumption of wealth; the second part, with the present organization of industry and the economic and social problems arising from the relations of employers and employees. Among the problems considered are the labor problem, including the history and policies of trade unions, injunctions, arbitration, co-operation, profit-sharing, child labor, factory legislation, workingmen’s insurance, and socialism. Taussig’s Principles of Economics will be used as a text.

Required of all Sophomores. Three hours per week.

B. MODERN INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF EUROPE.

After a brief survey of the economic conditions in the European countries at the close of the Middle Ages, the course deals with the commercial and industrial development of the chief European countries since the middle of the eighteenth century, with special attention to Great Britain.

Lectures, supplemented by prescribed topical readings. Open to Juniors and Seniors. Three hours per week. First half-year.

C. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

A brief survey of the economic life of the colonists will be followed by a study of the factory system, public land policy, transportation facilities, and shipping before the Civil War; export trade, scientific agriculture, and railway extension after the War; recent development of large scale production, industrial combinations, and labor problems.

Lectures, supplemented by prescribed topical readings.

Open to Juniors and Seniors. Three hours per week, second half-year.

D. COURSES B AND C COMBINED.

E. INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION AND BUSINESS MANAGEMENT.

This course will include an examination of the human and physical factors in the organization and processes of industry; the internal economies of organization due to the division of labor, etc.; external economies of organization due to the concentration and integration of businesses; and the influences of the modern means of intercommunication on businesses. Special emphasis will be given to the growing size and complexity of modern business structure and to the managerial, financial, and political questions arising from business concentration, and the programs proposed for their solution will be analyzed.

Attention is given to the general nature and the different types of business management, and to the functions of the entrepreneur. The various problems involved in the philosophy, demands, and applicability of scientific management will be examined. The course closes with an analysis of the growing spirit of co-operation in business management, the growing interest in the problems of vocational guidance, and the tendency to interpret industry in terms of human worth.

Lectures, assigned readings, and discussions. Open to Seniors. Three hours per week.

F. PRINCIPLES OF SOCIOLOGY.

Beginning with a study of the biological and psychological bases of human society, this course traces its evolution under the operation of the various forces — physical environment, growth and migration of populations, social institutions, etc. and analyzes social phenomena with the view of arriving at certain laws of social progress and noting their bearing upon present social problems.

Chapin’s Introduction to the Study of Social Evolution will be used as a text. Open to Juniors and Seniors. Three hours per week.

G. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS.

The work of this course will consist largely of practical investigations, by individual members of the class, of some selected problem in economics or sociology, to be assigned by the instructor and pursued under his direction. A paper will be prepared on the assigned topic, the results presented before the class for criticism and discussion. The course will open with an introduction to the principles, theory, and practice in the statistical method. Open to Seniors completing Economics E or Sociology F. Three hours per week.

Source:  Catalogue of Dickinson College, 1913-1914, pp. 31-33.

1914-15.  Professor of Economics and Sociology at Dickinson College (Absent on leave)

1914. Review of H.R. Seager’s Principles of Economics: Being a Revision of Introduction to Economics. In Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (September 1914, pp. 294-296). Identified as “Leonard Stott Blakey, Dickinson College).

1914-16[?]. Worked at the air nitrates plant in Muscle Shoals, Alabama

1916. Assistant Professor of Economics and Business Administration, School of Applied Science, Carnegie Institute of Technology. Pittsburgh.

1918. The Pittsburgh Post (February 21, 1918), p. 14.
Assistant Professor of economics and business administration of the Carnegie Institute of Technology.

End of the WWI, associated with the Bing and Bing Construction Co. of New York.

1919. He had accepted a position as Economics Advisor to the Benjamin Electric Company of Chicago.

1919. “Prof. Leonard Blakey of the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, died yesterday in the county hospital. He was struck by an automobile Friday night.” Blakey “had come to Chicago to make arrangements with a. W. Shaw & Co. for the publication of his book, which deals with the high cost of living.” Brother A.R. Blakey lives in Chicago. Chicago Tribune (October 5, 1919), p. 1.

