Category: Amherst

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Amherst Chicago Economists

Chicago. Economics Ph.D. alumnus, George Rogers Taylor. 1929

The economics Ph.D. alumnus featured in today’s post was awarded his doctorate in 1929 by the University of Chicago. George Rogers Taylor had a long and distinguished career at Amherst College as a leading U.S. economic historian. He was the author of  the history of economics at Amherst College from 1832 to 1932 transcribed for the previous post.

Taylor was an early pioneer in the interdisciplinary field of American Studies.

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George Rogers Taylor
Life and Career

1895. Born June 15 in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin.

1914. Graduates from Wayland Academy at Beaver Dam.

Fun Fact: The school was named after Francis Wayland (1796-1865), Baptist minister, economist, and president of Brown University.

1916. Graduates from Oshkosh Normal School. “He earned his way through college by waiting on tables, mowing lawns and tending furnaces. He credits the late Prof. F. R. Clow for his life-long interest in economics, Prof. M. H. Small for getting him a job as a steward in a boarding club where he received his meals and Prof. J. O. Frank, whose furnace he tended.” Source: The Oshkosh Northwestern, May 10, 1971, p. 3.

1916-17. Principal of an Blair School with ca. five teachers at Waukesha, Wisconsin. He taught seventh grade and half of the sixth grade.

The original school was established in 1847, rebuilt at new locations in 1889 and 1966 and finally closed in June 2019. Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (June 4, 2019).

1917-19. Petty Officer in the U.S. Navy, aviation operations. Assigned to wireless telephony.

1919. Summer. Worked at the post office at Beaver Dam.

1919-20. Taught eighth grade for one year at Wayland Academy.

1921. Ph.B., University of Chicago. Attended two summer school sessions plus an academic year to complete degree requirements in one year. College credit was given for some of his Navy service.

Taylor had received a four year scholarship which covered his tuition for his Chicago training. There was a long-time close connection between the Wayland Academy and Chicago. The main prize at Wayland Academy’s commencement was a four year scholarship to Chicago.

1921-22. Taught at University of Iowa. Taylor was asked by Frank Knight to go there as an instructor for a year.

Taught public speaking for part of spring term at a Hammond, Indiana high school at some point during graduate school.

1923. Taught economics at Earlham College for a semester.

1924. August 23 marries Mary Leanah Henderson in Mooresville, Indiana. He met her when she was a senior at Earlham College.

1923-24. Instructor, University of Chicago.

1924. Joins the faculty of Amherst College at the rank of instructor, coming along with Professor Paul Douglas.

1927. Promotion to assistant professor, Amherst College.

1929. Ph.D. University of Chicago.

1929. Promotion to associate professor, Amherst College.

1929-30. First semester visiting professorship at Mount Holyoke.

1930. Visiting professor at Smith College.

1930-31. Research for the International Committee on Price History.

1930. “Prices in the Mississippi Valley Preceding the War of 1812,” Journal of Economic and Business History, Vol. III, pp. 148-163.

1931. “Agrarian discontent in the Mississippi valley preceding the war of 1812,” (subject of the doctoral dissertation) Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 39, No. 4 (August 1931), pp. 471-505.

1932. “Wholesale Commodity Prices at Charleston, S.C.,” Journal of Economic and Business History, (two parts). Vol. IV (February and August).

1932. Arrived August 3 at the port of New York aboard the S.S. Europa that sailed from Southampton.

1934-35. Second semester. Visiting professor of economics at Mount Holyoke.

1937. (with Louis Morton Hacker and Rudolf Modley). The United States: A Graphic History. New York: Modern Age Books, Inc.

1938. Senior agricultural economist, U.S. Department of Agriculture.

1939. (with Edward Albertus and Lawrence Z. Waugh). Internal Barriers to Trade in Farm Products. Department of Commerce. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

1939. M.A. (hon.) Amherst College.

1939. Promotion to professor of economics, Amherst College.

1940. Spring semester. Visiting professor, Mount Holyoke College.

1940. “State Laws which Limit Competition in Agricultural Products,” Journal of Farm Economics Vol. 22, No. 1 (February).

1941-46. Office of Price Administration and War Production Board.

1943. Adviser on price and control and rationing to the Republic of Paraguay.

1948-68. General editor of the Amherst College’s American studies program book series “Problems in American Civilization” (D.C. Heath Co.). This was a part of Amherst’s “New Curriculum” introduced in 1947. Amherst was a pioneer of the field of American Studies.

1949. Jackson versus Biddle; the struggle over the second Bank of the United States. Boston: D. C. Heath and Company.

1950. Hamilton and the National Debt. Boston: D. C. Heath and Company.

1951. The Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860. Vol. IV of The Economic History of the United States.Rinehart and Co.

1952. Visiting Professor, Columbia University.

1953. The Great Tariff Debate, 1820 to 1830. Boston: D. C. Heath and Company.

1955-60. Editor of Journal of Economic History.

1956. The Turner Thesis concerning the Role of the frontier in American History. Rev. ed. Boston: D. C. Heath and Company.

1956. (with co-author Irene Neu). The American railroad network, 1861-1890. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

1956-58. President of the American Studies Association.

1959-62. Chairman of the Council on Research in Economic History.

1959. (with Ethel Hoover) Statement at Hearings before the Joint Economic Committee: Employment, Growth and Price Levels, 86th Congress, 1st Session, April 9, 1959.

1960. “Railroad Investment before the Civil War: Comment,” Trends in the American Economy in the Nineteenth Century, National Bureau of Economic Research, Studies in Income and Wealth, Vol. XXIV.

1961. Summer. Visiting professor at the University of Hawaii.

1962-64. President of the Economic History Association.

1963. The War of 1812: Past Justifications and Present Interpretations. Boston: D. C. Heath and Company.

1963. Visiting Professor, Tokyo University.

1964. Presidential address before the Economic History Association annual meeting “American Economic Growth before 1840: An Exploratory Essay,” Journal of Economic History, Vol. XXIV (December, 1964), 427-444.

1965. Retires from Amherst College.

1964. March 12. Public lecture at the University of Delaware published in “The National Economy Before and After the Civil War,” in David T. Gilchrist and David Lewis eds., Economic Change in the Civil War Era (Greenville, Delaware, 1965).

1966. “The Beginnings of Mass Transportation in Urban America, Part I,” The Smithsonian Journal of History. Part I (Summer); Part II (Autumn).

