Category: Economic History

Harvard. Economic History of Europe since 1500. Final Exam. Gay, 1902-1903

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2023-02-01

The previous post provided material for the first-semester course on mediaeval economic history taught at Harvard by economics instructor Dr. Edwin Gay during the 1902-03 academic year. In this post Economics in the Rear-view Mirror provides the course description, enrollment, and final exam questions for the follow-up course on European economic history since 1500.

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Economics 11
Course announcement
1902-03, Spring term

²hf. The Modern Economic History of Europe (from 1500). Half-course (second half-year). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 9. Mr. Gay.

This course, while intended to form a sequel to Course 10, will nevertheless be independent, and may usefully be taken by those who have not followed the history of the earlier period. The main thread of connection will be found in the history of trade; but the outlines of the history of agriculture and industry will also be set forth, and the forms of social organization dependent upon them. England, as the first home of the “great industry,” will demand a large share of attention; but the parallel or divergent economic history of the great countries of western Europe will be considered side by side with it.

Course 11 is open to those who have passed satisfactorily either in History 1 or Economics 1.

Source: Harvard University. Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Division of History and Political Science[Comprising the Departments of History and Government and Economics], 1902-03. Published in The University Publications, New Series, no. 55. June 14, 1902.

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Economics 11
Course Enrollment
1902-03, Spring term

Economics 11. ²hf. Dr. Gay. — The Modern Economic History of Europe (from 1500).

Total 18: 7 Gr., 1 Se., 5 Ju., 4 So., 1 Other.

Source: Harvard University. Annual Report of the President of Harvard College, 1902-03, p. 68.

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Economics 11
Final Examination
1902-03, Spring term

Describe briefly (a) métayage, (b) Zunftzwang, (c) commenda, (d) South Sea Bubble.
State succintly what you associate with the names of (a) John Hales, (b) Jean Bodin, (c) Colbert, (d) Nicholas Barbon.
Give the chief points of interest in the economic history of the reign of Richard II. Where modern writers differ in opinion on any of these points, mention their views.
(a) Summarize the history of wage regulation by public authority in England, noting the views of Rogers, Cunningham and Hewins as to the effectiveness of this public regulation.
(b) By what causes and to what extent was the position of the wage-earner affected in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?
Name the three English statutes between 1560 and 1660 which you consider of most economic importance, and outline their provisions and significance.
When and why did the gild system of industry come to an end in England, France, and Germany? Describe the forms of industrial organization which displaced it.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 6. Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics, History of Religions, Philosophy, Education, Fine Arts, Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Music in Harvard College, June 1903 (in the bound volume Examination Papers 1902-1903).

Image Source: Edwin F. Gay in Harvard Class Album 1906.

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Economic History Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Mediaeval economic history. Final exam. Gay, 1902-1903

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2023-02-01

Edwin Francis Gay (1867-1946) came to Harvard in 1902 as an instructor of economic history taking over William Ashley’s courses after having spent a dozen years of training and advanced historical study in Europe (Berlin, Ph.D. in 1902 under Gustav Schmoller, also he was in Leipzig, Zurich and Florence). He and Abram Piatt Andrew received five-year contracts as assistant professors of economics in 1903. In just four years he actually advanced to the rank of professor. He served as a principal advisor to Harvard President Charles Eliot in establishing the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration in 1908. After the favored candidate to be the founding dean of the business school, William Lyon Mackenzie King (Ph.D., Harvard 1909) turned down the offer, instead continuing as deputy minister of labor in Canada then later becoming prime minister of Canada, President Eliot turned to Gay. In nine years Gay put his stamp on the Harvard Business School, apparently playing an instrumental role in the use of the case method (pedagogic transfer from the law school) with a strong emphasis on obtaining hands-on experience through practical assignments with actual businesses. He is credited with establishing the academic degree of the M.B.A. (Master of Business Administration), the credential of managers.

During WW I Gay worked as adviser to the U.S. Shipping Board and then went on to become editor of the New York Evening Post that would soon go under, giving Gay “an opportunity” to return to Harvard where he could teach economic history up through his retirement in 1936. Gay was among the co-founders of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Council of Foreign Relations. He and his wife moved to California where he worked at the Huntington library where his bulk of his papers are to be found today.

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Economics 10
Course Announcement
(1902-03, first semester)

¹ The Mediaeval Economic History of Europe. Half-course (first half-year). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 9. Mr. Gay.

In this course special attention will be given to England, but its economic life will be treated in connection with the general economic and social development of western Europe.

Supplementary reading on the part of the student will be expected and tested by written reports.

The object of this course is to give a general view of the economic development of society during the Middle Ages. It will deal, among others, with the following topics: the manorial system in its relation to mediaeval agriculture and serfdom; the merchant gilds and the beginnings of town life and of trade; the craft gilds and the gild-system of industry, compared with earlier and later forms; the commercial supremacy of the Hanseatic and Italian merchants; and the break-up of the mediaeval organization of social classes.

It is desirable that students in this course should already possess some general acquaintance with mediaeval history, and those who are deficient in this respect will be expected to read one or two supplementary books, to be suggested by the instructor. The course is conveniently taken after, before, or in conjunction with History 9; and it will be of especial use to those who intend to study the law of Real Property. It is open to those who have passed satisfactorily either in History 1 or in Economics 1.

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Economics 10
Course Enrollment
1902-03 (First term)

Economics 10. ¹hf. Dr. Gay. — The Mediaeval Economic History of Europe.

Total 16: 6 Gr., 1 Se., 2 Ju., 6 So., 1 Other.

Source: Harvard University. Annual Report of the President of Harvard College, 1902-03, p. 68.

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Economics 10
Final Examination
(1902-03, First Semester)

Explain briefly:—
1. firma unius noctis.
2. judex, villicus, major.
3. damnum emergens, lucrum cessans.
4. lettre de foire.
Describe briefly:—
1. reprisals, noting the action taken in the first Statute of Westminster.
2. the staple.
3. the views of Nicholas Oresme on money (following Cunningham).
Comment on the following:—
1. “Omnis etiam qui venit in hunc locum liber hic sedebit, nisi fucrit servus alicujus et confessus fuerit dominum.”
2. What were the other chief characteristics and privileges of the mediaeval town?
What was the Gild Merchant? The Craft Gild? The relation between them?

Take two of the following three questions.

Outline the mediaeval history of the Levant trade. By what routes and through what hands were the Oriental products distributed over Western Europe?
a. Give an account of the origin, extent and organization of the Hanseatic League.
b. Give the chief facts (with dates) in the history of the ‘Steelyard.’
Sketch the medieval monetary history of England to the introduction of a gold coinage, with the date and significance of this step. How far was this history parallel with that of France and Germany, and what was its chief point of difference?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 6. Papers (in the bound volume Examination Papers Mid-years 1902-1903).
Also included in: Harvard University Archives. Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 6. Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics, History of Religions, Philosophy, Education, Fine Arts, Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Music in Harvard College, June 1903 (in the bound volume Examination Papers 1902-1903).

Image Source: Edwin F. Gay, seated in office, 1908. From Wikipedia. Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror

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Economic History Exam Questions Johns Hopkins Undergraduate

Johns Hopkins. Exam questions for undergraduate economic history. Broadus Mitchell, 1937-1938

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2022-12-27

Associate Professor Broadus Mitchell taught the standard undergraduate survey course in economic history at Johns Hopkins in 1937-1938. He resigned from Johns Hopkins the following year over the matter of admitting an African American student to the department of political economy (the admission was fought by the Johns Hopkins University administration).

Much more about Mitchell can be found in the 90 page transcript of an oral history interview with him from August 14 and 15, 1977 that can be found in the Southern Oral History Program Collection at the website Documenting the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

It is the regret of my life that at Johns Hopkins University I did not pursue to the bitter end the defense of the proposal to admit a qualified Negro graduate student in the Department of Political Economy. He was Edward S. Lewis, who was the Secretary of the Urban League, of which I had been the first President in Baltimore. He was a graduate, I believe, of the University of Chicago and maybe of the Columbia University School of Social Work; I’ve forgotten. At any rate he was in every way a highly qualified, mature applicant for admission to graduate work. He was a leading black social worker in Maryland, where there’s a large negro population with a much higher incidence of poverty, disease, and so on than the whites. And he had been doing graduate work in economics at the University of Pennsylvania, commuting weekends. He could only get weekends, because he was holding his position as Secretary of the Urban League in Baltimore. And this was unsatisfactory and costly and interrupted and so on, so why shouldn’t he come to Johns Hopkins where we had every facility? … pp. 76-77.

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Course Description
Economic History
1937-1938

12 B. Economic History. Associate Professor Mitchell. Three hours weekly through the year. M., Tu., W., 9.30. Gilman Hall 314.

In the first part of this course a study is made of English economic history, the purpose being to show not only the industrial development of the English people as such but the way in which the economic motive has influence the whole of social life. Particular attention is given to the characteristic forms of economic organization—the manorial system, the guild system, the entrance of capitalism and the causes and consequences of the Industrial Revolution. Special reference is made to those features of English economic history which have influenced industrial life in the United States. The second part of the course is a survey of the economic history of our own country. Here the same effort is made, as in the case of England, to show the bearing of economic considerations on political evolution, especially in the direction of the growing importance of the Federal Government.

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Semester Examinations
Economic History
1937-1938

THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
MID-YEAR EXAMINATION
POLITICAL ECONOMY 12 B

Dr. Mitchell

February 1, 1938
9 a.m.

Contrast life in an English manorial village of the 13th century with agricultural life in the United States today.
What were the main causes and consequences of the enclosures movement?
Contrast the conduct of industry and commerce in the towns of England in the Middle Ages with industrial and commercial life in the United States today.
Trace the transition from the guild system through the domestic system to capitalism.
Describe the Industrial Revolution.
Give a brief account of two of the following movements: labor unionism, the factory acts movement, Chartism, socialism, consumers’ co-operation.
What is meant by the economic interpretation of history?
What is the status of the laissez faire theory in the United States today?
Make an argument that mankind would be better off if the inventors of the 18th century never lived.

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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
FINAL EXAMINATION
IN
POLITICAL ECONOMY 12 B

Dr. Mitchell

May 31, 1938
9 a.m.

What was the economic position of the country at the time the Constitution was formed?
Discuss the “American System”
Give an outline of banking from 1791 to the adoption of the Federal Reserve Act.
Contrast economic conditions in North and South on the eve of the Civil War.
Tell what you can of the growth of large-scale business enterprise and its economic and legislative consequences.
Discuss the protective tariff in America.
Identify briefly: Mathew Carey, Friedrich List, Salmon P. Chase, Nicholas Biddle, James B. Duke, Samuel Slator.
Tell what you know of governmental intervention in economic life during the depression which began in 1929.

Source: Johns Hopkins University, Eisenhower Library. Ferdinand Hamburger, Jr. Archives. Department of Political Economy. Curricular Materials. Series 6. Box 2. Folder “Department of Political Economy — Exams, 1936-1940”.

Image Source: Broadus Mitchell in his office, ca. 1938. From the Johns Hopkins university graphic and pictorial collection. Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Economic History Exam Questions Harvard Suggested Reading

Harvard. US Economic History. Readings and Exams. Sprague and Patten, 1901-1902

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2022-08-11

In addition to a course announcement with description, enrollment figures, and the mid-term and/or year-end examination questions, we have a reading list for “reports”, presumably to be written or presented by students, for a course in U.S. economic history jointly taught by O.M.W. Sprague and James Horace Patten (see below) at Harvard during the 1901-1902 academic year.

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JAMES HORACE PATTEN

Born at Spring Hill, Kan., Dec. 23, 1877. Son of Henry Harrison and Gertrude (Pratt) Patten.

School: Paola and Olathe High School; Wentworth Military Academy.

Year in College: 1896-97. A.B.; AM. 1899; LL.B. 1905; A.B. 1896 (Kansas State University).

Married: Olive Young Latimer, Oct. 12, 1909, Belton, S.C.

Occupation: Lawyer.

Address: (business) 204 Second Street, S.E., Washington, D.C.; (home) 1918 S. Street, N.W., Washington, D.C.

Was Instructor of Economics, Harvard College, 1900-02; Austin Teaching Fellow, Harvard, 1902-03; appointed Professor of Political Science, University of New Brunswick, in May, 1902; resigned in August, 1902, to enter Harvard Law School; admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in June, 1905; South Carolina Bar in 1909; District of Columbia in 1906; resided in Washington, D.C., since 1905, office 204 Second Street, S.E.; residence 1918 S Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. I was general counsel, Farmers’ educational Co-operative Socitey, 1909-16; assistant secretary, Farmers’ National Congress, 1914-18; and secretary, 1918-20; secretary, Immigration Restriction League since 1912; member, Phi Beta Kappa, Beta Theta Pi, Mason, University Club, Washington, D.C.; national vice-president, Patriotic Order Sons of America.

Source: Harvard Class of 1897. Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Report 1897-1922, pp. 421-422.

James Horace Patten. “The Immigration Problem and the South” from The American (Raleigh, N.C.: April 1, 1906).

His death

[Died Apr. 25, 1940 (AP) Washington, April 26: “James H. Patten, 62, attorney and publicist, died yesterday from effects of illunitating gas a short time after his wife found him in the kitchen of their home”.

A certificate of suicide was issued. “Mrs. Patten told police her husband had been in ill health and suffering from a nervous disorder for some time.” The Greenville News, S.C. April 27, 1940, p. 10]

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Course Announcement,
1901-1902.
Economics 6

For Undergraduates and Graduates

The Economic History of the United States. Tu., Th., at 2.30. Dr. [Oliver Mitchell Wentworth] Sprague and Mr. [Austin Teaching Fellow, James Horace] Patten.

Course 6 gives a general survey of the economic history of the United States from the close of the eighteenth century to the present time, and aims to show on the one hand the mode in which economic principles are illustrated by American experience and, on the other, the extent to which economic conditions have influenced social and political development. The following are among the subjects considered: aspects of the Revolution and commercial relations during the Confederation and the European wars; the history of the protective tariff policy and the growth of manufacturing industries; the settlement of the West and the history of transportation, including the early canal and turnpike enterprises of the states, the various phases of railway building and the establishment of public regulation of railways; the development of corporations and the formation of industrial combinations; various aspects of agrarian history, such as the public land policy, the growth of foreign demand for American produce and the subsequent competition of other sources of supply, certain social topics, such as slavery and its economic basis, emancipation and the present condition of the Negro, the effects of immigration. Finally, the more important features of our currency and financial history are reviewed. Comparisons will be made from time to time with the contemporary economic history of Europe.

The course is taken advantageously with or after History 13. It is open to students who take Economies 1, and also to Juniors and Seniors who are taking that course.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Annual Announcement of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Division of History and Political Science comprising the Departments of History and Government and Economics (June 21, 1901). Official Register of Harvard University 1901-1902. Box 1. Bound volume: Univ. Pub. N.S. 16. History, etc. p. 42.

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Course Enrollment, 1901-02
Economics 6.

For Undergraduates and Graduates:—

[Economics] 6. Dr. Sprague and Mr. Patten. — The Economic History of the United States.

Total 125: 7 Graduates, 33 Seniors, 53 Juniors, 19 Sophomores, 13 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1901-1902, p. 77.

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REPORTS IN ECONOMICS 6.

[In pencil: “1901-02 ?”]

COLONIAL TOPICS.

ENGLISH COLONIAL POLICY. — WAS IT BENEFICIAL TO THE COLONIES OR THE MOTHER COUNTRY?

Beer: Commercial Policy of England toward her Colonies, chs. iv-viii.

Rogers: Economical Interpretation of History, 318-340.

Rabbeno: American Commercial Policy, 48-91.

Smith: Wealth of Nations, Bk. IV, ch. vii.

Ricardo: Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, ch. xxv.

Bernard: Select Letters on the Trade Government of America.

SPANISH COLONIES AND COLONIAL POLICY.

Burke: European Settlements in America, Part III, chs. iii-v, viii, ix, xi, xvi.

Robertson: History of America, Bk. VIII.

Lewis: Government of Dependencies, 134-165, 351-9.

Merivale: Colonization and Colonies, I, 1-44.

Moses: The Casa de Contratacion of Seville. — Annual Report of the American Historical Assn., 1894, pp. 93-123.

Winterbotham: History of America, IV, 176-202.

Reynal: History of the Indies, III, 336-426, IV, 275-345.

Humbolt: Political Essays on the Kingdom of New Spain, I, 230-257, III, 231-251, 283-294, 324-3336, 394-418, 490, IV, 27, 55, 92-127.