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Other Newspaper Accounts
of Leonard Blakey’s death

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Oct. 6, 1919), p. 20.

“[Leonard Blakey] was not connected with the Carnegie Institute of Technology at the time of his death, according to officials of the institution.
Prof. Blakey, two years ago, was assistant professor of commercial engineering at the Pittsburgh school, but left here to go to Washington, where he entered government service.”

Evening Times-Republican, Marshalltown, Iowa (December 15, 1919), p. 2.

At time of his death in Chicago, Leonard Blakey just completing a book called “Wage Scales and the Living Costs”, a comprehensive survey of the wage question and cost of living put down in a concise and readable form. The book, which is just now making its appearance, following his death, is creating a great amount of interest throughout the country, as it deals with present day conditions. The New York Sun introduced the book, noting Blakey was born in Racine, Wisconsin, educated there and in Iowa, graduated from Beloit College, taking post-graduate course at Columbia University. Instructor in economics in Tufts College and at Dickinson, and Carnegie Institute of Technology. “During the war he was the labor expert at the Mussels Shoals air nitrate enterprise. In January 1919 he began his study. He went to Chicago (as opposed to New York City to get speedy publication”. “He met his death as he was on his way to have his final revision of the last chapter retyped for the printers.

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Obituaries for Leonard Stott Blakey transcribed at the Find-A-Grave Website

Leonard Blakey Hit By Auto
Was In Chicago Attending to Business Matters – Struck By Speeding Car
Just Completed Gov. Book
Was Brought Here for Burial, Was a Son of Chas. Blakey, a Former Resident Here

Estherville Enterprise, Estherville, IA, October 8, 1919.

Friends of Leonard Blakey of the Chas. Blakey family, were greatly shocked on Sunday last to learn of the sudden death by accident of Leonard Blakey in Chicago. He had been connected with a New York firm and was making a change to Chicago. He came there and took rooms with his father, sister and brother Roy, who is in the Rush Medical school. He had been down to the city during the day consulting his new employer and that evening went to the Y.M.C.A. building to get some stenographic work done. It was about 9 o’clock in the evening and it is supposed he was returning from the Y.M.C.A. building when an auto struck him. He was so badly injured he never regained consciousness. He had no Chicago address and the police rushed him to the hospital. On his clothing was his Pittsburg address and they at once endeavored to get in touch with someone there. In the hospital was an Intern who remembered there was a medical student in Rush by that name and after twenty-four hours after the accident they got in touch with Roy Blakey. The Blakey family in the meantime had made an endeavor through the police to locate him.
The remains were brought to this city for burial.

The following is the obituary used by Rev. Voorhies who officiated at the funeral services:

Leonard Stott Blakey was born in Racine County, Wis., April 15, 1881, the son of Charles and Ella Apple Blakey. He attended school near Spirit Lake, Iowa, the family having moved to a farm near there when he was two years old. Later the family moved to Estherville where Leonard attended the grade and high school, graduating in 1900. In the Fall of the same year he entered Beloit College where he graduated in 1904. Following this he taught in the high school at Savanna, Illinois, and Memorial University, Mason City, Iowa. Then he attended Columbia University, New York, receiving the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1911 (sic). He again took up teaching, going first to Tufts College, Boston, and later to Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa. The following year he went to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to take up employment work with the Air Nitrates plant. At the close of the war he became associated with the Bing and Bing Construction Co., of New York. During the latter period he has been writing a book on the subject: Has Labor Carried Its War Burden,” which is now in the hands of the publishers. He had just accepted a position as Economics Advisor to the Benjamin Electric Company of Chicago. Surviving members of the family are: His father, Charles Blakey, his brother Roy Blakey, and sister Dorothy Blakey, all being residents of Chicago.