1965-70. Senior resident scholar at the Eleutherian Mills Historical Library (Wilmington, Delaware). Taught graduate seminars in economic history at the University of Delaware.

1967. “American Urban Growth Preceding the Railway Age,”Journal of Economic History, Vol. XXVII (September).

1969. Introduction to the reprint of Introduction and Early Development of the American Cotton Textile Industry to 1860 (1863) by Samuel Batchelder. New York: Harper & Row.

1969. American Economic History before 1860 (Goldentree Bibliographies in American History, ed. Arthur S. Link) compiled by George Rogers Taylor. New York: Appleton Century Croft.

1983. Died April 11 in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Sources:

Obituary, Daily Hampshire Gazette (Northampton, Massachusetts), April 12, 1983, p. 4.

Scheiber, Harry N., and Stephen Salsbury. “Reflections on George Rogers Taylor’s ‘The Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860’: A Twenty-Five Year Retrospect.” The Business History Review, vol. 51, no. 1, 1977, pp. 79–89.

May 19, 1978 interview of George Rogers Taylor from the Amherst College Archives & Special Collections, Oral History Project.

Hugh G. J. Aitken’s memorial note in The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 44, No. 2, pp. 626-629.

Image Source: Amherst College, The Olio 1930, p. 45.

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Amherst Economics Programs Undergraduate

Amherst. 100 years of economics, 1832-1932

Even a superficial local history of one department can contain anecdotal nuggets of interest to historians of economics. This one for Amherst College was written by the University of Chicago trained economic historian George Rogers Taylor (Ph.D. 1929) whose Amherst faculty career spanned four decades. He tagged along when Paul Douglas took leave to teach at Amherst.

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One Hundred Years of Economics
[1832-1932]
at Amherst College
by George Rogers Taylor 

                  ALTHOUGH economics is one of the oldest of the so-called social sciences, it may come as a surprise to some to learn that in one form or another this subject has been taught at Amherst probably since the founding of the college. At first no separate courses were given in economics, but it was a recognized part of the more general subject then known as moral philosophy. It will be remembered in this connection that Adam Smith himself was professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow and came to his interest in economics from that more general subject. As early as 1827-28 “political economy” — now known as “economics” — was listed as required for seniors, but it is not known how much work was done or what member of the faculty directed it. Quite possibly Pres. Heman Humphrey, who held the chair of professor of mental and moral philosophy, may have done some regular teaching in economics.

                  One hundred years ago, during the school year 1832-33, political economy became a definitely recognized part of the curriculum, and Hon. Samuel C. Allen [a trustee of the Amherst College Corporation] was appointed to the faculty as lecturer in political economy [First term of Senior Studies “Say’s Political Economy” (p. 14); “ Lectures on Political Economy and Legislation will be delivered by the Hon. Samuel C. Allen” (p. 15)]. It is reported that he volunteered his services for this purpose and received by way of compensation “the thanks of the trustees.” He lectured only during this one year. Though political economy continued to be taught, there probably were no further formal lectures in the subject until 1835. In that year Hon. William B. Calhoun of Springfield [A.M. “Lecturer on Political Economy”, Nov 1836 Catalog (p. 5)], one of the trustees, was appointed lecturer in political economy [Third term, Senior year. Nov 1836 Catalog (p. 16)]. He continued to hold that position until 1849 [sic, 1835-1850 according to Amherst records]. Then, for a little more than a decade, there was no faculty representative definitely in this field; but the course continued as part of the curriculum and, at least in some years, regular lectures were given. Apparently this teaching was allotted to the professor of intellectual and moral philosophy.

                  One other lecturer in political economy was appointed before 1876. Amasa Walker [Note: Father (!) of Francis Amasa Walker] held that position from 1860 to 1869. Like Allen and Calhoun, Walker came to his teaching with the background of one interested in public affairs. In addition to holding state offices, all three men were members of the United States House of Representatives. Both Calhoun and Walker carried on their work at Amherst College while serving in Congress. All of these early teachers of political economy at Amherst were unquestionably able, public spirited, and deeply religious men.

                  The economics taught in these early lectures followed in general the lines laid down by the English classical school. The popular translation of Say’s “Political Economy” was used as a textbook until 1838, when it was replaced by Wayland’s “Political Economy” — an American restatement and simplification of the classical doctrine. But it must not be concluded that these men were dry-as-dust expositors of the “dismal science.” Nor were they among those of the period who have been so often accused of using classical economics primarily as a device for defending the status quo. All were men of liberal tendencies, much interested in the progressive movements of their day. Allen, who started out as a Congregational minister, afterwards becoming a Unitarian, was a Democrat and an ardent champion of free trade. William B. Calhoun is described as one who dealt with social and political problems more in the spirit of a philosopher than a politician. He left former political allegiances to become a strong anti-slavery Whig and was a leader in the temperance movement of the time. Amasa Walker also was an active leader in the reform movements of his day. He gave generously of his time and ability to the temperance, anti-slavery, and peace movements.

                  Of the three, Walker is the only one who was primarily an economist. He was generally recognized in his day as an authority in finance and has left writings, particularly in the field of currency and finance, which may still be read with profit by the economist and the historian. In 1866 he published his chief work, “The Science of Wealth.” His chapters on money and currency are particularly able. He was much in advance of his time in the use of statistics and graphical methods. Even in the more theoretical parts of the subject, Walker was vigorous and questioning. American conditions with which he was acquainted, not only as a business man but also as a legislator, led him to question Malthus’s famous law of population and to differ with Ricardo on certain important points of rent theory.

                  The present phase of economics at Amherst College began with the appointment of Anson D. Morse as instructor in political economy in 1876. The subject became now much more than an appendage to moral philosophy and the lectures were no longer given by ministers or practical men of affairs. From now on the teachers were professional students of social science, trained as such, and among those who were called to the chair of professor of economics were men who are numbered among the ablest in the American field.

                  Professor Morse [Anson D. Morse Papers at the Amherst College Archives] began his many years of fruitful teaching at Amherst in 1876 as an instructor of political economy. But his main interest was history, and before many years he had shifted completely over to that department. It is history, therefore, rather than economics, which has primary claim upon this man who is remembered not only as a scholar but as one of Amherst’s most stimulating teachers.