THE COLONIAL LABOR PROBLEM. — DIFFICULTY OF SECURING A SUPPLY OF LABOR AND THE MEANS USED TO OVERCOME IT.

(a) Transportation of Criminals, and Indentured Servants.

Merivale: Colonization and Colonies, Part III, Lecture ix, xii, xiii.

Brownlow: Slavery and Serfdom in Europe, Lecture v.

Fisk: Old Virginia and Her Neighbors, II, 174-189.

Bruce: Economic History of Virginia, chs. ix, x.

Weeden: Economic and Social History of New England, 83-87, 520-522.

American Husbandry, I, 169-70. (Lib. No. 47.42.)

Lucas: Historical Geography of the British Colonies, II, 47.

(b) The African Slave Trade.

Weston: Progress of Slavery, 153-163, (ch. xi).

Merivale: Colonization and Colonies, Lecture ix-xi.

Lucas: Historical Geography of the British Colonies, III, chs. ii, iii.

DuBois: Suppression of the African Slave Trade, 1-6.

Cobb: Historical Sketch of Slavery, ch. IX.
Bandinel: Some Account of the Trade in Slaves, etc., Part I.
Edwards: History of the West Indies, Bk. IV, chs. ii-v.

Dean: Connection of Massachusetts with Slavery.

Weeden: Economic and Social History of New England, ch. xii.

Bruce: Economic History of Virginia, ch. xi.

COLONIAL CURRENCY. — SCARCITY OF SPECIE CURRENCY AND SOME OF THE SUBSTITUTES FOR IT.

White: Money and Banking, 120-134, 248-258.

Weeden: Economic and Social History of New England, pp. 32-45, 314-336, 473-491, 674-678.

Macfarlane: Pennsylvania Paper Currency. — Publications of American Academy of Pol. and Soc. Science, Vol. VIII, 50.

Bruce: Economic History of Virginia, ch. xix.

Ripley: Financial History of Virginia, ch. xix.

Davis: Currency Discussions in Mass. in the 18^th Century. — Quarterly Journal of Economics, XI, 70, 136.

Douglass: A Discourse Concerning the Currencies of the British Plantations in America. — Economic Studies, II, No. 5.

COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY.

COMMERCIAL RELATIONS WITH GREAT BRITAIN 1783-1830. — NAVIGATION ACTS AND THE WEST INDIA TRADE.

Lyman: The Diplomacy of United States, II, chs. ii, iii, xii.

Edwards: History of the West Indies, Bk. VI, ch. iv.

Lindsay: History of Merchant Shipping, II, 250-256, 345-407, III, 53-65.

Jay: Life and Writings of John Jay, I, 330-334.

Sumner: Life of Jackson, 164-170.

Rand: Economic History since 1763. (2d Ed.), 515-517.

Adams: Works, VIII, 241, 241 (sic), 310, 327, 350, (273-466).

Madison: Writings, II, 158, 170, 173, 197, 233. 480-483.

SOME REPRESENTATIVE VIEWS OF TARIFF POLICY.

(a) Webster and the Position of New England.

Webster: Works, III, 94 (1824), 224 (1828), V, 161 (1846).

Taussig: State Papers and Speeches on the Tariff, 317-385.

For the votes of each state on each Tariff Act, see Sen. Rept. No. 2130, 2d Sess. 51st Congress, pp. 118-120.

(b) Calhoun and McDuffie. — Opposition of the South. — . Had South Carolina just cause for complaint?

Houston: A [Critical] Study of Nullification in South Carolina, chs. iii, iv.

Calhoun: Works, II, 163-173, VI, 2-34.

McDuffie: In Annals of Congress, 18th Cong., I, 1552, 1677, II, 2402-2425; in Congressional Debates, III, 1003, 1006, 2400-2404, VI, 843-847, VIII, Part III, 3142.

Gallatin: Report on Manufactures, 26-29 (Lib. No. 7372, 25).

Taussig: State Papers and Speeches on the Tariff, 1-62, 109-213.

Rabbeno: American Commercial Policy, 287-324.

(d) List and Carey.

Rabbeno: American Commercial Policy, 325-383.

List: National System of Political Economy, 189-352.

Carey: Principles of Social Science: I, chs. iv, §§1-3, viii, x, xiv, xv, xix, xx. xxvi-xxix.

THE TARIFF POLICY AND THE GROWTH OF INDUSTRY 1846-1860. — HOW DID THE LOW DUTIES AFFECT MANUFACTORIES AND WAGES?

Webster: Works, V, 225-235.

Winthrop: Cong. Globe, 1845-46. Appendix, 972-973.

Taussig: Tariff’ History of the U.S., 109-154.

Bolles; Financial History of the U. S., 449-466

Grosvenor: Does Protection Protect, chs. ix, xi, xvi, xix-xxii, xxiv.

Bishop: History of American Manufactures, II, 505 (483-505).

Wright: Comparative Wages, 23-38, 191-199.

Aldrich: Report on Wholesale Prices, Wages, and Transportation, Part I, 11-16. (Sen. Report, No. 1394, 52d Cong. 2d Sess.)

Compendium of the 7th Census, 178-184.

Compendium of 8th Census, 59-75.

GROWTH AND DECAY OF AMERICAN SHIPPING.

Shaler: The United States of American, I, 518-624.

Kelley: The Question of Ships, ch. i-v, xi.

Bates: American Marine, chs. ii, viii-xii, xxii.

Wells: Decay of Our Ocean Mercantile Marine. (Lib. No. v. 6034).

Lindsay: History of Merchant Shipping, IV, chs. iii, iv.

Lynch: Causes of the Reduction of American Tonnage.

SETTLEMENT OF THE WEST.

SPREAD OF COTTON CULTURE AND ITS EFFECT ON SLAVERY. — HAD SLAVERY A PERMANENT ECONOMIC BASIS IN THE SOUTH?

Hammond: The Cotton Industry, chs. ii, iii.

Merivale: Colonization and Colonies. I, 295-302.

Wakefield: The Public Lands a Mine of Wealth, 44-46.

_________: England and America, ii, 1-17.

Sterling: Letters from the Slave States, 302-322.

Hildreth: Despotism in American, ch. iii.

Weston: Progress of Slavery, chs. i-iv, xii, xiv-xvi.

Cairnes: The Slave Power, chs. ii-v, especially 83-92.

Olmsted: The Cotton Kingdom, I, ch. 1; II, 361-398; or

_________: A Journey in the Back Country, ch. viii.

_________: Seaboard Slave States, chs. iii. iv, viii.

Russell: North America, its Agriculture and Climate, chs. viii-x, (xv-xvi).

IMPROVEMENTS IN TRANSPORTATION, AND GROWTH OF INTERNAL COMMERCE AS INDICATED BY LAKE, RIVER, AND CANAL TRAFFIC, 1813-1860.

McMaster: History of United States, III, 459-496, 1V, 381-424.

Million: State Aid to Railways in Missouri, 7-29, 196-229.

Adams: Public Debt, 317-342.

Flagg: Internal Improvements in New York. — Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine, XXIII-XXV. (See also, VI, 439, XVIII, 488.)

Poor: Manual of the Railroads of the U. S., 1868-9, pp. 9-19.

Kettell: In Eighty Years’ Progress, 165-167, 178-190.

U.S. Treas. Dept.: Report on the Internal Commerce of the United States, 178-233.

Andrews: Report on Colonial and Lake Trade.

De Bow: Industrial Resources of the South and West, I, 444-453.

SALE AND SETTLEMENT OF THE PUBLIC LANDS. — PUBLIC LAND POLICY

McMaster: History of U.S., II, 476-482, III, 89-146.

Hart: Practical Essays on American Government, 233-258.

Donaldson: The Public Domain, chs. vii, viii, x, xiii, xx, xxvii.

Gallatin: Writings, III, 209-229.

Colton: Life, Correspondence, and Speeches of Henry Clay. I. ch. xx, VI. 56-85.

American Annual Register, 1829-30, p. 67.

Sato: History of the Land Question in the U.S. — Johns Hopkins University Studies in Hist. and Pol. Sci., IV, Nos. vii-ix.

CURRENCY AND FINANCE

THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM ESTABLISHED BY HAMILTON AND GALLATIN.

Hildreth: History of U.S., IV, 152-176; 206-220; 252-256; 536-538.

Dunbar: Some Precedents followed by Hamilton, Q.J.E., III, 32-59.

Hamilton: Reports on Public Credit; Works, III, 1-45, 457-529. (Lodge Ed., ii, 97-108; 475-529.)

Adams: Life of Gallatin, 267-274; 292-297

______: History of U.S., I, ch. x.

Howe: Taxation in the U.S. under the Internal Revenue System. chs. i, ii.

BANK NOTES AS DEPRECIATED CURRENCY AND THE HISTORY OF THE SECOND UNITED STATES BANK, 1814-1846.

Hildreth: History of U.S., IV, 256-262.

Bancroft: A Plea for the Constitution, etc., Part iii.

White: Money and Banking, 271-313.

Gallatin: Considerations on the Currency and Banking System of the U.S., 5-6, 19-84. (See also Writings, 235-6; 253-336.)

Sumner: History of American Currency, 59-169; or

______: Life of Jackson, 236-276; 291-342.

McMaster: With the Fathers, 237-252.

THE INDEPENDENT TREASURY AND EFFORTS TO SECURE A SPECIE CURRENCY, 1836-1860.

Bolles: Financial History of the U.S., II, 351-358.

Hildreth: Banks and Banking, 109-113; 170-177.

Gouge: A Short History of Paper Money and Banking in the U.S., 103-106: 111-116.

Van Buren: Special Message of 1837, Statesman’s Manual, 1051.

Webster: Works, IV, 312, 324.

Benton: Thirty Years’ View, II, 124, 164.

Kinley: The Independent Treasury of U.S., chs, i-iii, vii.

Sumner: History of American Currency, 161-189.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003.Box 1, Folder “Economics, 1901-1902”.

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Mid-Year Examination 1901-02
ECONOMICS 6

Define or explain:
1. Enumerated Commodities.
2. The Molasses Act.
3. Specie Circular.
4. Independent Treasury.
5. The “National Pike.”
6. Pre-emption.
7. The tariff of abominations.
The iron industry in the United States to 1860 and the influence of the tariff upon its development.
Why was protection favorably regarded in the West and South after the War of 1812?
The relation of the public lands to the tariff after 1825.
What economic reasons were advanced against the renewal of the charter of the second bank of the United States? Were they well-founded?
The history of internal improvements in Michigan, Illinois, and Pennsylvania, distinguishing carefully important differences.
The connection of the settlement of the Mississippi valley, improvements in transportation facilities, and changes in the nature and relative importance of occupations in different sections of the country. What statistics show the connection?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Mid-year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 6, Bound volume: Examination Papers, Mid-Years, 1901-02.

______________________________

Year-End Examination 1901-02
ECONOMICS 6

Trace with specific illustrations the steps taken for the elimination of railroad competition between 1868 and 1878.
Conditions leading to the greater diversification of agriculture in the United States. What peculiar obstacles present themselves in the South?
Why are duties on raw materials less defensible than those on manufactures? Give specific illustrations.
Why have the silk duties been more successful than the linen duties?
The value of the inductive method in studying the effects of protective duties.
What kinds of money might have increased in quantity under U.S. laws in 1874, in 1885 and in 1901?
Why is the United States acquiring a larger proportion of the current production of gold now than ten or fifteen years ago?
Defects in the fiscal system of the United States. Illustrate from experience during the war of 1812 and the Civil War

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers, 1873-1915. Box 6, Bound volume: Examination Papers, 1902-03. Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics, Philosophy, Education, Fine Arts, Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Music in Harvard College (June, 1902), p. 25.

Image Source: Wikimedia. Muse Clio from the illustrations to Ovid by Virgil Solis (1562).

Tags PattenJH, Sprague

Economic History M.I.T. Suggested Reading Syllabus

M.I.T. Reading list for Problems in Russian Economic History. Domar, 1975

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2022-05-28

Evsey Domar’s 1970 article, “The Causes of Slavery or Serfdom” (The Journal of Economic History. Vol. XXX, March, 1970) made him a one-hit wonder in the field of economic history. But what a hit!

He shared some of his life-long passion for Russian economic history with M.I.T. graduate students back when M.I.T. could boast having three professors teaching economic history — Charles Kindleberger covered modern European history, Evsey Domar focussed on his Russian peasants, and Peter Temin was there for U.S. economic history of the new cliometric fashion. Just about ten years ago Peter Temin wrote a memoir on “the rise and fall of economic history at MIT“.

One salient memory I took from Domar’s Russian economic history class is associated with the very first meeting when Domar, not a very tall man, lugged into the classroom a huge rolled-up map of Russia to hang on the blackboard. He hardly referred to the map so I presumed he once ordered it in a fit of enthusiasm that far exceeded its pedagogical usefulness. Or maybe Domar was a kindred spirit of The Dude (see “Lebowski, Big”) and thought his Russia map really tied the classroom together.

________________________

PROBLEMS IN RUSSIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY
14.732

E.D. Domar
Spring Term 1974-75

The purpose of this list is to indicate to the student the sources in which the more important topics of the course are discussed from several points of view. He will be held responsible for the topics rather than for “who said what.”

Since it is difficult to understand the economic and social developments in a country without a good general background in the country’s history, it is suggested that students who have not had a course in Russian history familiarize themselves with some standard textbook, such as A History of Russia by Nicholas V. Riasanovsky (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), to which some references will be made here.

The book which will be used from cover to cover is Jerome Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961). It would be best to buy a copy. (Paperbacks are available).

Each student is expected to write a term paper of about 30 double-spaced pages on a subject agreed upon with the instructor.

There will be a 80 minute final examination on the last day of class in May.

PART I – KIEVAN RUSSIA
PART II – APPANAGE RUSSIA

REQUIRED

Riasanovsky, Parts I, Il, and III.

Blum, Introduction, Chapters 1-7.

RECOMMENDED

Karl Bosl, Alexander Gieysztor, Frantisek Graus, M. M. Postan, and Ferdinand Seibt, Eastern and Western Europe in the Middle Ages (Harcourt Brace, Jovanovich, Inc., 1971).

Francis Dvornik, The Slavs in European History and Civilization (Rutgers University Press).

James Gregory, Russian Land, Soviet People: A Geographical Approach to the U.S.S.R. (London, 1968).

V. O. Kliuchevsky, A History of Russia, translation by C. J. Hogarth.

Peter Liashchenko, History of the National Economy of Russia to the 1917 Revolution, translated by L. M. Herman (New York: 1949, 1970).

Frank Nowak, Medieval Slavdom and the Rise of Russia (Greenwood Press, Inc.)

W. H. Parker, An Historical Geography of Russia (London: 1968).

Henry Paszkiewicz, The Origin of Russia (New York: 1969).

M. N. Pokrovaky, History of Russia from the Earliest Times to the Rise of Commercial Capitalism(Bloomington, Indiana: 1966).

B. H. Slicher (van Bath), The Agrarian History of Western Europe, A.D. 500-1850.

Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, Vol. III, pp. 391-454.

George Vernadsky, Kievan Russia (New Haven: 1948).

George Vernadsky, The Mongols and Russia (New Haven: 1953).

Warren B. Walsh, Readings in Russian History from Ancient Times to the Post-Stalin Era, Vol. I, (Syracuse University Press, 1963).

PART III — THE DEVELOPMENT OF SERFDOM BEFORE PETER I
XVI and XVII CENTURIES

REQUIRED

Riasanovsky, Part IV (as a background)

Blum, Chapters 8-14.

Evsey D. Domar, “The Causes of Slavery or Serfdom,” The Journal of Economic History. Vol. XXX, March, 1970, pp. 18-32.

Richard Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy (Chicago: 1970). Introduction, Parts I, II (omit the details and get the man ideas).

Joseph T. Fuhrmann, The Origins of Capitalism in Russia: Industry and Progress in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Chicago: 1972), Chapters 1, 2, 10-13 (omit the details).

RECOMMENDED

Paul Avrich, Russian Rebels, 1600-1800 (Schocken Booke, 1972).

Lloyd E. Berry and Robert O. Crummey, editors, Rude & Barbarous Kingdom (The University of Washington Press, 1968).

V. O. Kliuchevsky, A Course in Russian History: The 17th Century (Quadrangle Books, Inc.)

James Mavor, An Economic History of Russia (New York: 1965), two volumes.

R. E. F. Smith, The Enserfment of the Russian Peasantry (Cambridge: 1968).

George Vernadsky, The Tsardom of Moscow, 1547-1682, in two volumes, (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969).

Jerome Blum, “The Rise of Serfdom in Eastern Europe,” American Historical Review, Vol. LXII, 1957, pp. 807-836.