Book of A Local Boy is Popular
Leonard Blakey’s Work Now Running in New York Sun Was Recently Killed
Work Has to Do With the Wage Scale and High Cost of Living – Is Authority

Vindicator and Republican, Estherville, IA, December 10, 1919

At the time Leonard Blakey met with his death in Chicago last fall he was just completing a book called “Wage Scales and the Living Costs.” It is a comprehensive survey of the wage question and the cost of living put down in a concise and readable form. The book which is just now making its appearance following his death, is creating a large amount of interest throughout the country as it deals with present day conditions.
Leonard Blakey was an Estherville boy. He was known to the great majority of our people and his career followed with a great deal of interests by local people. His untimely death last fall was deeply mourned by all his former friends. Had he been permitted to live he would have accomplished great things in this world. As it is, he leaves behind this scientific analysis which is being used throughout the country in settling important questions of the day. The Vindicator and Republican has on file a copy of the New York Sun containing the first installment of the book and we will be glad to loan it any former friends who may wish to read it. Following is the tribute paid to the memory of Leonard by that paper at the beginning of the article:
Leonard Blakey, economist and professor, from whose last work the following analysis of Wage Increases and Living Costs was taken, was killed accidentally by an automobile in Chicago recently just as he was to reap the fruits of years of study. He was born thirty-eight years ago in Racine, Wisconsin, was educated in the public schools there and in Iowa, and graduated from Beloit College, taking a post graduate study course at Columbia University in this city.
He was an instructor in economics in Tufts College and at Dickson, and then was attached to the Carnegie Institute of Technology. During the war he was the labor expert at the Mussels Shoals air nitrate enterprise. Last January Mr. Blakey began his study of wage increases and living costs with the idea that the findings might be of value to the nation in its reconstruction problems. When the report was partly completed he was urged to publish it in book form for use as a text book at Columbia and at Carnegie Tech. He also planned to send copies for use of the Industrial conference in session in Washington.
Owing to conditions in the book trade in New York Mr. Blakey went to Chicago to get speedy publication. The A. W. Shaw Company took up the work. He met his death as he was on his way to have his final revision of the last chapter retyped for printers.

Source: Wayback machine archived copy of the Find-A-Grave entry for Leonard Stott Blakey (1881-1919).

Image Source: Carnegie Institute of Technology yearbook, The 1918 Thistle, p. 80. Portrait of Professor Stott Blakey.

Categories
Bryn Mawr Columbia Economists NYU Pennsylvania Wellesley

Columbia. Economics Ph.D. Alumnus, Henry Raymond Mussey. 1905

Time to meet another economics Ph.D. alumnus.

This post provides a chronology of the life and career of Henry R. Mussey who received his graduate economics (and sociology) training at Columbia University. His useful editing skills landed him jobs twice at The Nation where he served as managing editor for a number of years. A man of convictions sufficiently strong to quietly resign his Columbia/Barnard position in protest of the dismissal of psychology professor James McKeen Cattell and English/comparative literature assistant professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana in 1917 for allegedly disseminating “doctrines tending to encourage a spirit of disloyalty to the Government of the United States.” Historian Charles Beard’s resignation also in protest of these dismissals was both public and fiery. It is not clear why Mussey did not create more of a fuss, but I would guess his personality was the opposite of a fist-pounding, door-slamming alpha-academic. 

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Other posts with Henry R. Mussey related content

His 1910 essay “Economics in the College Course.”

Civil rights activist’s Virginia Foster Durr’s recollection of “Professor Muzzy” at Wellesley College in the early 1920s.

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Henry Raymond Mussey
Timeline

1875. December 7. Born in Atkinson, Illinois to parents William Alvord Mussey (1839-1926) and Louise Nowers (1845-1928).

Began his collegiate studies at the Geneseo Collegiate Institute, Illinois.

1900. A.B. Beloit.

Fun fact.  In 1899 H.R. Mussey (’00) played the role of Antigone. Performances of Greek dramas given in English were a staple of Beloit College life.
Source: Edward Dwight Eaton, Historical sketches of Beloit College, (Second edition, 1935), p. 234

1901-02. Presented a paper “The Theory of Monopolies” in John Bates Clark seminar in political economy and finance that met every other week.