                  From 1885 down to the World War, three outstanding teachers left their impress on economics, not only by their teaching at Amherst College but also through their writings. Two of these, John Bates Clark [see also; also this post] and his son, John Maurice Clark, have made major contributions to the economic thought of the time. The elder Clark is known for contributions to economic theory that are regarded by many as the most significant which America has produced. His son has taken his place as one of the ablest and most original of American economic writers of today. The third, James W. Crook, [see also] was primarily a teacher, beloved by two generations of Amherst students.

                  In more recent years, the professors of economics at Amherst have continued to be men of outstanding ability and national prominence. Among those who were in the department long enough to leave a definite mark on the life of the College must be listed Walton Hale Hamilton, Walter W. Stewart, Paul Howard Douglas, and Richard Stockton Meriam.

                  Until 1880 only one course was given in economics. This was apparently comparable to the principles or introductory course of more recent years. It is interesting to note that the first course to be added (1880) was one in the history of socialism. As time went on other courses appeared and disappeared, but usually they were substantially in one of the four fields now covered by advanced courses — finance, labor, economic history, and advanced theory.

                  It will be noted that two tendencies in the teaching of college economics which have been increasingly prominent in the United States during the last twenty years have been completely avoided at Amherst. The first is that toward the multiplication of courses. In fact, Amherst has gone to the extreme in the other direction. A study¹ of a large number of American colleges made in 1928 brought out the fact that only three colleges offered fewer courses in economics than Amherst, and the average number of subjects per instructor was smaller at Amherst than at any other college.

                  In the second place, the trend toward the introduction of business subjects has not affected the Amherst course of study. Economics, as taught here for one hundred years, has been given from the cultural and not from the professional point of view. In fact, the early courses in moral philosophy, which included at least some economics, were in so far as they were especially designed for students preparing for the ministry, possibly more professional than are the present courses in economics which are designed for the student who is to enter any walk of life.

                  The first hundred years of economics at Amherst College has witnessed many changes. A distinguished line of teachers has come and gone. The subject matter of the courses has been somewhat altered and expanded. In the early days economics was a compulsory course during part of the senior year. As time went on the department was enlarged but study in the department was made optional. Since 1927 the introductory course has been open to sophomores. The advanced student has now four courses in the department from which he may choose: economic history of the United States, labor problems, theory of credit, and development of economic thought, and additional individual work is offered for those taking honors in economics. But though many changes have taken place, the purpose of the work has remained essentially what it has always been, to fit the student to take his place in the world as a cultured man and a good citizen.

1 E. E. Cummins, “Economics and the Small College,” American Economic Review, Vol. XXVIII, No. 4 (December 1928) p. 631.

Source: George Rogers Taylor, “One Hundred Years of Economics at Amherst College,” Amherst Graduates’ Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 4 (August 1933), pp. 300-303.

Image Source:  1831 view of Amherst College by Alexander Davis. Restored copies are available for $44.95 (plus presumably shipping) at Vintage City Maps.

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Amherst Principles Undergraduate

Amherst. Economics course offerings. Crook, 1901-1902.

At the beginning of the twentieth century there was only one instructor for economics at Amherst College. He offered elective courses to seniors.  His name was James Walter Crook, Associate Professor of Political Economy, an 1895 Columbia University Ph.D, the successor to John Bates Clark who had briefly taught at Amherst from 1892 to 1895.

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James Walter Crook
Timeline

1859. Born December 21 in Bewdley, Ontario, Canada.

1883. Married Eva Maria Lewis of Manistee, Michigan. They had no children.

1891. A.B., Oberlin College.

1891-92. Instructor in history, Oberlin College.

1892-93. Graduate fellow in economics at the University of Wisconsin.

1893-94. Graduate student at the University of Berlin, Germany.

1894-95. Graduate fellow in economics at Columbia University.

1895. Lecturer on Taxation at Columbia University.

1895. Ph.D., Columbia University.

German Wage Theories: A History of Their Development. Vol. IX, No. 2 (1898) of Studies in History, Economics and Public Law. New York: Columbia University

1895–99. Assistant Professor of Political Economy, Amherst College.

1899-1907. Associate Professor of Political Economy, Amherst College.

1907-27. Professor of Political Economy, Amherst College.

1912. M.A., Amherst College.

1927—. Professor Emeritus, Amherst College.

1927-33. Professor of Public Speaking at Northeastern University.

1933. Died November 22 in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Sources: Annual yearbooks of Amherst College (The Olio), Crook’s Boston Globe obituary (October 23, 1933)

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Amherst College
Economics Course Offerings
1901-02
Professor Crook

The numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 denote, not the four classes, but the successive years in which courses are offered. The letters a, b, c denote the first, second, and third terms. The letters aa, bb, cc indicate courses parallel with courses a, b, c, respectively. [p. 51]

(1 a) Outlines of economics. Walker’s Political Economy; Hadley’s Economics. (Four hour course.)

(1 b) Advanced work in economic theory. Assigned readings in Smith, Ricardo, and Mill, with especial attention to Marshall’s Principles of Economics and Clark’s Distribution of Wealth. (1 a requisite.)

(1 bb) Money and banking. Dunbar’s Theory and History of Banking; White’s Money and Banking; Taussig’s Silver [Situation in the United States]. (1 a requisite.)

The practical monetary problems of the United States are considered, and the systems of banking practised in England, France, Germany, and the United States are compared.

(1 c) Public finance; taxation; public expenditures; public debts; financial administration. Adams’s Science of Finance. (1 a requisite.)

(1 cc) Practical economic problems; transportation; monopolies; trusts. Thesis required. Hadley’s Railroad Transportation; Jenks’s Trust Problem, (1 a requisite.)

Source: Amherst College Catalogue for the Year 1901-02, pp. 53-54.

Image Source: James Walter Crook in The Olio 1905, p. 23.

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AEA Amherst Columbia Economists Germany Johns Hopkins Smith

Columbia. Short biographical note on John Bates Clark at age 52

 

Today’s post adds to the virtual clipping file of relatively obscure biographical items for John Bates Clark. The turn of the century volumes edited by Joshua L. Chamberlain, Universities and Their Sons, serve as a who’s who with an academic twist and the source of this early-through-mid-career biography for the great John Bates Clark.