T. S. Wellan, The Early History of the Russia Company (New York: 1969).

See also Part I and II of the Reading List.

PART IV – FROM PETER I TO THE EMANCIPATION OF THE PEASANTS
1700 — 1861

REQUIRED

Blum, Chapters 15-27.

James Mavor, An Economic History of Russia (New York: 1925, 1965), pp. 100-141 (omit the details).

A. Kahan, “Continuity in Economic Activity and Policy During the Post-Petrine Period in Russia,” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. XXV, March, 1965, pp. 61-85.

A. Kahan, “The Costs of ‘Westernization’ in Russia: The Gentry and the Economy in the Eighteenth Century,” The Slavic Review, Vol. XXV, March, 1966, pp. 40-66.

R. Portal, “The Industrialization of Russia,” The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Vol. VI, Part II, (Cambridge: 1965), pp. 801-810.

W. Blackwell, The Beginnings of Russian Industrialization, 1800-1860 (Princeton: 1968), (Get the main ideas and omit all details).

RECOMMENDED

Clifford M. Foust, Muscovite and Mandarin: Russia’s Trade with China and its Setting, 1727-1805 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press, 1969).

Baron August Von Haxthausen, Studies on the Interior of Russia (University of Chicago Press, 1972).

Baron August Von Haxthausen, The Russian Empire, Volume 1 and 2.

James Mavor, An Economic History of Russia (New York: Russell and Russell, Inc., 1925, 1965), pp. 142-374, Volume I.

Anatole G. Mazour, The First Russian Revolution, 1825: The Decembrist Movement — Its Origins, Development, and Significance (Stanford: 1937).

Walter McKenzie Pintner, Russian Economic Policy Under Nicholas I (Cornell University Press, 1967).

Charles H. Pearson, Russia by a Recent Traveller (Frank Cass and Co. Limited, 1970).

S. P. Turin, From Peter the Great to Lenin: A History of the Russian Labour Movement with Special Reference to Trade Unionism (W. Heffer and Sons)

PART V — FROM THE EMANCIPATION OF THE PEASANTS TO
THE SOVIET REGIME 1861-1917

REQUIRED

A. Gerschenkron, “Agrarian Policies and Industrialization: Russia 1861-1917,” The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Vol. VI, Part II, (Cambridge: 1965) , pp. 706-800 (Get the main ideas and skip the details).

G. T. Robinson, Rural Russia Under the Old Regime (New York: 1962).

A. Gerschenkeron, “Russia: Patterns and Problems of Economic Development, 1861-1958,” Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, Mass.: 1962), pp. 119-151.

A. Gerschenkron, “The Rate of Industrial Growth in Russia Since 1885,” The Tasks of Economic History, Supplement VII, 1947, to The Journal of Economic History, pp. 144-174.

R. W. Goldsmith, “The Economic Growth of Tsarist Russia, 1860-1913,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. IX, April, 1961, pp. 441-475 (only pp. 441-443 are required).

Paul Gregory, “Economic Growth and Structural Change in Tsarist Russia: A Case of Modern Economic Growth?” Soviet Studies, Vol. XXIII, January, 1972, pp. 418-434.

T. H. Von Laue, Sergei Witte and the Industrialization of Russia (New York: 1963), (not in detail), pp. 1-35, 262-308.

RECOMMENDED

Dorothy Atkinson, “The Statistics on the Russian Land Commune, 1905-1917,” Slavic Review, Vol. 32, Number 4, December, 1973, pp. 773-787.

Alexis N. Antsyferov, Russian Agriculture during the War: Rural Economy (New Haven: 1930).

Haim Barkai, “The Macro-Economics of Tsarist Russia in the Industrialization Era: Monetary Developments, the Balance of Payments and the Gold Standard, The Journal of Economic History, Vol. XXXIII, June, 1973, pp. 339-371.

A.V. Chayanov, The Theory of Peasant Economy (Homewood, Illinois: 1966).

T. Emmons, The Russian Gentry and the Peasant Emancipation to 1861 (Cambridge: 1968).

A. Gerschenkron, Continuity in History and Other Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: 1968).

A. Gerschenkron, Europe in the Russian Mirror: Four Lectures in Economic History (Cambridge University Press, 1970).

Geoffrey A. Hosking, The Russian Constitutional Experiment: Government and Duma, 1907-1914 (New York and London: Cambridge University Press, 1973).

Isaac A. Hourwich, The Economics of the Russian Village (New York: Columbia University, 1892).

Stefan Kieniewicz, The Emancipation of the Polish Peasantry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969).

V. I. Lenin, The Development of Capitalism in Russia, (second Russian edition, Moscow: 1907; English translation, Moscow: 1956).

James Mavor, An Economic History of Russia (New York: Russell & Russell, 1925, 1965).

John P. Mckay, Pioneers for Profit: Foreign Entrepreneurship and Russian Industrialization, 1885-1913(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).

Margaret Miller, The Economic Development of Russia, 1905-1914, second edition, (New York: 1967).

W. H. Parker, A Historical Geography of Russia (London: 1968).

Alfred J. Rieber, editor, Politics of Autocracy: Letters of Alexander II to Prince Bariatinskii, 1857-1865 (New York: 1966).

Amende Roosa, “Russian Industrialists and ‘State Socialism’, 1906-1917,” Soviet Studies, Vol. XXIII, January, 1972, pp. 395-417.

Teodor Shanin, The Awkward Class: Political Sociology of Peasantry in a Developing Society: Russia 1910-1925 (Oxford: 1972).

Mikhail I. Tugan-Baranovsky, The Russian Factory in the 19th Century, Richard D. Irwin, 1970.

Wayne S. Vucinich, editor, The Peasant in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968; London: 1970).

Reginald E. Zelnik, Labor and Society in Tsarist Russia: The Factory Workers of St. Petersburg, 1855-1870(Stanford: April, 1971).

Male, D. J., Russian Peasant Organisation Before Collectivisation. A Study of Commune and Gathering 1925-1930. (Cambridge University Press, 1971).

Source: Personal copy of Irwin Collier.

Image Source: MIT Economics Facebook post (Evsey Domar, In Memoriam) of October 10, 2014.

Tags Domar

Economic History Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania. Rejected proposal to the Committee on Research in Economic History. Kuznets, ca. 1941

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2022-05-23

The economic historian Earl J. Hamilton’s papers at the Economists’ Papers Archive at Duke University are, we shall say, rather disheveled, though not quite in the archival dusty way that John Maurice Clark’s papers at Columbia University are found by the rummaging historian. There are numbers of folders that might as easily be labelled “Everything plus the kitchen sink, 1930-1970” and it was in one such folder that the following undated memorandum of Simon Kuznets was found.

The backstory to this memo is that sometime around 1941 Simon Kuznets (then a forty-year old professor at the University of Pennsylvania) self-nominated his quantitative approach to economic history to become one of the pillars of a major project in economic history to be supported by the Rockefeller Foundation through the Social Science Research Council. His project was rejected which just might have had something to do with his later resignation from the Committee. The larger context is described in Arthur H. Cole. The Committee on Research in Economic History: An Historical Sketch. The Journal of Economic History, vol. XXX, No. 4 (December 1970), pp. 723-741.

In the debate pertinent to the fields most worthwhile for the Committee, considering the whole situation of public needs, quantum of research funds, paucity of existing talent, and the like, two proposals were elaborated for Committee consideration, both of which caused much debate and a postponement of decision on the selection of suitable subjects. One was submitted by [Edwin] Gay. He had apparently been much impressed by the summaries of changes in national foreign policies which Arnold Toynbee was then preparing for publication in England. (One of Gay’s personal connections was that of treasurer and active member of the Council on Foreign Relations.) He suggested a continuing group to record the significant alterations of conditions in the principal segments of the American economy. After lengthy debate, it was decided that this project would entail too great a commitment of our limited funds, and the proposition was tabled-and never called back into debate. The second scheme was that which Kuznets has prosecuted over the past two or three decades. At the period of our debate, he seemed unable to outline his program and define his objectives in a manner that satisfied his fellow members of the group. In the end this proposal also was shelved-permanently. Happily Kuznets did secure other financial backing within a few years and has been busy with the investigation ever since: the measurement of economic change and a determination of its cause. [p. 728]

In an earlier article, the (losing) Kuznets and Gay proposals were not mentioned however the winning topics were named in Arthur H. Cole, Committee on Research in Economic History: A Description of Its Purposes, Activities, and Organization. The Journal of Economic History. Vol. 13, No. 1 (Winter, 1953), pp. 79-87.

The Committee on Research in Economic History owes its start to the scholarly interests of Dr. Joseph H. Willits and Dr. Anne Bezanson, at that time both associated with the Rockefeller Foundation. A committee of inquiry was nominated by them; a report of the needs of economic history was drafted by the committee; and, at the instance of Dr. Willits, a grant was made by the Foundation. In all these latter proceedings, Dr. Edwin F. Gay, director of research at the Huntington Library and the dean of American economic historians, was the energizing element. The grant was made in 1940.
During the following ten years, the committee operated as an organ of the Social Science Research Council. Subsequently it withdrew from the Council, secured incorporation as a nonprofit institution under the laws of the District of Columbia, and is now an independent body.
The objective specified for the committee in the grant of the Rockefeller Foundation was broad but simple: merely to develop the field of economic History….
…The specific areas in economic history which the committee found to be especially worthy of research attention and to which it decided initially to devote effort were (i) the relation of the state to American economic development; (2) the evolution of the corporation in the United States and Canada; (3) the history of banking in these same areas; and (4 ) the role of entrepreneurship in our economic progress. [pp. 79-80]

_________________________

Memorandum on General Bases of the Research Program

To: Members of Committee on Research in Economic History
From: Simon Kuznets

The concern of economic history is to describe and analyse changes over time in the structure and performance of an economic system. This should comprise not only qualitative changes in character of economic organization or faults in its structure (associated with such events as wars or revolutions), but also (b) quantitative measures of the economic factors and of their performance. Whatever may be said of the adequacy with which the discipline of economic history carried through task (a), it has, for various reasons, neglected (b). Yet it is in the combination of study of qualitative changes and structural faults with a quantitative analysis of factors, their interrelations and their performance, that lies the way to significant results.
The aims of economic history may be viewed as (a) providing economic changes, raw materials so as to reveal the lines of causal relation among them, and the patterns of quantitative change — all in application to the concrete historical unfolding of economic events, but with a view to results that can serve as tests and cornerstones for analysis of the present and prognosis of the future. The two aims are interdependent. Whatever may be said of the past efficiency of the discipline of economic history in satisfying aim (a), there appears to be a pressing need for strengthening its performance in attaining aim (b). Also, there is an obvious relation between the neglect by economic history in the past of quantitative analysis of the substantive performance of the economic system and its failure to interpret economic change in analytical categories (i.e., between 1b and 2b)
The adequacy or inadequacy of any specific study of qualitative changes in economic structure, or of any collection of raw materials, is to be judged in terms of the analytical uses to which the results can be put. The need for new data, whether qualitative or quantitative, can be seen clearly only in the light of a study guided by some significant problem which one intends to analyse in terms of historical experience. There is no way, barring the extreme and unimportant cases of complete absence of any empirical data, to determine the adequacy of raw materials and the character of the lacunae, except by coming to the data with a broad and well articulated question to which one seeks an answer.
Hence, the Committee should, in planning its research program, consider the advisability of selecting at least one broad problem, one comprehensive study that could serve as a focus of whatever narrower undertakings may be launched. In view of the need of emphasizing a combination of historical-qualitative, statistical and analytical methods of inquiry, the broad central study should force the investigators to use fully each and all of these types of research tools. This, of course, does not mean that similar combination of research tools should not be employed in any of the narrower studies the Committee may wish to launch.
As stated in my earlier communication, it seems to me that such a central comprehensive study could be formulated on, the broad topic of economic change in this country, to comprise: (a) a study of long term changes; (b) a study of shorter term recurrent fluctuations; and supplemented by (c) a chronological record of specific changes of the type provided by economic annals. (a) The study of long term or secular changes would deal with the quantitative aspects of the growth of population, production, size and organization of enterprise, various facets of the trade, transportation and credit systems, relation of domestic and foreign trade, relation of government etc. to the economic system, and so on. It would attempt to show how fast or slow such changes were in the past; what were the quantitatively measurable or qualitatively recordable factors that appeared to determine these rates or their changes; and what elements of persistence and variation in these long term trends can be discerned. (b) The study of shorter term fluctuations would attempt to present a record of business cycles in this country in their historical succession their peculiarities, in the light of qualitative and quantitative data available as well as of the hypotheses offered by economic theory. (c) Economic annals will seek to record the succession of specific events, which are of bearing upon both long and short term changes in the economy, events that do not appear clearly in continuous quantitative records. They will thus provide largely the qualitative materials needed for studies (a) and (b), and indeed will follow the principles of selection imposed by these broader studies.
Objections may be raised to the effect that such studies are impossibly wide; that we don’t have the materials for a complete story of secular changes of business cycles in the economy of this country; that the compilation of economic annals, if taken seriously, would alone absorb the efforts of a score of investigators for years to come. To all these objections I would reply that to wait with initiation of such broad, synthetic studies until materials are relatively complete would be to wait until the Greek Kalends; that if such studies are essentially impossible, we had better give up economic history; and that we shall contribute much more to the enrichment of society’s knowledge and understanding through a glorious allure in such broad undertakings than through inglorious successes in more specific, pedestrian studies. I would also point to a complete absence of even a single broad history of business fluctuations in this country: to the relative inadequacy of the synthesis of secular changes offered in the available literature; and to the reasonable assumption that a tentative synthesis now is not the less valuable because it is necessarily tentative and will give room to a more thoroughly grounded one in the decades to come.
The need for such a broad comprehensive study is suggested also by the following two considerations. First, a large literature already exists on the long term changes in various special fields, such as population various industries, some segments of the banking system, foreign trade, tariffs, business organization, etc.; and yet there are few thoroughgoing attempts, if any, to pull the threads together and weave the secular tendencies in these various, essentially related aspects of the economic system into a coherent study that would use adequately quantitative and qualitative data as well as theoretical hypotheses. On cyclical fluctuations too there are a number of special published studies, inadequate as they may be in toto. Even if the proposed inquiries of secular change and of business cycles accomplish nothing more than to bring the results of already published studies together, evaluate them critically, and point to the questions still unanswered, a valuable service will be performed. But naturally, the inquiries proposed may and will in addition utilize primary data that have not yet been analysed and published.
The second important consideration is that at present, in times of rapid change in structure and performance of our economic and social system, it is particularly necessary to think through our past in terms that will shed some light on the present and on the future. I do not suggest that the broad studies proposed will provide a definitive answer as to where we go from here, or enable us to establish immutable trends and laws. But they should help us to distinguish durable from transient phenomena; guard us and others against interpreting the past and present in terms of emotionally determined patters of group or class thinking; and thus bring the results of dispassionate social study to bear most efficiently and directly to the understanding and solution of present problems. I fail to see how studies of narrower scope can be expected to perform this important function.
It will be noted that the broad studies proposed involve no confining scheme except the distinction among various types of economic change by the temporal span of their persistence. This distinction is so fundamental that it cannot and should not be neglected in any historical study. Within the framework of each type of change, all the related processes of economic life should be considered — in proportion to their relative importance in determining the character and significance of the changes under study. The other topics suggested in our discussions and correspondence so far, such as the increasing control by the state, or influence of free land, or studies of firms in a given industry, or studies of a region, all appear to be too narrow to serve as the focusing point and central study of the Committee’s research program. They can be justified only within a broader framework that should explain why this and not another facet of economic life is to be studied; and how the studies so circumscribed can be expected to yield results of analytical validity without consideration of related factors presumably excluded.
The carrying out of the central, basic group of studies would provide the justification for narrower undertakings, since they will supply the framework for the latter. It is the broad picture of secular changes and recurrent fluctuations in the economy of this country that will provide the needed background against which, e.g., a tendency towards increasing control by the state can be understood and studied. This does not mean that in actual practice we should wait with beginning the more specific studies until the synthetic studies are completed. But it does mean that the latter are an indispensable core of the program; should be envisaged, planned, and initiated among the first; and serve throughout the Committee’s activity as the focusing point of the whole range of undertakings.
The narrower studies should be launched only in so far as they are seen to contribute to the broader picture of trends and fluctuations in this country’s economy: either directly and immediately through their results or because they suggest new types of data, new types of approach, new methods which we wish to encourage because, if multiplied and followed, they will add significantly to the understanding of changes in the past and present. Some such criterion is indispensable if we are to guard against lowering the potential value of our efforts by devoting them to following beaten tracks, and adding to a large body of already existing data another batch, of low marginal utility.
This memorandum is intended as an amplification of the proposals submitted before; and to serve, if the Committee so wishes, as a basis for discussion at its forthcoming meeting. It need not be added that, strongly as I am inclined to the views presented here, I realize that they may be unduly influenced by past personal experience in economic and statistical research, by ignorance of the literature of economic history, and by a predilection towards broad canvas and general results; and I am therefore looking forward with interest to whatever critical comments the members of the Committee may wish to offer.

Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archive. Earl J. Hamilton Papers, Box 2, Folder “Correspondence—Misc. 1930’s-1960s and n.d.”.

Tags Gay, Kuznets

Economic History History of Economics Johns Hopkins Regulations

John Hopkins. Proposals for First and Second Year Graduate Examinations. Musgrave, 1960

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2022-05-01

Having had just served as a member of the economics faculty at the University of Michigan for the preceding twelve years, Richard A. Musgrave demonstrated the seriousness and enthusiasm for his new job at the Johns Hopkins University starting with the academic year 1960-61. It is interesting to see one and the same person arguing for both more mathematics and more history of economics to be included in the graduate general microeconomic and macroeconomic examinations.

_____________________________

October 19, 1960

MEMO TO: Members of the Department
FROM: R. A. Musgrave

As we mentioned before, it would be desirable to make some announcement to the graduate students indicating how the examinations would be handled this year. I think the announcement could be framed in such a way to relate to this year only, without establishing a new policy or making a precedent for what is to be done thereafter. I indicated to the graduate students at the opening meeting that some such statement would be forthcoming.

As I understand it, there was a fairly general feeling at the close of last year that it was not very satisfactory to insist upon equal-emphasis examinations in twelve fields, with the result that performance in some areas (as was the case with International Trade) would be below the senior level. At the same time, there also seemed general agreement that the Hopkins tradition of avoiding over-specialization is sound. The following proposal attempts to be in line with these ideas and is herewith submitted for discussion.

With regard to the proposal for the second year exam, these two questions may be thought about:

I do think it is sound that a certain amount of mathematical economics and history of thought should be worked in with the general theory examinations rather than be treated as a special area. A person specializing in mathematical economics would be free to choose econometrics as one of his fields anyhow. A person specially interested in history of thought might be permitted to offer this as a special field. In other words, history of thought might be added to the optional fields listed on the next page.
If the student chooses two out of the six optional fields, this of course means that there remain four fields which are not at all covered. If we are worried about this, we might add a requirement that a student must have done a certain amount of course work in these fields. Or one might add sort of “minima examinations” in these other fields, as distinct from the more intensive examinations in the special fields. But this would again greatly increase the examination load.

Graduate Students’ Examinations in Political Economy
Spring 1961

Our examination procedure this year will be as follows:

First Year Graduate Students. There will be an oral examination in the latter part of May. This examination is designed to give the Department an opportunity to confirm its judgment that the incoming graduate students have the ability to meet the requirements of Ph.D. work, to explore the extent of the students’ preparation in various areas, and to determine in what areas additional work is needed. The Staff is aware of the work which a student has done before coming to Hopkins, and of the courses which he is taking this year. The examination is conducted accordingly, and no preparation distinct from regular course work is required.

Second Year Graduate Students. In May, second year graduate students will come up for their Ph.D. generals. The generals consist of a set of written examinations and an oral examination. The oral examination covers the general range of work which has been completed. The written examination will include the following papers, four hours each.

Theory. There will be a paper on micro theory and macro theory each. There will be no separate papers in mathematical economics and history of thought. Rather, the papers dealing with micro and macro theory will contain some questions demanding an answer which involves mathematical tools; as well as questions involving a historical perspective on the development of doctrine. The examination in micro theory will include the theory of relative prices, incomes, and welfare economics. The examination in macro theory will include the theory of income determination, growth and stabilization policy.
Statistics.
Economic History. The examination in Economic History will include questions on American and European economic history. Students who have not taken work in economic history here will be held responsible for two books, as follows: (To be inserted).
Optional Fields. In addition to the preceding four examinations, the student may choose two of the following fields: International trade, industrial organization, labor, public finance, money, economic development, and econometrics. A substantial familiarity with the chosen field is required.

Source: The Ferdinand Hamburger, Jr. Archives of the Eisenhower Library at Johns Hopkins University. Department of Political Economy, Series 7, Subseries 1. Box No. 3/1. Folder “Graduate and Undergraduate Curriculum 1953-1961.”

Image Source: Richard A. Musgrave page at the University of Michigan’s Faculty History Project.

Tags Musgrave

Economic History Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Twenty years of graduate economic history exams. Gay and Usher, 1930-1949

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2022-04-09

This has turned into a post that is over fifty pages long when printed as a normal text document. It began with materials in a folder found in Alexander Gerschenkron’s papers at the Harvard archives that contained a test-bank of two of his predecessors in economic history at Harvard, Edwin F. Gay and Abbott Payson Usher, starting with the 1929-30 academic year. I thought this was a convenient collection to transcribe but soon found myself going through other archival material I have collected to fill in the inevitable “missing observations”. There are still a few gaps I am sorry to report, but not enough to stop me from posting this incredible collection of the exams for graduate courses in economic history at Harvard spanning twenty years during the first half of the 20th century.

Harvard’s catalogues of courses long distinguished between those “primarily for undergraduates”, “for undergraduates and graduates” and “primarily for graduates”. The exams transcribed below are from courses “primarily for graduates”.

__________________________________

Previous posts
(for 1921-1941)

Biographical info for Edwin F. Gay and Abbott Payson Usher.

Readings for undergraduate european economic history (Economics 2a). Usher, 1921.

Final Exam Questions for undergraduate European Economic History (Economics 2a). Usher, 1922.

Readings and final exam for undergraduate/graduate History of Commerce to 1750 (Economics 10a). Usher, 1929-30.

Readings and Exam for undergraduate European Economic History since the Industrial Revolution (Economics 2a) Gay, 1934.

Course outline, readings, and exam for undergraduate/graduate Development of Industrial Society (Economics 10b). Usher, 1934.

Readings for Recent Economic History (Economics 23). Gay, 1934-35.

Readings and paper topics for Economic History to 1450 (Economics 21) Usher, 1934-35.

Topics/readings for Modern Economic History Seminar (Economics 136). Usher, 1937-41.

__________________________________

1929-30

From Course Announcements

II
ECONOMIC HISTORY

Economics 23 ¹hf. Economic History to 1450

Half-course (first half-year). Two hours a week, to be arranged. Associate Professor Usher.

[Economics 24. Topics in Modern Economic History]

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Gay.

Omitted in 1929-30.

Economics 25. Recent Economic History

Tu., Th., at 4. Professor Gay.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXVI (September 19, 1929), No. 44, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1929-1930 (Second Edition), p. 124.

Enrollment

Economics 23 ¹hf. Associate Professor Usher. — Economic History to 1450.

Total 1: 1 Graduate.

Economics 25 Professor Gay. — Recent Economic History.

Total 47: 40 Graduates, 7 Radcliffe

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1929-30, p. 78.

1929-30.
Harvard University.
Economics 23¹.
[Mid-year Exam, 1930]

Answer five questions.

What distinction may be drawn between the process of invention and the process of achievement? Give illustrations.
What reasons may be advanced for considering the beginning of the Christian Era a line of demarcation of primary importance?
Comment on the individual terms and the general doctrine of the following passage:
For centuries the Roman adhered to his “two-field system” of agriculture, and rectangular fields, and the Germans preserved the ancestral “strip system” of fields of their village communities. Even the reduction of these free villages to manorial villages and the fiscal pressure of the manorial regime failed completely to fuse or even much to modify these immemorial farming practices.
Discuss the meanings of the terms “civitas”, “oppidum”, “portus” and their relation to the problem of the origin of the medieval towns.
What distinctions may be drawn between the “free” craft and the “worn” craft? What were the functions of the wardens of a craft guild?
Describe the general features of a radiate market system, and explain the broader characteristics of its price structure in normal times.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1929-30
Harvard University.
Economics 25
[Mid-year Exam, 1930]

PART I

(An hour to an hour and a half)
Write an essay on one of the following topics.

The practical triumphs of the Ricardian economies before 1850.
The “movement of liberation,” or “laissez-faire,” as applied to the condition of the industrial workers.
An outline history of any decade between 1790 and 1860. In Europe and the United States, emphasizing the economic factors, and giving reasons for the choice of decade.

PART II

Write on three of the following questions.

Comment on the following statement:
[As compared with England] “the postponement of personal freedom gave the continental serfs one signal advantage. Emancipation was accomplished without the sacrifice of their rights in the soil.”
Give a definition or a concise description of the “putting-out” system; justify your inclusions and exclusions.
Describe briefly the relations between the agricultural development of the United States and Europe before 1860.
Outline the attitude of the government to railroads in England, the United States, and France, before 1860.
On two occasions in his life — 1819 and 1844 — Sir Robert Peel thought that he had placed the English monetary system on a sure foundation. Why?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Mid-year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 12, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1929-30.

1929-30
Harvard University.
Economics 25
[Year-end Exam, 1930]

Adequate and appropriate historical evidence must be presented in support of any opinions and generalizations.

Answer four of the following questions.

Discuss the following statement, especially emphasizing the relations between banking and agriculture in American economic history:
“It is hardly too much to say that the political as well as economic history of America has been dominated by real estate speculation and by the cheap money controversy, largely an offshoot from the former.”
F. H. KNIGHT, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (1921), p. 17.
Explain and illustrate the following passage from Alfred Marshall, Industry and Trade (1919), p. 746:
“[The English classical economists] overlooked the fact that many of those indirect effects of Protection which aggravated then, and would aggravate now, its direct evils in England, worked in the opposite direction in America. For the more America exported her raw produce in return for manufacture, the less the benefit she got from the Law of Increasing Return….”
Compare and criticize the two theories of the development of the Industrial Revolution implied in the two following quotations:
“La préponderance économique du commerce, trait dominant de la phase économique qui s’étend du commencement du XVI^e siècle à la fin du XVIII^e, va decroître relativement à l’industrie naissante.”
B. Nogaro and W. Oualid, L’Évolution du Commerce, du Crédit et des Transports (1914), p. 9.
“…it was this slow process of finding out the opaque matters of fact that make up the material of technological science that occupied several generations of the British before the Germans took over any appreciable portion of it. The first acquisition of this material knowledge is necessarily a slow work of trial and error, but it can be held and transmitted in definite and unequivocal shape, and the acquisition of it by such transfer is no laborious or uncertain matter.”
T. Veblen, Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (1915), p. 185.
Discuss the tendency toward aggregation and control in industry in the United States, Germany, and England, with comment on the following statements:
1. “Our people cannot live and thrive under the regime of bureaucracy that threatens unless industry solves its own problems. It was the abuses attendant upon an unregulated national industrial impulse that brought upon our country that legislative monstrosity known as the Sherman anti-trust law…. It is industry’s own neglect … that gives us a growing number of boards, commissions and tribunals to add their weight to the burden of industry.” American Federation of Labor (1924)
  “The state is not capable of preventing the development of the natural concentration of industry.”
  S. Gompers, Presidential Address to the American Federation of Labor, 1899.
  “Our big business has not justified the fears of our people.” Owen D. Young.
2. As contrasted with the growth of industrial combination in other countries, a French writer thinks that “trusts” have arisen in the United States because the government has “done too little or too much” — i.e. too little intelligent and effective regulation (including the regulations of railroads) and too much protection by tariffs.
What have the successive booms and crises, the upward and downward swings of business cycles, during the last century taught the banker, the manufacturer, and the wage-earner?
Comment on the accompanying statistical table:

Net tonnage of leading mercantile fleets, 1850-1920
(in thousand tons)

		1850	1870	1890	1910	1920
United Kingdom	sail	3,397	4,578	2,936	1,114	625
United Kingdom	steam	168	1,113	5,043	10,443	12,026
United States (in foreign trade)	sail	1,541	2,449	749	235	937
United States (in foreign trade)	steam	45	97	198	557	8,626
German Empire	sail		900	710	507	342
German Empire	steam		82	724	2,397	221
France	sail	674	918	444	636	267
France	steam	14	154	500	816	1,746
Norway	sail	298	1,009	1,503	628	225
Norway	steam		14	203	897	1,149
Japan	sail			48	413	203
Japan	steam			94	1,234	1,900

Note: The figures for the year 1920 have been obtained from another source, and are not reliably comparable with the figures for the earlier years. There is particular suspicion of error in the figures for United States shipping in that year.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers Printed for Final Examinations [in] History, New Testament, …, Economics, …, Military Science, Naval Science (January-June 1930) in Vol. 72 Examination Papers, Finals 1930.

__________________________________

1930-1931

From Course Announcements

II
ECONOMIC HISTORY

Economics 23 ¹hf. Economic History to 1450

Half-course (first half-year). Two hours a week, to be arranged. Associate Professor Usher.

[Economics 24. Topics in Modern Economic History]

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Gay.

Omitted in 1930-31.

Economics 25. Recent Economic History

Wed., Fri., at 3. Professor Gay.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXVII (September 17, 1930), No. 42, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1930-1931 (Second Edition), p. 125.

Enrollment

Economics 23 ¹hf. Associate Professor Usher. — Economic History to 1450.

Total 2: 1 Graduate, 1 Senior.

Economics 25 Professor Gay. — Recent Economic History.

Total 50: 41 Graduates, 9 Radcliffe

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1930-31, p. 77.

1930-31
Harvard University
Economics 23.
[Mid-year Exam 1931]

Answer five questions.

What distinctions may be drawn between the process of invention and the process of achievement? Give illustrations.
What reasons may be advanced for considering the beginning of the Christian Era a line of demarcation of primary importance to economic history?
Sketch the history of the “colonus” in Roman Gaul and in the Frankish kingdoms.
Discuss the meanings of the terms “civitas”, “oppidum”, “portus” and their relation to the problem of the origins of the medieval towns.
What distinctions may be drawn between the “free” craft and the “sworn” craft? What were the functions of the wardens of a craft gild?
Describe the general features of a radiate market system, and explain the broader characteristics of its price structure.
Write briefly on any one of the following topics:

shipping partnerships and sea-loans,
towns and trade routes of the Mohammedan world,
Venice, Genoa, and the crusades.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1930-31
Harvard University
Economics 25
[Mid-Year Exam, 1931]

Write an essay on one of the topics in Part I, and answer briefly two questions in Part II.

The relation between the development of economic theory and the experiences of the period of the Industrial Revolution in England.
English Liberalism: its component elements as a body of doctrine, and its expression in political action before 1865, with especial emphasis upon its attitude toward economic policy.

Summarize in parallel columns the outstanding events in the economic history of England and the United States between 1840 and 1850.
Do the same for England and France between 1850 and 1870.
How closely is the history of transportation in England before 1870 related to the long and the short fluctuations in general business activity?
Outline the chief points you would treat in a chapter on Money and Banking for an Economic History of the Nineteenth Century to 1865.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Mid-year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 12, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1930-31.

1930-31
Harvard University
Economics 25
[Year-end Exam, 1931]

I
Write an essay on one of the following statements:

“The machine, the child of laissez faire, has slain its parent.”
“You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”
“The one-crop system has been the bane of American agriculture.”
“In England the Reform Act initiated and the Corn Law decreed the conquest of town over country, factory over farm; in the United States a similar revolution is in process.”
“The Sherman Act, like Canute’s throne, was set to stem the advancing tide. Now the question is, shall it be submerged or dragged back to higher land.”

II
Write concisely on two of the following questions:

What are four outstanding developments of banking from about 1790 to the present time? Compare and contrast these movements in Western Europe and the United States.
In what successful ways did Western Europe meet the invasion of American agricultural products after 1870?
Place in their order of industrial and commercial importance, at 1750, 1880 and 1930, the following countries: Holland, Germany, France, England and the United States. Give your reasons.
Trace the connection, if any, between (a) the swings of business cycles and secular trends and (b) the development of the combination movement and trade unionism.

__________________________________

1931-1932

From Course Announcements

II
ECONOMIC HISTORY

Economics 23 ¹hf. Economic History to 1450

Half-course (first half-year). Two hours a week, to be arranged. Associate Professor Usher.

[Economics 24. Topics in Modern Economic History]

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Gay.

Omitted in 1931-32.

Economics 25. Recent Economic History

Wed., Fri., at 4. Professor Gay.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXVIII (September 24, 1931), No. 45, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1931-1932 (Second Edition), p. 127.

Enrollment

Economics 23 ¹hf. Associate Professor Usher. — Economic History to 1450.