1902. Fellow in the Columbia Department of Economics, appointed instructor in Economics to replace A.M. Day who had resigned to work for the new Tenement House Commission of New York City. “Mr. Mussey has already acquired much popularity and confidence among the students in his classes.” Columbia Daily Spectator, Vol. XLV, No. 42 (21 March 1902), p. 1.

1903. The “Fake” Instalment Business. New York: The University Settlement Society.

1903-05. Assistant Professor of Economics and Industry in New York University School of Commerce .
Source: Barnard College, Morterboard, 1912, p. 28.

1905. Ph.D., Columbia University. Thesis: Combination in the Mining Industry: A Study of Concentration in Lake Superior Iron Ore Production. (vol. XIX, No. 3) New York: Columbia University Press.

1905. Engaged to Miss Mabel Hay Barrows of New York. Ca. 1902 she directed a revival production of the Greek play The Ajax of Sophocles at the university. Winter 1904-05 Ajax performed in New York. Also given in different colleges (Manhattan, Chicago, University of California) travelling as far West as California. “Mr. Mussey accompanied the players as general director of stage manager. He is professor of economics and history in New York university.” The Minneapolis Journal (Jan 24, 1905, p. 11).

“The music for the occasion has been composed by Miss Constance Mills and the costumes worn by the actors and singers have been copied form Greek vase paintings. Preceding the idyls a chorus of maidens will sing the oldest piece of Greek music of which both words and notes are preserved—the Delphic Hymn to Apollo. The production will be rendered further interesting by three Greek dances, one of the religious type, one mimetic in character, and the other a reminiscence of the nymphs of sea and land, which will be given between the scenes from Theocritus.”
Source: Brooklyn Life (February 11, 1905, p. 32).

1905. June 28. Married Mabel Hay Barrows (1874-1931) in Georgeville, Quebec. One son.

1905-07. Associate Professor of Economics at Bryn Mawr College.
Source: Barnard College, Morterboard, 1912, p. 28.

1907-09. Assistant Professor of Sociology in the University of Pennsylvania.
Source: Barnard College, Morterboard, 1912, p. 28.

1908. Passport application (May 6). Permanent residence given as Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Occupation university professor. Passport to be sent to Loan Hall, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.

1909-1917. On the faculty of Barnard College.

1910. Economics in the College Course. Educational Review, Vol. XL (October, 1910), pp. 239-249.

1910. Drs. Agger and Mussey project. “Intersection debate” conducted by the Barnard Literary Association. Teams selected of four students from each class to debate, “Resolved that the common ownership of all the means of production will promote social welfare.”

1911. Adjunct Professor of Economics.
Source: Barnard College, Morterboard, 1911, p. 27.

1911. Henry Raymond Mussey, editor. The Reform of the Currency. In the Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York, vol. 1, no. 2, (January 1911).

1912. Assistant Professor of Economics, Barnard College.
Source: Barnard College, Morterboard, 1912, p. 28). Under his faculty portrait: “A smile that puts to flight all care and troubles, withal it teaches us of poverty and rents.”

1912. [identified as Associate Professor of Economics, Columbia University] Mussey, Henry Raymond. “Discussion of Investments on Instalments.” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York, vol. 2, no. 2, 1912, pp. 107–08.
JSTOR https://doi.org/10.2307/1171942

1916. Passport application (January 17). Permanent residence Croton-on-Hudson, New York. Plan to leave from the port of Seattle on the Awa Maru on March 7, 1916 to travel and study in Japan and China.

1916. Associate Professor of Economics in Columbia University, representing Beloit College at Vassar College Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration

1917. “took part in the arranging the program of a convention of the academy at Long Beach, L.I. in May, 1917, which caused comment because of alleged pacifist and pro-German speeches.” From Mussey’s New York Times obituary (February 11, 1940), p. 48

Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York, Vol. VII, Nos. 2,3 (July 1917). Edited by Henry Raymond Mussey and Stephen Pierce Duggan.

Part I. 1. The Democratic Ideal in World Organization; 2. Future Pan-American Relations.
Part II. 3. Future Relations with the Far East; 4. Investments and Concessions as Causes of International Conflict.