Pro-tip: At the bottom of this post you can click on the keyword “ClarkJB” to summon all the John Bates Clark related posts here at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

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Other Biographical postings for John Bates Clark

From the Smith College yearbook (1894)

Columbia University Memorial Minute (1938)

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CLARK, John Bates, 1847-

Born in Providence, R. I., 1857; studied at Brown for two years; Amherst for two years, graduating in 1872; studied abroad at Heidelberg University for one and a half years and at Zurich University one-half year; Professor of Political Economy and History, Carleton (Minnesota) College, 1877-81; Professor of History and Political Science at Smith College, 1882-93; Professor of Political Economy at Amherst, 1892-95; Lecturer on Political Economy, Johns Hopkins. 1892-94; Professor of Political Economy at Columbia since 1895.

JOHN BATES CLARK, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Political Economy at Columbia, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, January 26, 1847. His parents were John Hezekiah Clark, a well-known manufacturer of Providence, and Charlotte Stoddard Huntington, a granddaughter of General Jedediah Huntington of New London, Connecticut. He received his early education in the public schools of his native place. In 1865 he entered Brown, spending two years in study there, and later entered Amherst. During an interval of absence from this College he engaged in the manufacture of ploughs, and was one of the founders of the Monitor Plow Company, of Minneapolis, Minnesota. He retired from active business in 1871, and returned to Amherst, graduating in 1872. He then went abroad and studied for a year and a half at the University of Heidelberg, for a term at the University of Zurich, and for a short period in Paris. He returned to America in 1875 and, two years later, became Professor of Political Economy at Carleton College. He retained this position for four years, and then came to Massachusetts to take the Professorship of History and Political Science at Smith College. He was with Smith in this capacity for eleven years, until, in 1893, he was made Professor of Political Economy at Amherst College. From 1892 to 1894 he was also Lecturer on Political Economy at Johns Hopkins. He left Amherst in 1895 to take a Chair of Political Economy at Columbia, and has since been in charge of the department of Economic Theory of the University. In 1893 and also in 1894 he was elected President of the American Economic Association. Professor Clark has written a number of monographs and articles on economic subjects, and a book — The Philosophy of Wealth — which presents new theories. He also published in collaboration with Professor F. H. Giddings, The Modern Distributive Process, and is now about to publish a second work on Distribution [The Distribution of Wealth; A Theory of Wages, Interest and Profits (1899)]. He is a member of the Century and Barnard Clubs. Professor Clark married, September 28, 1875, Myra Almeda Smith of Minneapolis. They have four children, three girls and a boy.

Source: Universities and their sons; history, influence and characteristics of American universities, with biographical sketches and portraits of alumni and recipients of honorary degrees, Joshua L. Chamberlain, ed., Vol. II (Boston: R. Herndon Company, 1899), p. 423.

Image Source: Same.

 

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Amherst Barnard Berkeley Brown Chicago Colorado Columbia Cornell Dartmouth Duke Harvard Illinois Indiana Iowa Johns Hopkins Kansas M.I.T. Michigan Michigan State Minnesota Missouri Nebraska North Carolina Northwestern NYU Ohio State Pennsylvania Princeton Radcliffe Rochester Stanford Swarthmore Texas Tufts UCLA Vassar Virginia Washington University Wellesley Williams Wisconsin Yale

U.S. Bureau of Education. Contributions to American Educational History, Herbert B. Adams (ed.), 1887-1903

 

I stumbled across this series while I was preparing the previous post on the political economy questions for the Harvard Examination for Women (1874). I figured it would be handy for me to keep a list of links to the monographs on the history of higher education in 35 of the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. Maybe this collection will help you too.

Contributions to American Educational History, edited by Herbert B. Adams

  1. The College of William and Mary. Herbert B. Adams (1887)
  2. Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia. Herbert B. Adams (1888)
  3. History of Education in North Carolina. Charles L. Smith (1888)
  4. History of Higher Education in South Carolina. C. Meriwether (1889)
  5. Education in Georgia. Charles Edgeworth Jones (1889)
  6. Education in Florida. George Gary Bush (1889)
  7. Higher Education in Wisconsin. William F. Allen and David E. Spencer (1889)
  8. History of Education in Alabama. Willis G. Clark (1890).
  9. History of Federal and State Aid to Higher Education. Frank W. Blackmar (1890)
  10. Higher Education in Indiana. James Albert Woodburn (1891).
  11. Higher Education in Michigan. Andrew C. McLaughlin. (1891)
  12. History of Higher Education in Ohio. George W. Knight and John R. Commons (1891)
  13. History of Higher Education in Massachusetts. George Gary Bush (1891)
  14. The History of Education in Connecticut. Bernard C. Steiner (1893)
  15. The History of Education in Delaware. Lyman P. Powell (1893)
  16. Higher Education in Tennessee. Lucius Salisbury Merriam (1893)
  17. Higher Education in Iowa. Leonard F. Parker (1893)
  18. History of Higher Education in Rhode Island. William Howe Tolman (1894)
  19. History of Education in Maryland. Bernard C. Steiner (1894).
  20. History of Education in Lousiana. Edwin Whitfield Fay (1898).
  21. Higher Education in Missouri. Marshall S. Snow (1898)
  22. History of Education in New Hampshire. George Gary Bush (1898)
  23. History of Education in New Jersey. David Murray (1899).
  24. History of Education in Mississippi. Edward Mayes (1899)
  25. History of Higher Education in Kentucky. Alvin Fayette Lewis (1899)
  26. History of Education in Arkansas. Josiah H. Shinn (1900)
  27. Higher Education in Kansas. Frank W. Blackmar (1900)
  28. The University of the State of New York. History of Higher Education in the State of New York. Sidney Sherwood (1900)
  29. History of Education in Vermont. George Gary Bush (1900)
  30. History of Education in West Virginia. A. R. Whitehill (1902)
  31. The History of Education in Minnesota. John N. Greer (1902)
  32. Education in Nebraska. Howard W. Caldwell (1902)
  33. A History of Higher Education in Pennsylvania. Charles H. Haskins and William I. Hull (1902)
  34. History of Higher Education in Colorado. James Edward Le Rossignol (1903)
  35. History of Higher Education in Texas. J. J. Lane (1903)
  36. History of Higher Education in Maine. Edward W. Hall (1903)

Image Source: Cropped from portrait of Herbert Baxter Adams ca. 1890s. Johns Hopkins University graphic and pictorial collection.