Total 1: 1 Graduate.

Economics 25. Professor Gay. — Recent Economic History.

Total 65: 54 Graduates, 11 Radcliffe

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1931-32, p. 72.

1931-32
Harvard University
Economics 23
[Final Exam 1932]

Answer five questions.

Write briefly on any one of the following topics:

the development of the mechanical clock,
the development of the sailing vessel, 1200-1450,
the application of power to milling, 100B.C.-1300 A.D.

May any of the industrial establishments of ancient Greece or Rome be properly classified as factories? Why, or why not?
What was the significance of the types of establishment whose classification is involved in such doubts?
Describe the general features of the organization of the craft gilds.
In what respect do we find differences in the various regions of Europe?
Describe the legal and economic features of villein tenure in France and England in the middle ages.
How may we explain the development of towns in Italy and Northern Europe after the ninth century?
What were the distinctive privileges of a town?
Describe the operations of banks of deposit in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and discus their significance in the development of credit.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1931-32
Harvard University
Economics 25
[Mid-Year Exam, 1932]

Write an essay on one of the topics in Part I, and answer briefly three questions in Part II.

“The changes of the Industrial Revolution in England were interrelated both serially and laterally, i.e., as between commerce, industry and agriculture.”
“The policy of Free Trade has dislocated the whole structure of English society.”
Peasant proprietorship in Western Europe.

Estimate the significance of Peel’s administration (1842-46) in the economic history of England.
Discuss the “home-market” argument in United States tariff history.
Comment on the statement: “Between 1830 and 1840 the issue between individualists and collectivists was fairly joined.”
“The introduction of railways marks a stage in the Industrial Revolution in England, not as in some countries its beginning.” Give illustrations for three countries of this statement.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Mid-year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 12, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1931-32.

1931-32
Harvard University
Economics 25
[Year-End Exam, 1932]

Write an essay (not more than half your time) on any one of the following questions, and answer more briefly two other questions.

Compare the governmental railroad policies of the United States, England and Germany since 1870.
Explain the movement toward a protective tariff policy since 1860, with illustrations drawn from the economic history of two countries which led in the movement.
Does historical experience support the arguments of the advocates of ship subsidies for the United States?
Discuss the following statements:
“Virtual monopoly is an incident of our industrial development.” Senator Aldrich.
“The trust movement was and is a direct response to certain forces inherent in modern industry, and if it ought to be controlled, it must be controlled with those forces in mind.” Professor Jenks.
It is said that the labor movement in the United States is a generation behind that of England. Give your reasons for or against this statement.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Vol. 74 (HUC 7000.28) Examination Papers, Finals 1932.

__________________________________

1932-1933

From Course Announcements

II
ECONOMIC HISTORY

Economics 23 ¹hf. Economic History to 1450

Half-course (first half-year). Two hours a week, to be arranged. Associate Professor Usher.

[Economics 24. Topics in Modern Economic History]

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged, Professor Gay.

Omitted in 1932-33.

Economics 25 ¹hf. Recent Economic History

Half-course (first half-year). Wed., Fri. at 4. Professor Gay.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXIX (September 19, 1932), No. 41, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1932-1933 (Second Edition), p. 126.

Enrollment

Economics 23 ¹hf. Associate Professor Usher. — Economic History to 1450.

Total 4: 4 Graduates.

Economics 25 ¹hf. Professor Gay. — Recent Economic History.

Total 51: 39 Graduates, 12 Radcliffe

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1932-33, p. 66.

Note: Have found no copy of the Economics 23¹ exam as of yet for 1932-33.

1932-33
Harvard University
Economics 25¹
[Mid-year Final Exam, 1933]

Write an essay (not more than half your time) on any one of the following questions, and answer concisely three other questions.

Compare governmental regulation of railroads, as developed in the United States, with governmental ownership as in Germany, emphasizing the merits and defects of the two methods of control. Do these historical experiences throw any light upon the present railroad problem in the United States?
Is free trade responsible for the relative decline of the British iron and steel industry as compared with that of the United States and Germany? Enumerate and weigh the chief factors accounting for the development of the industry in these countries.
(a) Trace the successive steps in banking reform in England and the United States. Is there any parallelism?
(b) How do you explain the differences between the two countries in regard to the movements of banking concentration and industrial combination?
Outline a series of chapters in a book on the agricultural “world invasion” of European markets.
“Among the agencies which labor has chosen to defend its interests are the trade union, the cooperative society, and political action.” What has been the relative importance of these agencies at three stages of the British labor movement?
Discuss critically Dice’s views concerning “collectivism” and its causes.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers Printed for Final Examinations [in] History, History of Religions, …, Economics, …, Military Science, Naval Science (January-June 1933) in Vol. 75, Examination Papers, Finals 1933.

__________________________________

1933-1934

From Course Announcements

II
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

Economics 21 ²hf. (formerly Economics 23) Economic History to 1450

Half-course (second half-year). Two hours a week, to be arranged. Associate Professor Usher.

[Economics 22. (formerly Economics 24) Topics in Modern Economic History]

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Gay.

Omitted in 1933-34; to be offered in 1934-35.

Economics 23 ²hf. (formerly Economics 25) Recent Economic History

Half-course (second half-year). Wed., Fri., at 4. Professor Gay.

[Economics 24. Topics in American Economic History]

Hours to be arranged. Professor A. H. Cole.

Omitted in 1933-34.

[Economics 25. (formerly Economics 30). Economic Problems of Latin America]

Tu., Th., at 3.

Omitted in 1933-34.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXX (September 20, 1933), No. 39, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1933-1934 (Second Edition), pp. 127-128.

Enrollment

Economics 21 ²hf. (formerly Economics 23). Associate Professor Usher. — Economic History to 1450.

Total 3: 2 Graduates, 1 Seniors.

Economics 23 ²hf. (formerly Economics 25). Professor Gay. — Recent Economic History.

Total 18: 13 Graduates, 5 Radcliffe

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1933-34, p. 85.

Note: Have not found exam for Economics 21 ²hf. (formerly Economics 23) Economic History to 1450

1933-34
Havard University
Economics 23²
[Final Exam 1934]

Write an essay (not more than half your time) on any one of the first six questions, and answer concisely three other questions (including question 7).

Discuss the following statements:
“The present agricultural depression differs in its origin and character in many respects from the general depression of the period 1873-96, but in the conditions which brought about the depression of 1873-96 there are important points of similarity with the post-war situation.”
“The European attitude toward agriculture is entirely different from that of the great exporting countries beyond the seas.”
“The choice (in railway management) is between rationalization and nationalization.” (Sir Eric Geddes.)
“The trend, in all forms of transport and over a long period, is inevitably toward amalgamation. As between private monopoly and public ownership the choice is clear; the only question is as to the form which public ownership shall take.”
Comment on these views. In what respects does the experience of the United States differ from that of England and Germany?
The Webs say that there was a time at the middle of the nineteenth century when capitalism “could claim that it had produced a surprising advance in material civilization for greatly increased populations. But from that moment to the present it has been receding from defeat to defeat, beaten ever more and more hopelessly by the social problems created by the very civilization it has built up.”
A critic of the present governmental policies has recently declared that, with the various restrictions on output, wage and price regulations, and codes of business practice, the United States is returning to the Age of Diocletian or to the medieval gild-system, and thereby imperiling the chief gains of the great technological and economic progress since the Industrial Revolution.
Comment on the two points of view, and give reasons for your own view as to the present direction of economic and social development.
Compare the history of banking reforms since 1815 in England and the United States with reference to the successive business cycles.
What part, according to the Macmillan Report, has the United States played in the post-war economic situation; and in the proposals for monetary and banking reform, made in this Report, what is practicable for the United States?
“The Cooperative movement is one of the constituent elements in the socialist state.”
“No social group, on the Continent of Europe, is more important, and none more intensely individualistic, than the peasant landholders.”
Which of these assertions is more nearly true? Can they be reconciled?
Which among the books you have read in this course do you regard as the best? State your reasons and discuss that book critically.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

__________________________________

1934-1935

From Course Announcements

II
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

Economics 21 ¹hf. Economic History to 1450

Half-course (first half-year). Two hours a week, to be arranged. Associate Professor Usher.

Economics 22. Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Gay

Economics 23 Recent Economic History

Tu., Th., at 4. Professor Gay.

[Economics 24. Topics in American Economic History]

Hours to be arranged. Professor A. H. Cole.

Omitted in 1934-35

[Economics 25. Economic Problems of Latin America]

Tu., Th., at 3.

Omitted in 1934-35.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXXI (September 20, 1934), No. 38, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1934-1935 (Second Edition), p. 128.

Enrollment

Economics 21 ¹hf. Associate Professor Usher. — Economic History to 1450.

Total 4: 2 Graduates, 2 Seniors.

Economics 23. Professor Gay. — Recent Economic History.

Total 22: 16 Graduates, 1 Senior, 4 Radcliffe, 1 Other.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1934-35, p. 82.

Economics 21. Economic History to 1450.
Readings and paper topics, Usher. 1934

1934-35
Harvard University
Economics 21
[Final Exam. Jan 18, 1935]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay upon some topic selected from the reading period assignments, or upon one of the following topics:
1. a multilinear concept of historical process,
2. systems of agriculture in the open field villages of England and Europe.

II
Answer three questions

Describe the rights and obligations of the peasant cultivator in two types of the perpetual leases of Roman and medieval law.
Describe the primary features of an organized market, and the simple and radiate forms of market systems.
Discuss the nature and importance of capitalistic control of industry in medieval Europe.
Describe the characteristic functions and features of religious gilds in England.
Sketch the early history of deposit banking in medieval Europe.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1934-35
Harvard University
Economic 23
[Mid-year Exam 1935]

Write an essay (not more than half your time) on any one of the following questions and answer concisely three other questions.

Discuss critically the following statements:
1. In England, up to the middle of the eighteenth century, “production was regulated by local consumption…After an apprenticeship of greater or less length everyone became a master; the State guaranteed the guilds a monopoly of production and secured the interests of the consumer by requiring all products to pass certain standard tests. But this patriarchal state of things suddenly gave way before a movement which has been justly called the Industrial Revolution. To these gigantic changes (machinery, steam, factories, wide markets, chain of middle-men) the guild system soon showed itself inadequate.” (Guido de Ruggiero, History of European Liberalism.)
2. For about fifty years before the middle of the eighteenth century in England, “trade had been freed from the oppression of the dying guilds, but machinery had not yet come to the aid of capitalism to enable it to overturn and destroy the whole social fabric and especially the livelihood of the poor.” (R. W. Postgate.)
“Metallurgy and the metal workers have an absolute primacy in the history of modern manufacturing industry.” (Clapham.)
Illustrate this statement for England.
Is it equally true for all countries?
“It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being.”
Was this true when John Stuart Mill wrote it in 1848? If so, why?
Outline a chapter (or a book) on the Agrarian Revolution in England.
Describe the development of the Zollverein, distinguishing the economic and the political factors.
The significance of the decade of the forties in European economic history.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1934-35
Harvard University
Economics 23
[Year-end Exam, 1935]

Write an essay not more than half your time) discussing one of the quotations or topics in this paper, and comment concisely on three others.

“It is believed that, had it not been for the free-trade policy of Great Britain, the manufacturing system of America would at the present time have been much more extensive than it is.” (Ellison, 1858.)
“There is some truth in the view of the cynical British exporter who thanked God for the American tariff, but for which American manufacturers would have driven him out of the world markets.’ (London “Economist,” 1912.)
“In my belief, both Free Trade of the laissez-faire type and Protection of the predatory type are policies of Empire, and both make for War.” (H. J. Mackinder, 1919.)
Do you find any confirmation for these views in your reading of American tariff history? Illustrate from the cotton or iron industry.
“On voit apparaître chaque jour davantage tout ce que l’Angleterre, depuis cent ans, devait à des circonstances que les contemporains avaient cru permanantes et qui n’etaient que passagères.
L’hégémonie économique anglaise coincide dans l’histoire avec le règne de la machine à vapeur; la période victorienne, apogée de prosperité et de puissance, évolue tout entière sous le signe du charbon….C’est ainsi qu’a pu s’édifier, sur al base étroite d’un territoire plus que médiocre, cette paradoxale superstructure manufacturière, et parallèlement s’épanouir cette population aujourd’hui trop dense, si dangereusement dépendante, pour sa subsistance, des produits importés….
Dans ces conditions, le jeu parfaitement agencé de la doctrine libre-échangiste paraissait avoir été concu tout exprès pour l’Angleterre, par les soins d’une Providence attentive et partiale.” (Siegfried, 1931.)
The National Banking system is “not only a perfectly safe system of banking, but it is one that is eminently adapted to our political institutions.” (Hugh McCulloch, 1863.)
“American banking has not yet distinguished between solvency after an interval, and readiness to meet demands at once and without question… At present the characteristics of the American business man seem to fit him to do most things better than banking.” (Hartley Withers, 1909.)
“Everybody will agree to-day that it would be difficult to imagine a banking system more cruel and inefficient than that prevailing in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century — a system which, instead of scientifically regulating the flow of credit and money so as to secure the greatest possible stability, was designed automatically to produce instability.” (Paul Warburg, 1930.)
“The technological revolution of the last hundred years furnishes the ultimate explanation of agricultural progress and of agrarian discontent both in Europe and America.” (ca. 1925)
“Though the mechanization of industrial processes is almost universal, the great majority of farmers throughout the world are content with the simple instruments used by their forefathers.” (“World Agriculture,” 1932.)
“The significant fact is that the periods of prosperity and the great depressions in agriculture have coincided with periods of monetary expansion and monetary contraction. Though other factors must not be ignored, the agricultural history of the last hundred years shows that favorable monetary conditions are essential to recovery.” (“World Agriculture,” 1932.)
“The Merchant Marine of the United States is not a burden upon the tax-payer’s back, but an economy of the first water, keeping millions in the country, giving employment to thousands of persons, aiding in the development of foreign markets and backing up the nation’s forces in any contingency that may arise.” (Senator Royal S. Copeland, 1934.)
“Our own vessels carry only about 40 per cent of our foreign trade. We are dependent on our competitors to carry 60 per cent of our trade to market. Of course, the result is that they help themselves and hamper us. Parity in merchant ships is only less important than parity in warships. We ought to make the necessary sacrifices to secure it.” (Calvin Coolidge, 1930.)
D. H. Robertson, writing in 1923, concerning the American Railroad Act of 1920 and the increased powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission, says:
“The home of free enterprise has furnished us with experiments in positive State control on a scale which finds no parallel outside Communist Russia.”
Louis D. Brandeis in 1912 wrote: “The success of the Interstate Commerce Commission has been invoked as an argument in favor of licensing and regulating monopoly.” This argument, he held, was not valid. Do you agree? Why or why not?
In a period when traditional standards have broken down and when the legal system is supported by laissez-faire theory, the movement toward industrial combination is “a remorseless sort of profit-seeking.” (M. W. Watkins, 1928.)
“The only argument that has been seriously advanced in favor of private monopoly is that competition involves waste, while the monopoly prevents waste and leads to efficiency. This argument is essentially unsound. The wastes of competition are negligible. The economies of monopoly are superficial and delusive. The efficiency of monopoly is at the best temporary.” (L. D. Brandeis, in Harper’s Weekly, 1913.)
“Our evidence goes to show that most of the Trusts and Cartels have been, in their origin at any rate, defensive movements.” (D. H. MacGregor, 1912.)
Industrial combinations must be recognized as “steps in the greater efficiency, the increased economy, and the better organization of industry.” (Minority Report of the Parliamentary Committee on Trusts, 1918.)
Write on the topic which, in your reading for this course, has most interested you.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

__________________________________

1935-1936

From Course Announcements

II
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

[Economics 21 ¹hf. Economic History to 1450]

Half-course (first half-year). Two hours a week, to be arranged. Associate Professor Usher.

Omitted in 1935-36.

Economics 22. Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Gay

Economics 23 Recent Economic History

Wed., Fri., at 4. Professor Gay.

Economics 24. Seminar. Topics in American Economic History

Hours to be arranged. Professor A. H. Cole.

[Economics 25. Economic Problems of Latin America]

Tu., Th., at 3.

Omitted in 1935-36.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXXII (September 18, 1935), No. 42, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1935-1936 (Second Edition), p. 140.

Enrollment

Economics 23. Professor Gay. — Recent Economic History.

Total 31: 24 Graduates, 7 Radcliffe.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1935-36, p. 83.

1935-36
Harvard University
Economics 23
[Mid-year Exam, 1936]

Write an essay (not more than half your time) discussing one of the quotations or topics in this paper, and comment concisely on three others.