1917. Associate Professor of Economics on the Barnard College Foundation. Tendered resignation to be effective at the convenience of the University.
Columbia Daily Spectator, Vol. XLI, No. 47 (4 December 1917), p. 1

“Rumours that circulated about the University yesterday to the effect that Professor Henry Raymond Mussey, Associate Professor of Economics on the Barnard Foundation, had tendered his resignation because of his sympathy with Professor Beard’s recent similar action were thoroly dispelled by various authorities on the campus, including Professor Mussey himself.
Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Vol. XLI, No. 48 (5 December 1917), p. 1

 

“Although Dr. Mussey refused to comment at the time, it was reported that the resignation was designed as a protest against the dismissal by the university of two other faculty members [James McKeen Cattell and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana]”
From New York Times obituary (February 11, 1940), p. 48

1918. Edited National Conference on War Economy. Vol. VIII, No. 1 (July 1918) of the Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York.

1918-20. Managing editor of The Nation.

1922. Joins the Wellesley College faculty.

PROFESSOR HENRY R. MUSSEY TO TEACH HERE
Appointed to Position in Economics Department
The Wellesley News (January 26, 1922), p. 2.

                  Dr. Henry R. Mussey has recently been appointed a member of the Department of Economics and Sociology, and is to come to Wellesley at the beginning of the second semester.

                  Dr. Mussey has had a distinguished career as teacher in several of the colleges of highest standing. He has been at various times Assistant Professor of Economics and Industry in New York University School of Commerce, Assistant Professor of Sociology in the University of Pennsylvania, Associate Professor of Economics at Bryn Mawr College, and Associate Professor of Economics at Barnard and Columbia.

                  For the past four years Dr. Mussey has given his time to journalism and public affairs, serving successively as managing editor of the Nation and of the Searchlight, and as executive secretary of the People’s Legislative Service at Washington.

                  Wellesley is fortunate in having the first fruits of Dr. Mussey’s extra-academic experience.

“Through the studies which I have recently made in Washington of American shipping interests and the Merchant Marine,” said Mr. Mussey, new professor in the Department of Economics….[made] during the time he was conducting investigations for senators and congressmen at Washington, just before he joined the faculty of Wellesley College.”
Source: The Wellesley News (February 23, 1922), p. 5.

1922-1929. Joined Wellesley College February 1922, left in 1929 to serve as Managing Editor of The Nation. Returned to Wellesley in 1931. The Wellesley News (February 15, 1940)

1929-31. Returns to The Nation as managing editor.

1930. Mussey prepared survey “for the League for Independent Political Action in which need for the formation of a new political party to deal with unemployment was set forth.” From New York Times obituary (February 11, 1940), p. 48

THIRD PARTY PLANS ARE LAID BY GROUP
League for Independent Political Action, Headed by Columbia Professor, Is Formed.
By the Associated Press.

NEW, YORK, September 9. Formation of the League for Independent Political Action, to help in organizing a new national political party, was announced yesterday. Prof. John Dewey of Columbia University is chairman.

The announcement said a national committee of 100 had been formed to start the movement opposing the Republican and Democratic parties.

Among the league’s aims, according to the announcement, are public ownership of public utilities, unemployment and health Insurance, old age pensions, relief for the farmer on, virtually a free trade basis, high progressive taxes on incomes, inheritances and increases in land values; abolition of “yellow dog” contracts and injunctions in labor disputes, independence of the Philippines and non-restriction of Negro and immigrant labor suffrage.

Officers include James Maurer, president of the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor; Zona Gale, of Wisconsin, author; Paul H. Douglas, professor of industrial relations, University of Chicago, and W. E. B. Dubois of New York, Negro educator, vice presidents.
Source: Evening Star, Washigton, D.C. (September 9, 1929), p. 16

1931. Returns to Wellesley College. [The Wellesley News (February 15, 1940)]

1931. Mussey’s wife, Mabel Hay Barrows, died at Neubrandenburg, Mecklenburg-Strelitz. November 30.

“Doctor and Mrs Mussey were abroad for a year, and she was taken suddenly sick while travelling through Germany.” Boston Globe (December 7, 1931), p. 11.