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Amherst Chicago Economists Harvard M.I.T. Placement

Chicago. Zvi Griliches asking Frank Fisher for junior appointment leads, 1961

 

In a 1961 memo Zvi Griliches reported to his Chicago colleagues some scouting results regarding a possible junior appointment in economics. He spoke econometrician-to-econometrician with his colleague Frank Fisher at M.I.T. about the most interesting graduate students in the Cambridge area on the job market that year. Four names were mentioned, two unsurprising enough were the names of economists “unable” to be drawn from the gravitational pull of Cambridge. 

Griliches ended his memo with the remark “This year Domar happens to be MIT’s ‘placement officer’ and this is likely to put us at some competitive disadvantage.” Does this mean that Griliches thought the monopsonist Evsey Domar would deliberately discriminate against the University of Chicago?

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Four graduate students discussed by Zvi Griliches and Frank Fisher

Beals, Ralph E. Dept. of Econs. Amherst College, Amherst, MA 01002. Birth Yr: 1936.  Degrees: B.S., U. of Kentucky, 1958; M.A., Northwestern U., 1959; Ph.D., Mass. Institute of Technol., 1970. Prin. Cur. Position: Clarence Francis Prof. of Econs., Amherst Coll., 1966.  Concurrent/Past Positions: Assoc., Harvard Institute for Int’l. Develop., 1973.  Research: Int’l. trade, commercial policy & industrialization in Indonesia.

[According to the Prabook website: Ralph E. Beals was Assistant professor economics, Amherst (Massachusetts) College, 1962-1963; associate professor, Amherst (Massachusetts) College, 1966-1971. ]

Hohenberg, Paul M. RPI, Dept of Econ, Troy, NY 12180. Birth Yr: 1933.  Degrees: B.Ch.E., Cornell U., 1956; M.A., Tufts U., 1959; Ph.D., Mass. Institute of Technol., 1963. Prin. Cur. Position: Prof. of Econs., Rensselaer Poly. Institute, 1977.  Concurrent/Past Positions: Vis. Assoc. Prof., Sir George Williams U., Montreal, 1972-74; Assoc. Prof., Cornell U., 1968-73.  Research: Urbanization & econ. change in Europe and U.S.

Marglin, Stephen A.  Birth Yr: 1938.  Degrees: A.B., Harvard U., 1959; Ph.D., Harvard U., 1965. Prin. Cur. Position: Prof. of Econs., Harvard U.

Temin, Peter. Mass Inst of Tech, Dept of Econ, Cambridge, MA 02139. Birth Yr: 1937.  Degrees: B.A., Swarthmore Coll., 1959; Ph.D., Mass. Institute of Technol., 1964. Prin. Cur. Position: Prof. of Econs., Mass. Institute of Technol., 1970.  Concurrent/Past Positions: Assoc. Prof., Mass. Institute of Technol., 1967-70; Asst. Prof., Mass. Institute of Technol., 1965-67. Research: Econ. history; telecommunications policy.

 

Source:  Biographical Listing of Members. The American Economic Review, Vol. 83, No. 6 (Dec., 1993).

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Memo on possible appointments written by Zvi Griliches

November 8, 1961

[To:] A. Rees
[From:] Z. Griliches
[Re:] The possible appointments.

I had a long telephone conversation with Frank Fisher last week about “whom we should look at.” It is his opinion that the single best young man coming up now in the Cambridge area is:

Stephen A. Marglin—He is a mathematical theorist, with several papers to his credit. He has spent a year at Cambridge, England and is currently in his second year of a three year Junior Fellowship at Harvard. I had already invited him to give a talk to the workshop and he will be here on January 16 to talk on “The Social Rate of Discount and the Opportunity Costs of Public Investment.” Frank thinks that we would have a very hard time getting him, in particular for next year, but that he is clearly the best.

The best current MIT student that will be coming to the market is, in Fisher’s opinion:

Ralph Beals—who is a third year graduate student specializing in the fields of monetary policy and econometrics. He has been working with Solow and Albert Ando and his interests in the monetary area have appartently been stimulated by Solow’s and Ando’s involvement in the Monetary Commission stuff.

In addition, Fisher mentioned that there are also two ver good “economic historian types” finishing there this year:

Peter Pemin[sic, “Temin”]—who is working with Gerschenkron at Harvard, and
Paul Hohenberg—who is working withKindelberger on the sources of the econonmic development of France in the 19thcentury.

This year Domar happens to be MIT’s “placement officer” and this is likely to put us at some competitive disadvantage.

cc:       H. Johnson, M. Friedman, T. Schultz✓, G. Stigler, W. Wallis.

Source:  University of Chicago Archives. Department of Economics Records, Box 42, Folder 3.

Image Source:  Zvi Griliches from the University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-06565, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

 

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Amherst Columbia Economists Germany Wisconsin

Columbia. Economics Ph.D. Alumnus, James Walter Crook, 1895

 

This posting is another in the irregular series, “Get to know an economics Ph.D. alum”. I stumbled upon Professor James Walter Crook’s photo while working on the previous autobiographical posting for John Maurice Clark who was a student of his at Amherst and later a colleague. Crook spent a year in Berlin as a student and overlapped with W.E.B. Du Bois there and to whom we see below he had been introduced.

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James Walter Crook (1859-1933)
Columbia Ph.D., 1895

James Walter Crook was born Dec. 21, 1859 in Ontario, Canada. His family emigrated to the U.S. in 1868. According to the 1880 U. S. Census he was the Census Enumerator for the 1st Ward of the City of Manistee in Manistee county, Michigan where he (21 years of age) lived with his mother and six younger brothers.  While a few younger brothers were  registered employed in a saw mill, James Walter Crook was listed as attending school. He married Eva Maria Lewis Sept 16, 1881 in Manistee. His occupation was “school teacher” according to the record of marriage.

Crook received his B.A. from Oberlin College in 1891 where he stayed on as a history instructor the following year. This was followed by a year of graduate work at the University of Wisconsin where he was listed as a Fellow in Economics, 1892-93.

He studied at the University of Berlin in 1893-94 where he happened to be introduced to W. E. B. Du Bois, himself an American student in Berlin. In Dubois’ papers there is a letter Crook wrote (January 21, 1905): “I suppose you do not remember me, but I recall with pleasure my meeting you in Berlin, Germany introduced by our mutual friend Knowlton, now of Fargo, N. Dakota.” In particular Crook was looking for advice regarding a sociological survey he wished to conduct among the ca. 200 African-Americans living in Amherst (population about 3,000 total).