(a) “The essence of the Industrial Revolution is the substitution of competition for the medieval regulations which had previously controlled the production and distribution of wealth.”
(b) The use of machinery “began by being the resultant of these two phenomena (the extension of the exchange of commodities and the increase in the division of labor), at one of the decisive moments in their evolution. This crisis, distinguished by the appearance of machinery, best defines the industrial revolution.”
The relations between the industrial and agrarian revolutions in England.
(a) The chief measures of factory legislation in England.
(b) To what extent and why, on the continent of Europe, did factory legislation lag behind that of England?
(a) In 1850 Porter wrote: “The laissez faire system has been pregnant with great loss and inconvenience to the country in carrying forward the railway system.” Heaton has recently remarked: “Considering the novelty of the car and the strangeness of the route, parliament could retort to Porter that it had been a fairly competent back-seat driver.”
(b) A French writer in 1883 explained the contrast between private enterprise in English railway management and public control or ownership in France and Germany as resulting mainly from the more advanced state of English economic development.
“The safest lesson to draw from the experience of Germany is the simple fact that changes in tariff policy were only one, and commonly not the most important, amongst the many causes of her economic progress.”

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1935-36
Harvard University
Economics 23
[Year-end Exam, 1936]

Write an essay (not more than half your time) discussing one of the questions in this paper, and comment concisely on three others.

Taussig finds that the development of trusts under protection does not “confirm the doctrine that the tariff matures monopolies permanently. … The industrial influence of the protective tariff tends to become less and less.” Illustrate with any two of his three cases — steel rails, tin plate and sugar refining. What is the basic historical relationship between the movements toward industrial combination and toward protectionism in Europe and America?
“The significant fact is that the periods of prosperity and the great depressions in agriculture have coincided with periods of monetary expansion and monetary contraction. Though other factors must not be ignored, the agricultural history of the last hundred years shows that favorable monetary conditions are essential to recovery.” (“World Agriculture,” 1932.) Give your reasons for agreement or criticism. What weight do you give to the “other factors”?
“A general view of the monetary history of the entire period of our national existence shows that each generation had to learn for itself and at its own expense the evils of unsound money and of defective banking.” Is the assertion also true of modern Europe? In outlining and comparing the experience of both America and Europe, distinguish between inherent unsoundness and lags of development.
“It remains clear that the Industrial Revolution is not a closed episode; we are living in the midst of it, and the economic problems of to-day are largely problems of its making.” (W. C. Mitchell, 1929.)
“Unregulated capitalism is being superseded by a regulated, organized and controlled capitalism.” (Hansen, 1932.)
“In the United States the profit motive . . . worked to the end of blind self-destruction.” (Childs, 1936.)
How far are these statements true and consistent with each other? In what respects are they questionable?
Clapham quotes a competent German observer of the English working classes, writing in the 80’s, as finding “an improvement . .. beyond the boldest hopes of even those who, a generation ago, devoted all their energies to the work.”
A recent writer, declaring that we must choose between security and progress, asks: “Have we reached a sufficiently high standard of per capita productivity to warrant stabilization at the present standard of living?”
Does Clapham agree that the German estimate was justified? What connections do you see between the two quotations?
“For all the exaggeration in the statements that English unionism has sounded the death-knell to English industrial leadership, it remains true that the absence of firmly entrenched unions in the cotton and iron manufactures has facilitated the march of improvement in the United States.”
“The English, by labor organization and social legislation, have built a platform over the abyss.”

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

Summer School of Harvard University
August 15, 1936
Economics S20 (Economics 23)

Write an essay (not more than half your time) discussing one of the questions in this paper, and comment concisely on three others.

(a) “The Napoleonic wars exercised the same influence upon subsequent commercial policy in France (though for different reasons) as the Civil War in the United States.” (Percy Ashley)
(b) “The British protective system up to 1846 had been maintained chiefly for the sake of agriculture; the German protective system from 1848 to 1860 had been dictated by the interests of manufacturers; now (in 1879) an effort was to be made to harmonize these two and to give a fair measure of protection to all.” (Percy Ashley)
“It remains clear that the Industrial Revolution is not a closed episode; we are living in the midst of it.” (W. C. Mitchell, 1929)
“Two contrasting theories of banking were put forward at the beginning of the nineteenth century and subsequently they controlled the banking development of the different countries.”
State precisely the two theories and their historical effects.
(a) “The one-crop system has been the bane of American agriculture.”
(b) In what ways did Western Europe meet the invasion of American agricultural products after 1870?
Trace the connection, if any, between (a) the fluctuations of business cycles and secular price trends, and (b) the development of the railroad network and railroad governmental policies in England and the United States since 1830.
“Among the agencies which labor has chosen to defend its interests are the trade union, the cooperative society, and political action.” (Webb) What has been the relative importance of these agencies at three stages of the British Labor movement? Compare and explain the differing development of American labor history.
“The wastes of competition are negligible. The economies of monopoly are superficial and delusive. The efficiency of monopoly is at the best temporary… Excesses of competition lead to monopoly, as excesses of liberty lead to absolutism.” (L. D. Brandeis, 1912)
“We are persuaded by our study of the combination movement at home and abroad that it is essentially a movement making for economy, efficiency, and better relations in business.” (Seager and Gulick, 1932)
What is your view, supported by what evidence?
Select the ten-year period in English and American economic history of the nineteenth century which you believe to be the most important, giving your reasons, and then summarize in parallel columns the outstanding events of that decade for both countries.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

__________________________________

1936-1937

From Course Announcements

III
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

[Economics 131 ¹hf. (formerly 21). Economic History to 1450]

Half-course (first half-year). Two hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Usher.

Omitted in 1936-37.

Economics 133 (formerly 23). Recent Economic History

Mon., Wed., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Fri., at 4. Professor Usher.

[Economics 136 (formerly 22). Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History]

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor —

Omitted in 1936-37.

Economics 137 ²hf. (formerly 24). Seminar. Topics in American Economic History

Half-course (second half-year). Hours to be arranged. Professor A. H. Cole.

[Economics 138 (formerly 25). Economic Problems of Latin America]

Tu., Th., at 3.

Omitted in 1936-37.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXXIII (September 23, 1936), No. 42, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1936-1937 (Second Edition), p. 146.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133 (formerly 23). Professor Usher. — Recent Economic History.

Total 36: 31 Graduates, 5 Radcliffe.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1936-37, p. 93.

[NOTE: the final exams volume for 1936-37 binds January-June, 1937 together so for full courses it appears only the June exam were included.]

1936-37
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Examination, 1937]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic covered by the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: the historical significance of the theory of monopolistic competition; the concept of interregional equilibrium.

II
(About two hours)
[Handwritten addition: Answer three questions]

Answer (a) or (b).
1. In what respects did the Ricardian group misjudge the structure of the London money market of their day?
2. Sketch the development of contacts between the United States Treasury and the New York money market in the period, 1869-1914.
Answer (a) or (b).
1. Sketch the history of the petroleum industry in the United States during the decade 1870-1879.
2. Discuss the development and the significance of any single cartel in Great Britain or Germany.
Describe briefly the position of British agriculture during the period 1878-1895, and discuss the relative significance of the factors primarily involved.
Answer (a), (b), or (c)
1. Discuss the relations between sugar growing in Hawaii and the position of Hawaiian products in the markets of the United States.
2. Is tariff protection likely to afford Great Britain an adequate solution to the problem of foreign dumping?
3. Discuss the relative importance of political and economic factors in the tariff policies of France or Germany since 1871.
Answer (a), (b), or (c).
1. Discuss the significance of recent tendencies toward centralized control of power production in Great Britain and continental Europe.
2. Sketch the development of the Royal Dutch-Shell Petroleum Company and discuss the significance of its position in the world market.
3. Discuss the relative importance of birth rates and death rates in the history of population in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

__________________________________

1937-1938

From Course Announcements

III
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

Economics 133 (formerly 23). Recent Economic History, 1820-1914

Mon., Wed., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Fri., at 4. Professor Usher.

Economics 136 (formerly 22). Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Usher.

[Economics 137 ²hf. (formerly 24). Seminar. Topics in American Economic History]

Half-course (second half-year). Hours to be arranged. Professor —.

Omitted in 1937-38.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXXIV (October 1, 1937), No. 44, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1937-1938 (Second Edition), p. 153.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133 (formerly 23). Professor Usher. — Recent Economic History, 1820-1914.

Total 33: 25 Graduates, 2 Business School, 1 Public Administration, 4 Radcliffe, 1 Other.

Economics 136 (formerly 22). Professor Usher. — Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History.

Total 7: 7 Graduates.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1937-38, p. 86.

1937-38
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Mid-year Exam, 1938]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic based upon the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: the concept of social evolution as a multilinear process; the development of free trade in Great Britain.

II
(About two hours)

Answer three questions:

What were the more important factors underlying the differences in the rates of growth of the cotton and the woollen industries in the period, 1750-1850?
Answer a, b, c, or d.
1. Describe and discuss the characteristic features of railway rates in Trunk line territory before 1887.
2. Discuss the general features and the significance of the consolidation of railways in Great Britain in 1921.
3. Sketch the history of the French railway network through 1883.
4. Discuss the significance of water competition for the railways of Germany.
Describe the primary factors in the location and development of London, Paris, or New York city.
Discuss the problems presented by the proposal to include Austria in the German Customs Union, 1848-1863.
Answer a, b, or c.
1. Discuss the place of the small holding in Great Britain, with special reference to its development since the agricultural depression (1878-1895).
2. Describe the factors affecting the development of small peasant holdings in France.
3. Describe the organization and routine on some of the large slave plantations of the old south.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Mid-Year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 13. Papers Printed for Mid-Year Examinations [in] History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science (January-Febrary 1938) included in bound volume Mid-Year Examinations 1938.

1937-38
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Exam, 1938]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic covered by the work of the reading period or on one of the following topics: planning in free societies; modern tendencies toward autarchy.

II
Answer THREE questions.

Answer (a) or (b).
1. Discuss the policies used by the Bank of England between 1825 and 1910 in establishing its rate of discount.
2. What considerations seem to have led Biddle to apply in January 1832 for an extension of the charter of the Second Bank of the United States?
Discuss the characteristic practices of pools and cartels in the United States up to 1899.
Discuss: “The Corn Law of 1815 like the Agriculture Act of 1920 attempted to stabilize returns to the British wheat grower, but the machinery of the act of 1920 was even less adapted to its purpose than the machinery established in 1815.”
Answer (a), (b), (c), or (d).
1. Does the history of the silk manufacture in the United States afford decisive evidence of the significance of protection to young industries? Why, or why not?
2. Discuss the argument that protection will make it possible for Britain to maintain her “standard of life.”
3. Discuss: “In France, protection has been the parent as well as the child of fear. It has strengthened the force, which in conjunction with ignorance, gave it birth.”
4. What principles and purposes dominated the fiscal policy of Bismarck?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Final Examinations, 1853-2001. Box 4. Papers Printed for Final Examinations [in] History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science (June 1938).

__________________________________

1938-1939

From Course Announcements

III
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

[Note change in course numbering]

Economics 133. Recent Economic History, 1820-1914.

Mon., Wed., Fri., at 4. Professor Usher.

Economics 136. Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Usher.

[Economics 137 ²hf. Seminar. Topics in American Economic History]

Half-course (second half-year). Hours to be arranged. Professor —.

Omitted in 1938-39.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXXV (September 23, 1939), No. 42, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1938-1939 (Second Edition), p. 150.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133. Professor Usher. — Recent Economic History, 1820-1914.

Total 46: 40 Graduates, 2 Public Administration, 2 Radcliffe, 2 Others.

Economics 136. Professor Usher. — Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History.

Total 10: 9 Graduates, 1 Senior.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1938-39, p. 99.

1938-39
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Mid-year Exam, 1939]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: feudal tenures as a basis for land utilization; the significance of the quantitative method in economic history.

II
Answer THREE questions

Sketch the history of the application of machinery in the textile industries of Great Britain, France, Germany, or the United States for any period of 100 years between 1700 and 1900.
Describe the salient features of the railway network in any one country, and discuss the merits of public policy in respect of railway construction in that country.
Within what limits of accuracy may we compute the quantitative significance of the following inventions: Darby’s process for smelting iron with coke, Fourneyron’s turbine, the Jacquard loom action?
Sketch the development of the fiscal policy embodied in Peel’s budget of 1842, and discuss its significance.
Answer (a) or (b).
1. Discuss: “The long succession of preemption acts were but premonitions of a free land policy, a policy destined to come, but hindered by sectional interests and differences for many years.”
2. Discuss the economic and the political significance of the major compromises embodied in the ordinances creating the national domain in the United States.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1938-39
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Exam, 1939]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: the bullionists and the Bullion Report; the anti-monopoly policy in the United States.

II
Answer three questions

Answer (a) or (b).
1. What were the lessons of the crisis of 1847? In what ways did this crisis affect the policies of the Bank of England?
2. What were the merits and the defects of the organization of the call loan market in New York prior to 1914?
Answer (a), (b), or (c).
1. Discuss the attempts to establish international control of the sugar trade between 1926 and 1932.
2. Sketch the development of trusts and cartels in Great Britain after 1914.
3. Describe the characteristic types of “concern” in post-war Germany.
Answer (a), (b), (c), or (d).
1. Has the United States gained enough from the development of the Beet Sugar culture to justify the costs?
2. Can policy of tariff preferences between Great Britain and her dominions be defended on economic grounds?
3. Discuss the theories which served as the basis for the development of protection in France after 1889.
4. Sketch the development of agrarian influences upon German tariff policy after 18790 and discuss briefly the merits of the basic demands.
Discuss the influence of the development of hydro-electric power sites upon the industrial future of Italy.
What changes in the Malthusian theory of population are necessary to bring its broader elements into conformity with the historical record of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?

__________________________________

1939-1940

From Course Announcements

III
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

Economics 133. Recent Economic History, 1820-1914

Mon., Wed., Fri. at 3. Professor Usher.

[Economics 136. Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History]

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Usher.

Omitted in 1939-40; to be given in 1940-41.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXXVI (September 22, 1939), No. 42, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1939-1940 (Second Edition), p. 158.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133. Professor Usher. — Recent Economic History, 1820-1914.

Total 50: 41 Graduates, 1 Senior, 1 Public Administration, 4 Radcliffe, 3 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1939-40, p. 100.

1939-40
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 133
[Mid-Year Exam, 1940]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: the concept of nodality, the effective sphere of pure competition in the industrial societies of the nineteenth century.

II
Answer three questions

Answer a, b, c, d, or e.
1. How many of the basic forms of industrial organization were to be found in the textile industries of the United States between 1790 and 1830? What was their relative importance?
2. Describe the distinctive features in the organization, equipment, and management of the Boston Manufacturing Company in Waltham in its early years.
3. Discuss: “Those who draw all their illustrative material from the textile industries fall into serious errors in their judgment of the effect of machinery upon labour.”
4. Describe the position of organized labor in Germany towards the close of the nineteenth century.
5. Sketch the development in the use of iron and its products in England between 1800 and 1890.
In what ways and to what extent do geographic factors affect the rate structure of a given railway network?
Answer a, or b.
1. What considerations led the various groups of German states to accept the leadership of Prussia in the Customs Union?
2. Sketch the activities of M. Chevalier in the negotiation of the Anglo-French Treaty of Commerce of 1860.
Answer a, b, or c.
1. What elements of ambiguity made it difficult to interpret and enforce the resolutions of the French National Assembly of August 4 and 11, 1789? What interpretation was finally established by the legislation of 1792 and 1793?
2. Does the experience of France and Germany in the late nineteenth century warrant the belief that the number of small holdings can be now increased or even maintained without tariff protection or financial aid?
3. Discuss: “Although southerners have persistently asserted that the interstate slave trade was of no substantial significance, the structure of slave prices provides decisive evidence that the trade was vital to the perpetuation of slavery as a system.”
Discuss: “Southern systems of settlement were based on a policy of free land, and the actual introduction of such modes of settlement on the Public Domain was largely due to southern influence, but formal recognition of the policy was long and successfully opposed by southern members of Congress.”

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1939-1940
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 133
[Year-End Exam, 1940]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic covered by the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: Malthus and the theory of population; technological factors underlying tendencies towards integration in the production and distribution of electricity.