Date of death from American Consular Service, Report of the Death of an American Citizen. Cause of death: Intestinal Ulcers and intestinal complications as certified by attending physician (Duodenal Ulcer). Cremated.

1934. July 15. Married Miss Sara Corbett.

1936. “helped organize in Boston the Massachusetts Society for Freedom in Teaching.” From New York Times obituary (February 11, 1940), p. 48

1940. February 10. Henry Raymond Mussey, A. Barton Hepburn professor of economics, died in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

Image Source: Bryn Mawr College Yearbook, Class of 1907.

Categories
Gender Undergraduate Wellesley

Wellesley. Economics education of Virginia Foster Durr, ca. 1922

Again we may thank serendipity and my propensity to plunge into the rabbit-holes of opportunity for another post. I came across a collection of oral history interviews in the University of North Carolina’s Documenting the American South while seeking information about UNC economics professor Daniel Houston Buchanan. It was in that collection of primary resources that I stumbled upon the 1975 interviews with the Civil Rights activist Virginia Foster Durr. In her description of her years at Wellesley College, I came across Durr’s positive recollection of economics professor “Muzzy”. That part of her interview was reworked and included in her autobiography seen below. I then decided to track down the professor who ignited her lifelong interest in economic inequality. It would have made my work slightly easier had she or her editor thought about checking the correct spelling of Muzzy. The professor in question turns out to be Henry Raymond Mussey (Columbia Ph.D., 1905).

What we have with this post some indication of the impact made by one economics instructor on the future political life of one of his students. She fought the good fight and Mussey was a positive influence in her personal development. 

Bonus Material: What Durr had to say about matters sexual and biblical at Wellesley in the early 1920s has been included along with the account of her economics awakening.

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Virginia Foster Durr

Born August 6, 1903, and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, Virginia Foster Durr was the youngest child of Ann (Patterson) and Sterling Johnson Foster. She attended Wellesley College from 1921 to 1923, when she was forced to withdraw due to lack of funds. In 1926 she married Clifford Judkins Durr. In 1933, when Clifford Judkins Durr was appointed to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the Durrs moved to Seminary Hill, Virginia; Clifford Judkins Durr later worked for the Federal Communications Commission.

During the years the Durrs lived in Virginia, Virginia Foster Durr led an active social life. Her circle included government officials she knew through Clifford Judkins Durr and through her sister, Josephine, and brother-in-law, Hugo Black, Sr., who was appointed to the United States Supreme Court in 1937. She also devoted time to liberal causes. From 1938 to 1948 Virginia Foster Durr was active in the Southern Conference in Human Welfare, primarily fighting the poll tax. She campaigned for progressive Democrats in 1942 and for the Progressive Party, supporting Henry A. Wallace’s 1948 presidential bid. She also endorsed the American Peace Crusade in 1951.

In 1951, after a brief period in Denver, the Durrs returned to Alabama, where Clifford Judkins Durr opened a private law practice in Montgomery, and Virginia Foster Durr worked as his secretary. In 1954 Virginia Foster Durr and others were accused of being Communists and were called before the Senate Internal Security Sub-Committee, chaired by Senator James Eastland of Mississippi. Although Clifford Judkins Durr did not serve as Virginia Foster Durr’s attorney, he did a great deal of work on the case, collecting information about the informants and providing legal advice to Virginia Foster Durr and her co-defendants. The accusations were ultimately proven to be false.

In 1955, when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger, Clifford Judkins Durr was called in as her attorney and arranged for her release on bail. This incident sparked the “Montgomery Bus Boycott,” during which African Americans refused to ride on public transportation in the city for over a year. Thus began a second period of civil rights activism for Virginia Foster Durr.

Virginia Foster Durr’s political activities, and Clifford Judkins Durr’s activities with the National Lawyers’ Guild and his public attacks on loyalty oaths and the FBI, led to surveillance by the Bureau.