After Germany Crook went on to do graduate work at Columbia University in 1894-95. The next year he was hired to teach Political Economy at Amherst where he worked through retirement.  Crook was awarded a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1895, publishing his dissertation as German Wage Theories: A History of Their Development. Vol. IX, No. 2 of Studies in History, Economics and Public Law. New York: Columbia University, 1898.

According to the U.S. Census reports he and his wife Eva lived at  21 Main Street in Amherst for at least the four censuses 1900-1930.

James Walter Crook, died in Springfield, MA 1933.

Source: From faculty pages in the Amherst College Yearbook, Olio, 1905, page 24. Also the Dubois papers at the University of Massachusetts and U.S. Census reports.

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PROFESSORS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
Amherst College (1877-1910)

1877

 Anson Daniel Morse, LL.D. 1878
1892 John Bates Clark, Ph.D.

1895

1892

 Charles Augustus Tuttle, Ph.D., Associate Political Economy and International Law 1893
1895 James Walter Crook, Ph.D., Assistant

1899

1899

 James Walter Crook, Ph.D., Associate 1907
1907 James Walter Crook, Ph.D.

1908

 Glover Dunn Hancock, Ph.D., Assistant 1910
1910 John Maurice Clark, Ph.D., Associate

 

Source:   General Catalogue of Amherst College including the Officers of Government and Instruction, the Alumni and Honorary Graduates, 1821-1910. Amherst, Mass., p. 9.

Image Source: From faculty pages in the Amherst College Yearbook, Olio, 1905, page 24.

 

 

 

Categories
Amherst Chicago Columbia Economists

Columbia. John Maurice Clark. Autobiographical notes, 1949

 

The following recollections of John Maurice Clark of his earliest contacts with economic problems is found in a folder of his papers containing notes about his father, John Bates Clark. The hand-written notes are fairly clear until we come to a clear addition on the final page. Abbreviations are used there and the handwriting is not always clear. Still the pages together provide a few nice stories and short lists of J.M. Clark’s teachers and students.

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June 8, 1949

J.M.C.’s recollections of his earliest contacts with economic problems.

I think my earliest contact with an economic problem came on learning that the carpenter who sometimes came to do odd jobs for us at 23 Round Hill got $2.00 a day. I had a special interest in that carpenter. He was a tall man, with a full, dark beard; and it had been my imprudent interest in his operation with the kitchen double-windows (putting on? taking off?) that led me to lean out of a hammock and over the low rail of our second-story porch, to watch him (I was between two and three at the time). Mechanical consequences—I descended rapidly, landing on my head, but apparently suffering no injury except biting my tongue. Subjective consequences – maybe it pounded a little caution into me at an early age; but the present point is that it fixed that carpenter in my memory as “the man who picked me up.” It was some time later I learned that he got $2.00 a day.

I don’t remember whether I took the initiative and asked, or not. The cost of things was often discussed in our house, and my mother often talked of the difficulty of making both ends meet. I knew my father’s salary, though I can’t be sure now whether it was $3,500 or less. Anyhow, it was maybe eight or ten times the carpenter’s pay; and I began wondering how he made both ends meet, and remarked to my father that $2.00 a day wasn’t much to live on. He answered that it was pretty good pay for that kind of work. So I learned there were two ways of looking at a daily stipend—as income to live on and as the price of the service you gave your employer. Or perhaps simply the standpoints of the recipient and the payer. But especially I learned there were people who had to adjust their ideas of what they could live on, to a fraction of the income we found skimpy for the things we thought of as necessary. In short, I had a lesson in classes and their multiple standards to ponder over; without reaching any very enlightening conclusions.

I don’t think I connected this with our friends the Willistons (of the family connected with Williston seminary in Easthampton) who lived in the big house above us and from whom we rented ours. They were evidently much richer than we. They had gone to Europe (and been shipwrecked on the way, and had to transfer at sea to a lumber-schooner, which threw its deckload of lumber overboard to enable it to take on the people from the helpless steamship. — but that’s another story.)

To return to the carpenter. I suppose today he’d get perhaps $16, more?, and a Smith College salary, for a full professor, might be $7,000 or $8,000. The discrepancy has shrunk to maybe 2/5—certainly less than half—of what it was then. That puzzling discrepancy was my first lesson in economics—the first I remember.

There was another lesson—if you could call it that—the summer we spent a while at the Stanley House (now gone) in Southwest Harbor, on Mt. Desert. The rich people went to Bar Harbor. At Southwest, there was Mr. Brierly who had a yacht. We took our outings in a rowboat, sometimes with the help of a spritsail. One time we were going up Somes Sound, and were passed by one of the biggest ocean-going steam yachts—the “Sultana”. It was a very impressive sight, in those narrow waters, and looked about as big as the “Queen Mary” would to me now. I don’t remember anybody doing any moralizing; but if they did, the impression it left was that we, in our fashion, were doing the same kind of thing they were.

My first contact with economic literature (not counting the subversive economics of Robin Hood, which we boys knew by heart, in the Howard Pyle version) was at 23 Round Hill, so I must have been less than nine. I found a little book on my father’s shelves that had pictures in it – queer pictures done in pen and ink, which puzzled me. There was a boy not much bigger than I was, in queer little knee-britches, acting as a teacher to a class of grown men (including I think a Professor Laughlin, under whom I later taught at the University of Chicago.) And there were classical females being maltreated by brutal men, and other queer things. I was curious enough to read some of the text, to find out about the pictures. It was “Coin’s Financial School,” the famous free-silver tract.

I read enough to become a convinced free-silverite. And then I had the shock of discovering that my beloved and respected father was on the wrong side of that question. I decided there must be more to it than I’d gotten out of the queer picture-book. I suppose that was my first lesson in the need of preserving an open mind and holding economic ideas subject to possible reconsideration. Davenport and Veblen gave me more extensive lessons, fifteen or twenty years later, only this second time it was my father’s ideas I had to rethink, after reluctantly admitting that these opposing ideas represented something real, that needed to be reckoned with. One had to do something about it, though the something didn’t mean substituting Veblen for my father. It was a more difficult and discriminating adjustment that was called for.