II
Answer THREE questions

Answer (a) or (b).
1. “In actual operation, the Bank Act of 1844, instead of tying the currency more closely to gold, injected an additional amount of credit into the reserves of the English banking system.” Discuss.
2. Sketch the development of the Suffok banking system and discuss its significance.
Describe the conditions in the American iron industry that led to the formation of the United States Steel Corporation. What may we presume to have been the effect of this achievement upon competition in the industry?
Answer (a) or (b).
1. Discuss the effectiveness of the British Wheat Act of 1932.
2. Describe the organization of the Russian collective farms and their influence upon productivity.
Answer (a), (b), (c), or (d).
1. Discuss the relation of the changes in the duties on wool and woolens in the U. S. tariff act of 1913 to the general concept of a competitive tariff.
2. Does Beveridge offer a satisfactory defense for a continuance of a free trade policy in Great Britain? Why, or why not?
3. Discuss the concepts of tariff policy held by Protectionists and Liberals in France, with special reference to the precise points of difference between them.
4. Describe and discuss Bismarck’s theories of taxation and fiscal policy.
Does the development of hydro-electric power significantly affect either the immediate or the ultimate location of economic activity in Europe and the United States?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Final Examinations, 1853-2001. Box 5. Papers Printed for Final Examinations [in] History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science (June 1940).

__________________________________

1940-1941

From Course Announcements

III
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

Economics 133. Recent Economic History, 1820-1914

Mon., Wed., Fri., at 3. Professor Usher.

Economics 136. Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Usher.

[Previous post for the Economics 136 Seminar]

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXXVII (March 4, 1940), No. 7, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1940-1941 (Provisional Announcement), p. 161.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133. Professor Usher. — Recent Economic History, 1820-1914.

Total 41: 31 Graduates, 4 Public Administration, 6 Radcliffe.

Economics 136. Professor Usher. — Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History.

Total 10: 9 Graduates, 1 Senior.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1940-41, p. 59.

1940-41
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Mid-year Exam, 1941]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: typical deviations from a “normal” distance principle in railway rate structures; elements of a concept of social evolution implicit in the work of Bentham and Malthus.

II
Answer THREE questions

What were the primary changes in the processes of producing malleable iron in the late eighteenth century? In what fields did these changes extend the use of iron products?
Describe the changes in ocean shipping services that resulted in the organized attempt to control rates through shipping conferences. Do you feel that these rate agreements imposed undesirable restrictions upon free competition?
Under what circumstances is labor “externally conditioned”? Do such phenomena make the location of economic activity indeterminate?
Answer (a) or (b).
1. What were the objectives of the Middle German Commercial Union? What were the basic factors in its failure?
2. Describe the protectionist groups in Germany between 1833 and 1865, and point out the reasons for the ineffectiveness of their activities.
Describe the broader features of the concentration of ownership of land in England, France, and Prussia in the late nineteenth century. Have we reason to believe that the degree of concentration was affected by the agrarian reforms of the period 1750-1850?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Mid-year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 14, Papers Printed for Mid-Year Examinations [in] History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science in a bound volume, Mid-Year Examinations—1941.

1940-41
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Exam, 1941]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: the significance of locational theory for the restatement of the theory of international trade; the fallacies and dangers in the concept of a closed economy.

II
Answer THREE questions

Answer (a) or (b).
1. Sketch the development of the Bank of England as a central bank.
2. Describe the nature and the extent of the concentration of bank reserves in New York city under the old National Banking system. Was this a desirable or adequate means of achieving centralization of reserves? Why, or why not?
What were Adam Smith’s views on the use of the corporate form in private business, both as to public policy and private administration?
Does the history of private business corporations in the United States belie the wisdom of Smith’s judgment? Why, or why not?
Answer (a) or (b).
1. Discuss the place of wheat growing in British farming, and the effect upon agriculture in general of policies affecting wheat culture.
2. Were the countries of South Eastern Europe suffering from over-population in 1930? Why, or why not?
Answer (a), (b), (c), (d), or (e).
1. What circumstances led to the revision of the United States tariff in 1909? In what measure were the objectives of revision actually achieved?
2. Have we grounds for presuming that the development of the iron and steel industry of the United States was significantly influenced by the protection given it? Why, or why not?
3. What changes have taken place since 1880 in the position of Great Britain in the export markets of the world?
4. Discuss: “The agrarian interests in France made a fatal mistake in the decade of the eighties by seeking to share in protection instead of seeking reductions in the duties on manufactures.”
5. Discuss the program of the agrarian party in Germany towards the close of the last century.
Do changes in the expectation of life afford a significant measure of material well-being? Why, or why not?

__________________________________

1941-1942

From Course Announcements

III
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

Economics 133. Recent Economic History, 1820-1914

Mon., Wed., Fri., at 3. Professor Usher.

[Economics 136. Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History]

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Usher

Omitted in 1941-42.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXXVIII (September 18, 1941), No. 54, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1941-1942, p. 61.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133. Professor Usher. — Recent Economic History, 1820-1914.

Total 34: 26 Graduates, 4 Public Administration, 4 Radcliffe.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1941-42, p. 64.

1941-42
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Mid-year Exam, 1942]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic based upon the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: the postulates of liberalism; the influence of improvements in transport upon the importance of primary nodes.

II
Answer THREE questions

Sketch the broader features of the process of achievement, and indicate explicitly its relation to the process of invention.
Discuss: “The Marxian concept of the labor problem was largely implicit in the Marxian concept of the factory. Careful analysis of the conditions of employment in factories affords a basis for a significant restatement of the problems of labor.”
Answer (a), (b), (c), or (d).
1. Sketch the development of railroad rebates in the United States and discuss the elements of danger to shippers and to the public.
2. Describe the procedure of railway amalgamation in Great Britain in 1921, and discuss briefly the treatment of basic problems.
3. Describe the reorganization of French railways in 1921, and discuss the advantages of the plan.
4. Does the sketch of German railway policy in Barker actually support the conclusions he draws in respect of the advantages of state ownership?
In what respects does the history of the iron industry show the importance of a dominant material on the location and the structure of an industry? Draw illustrative material from the history of the industry in Great Britain, France, Germany, or the United States.
Answer (a), (b), or (c).
1. In what ways and in what degree did crop rotations lead to improvements in productivity and to more adequate differentiation of land use?
2. Sketch the development of the procedures and the policy of making grants of public lands to further internal improvements.
3. In what ways did the defects of the Harrison Act of 1800 lead to a demand for the revision of the general principles of public land policy?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 15, Papers Printed for Mid-Year Examinations [in] History, History of Religions,…Economics,…, Military Science, Naval Science. January-February, 1942 in bound volume Mid-year Examinations—1942.

1941-42
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Exam, 1942]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic covered by the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: concepts and measures of material well-being, the gold standard in the nineteenth century.

II
Answer THREE questions.

Answer (a) or (b).
1. What were the essential features of the credit policy proposed by the Banking School, 1820-1840? In what respects was it unsound?
2. Sketch the development of the Free Banking system in the United States. Discuss its advantages and disadvantages.
Discuss the issues of fact raised by the prosecution of the United States Steel Corporation. Do you feel that the position taken by the Court was sound? Why, or why not?
Discuss the policy of Great Britain towards agriculture during and since the great depression. Do you feel that agriculture was sacrificed to misguided loyalty to a free trade policy?
Describe the effects of technical development upon units of management in the production and distribution of electricity since 1890.
Answer any one of the following:
1. Discuss the relative merits of proration and unit operation as solutions of the problem of regulating the production of petroleum.
2. Sketch the history of the reservation of oil lands by the government of the United States, and the development of their exploitation.
3. Sketch the development of oil production and trade in eastern Europe and the Dutch East Indies from 1900 to 1924.
4. Sketch the development of British oil policies, 1900-1924.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1942
Harvard University
Economics S133

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on the selected topic.

II.
Answer three questions: exclusive of the general topic of the essay.

Answer a or b:
1. Sketch the development of the factory system from its origins to a position of clear dominance in Great Britain, or in Germany
2. Sketch the development of the factory system in the United States to 1880.
Answer a, b, c, or d:
1. Describe and discuss the characteristic features of railway rates in Trunk line territory before 1887.
2. Discuss the general features and the significance of the consolidation of railways in Great Britain in 1921.
3. Sketch the history of the French railway network through 1883.
4. Discuss the significance of water competition for the railways of Germany.
Under what circumstances is labor “externally conditioned”? Do such phenomena make the location of economic activity indeterminate?
Answer a or b:
1. Discuss the contributions of Peel and Cobden to the establishment of Free Trade in Great Britain.
2. Sketch the progress of negotiations leading to the German Customs Union during the years 1828 to 1834.
Answer a or b:
1. Sketch the development of the Bank of England as a central bank.
2. Sketch the development of contacts between the United States Treasury and the New York money market in the period, 1869-1914
Answer a or b:
1. Sketch the history of the petroleum Industry in the United States from 1859-1879.
2. Discuss the development and the significance of any single cartel in Great Britain or Germany.
Answer a, b, c, d, or e:
1. What was the purpose of the compensating duties in the woollen and worsted schedules of the United States tariff of 1867, 1883, and 1890? Did the duties as levied achieve this purpose?
2. Describe the different forms of dumping. How did the forms prevalent in the United States before 1914 affect the development of our domestic industries? Was dumping disadvantageous to the consumers of similar goods in the United States?
3. Does imperial preference meet the essential needs of ether Great Britain or her dominions? Why, or why not?
4. Discuss: “The history of protection in France shows clearly the impossibility of securing trustworthy objective evidence of its effect, but the record of the nineteenth century affords no presumption that the benefits of protection offset the palpable increases in the cost of living due to the tariffs.”
5. Has the experience of Germany thrown new light upon the effects of protection to agriculture? Why, or why not?
Answer a or b:
In what ways and to what extent have technological changes, since 1900, affected the regional balance of primary resources in Europe and the world at large?
What changes in the Malthusian theory of population are necessary to bring its broader elements into conformity with the historical record of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

__________________________________

1942-1943

From Course Announcements

III
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

Economics 133. Recent Economic History, 1820-1914

Mon., Wed., Fri., at 3. Professor Usher.

Economics 136. Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History]

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Usher.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXXIX (September 23, 1942), No. 53, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1942-1943, p. 56.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133. Professor Usher. — Recent Economic History.

Total 15: 10 Graduates, 3 Public Administration, 2 Radcliffe.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1942-43 p. 48.

1942-43
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Mid-year Exam, 1943]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: the shortcomings of Victorian liberalism, out-standing definitions of the factory and their significance.

II
Answer THREE questions.

Answer (a) or (b).
1. Discuss the changing conditions of competition among the various textile products from 1750 to 1851.
2. Describe the out-standing technical improvements in the iron industry in England in the late eighteenth century.
Answer one of the following:
1. Describe the devices employed by railroads in the United States to make personal discriminations in favor of particular shippers. What success has been achieved in the suppression of these practices?
2. Describe and discuss the primary features of the British Railway Act of 1921.
3. Discuss the relative significance of the benefits to the railroads and the new liabilities involved in the Conventions of 1883 between the great railroad companies and the French government.
4. Describe the inland waterways of Germany and discuss their place in the transport system.
What are the more important weight-losing materials? What is their relative significance for the localization of economic activity at the present time?
In what ways and to what extent did purely fiscal motives enter into the reform of the British tariff in the first half of the nineteenth century?
Answer (a), (b), or (c).
1. In what ways did new problems of land use affect the character of agrarian reforms in England and in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?
2. What compromises were involved in the adjustments of the claims to western lands?
3. Sketch the development of the political agitation for free land through the passage of the Homestead Act.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1942-43
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Exam, 1943]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic covered by the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: modern formulations of autarky as an objective of economic policy; Victorian Liberalism — its prestige as a gospel, its deficiencies as a social philosophy.

II
Answer three questions.

Answer (a) or (b).
1. Describe the primary features of the London money market in the early nineteenth century, indicating essential specialization of function.
2. Describe the various elements in the Democratic party that were hostile to the Second Bank of the United States. In what ways, and to what extent did they influence Jackson?
Was the Sherman Law an appropriate and well designed instrument to prevent the kinds of abuse of economic power that were emerging in the United States about 1890? Why, or why not?
Answer (a) or (b).
1. Discuss British policy towards wheat growing before and after World War I.
2. Does German trade under exchange controls offer an adequate solution to the problems of the agricultural areas of south eastern Europe? Why, or why not?
Sketch the development of centralized power production in Great Britain and Germany.
In what respects does the record of population growth in Great Britain reveal the presence of factors unsuspected by Malthus?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

__________________________________

1943-1944

From Course Announcements

III
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

Economics 133a. Economic History, 1750-1860

Half-course (summer term; to be repeated in spring term). Mon., Wed., Fri., at 3. Professor Usher.

Students will attend classes in Economics 33a and do supplementary work for [graduate] credit in this course.

Economics 133b. Economic History, 1860-1914

Half-course (winter term). Mon., Wed., Fri., at 3. Professor Usher.

Students will attend classes in Economics 33b and do supplementary work for [graduate] credit in this course.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XL (March 29, 1943), No. 4, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1943-1944, p. 40.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133a. (winter term) Professor Usher. — Economic History, 1750-1860.

Total 16: 12 Graduates, 2 Public Administration, 2 Radcliffe.

Economics 133b. (winter term) Professor Usher. — Economic History, 1860-1914.

Total 23: 16 Graduates, 2 Public Administration, 4 Radcliffe, 1 Other

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1943-44 p. 57.

1943-44
Harvard University
Economics 33a, 133a
[Final Examination, June 1944]

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: Bentham’s contribution to the content of liberalism: the theory of invention.

II
(About two hours)
Answer THREE questions.

Answer (a) or (b).
1. What were the characteristic features of the agrarian reforms in France, 1750-1815?
2. Have we reason to presume that the plantation would have developed significantly in southern United States if slave labor had not become available? Did slave labor make the plantation more profitable than farming with free labor? Why, or why not?
Why has it been misleading to develop a concept of an “Industrial Revolution” that is to be identified with the period 1760-1800?
The generalization of the factory system created new problems in labor relations which were very imperfectly covered by the methods of collective bargaining even at their best.
In what ways did the development of steam navigation create new problems in merchant service and in national policy?
What is the significance of water and water power for the location of economic activity?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1943-44
Harvard University
Economics 33b, 133b
[Final Exam, February 1944]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic covered by the work of the reading period, or on one
of the following topics: planning in a free society, the significance of monopolistic competition theory for the formulation of policies for the control of business.

II
Answer THREE questions.

Answer (a) or (b):
1. Describe the structure of the Bank of England under the Bank Act of 1844. What was the significance of the distinctive features of the new structure?
2. Sketch the development of the Suffolk Bank system.
Answer (a) or (b):
1. In what ways does the topography of a region exert an influence on the pattern of the railway network? What typical patterns of networks may be distinguished?
2. Describe the broader features of the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. Do you feel that the courts were at fault for the disappointments experienced by the advocates of strict control?
Answer (a), (b), or (c):
1. What factors enabled the Standard Oil group to secure transport differentials from the railroads and from the pipe line companies?
2. What factors have controlled the development of integration of industry in Great Britain since 1870?
3. What changes have taken place in the structure of big business in Germany since 1919? How may we explain this development?
Describe the place of water power in the power system of the United States. Discuss the problems of policy involved in the full and effective utilization of these water powers.
What modifications of the Malthusian theory of population are necessary to bring its broader features into conformity with the historical record of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

__________________________________

1944-1945

From Course Announcements

III
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

Economics 133a. Economic History, 1750-1860

Half-course (winter term). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 12. Professor Usher.

Students will attend classes in Economics 33a and do supplementary work for [graduate] credit in this course.

Economics 133b. Economic History, 1860-1914

Half-course (winter term; to be repeated in spring term). Mon., Wed., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Fri., at 2. Professor Usher.

Students will attend classes in Economics 33b and do supplementary work for [graduate] credit in this course.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XLI (September 15, 1944), No. 19, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1944-1945, pp. 36-37.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133a. (winter term) Professor Usher. — Economic History, 1750-1860.

Total 20: 14 Graduates, 3 Public Administration, 3 Radcliffe.

Economics 133b. (winter term) Professor Usher. — Economic History, 1860-1914.

Total 17: 15 Graduates, 4 Public Administration, 7 Radcliffe [sic]

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1944-45 p. 64.

1944-45
Harvard University
Economics 33a, 133a
[Final Exam, February 1945]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: liberalism; the structure and objectives of a free society.