The Durrs had five children, four of whom survived to adulthood: Ann Durr Lyon, Lucy Durr Hackney, Virginia (“Tilla”) Foster Durr, and Lulah Durr Colan. After the death of Clifford Judkins Durr in 1975, Virginia Foster Durr lived in Wetumpka, Alabama, spending summers on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. Her autobiography, Outside the Magic Circle, was published in 1985. She continued to be politically active until a few years before her death. She died in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1999, at the age of 95.

Source: Biographical note to Papers of Virginia Foster Durr, ca. 1910-2007 in the Schlessinger Library, Radcliffe Institute Collection.

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Sex, Religion, and Economics
The liberations of Virginia Foster Durr at Wellesley College

                  …Instead of making us think how wonderful it would be to have a baby, we developed a real horror of such a disgusting performance. But that was typical of Wellesley: they would teach you one thing on a scientific basis but never tell you how the baby got into the mother’s stomach. Now, I’m sure there were girls at Wellesley who did know, but not the group I was with. We had been so inhibited by that time that we didn’t want to know. We didn’t discuss things like that. We talked about romance and beaus and lovers and sweethearts but not sex.

                  I’m sure the Southern girls believed, as I did, that sex was something connected with black people. It happened in the basement and was dirty and ugly and smelled bad, with a man leaving in the middle of the night or early in the morning and Mother getting upset and saying, “She’s had a man down there all night.” Something was ugly and disgusting about it.

                  We had some excellent teachers at Wellesley. I had a marvelous teacher in economics, Professor Muzzy (sic). He was a socialist, a Fabian. The Russian Revolution had taken place, but I never heard about it. Communism and Russia were far removed from my world. Muzzy was a follower of the Webbs. He read their great massive volumes with the details about how many outhouses there were in a certain road in London and the terrible plight of the poor. There were all kinds of tables and statistics that I had difficulty following. But I did get the impression that the great majority of people in the world had a pretty hard time. Once Muzzy gave me a paper to write. He knew that I came from Birmingham, so he said, “Mrs. Smith is the wife of a steelworker and her husband makes three dollars a day. Now tell me how Mrs. Smith with three children is going to arrange her budget so that she can live.”

                  Well, I tried to do it. I had to look up the price of food and rent and doctors. It was an active lesson in economics. I soon realized that Mrs. Smith couldn’t possibly live on that amount of money. She just couldn’t do it. When I handed in my paper, I had written at the end, “I’ve come to the conclusion that Mrs. Smith’s husband doesn’t get enough money, because they can’t possibly live on what he is paid as a steelworker in Birmingham, Alabama.” Not that I had ever been in a steel mill or knew anything about it. But Muzzy gave me an A, because he said I had finally realized that people can’t live on what they are paid.

                  I had another great experience, too. Bible was a required course at Wellesley, but it was taught as history. So I learned that my father had been right about Jonah and the whale. You can’t imagine what that meant to me. I had always felt that Daddy did a very noble act by saying he did not believe the whale swallowed Jonah. He refused to lie and be a hypocrite. But I had always been uneasy that my father had been thrown out of the church for being a heretic as a result of that. It was a great relief to learn that he had been not only noble but also right about the Bible stories as symbolism and myth.

                  These incidents at Wellesley had a delayed effect, but the main thing I learned was to use my mind and to get pleasure out of it. I also learned I could be comfortable about the Bible, and I could be comfortable that a woman could make a living and be happy even if she didn’t have a husband. And I began to realize that people had a hard time living and didn’t get paid enough. I began to get some inkling of economics. So my Wellesley education was quite liberating. On sex, there was a tremendous breakthrough, although it is hard to realize. I began to kiss Bill Winston and enjoy it thoroughly. Oh, he was so handsome and he used to wrap me in his VMI cape. My goodness, what romance! That was more dangerous than a hammock. So I was liberated to a degree. In sex, religion, and economics in those three in particular—I was liberated at Wellesley.

Source: Virginia Foster Durr and Hollinger F. Barnard. Outside the magic circle: the autobiography of Virginia Foster Durr. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), pp. 62-63.

Image Source: Alabama Department of Archives & History. Alabama Photographs and Pictures Collection. Portrait of Virginia Foster Durr. Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.