To return to my boyhood. It may have been about this time that I learned something about mechanical techniques, when my father took me to see the Springfield Arsenal. They had a museum, with broadswords that had been used in battle—one was so nicked up that its edge had disappeared in a continuous series of surprisingly deep nicks—but the mechanical process that impressed me was a pattern-lathe, rough-shaping the stocks of Krags. On one side was a metal model of the finished stock revolving, with a wheel revolving against it. On the other side was the wooden blank revolving, and a wheel like the one on the model, and linked to it so as to copy its movements, and armed with knives. So the machine could make complicated shapes following any model you put into it, and do it faster and more accurately that a hand worker.

Incidentally (and as a digression) that was our first military rifle with smokeless powder, more powerful than black; our first regular military magazine rifle of the modern kind with a bolt action and a box magazine. The regulars were just getting them. The militia still had the black-powder 45-70 Springfields at the time of the Spanish War, and a Massachusetts regiment had to be ordered off the firing-line at El Caney because their smoke made too good a target. Teddy Roosevelt had pull enough to get Krag carbines for his Rough Riders plus the privilege of using their own Winchesters if individuals preferred, and, if they had the 30-40-220, which took the Krag cartridge.

But my regular education in economic theory began at the age of 9 or 10, in our first year at Amherst, when we lived on Amity Street, opposite Sunset Ave. My father had in mind James Mill’s training of his son, John Stuart Mill, and he copied the techniques of explaining something during a walk, but he didn’t follow James Mill’s example by making me submit a written report for criticism and revision. All he did was to explain about diminishing utility and marginal utility—using the illustration of the oranges. And he was satisfied that I understood it, and concluded that the simple fundamentals of economics could be taught to secondary school or “grammar-school” students. Later, my friend and former graduate student, Leverett Lyon, pithily remarked that I probably understood it better then than I ever had since. Maybe he was right. I know when I met Professor Fetter, the year the Ec. Ass. met in Princeton, he told me I didn’t understand the theory, because I had said (in print, I think) that there were some dangers about the concept of “psychic income.” I didn’t say it was wrong, but I did think it was likely to be misleading to use a term that was associated with accountants’ arithmetic. So I did probably understand the theory “better” at the age of 9 or 10. Twenty ears later, it didn’t look so simple. This was long before I disagreed with Fetter about basing-point pricing and the rightness of the uniform FOB mill price, as the price “true” competition would bring about.

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J.M.C. later history.

Amherst, C in Ec tho 85 on exam, & written work not credited. (cf French A from Wilkins, C from [William Stuart] Symington (father of present (1951) W. Stuart Symington, head of nat security Resources Board). Symie sized my attitude up as that of a gentleman & gave me a gentleman’s mark)ache Crook said he “didn’t get hold” of me. He was correct.

 

Columbia: Giddings, A. S. Johnson, H.L. Moore, Seligman, Seager, Hawkins [?], Chaddock, Agger, Jacobstein. indoctrinated: J. B. C. orthodoxy modified by overhead costs (catalogued as “dynamics”) Dynamics (defined as) everything statics leaves out. & much induction. Take “Essentials” on slow dictation.

Veblen: slow infiltration of its logical & progre[?] rel. to the abstractions of J.B.C.: reverse normalizing might make[?] an arguable claim to equal legitimacy.

1912 ed. of Control of Trusts

“Contribution to theory of competive price” [QJE, August 1914] forerunner of “mon-comp”, largely empirical basis.

Germs of social & inst. ec. Rich-poor, Freedom as val in ec.[??] B. M. Anderson cf. Cooley

Revs of Hobson?, Pigou, Davenport Economics of Enterprise [Political Science Quarterly, Vol 29, no. 2]

 

To Chi. 1915 Changing basis of economic responsibility [JPE, March 1916] on moving to Chi. open declar[ation] of non-Laughlinism: backfire to an Atlantic article of Laughlin’s.

Modern Psych.

1917-18. War-ec. (“basis of war-time collectivism.”)

Students: Garver oral. Slichter, Lyon, Innis, Martin [?], Goodrich, Copeland, O’Grady [John O’Grady ?]

Ayres, Knight on faculty.

Ov. C. [Studies in the Economics of Overhead Costs]

Social Control [of Business]

 

Columbia. Students, Friedman, Ginzberg, Salera, Kuznets’ oral

 

Source: Columbia University Archives. John M. Clark Collection. History of Economic Thought. Box 37, Folder “J. B. Clark, 1847-1938”.

Image Source: John Maurcie Clark. University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-0171.  Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Categories
Amherst Columbia Economists Germany Johns Hopkins Smith

Columbia. John Bates Clark, Faculty Memorial Minute, 1938

 

Memorial minutes give us a snapshot appreciation of a deceased economist by colleagues. One really doesn’t read these to get any new significant items for the biography, one hopes instead to cull some insight into the minds and hearts of those who knew both the person and the work. “Innate modesty and a genuine kindliness” are a pair of expressed recessive traits that perhaps help to distinguish John Bates Clark from brilliant economic theorists of more recent vintage.

This biographical note for Clark from 1894 provides an earlier testimony.

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Memorial minute for Professor J. B. Clark
FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
April 22, 1938

 

JOHN BATES CLARK
1847-1938

In recording the death of Professor Emeritus John Bates Clark on March 21, 1938, at the age of ninety-one, the Faculty of Political Science is moved not only by a feeling of loss but also by a feeling of gratitude for great services rendered to mankind.

Born in Providence in 1847 and graduated from Amherst in 1872, Professor Clark set an example followed in the next three decades by scores of young American economists in going to Germany for graduate work. The interests in historical and anthropological studies that he cultivated in Heidelberg and Zürich were lasting characteristics of his mind—a fact often overlooked by commentators upon his later work.

On returning to this country, he began the searching analysis of economic relations that developed gradually into his peculiar contribution to social sciences. A little later than W. Stanley Jevons in England, Karl Menger in Austria, and Leon Walras in France, but quite independently of them and with an emphasis all his own, Professor Clark discovered how the utility of goods influences their values and prices. A collection of his early papers, The Philosophy of Wealth, published in 1885, revealed him as the keenest economic theorist of his time and country.

After teaching at Carleton, Smith, Amherst, and Johns Hopkins, Professor Clark joined this Faculty in 1895. It was while teaching at Columbia that he developed the full implications of his insights. His way of seeking to understand the complicated processes of economic life was to seize upon a set of fundamental factors, and to examine what results they would produce in the absence of disturbing circumstances. Work of this character obviously required logical powers of a high order and constructive imagination. What is less commonly appreciated, to make the results significant the work must be guided by sound intuitive judgments regarding the factors to be admitted to the problems treated and the factors to be excluded. How admirably Professor Clark’s judgment served him and how cogently he reasoned upon the basis of his assumptions were demonstrated by The Distribution of Wealth, published in 1899. That book still stands as the most important contribution of our country to pure economic theory.

Professor Clark’s later books, The Control of the Trusts, 1901, The Problem of Monopoly, 1904, and The Essentials of Economic Theory, 1907, show how effectively he could use his abstract constructions in dealing with practical problems, and how he could bridge the gulf that seemed to yawn between the timeless statis state of his Distribution of Wealth and the ever shifting condition of the work in which real men make their livings.

Of the service that Professor Clark rendered as the first Director of the Division of Economics and History of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, his co-workers in that field can speak with fuller knowledge than we possess. But we may note that no one deficient in a sense of reality, and no one without fervent interest in the welfare of his kind could have planned and carried through as he did the detailed record of the horrible sufferings that the War of 1914-1918 brought upon the world.

With intellectual distinction and integrity there was joined in Professor Clark and innate modesty and a genuine kindliness that won the affection of all who came into personal contact with him. Of what we deem finest in human achievement and character he was an example to be cherished and emulated.

 

Source: Columbia University Archives. Minutes of the Faculty of Political Science, 1920-1939. pp. 825-6.

Image Source: Amherst Yearbook Olio ’96 (New York, 1894), pp. 7-9. Picture above from frontispiece. Another link.

Categories
Amherst Courses Johns Hopkins

Johns Hopkins University. Theory of Distribution, John Bates Clark, 1892

When John Bates Clark held lectures on the theory of distribution at Johns Hopkins University in autumn 1892, he was also holding down two academic jobs in Massachusetts where he was Professor of Political Science and History at Smith College and Professor of Political Economy at Amherst College.

One presumes what he taught in his Hopkins course were his papers “The Law of Wages and Interest” (Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1890)  and “Distribution as Determined by a Law of Rent”  (Quarterly Journal of Economics, April 1891) as well as his response to Walker’s criticism (QJE, July  1891) published as “The Statics and the Dynamics of Distribution” (QJE, October 1891).

 

Source: John Bates Clark: A Memorial. Privately printed, p. 10.  For Smith College, see the faculty list in Smith College, Official Circular, No. 19 (1892), p. 50.

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If you find this posting interesting, here is the complete list of “artifacts” from the history of economics I have assembled thus far. You can subscribe to Economics in the Rear-View Mirror below. There is also an opportunity for comment following each posting….

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[Amherst College Catalogue for 1892-93]

POLITICAL ECONOMY.

A topical analysis of the subject, with references to important authorities, is made the basis of the work. In the class-room the course is carried on by means of recitations, discussions, lectures, abstracts, essays, and frequent examinations. A syllabus of the results attained is placed in the hands of each student daily.

First Term: four hours a week. — Economic Theory. An analysis of industrial society, the aim of which is thorough acquaintance with the Principles of PoliticalEconomy and correct methods of analysis. — Mill, Walker, Clark, Marshall.

Second Term: four hours a week. — The Silver Question; the Problem of Distribution; the Principles of Taxation, with especial reference to the Tariff Question; Theories of Free Trade and Protection; the History of Tariff Legislation in the United States; the Existing Tariff; Public Credit.
The work of this term is open to those only who have taken the first term.

Third Term: four hours a week. — The Theory of Distribution; the Labor Question; Socialism; Social Reform; Immigration.
The work of this term is open to those only who have taken the first term.

 

Source: Catalogue of Amherst College for the Year 1892-93, pp. 31-32.

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[Abstract of a course of lectures before the students in History and Politics, Oct.-Nov., 1892.]

On the Theory of Distribution. By John B. CLARK.

It was the object of the course to demonstrate the working of the forces that apportion the income of society among various claimants. To most men the gaining of a personal income presents itself as a process in distribution. A man does not keep the things that he himself produces, but secures for his own use a share of the things that others produce. The amount of the income appears to vary according to the terms that the recipient is able to make with those with whom he deals. That some law governs those terms is generally believed; but an accepted theory of distribution is lacking.

The course tried to make it clear that the law that is sought connects distribution with production. It causes the share of the social income that one recipient would receive, if conditions were quite normal, to correspond with the amount that he has contributed toward the creation of that income. Under natural law a man consumes things that other people make; but he gets and uses the value, or abstract quantum of wealth, that he himself brings into existence. “To each his product” is the rule, under free exchange and perfect competition.

In studying the mechanism by which this effect is secured, it is necessary, first, to ascertain, not what income accrues to particular men, but what attaches to the performing of certain functions. A man may perform several: he may be a laborer, a capitalist and an employer of laborer and capital. A purely economic theory of distribution accounts for the gains secured by working, by furnishing capital or by employing men and capital. A further and more distinctly sociological study accounts for the merging of various functions in the same men, and gives a resulting social distribution of wealth. The two studies together account for the size of the incomes of different persons and of different social classes.

In practical life static forces and dynamic ones are in action together. There are influences at work that would continue to produce their effects if society were reduced to a stationary state. Other influences depend on progress; these act when the economic world is in a transitional condition, leaving behind it one position of static equilibrium and advancing toward another. In life the dynamic influences succeed each other perpetually, and the stationary condition is never reached; but the static forces operate throughout the progressive movement. Isolating these forces and separately examining them affords one key to success in a study of distribution. The division of gains that takes place between employer and employed in one industry is to be kept in its true relation to the general distribution of the income of society as a whole. The non-competing groups and sub- groups that constitute an industrial society have been studied, and thereby the sources of the wages and interest earned in different employments have been determined.

The law that fixes the amount of wages and that of interest, in the whole social field, has been revealed by the use of a formula that is commonly applied in determining the rent of land. The central principle of the theory is that of so-called “diminishing returns.” In its broader and more scientific use the principle causes labor to become less productive per unit when more of it is applied in connection with a fixed amount of capital; and it causes capital to yield less per unit when an increasing quantity of it is used in connection with a limited amount of labor.

The character and effects of the chief dynamic influences were examined, and some of the conditions of the future well-being of society as a whole and of different social classes were determined.

 

Source: The Johns Hopkins University. University Circulars. Vol. XII, No. 105 (May 1893), p. 83.

Image Source: The Amherst Olio ’96 (1894).