II
Answer three questions

Answer a, b, or c.
1. In what ways did the rights enjoyed by English “landlords” of the eighteenth century fall short of being rights of unqualified ownership?
2. Discuss: “Homestead settlement had its essential roots in the practices of southern United States, but the formal adoption of the policy was persistently opposed by southern members in Congress.”
3. Sketch the various types of labor management used on southern plantations.
What are the essential features of the system of quantity production? Was the date of its significant introduction determined primarily by economic or by technological conditions?
Answer a or b.
1. Discuss the critical problems involved in the definition of a factory.
2. Describe the more conspicuous abuses in the administration of the old poor laws. Comment on the reform accomplished in 1834.
What conditions stood in the way of an early development of the operation of ocean going steamships by American builders and owners?
Why did the application of power to industry and transport alter the significance of surplus food supplies for the location of economic activity?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Final Examinations, 1853-2001. Box 10. Papers Printed for Final Examinations Winter Term [in] History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science (February 1945).

1944-45
Harvard University
Economics 33b, 133b
[Final Exam. June 1945]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic covered by the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: revisions and restatements of the theory of population; the future of the liberal concept of economic statesmanship.

II
Answer three questions

Answer (a) or (b).
1. What were the primary contentions of the Bullionist writers? In what respects would their positions now be criticized?
2. What tendencies towards centralization of banking appeared in the United States in the early nineteenth century?
Answer (a) or (b).
1. Under what circumstances does value of the transport service modify the rate structure of a railway network? Are discriminations of this nature “reasonable”?
2. In what ways did the Hepburn Act (1906) extend the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission? Were the new powers adequate?
Answer (a) or (b).
1. Describe the position of the United States Steel Corporation in the industry about the time of the decision of the Supreme Court. Do you feel that the Court was justified in finding that “full and free competition” existed in the industry?
2. Does the experience of Germany indicate that the “cartel” is a satisfactory and permanent means of organizing big business enterprises? Why, or why not?
What is, at present, the relative significance of coal, oil, and water power as sources of mechanical energy? Are there grounds for believing that the future development of water power will significantly alter the pattern of industrialization in the world?
Describe recent tendencies toward centralization of power production in Great Britain and continental Europe. Discuss the economic and social consequences of these changes.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Final Examinations, 1853-2001. Box 10. Papers Printed for Final Examinations [in] History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science (June 1945).

__________________________________

1945-1946

From Course Announcements

III
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

Economics 133a. Economic History, 1750-1860

Half-course (fall term). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 11. Professor Usher.

Economics 133b. Economic History, 1860-1914

Half-course (spring term). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 11. Professor Usher.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XLII (March 31, 1945), No. 8, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1945-1946, p. 40.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133a. (fall term) Professor Usher. — Economic History, 1750-1860.

Total 54: 34 Graduates, 1 Junior, 1 Freshman, 4 Public Administration, 14 Radcliffe.

Economics 133b. (spring term) Professor Usher. — Economic History, 1860-1914.

Total 79: 58 Graduates, 1 Sophomore, 9 Public Administration, 11 Radcliffe

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1945-46, p. 59.

1945-1946
Harvard University
Economic 133a
[Final Exam, August 1946]

Answer all questions. Question 1 is given double weight. Please write clearly and in ink.

Write an essay of one hour on the factors which appear to have controlled the timing and rate of industrial development of areas, using illustrative material from the industrial history of England, France, Germany, and the United States. What recommendations respecting policy would you make to a government of a backward nation anxious to achieve, not only parity in industrial development and technology, but also a position of leadership in these fields?
Compare the major features of the structures of land ownership and use, and of agricultural organization during the first half of the nineteenth century in two of the following regions: Great Britain, France, the southern United States, the American West. Discuss fully the economics of each of the two systems considered and criticize in the light of this discussion the public and private policies involved in each.
Explain how the Industrial Revolution and the factory system in Great Britain altered the position of the workers in the economic system, and discuss in the light of the prevailing concepts of economic and political organization the problems of government labor policy which arose.
Analyze the remarkable boom in the American shipping and ship-building industries between 1830 and 1856, and the subsequent collapse. In this connection, what features of American and British merchant marine policy appear to have been important, and which of these policies might be criticized as being undesirable or ill-conceived from the American point of view?
Discuss the evolution of the structure of the British money market and banking system between the late eighteenth century and the mid-nineteenth century, showing the major changes which occurred, and analyzing the primary problems which arose.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1945-1946
Harvard University
Economics 133b
[Final Exam, August 1946]

Answer all questions. Please write clearly and in ink.

Compare the primary features since 1860 of railway organization and public railway policy in two of the following countries: the United States, Germany, France, Great Britain. Analyze the points of strength and weakness which you find in each of the two cases.
Analyze the reasons for the continued failure of American foreign-trade shipping to make progress between 1860 and 1914. In particular, what problems were encountered in the use of ship subsidies, and what conclusions do you draw from this experience, and that of other countries, regarding the essentials of a good subsidy policy?
Analyze the reasons for the development of industrial integration in the United States, and explain the timing of the movement. In this connection compare and criticize the integration movements and associated public policies in the United States and in Germany or Britain.
What major problems have arisen in connection with the control and exploitations of major sources of energy for capitalistic economies? How has the energy problem conditioned the economic development and basic policies of western nations?
Analyze the factors responsible for the agricultural maladjustments of the period 1914-1939. In what respects does this period differ from that from 1870 to 1914?
Write an essay discussing those features of the economic history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which seem to you evidences of progress, and those which seem the reverse. What concept and test of progress, or of the lack of it, do you consider valid.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

__________________________________

1946-1947

From Course Announcements

III

[NOTE: the announcement of courses of instruction no longer distinguishes “Economic history” courses from others in group III…cf: Group I Theory/Group II Statistics]

Economics 133a. Economic History, 1750-1860

Half-course (fall term). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 11. Professor Usher.

Economics 133b. Economic History, 1860-1914

Half-course (spring term). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 11. Professor Usher.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XLIII (September 3, 1946), No. 21, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1946-1947, p. 45.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133a. Professor Usher. — Economic History, 1750-1860 (F).

Total 68: 46 Graduates, 3 Seniors, 1 Junior, 10 Public Administration, 8 Radcliffe.

Economics 133b. Professor Usher. — Economic History, 1860-1914 (Sp).

Total 73: 50 Graduates, 1 Senior, 1 Junior, 12 Public Administration, 9 Radcliffe

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1946-47, p. 71.

1946-47
Harvard University
Economics 133a
[Final Exam, January 1947]

I
About one hour

Write an essay based on the work of the reading period or on one of the following topics: the Marxian concept of the factory and its problems: British and American shipping subsidies.

II
Answer three questions.

What were the essential features of the rotation systems developed in Great Britain and in Europe? In what ways and to what extent did the introduction of the rotations require reform of tenure and of village organization?
Discuss: “Recent developments of science and of scientific methods have made invention a laboratory process; it has become a group activity independent of particular individual endowments.”
What are the characteristic features of craft industry? Describe and define the different kinds of relationships to be found in the craft industries.
Is Weber’s treatment of transportation costs as uniform ton-mile rates a satisfactory basis for the theoretical analysis of the location of economic activity? Why, or why not?
Answer a or b.
1. What political and economic circumstances led to the success and significance of the German Customs Union?
2. In what respects was the liberal philosophy of the nineteenth century unsound or incomplete?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1946-47
Harvard University
Economics 133b
[Final Exam, May 1947]

I
About one hour

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: the legal concept of “free competition” in U. S. statutes and case decisions; the significance of the value of transport in railroad rate structures.

II
Answer THREE questions

Answer (a) or (b).
1. What were the merits and defects of the defense of the policies of the Bank of England made by the officers of the Bank, in the period 1820-1840?
2. Describe the tendencies toward centralization of banking activity in the state banking systems of the United States prior to 1860.
Answer (a), (b), or (c).
1. Sketch the development of British policy towards railroad construction and regulation, 1830-1914.
2. In what ways did the government of France give financial aid to the construction and operation of railroads prior to World War I?
3. What were the characteristic features of the rate structure in the southern United States prior to World War I?
In what ways did the development of the Bessemer Converter and the Open Hearth process affect the structure and organization of the iron and steel industry?
Discuss the social and economic problems embodied in the doctrine of “capture” as developed in the United States in respect of property rights in petroleum.
Discuss: “The Malthusian principles of population were not essentially incorrect, though the formulation by Malthus was infelicitous and incomplete, and later discussion has commonly exaggerated the defects of the original presentation.”

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

__________________________________

1947-1948

From Course Announcements

III

Economics 133a. Economic History, 1750-1860

Half-course (fall term). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 11. Professor Usher and Assistant Professor Rostow.

Economics 133b. Economic History, 1860-1914

Half-course (spring term). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 11. Professor Usher and Assistant Professor Rostow.

Economics 136a. Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History

Half-course (spring term). Hours to be arranged. Professor Usher and Assistant Professor Rostow.

Economics 136b. Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History

Half-course (spring term). Hours to be arranged. Professor Usher and Assistant Professor Rostow.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XLIV (September 9, 1947), No. 25, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1947-1948, p. 74.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133a. Professor Usher. — Economic History, 1750-1860 (F).

Total 77: 59 Graduates, 11 Public Administration, 7 Radcliffe.

Economics 133b. Professor Usher. — Economic History, 1860-1914 (Sp).

Total 65: 50 Graduates, 8 Public Administration, 6 Radcliffe, 1 Other

Economics 136a. Professor Usher. — Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History (F).

(F) Total 7: 5 Graduates, 1 Junior, 1 Radcliffe

Economics 136b. Professor Usher. — Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History (Sp).

(Sp) Total 5: 5 Graduates

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1947-48, p. 91.

1947-48
Harvard University
Economics 133a
[Final Exam, January 1948]

I.
About one hour

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: the place of energy resources in the economy of a region, the concept of the factory.

II.
Answer three questions

Answer a, b, or c.
1. How did copyhold tenures arise in England? In what respects, and on what grounds, were the relations of the copyholder to his lord modified by judicial interpretation?
2. Discuss: “The National Assembly destroys entirely the feudal régime, and decrees the abolition without compensation of all feudal dues.” Resolution of Aug. 11, 1789.
3. Discuss the political and economic issues involved in granting rights of preemption to squatters on the Public Domain.
Answer a, or b.
1. What were the more important stages in the development and application of the hydraulic and steam turbines?
2. Describe the official and unofficial procedures for establishing wage rates in England in the eighteenth century.
Describe the various types of improved inland waterways, and discuss the effectiveness of competition between waterways and railroads.
What types of industries can be most advantageously located at wholesale market sites? why?
Discuss: “The function of state coercion is to override individual coercion; and, of course, coercion exercised by any association of individuals within the state.”

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1947-48
Harvard University
Economics 133b
[Final Exam, May 1948]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: “malefactors of great wealth,” the judicial concept of competition.

II
Answer THREE questions.

Answer (a) or (b):
1. “The Bank Act of 1844 is an outstanding illustration of erroneous policy: the act failed to achieve any of its essential purposes; it remained on the statute books because it secured incidental conveniences that were really without importance.” Discuss.
2. Describe the relations between the United States Treasury and the National Banks, 1865-1913.
Answer (a), (b) or (c):
1. What are the obstacles to the adoption of cost of service as a test of the “reasonableness” of railroad rates?
2. In what ways, and to what extent did the British government encourage competition among railroads in the nineteenth century?
3. Did the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 provide adequate remedies for the abuses against which it was directed? Why, or why not?
Describe the technical factors affecting the size of the enterprise in the iron and steel industry, or the electric power industry.
Discuss the competitive position of coal as a source of energy since 1900.
In what ways and to what extent do vital statistics throw light upon the relative well-being of different populations?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

__________________________________

1948-1949

From Course Announcements

Note: Usher’s last year, Gerschenkron’s first year.

III

Economics 233a (formerly 133a). Economic History, 1750-1860

Half-course (fall term). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 11. Professor Usher and Associate Professor Gerschenkron.

Economics 233b (formerly 133b). Economic History, 1860-1914

Half-course (spring term). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 11. Professor Usher and Associate Professor Gerschenkron.

Economics 236 (formerly 136a and 136b). Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History

Full-course. Wed., 4-6. Professor Usher and Associate Professor Gerschenkron.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XLV (September 15, 1948), No. 24, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1948-1949, p. 78.

Enrollment

III

Economics 233a (formerly 133a). Economic History, 1750-1860 (F). Professor Usher and Associate Professor Gerschenkron.

Total 43: 38 Graduates, 1 Senior, 2 Public Administration, 5 Radcliffe. [sic]

Economics 233b (formerly 133b). Economic History, 1860-1914 (Sp). Professor Usher and Associate Professor Gerschenkron.

Total 42: 38 Graduates, 2 Public Administration, 2 Radcliffe

Economics 236 (formerly 136a and 136b). Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History (Full Co.) Professor Usher and Associate Professor Gerschenkron.

(F) Total 2: 2 Graduates
(Sp) Total 4: 2 Graduates, 1 Senior, 1 Public Administration

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1948-49, p. 78.

1948-49
Harvard University
Economics 233a
[Final Exam, January 1949]

I
About one Hour

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: the process of invention, the copyhold tenure.

II
Answer three questions

Answer a, b, or c.
1. Describe the primary features of the métayage tenures in France. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the tenure.
2. In what ways did the defects of the Harrison Act of 1800 lead to a demand for the revision of the general principles of public land policy?
3. Discuss the problems of determining the effective costs of slave labor on the plantations of the southern United States.
In what ways and to what extent did the development of the factory system modify the position of the capitalist or entrepreneur?
In what way did the development of steam navigation affect the character of competition and the organization of oceanic shipping in the second half of the nineteenth century?
Answer a or b.
1. What factors must be considered in computing the capacity of a railroad? What are the more conspicuous kinds of unused capacity?
2. Describe the primary features of the patterns of procurement and distribution costs in a material oriented industry.
Answer a or b.
1. Discuss the relative significance of Peel’s budget of 1842 and the repeal of the Corn Laws as the date line for the establishment of the Free Trade principle.
2. What were the distinctive contributions of Bentham to the development of liberalism?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Final Examinations, 1853-2001. Box 16. Papers Printed for Final Examinations [in] History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science (February 1949) in the bound volume Final Examinations Social Sciences, Feb. 1949.

1948-49
Harvard University
Economics 233b
[Final Exam, June 1949]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: the legal concept of competition in the United States; the measurement of material well-being.

II
Answer three questions.

Answer (a) or (b).
1. Describe the policies and functions of the Bank of England 1790-1819. Were the policies of the Bank essentially sound?
2. What problems were presented in the choice of a monetary standard in the United States? What were the defects of the Mint Act of 1792?
Answer (a) or (b).
1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of organizing a railway network under a principle of regulated regional monopoly?
2. Describe the Trunk Line’ Rate system in the United States. Discuss its significance for theoretical analysis of railroad rate structures.
Answer (a) or (b).
1. Describe the tensions and difficulties in the steel industry of the United States in the decade 1890-1900. Did the formation of the United States Steel Corporation provide a sound and satisfactory solution for these problems?
2. In what ways and to what extent did the development of industrial consolidation in Germany after 1919 lead to the formation of more fully integrated enterprises than the older cartels?
Discuss the purposes and primary features of the British Electricity Supply Acts of 1919 and 1926.
How may we explain the changes in the birth rates and death rates in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

Image Source: Edwin F. Gay (left) and Abbott P. Usher (right) from Harvard Class Album 1934.

Tags Gay, Gerschenkron, RostowWW, Usher

Economic History Exam Questions Fields Harvard Statistics

Harvard. Division Exams for A.B., General and Economics, 1920

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2022-01-28

The Harvard Economics department was once one of three in its Division in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The Departments of History and Government shared a general division exam with the Department of Economics and also contributed their own specific exams for departmental fields. This post provides the questions for the common, i.e. general, divisional exam and all the specific exams at the end of the academic year 1919-20 for fields covered by the economics department.

_______________________

Previously Posted Division A.B. Exams from Harvard

Division Exams 1916

Division Exams, January 1917

Division Exams, April 1918

Division Exams May 1919

Division Exams 1931

Special Exam for Money and Government Finance, 1939

Special Exam Economic History Since 1750, 1939

Special Exam for Economic Theory, 1939

Special Exam for Labor and Social Reform, 1939

_________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT AND ECONOMICS

DIVISION EXAMINATIONS FOR THE DEGREEE OF A.B.
1919-20

DIVISION GENERAL EXAMINATION
[April 29, 1920.]

PART I

The treatment of one of the following questions will be regarded as equivalent to one-third the examination and should therefore occupy one hour. Write on one question only.

Compare pamphleteering and propaganda as methods of exerting political influence.
What effect has the establishment of standing armies and navies had upon (a) political and (b) economic organization of the state?
Show how, and why, the following were adapted to certain stages of society: (a) feudalism; (b) gilds; (c) nationality; (d) industrialism.
Trace the course and explain the significance of the development of maritime law.
Contrast the Greek and Italian city states.
What are the wastes of the present industrial system and how, if at all, are they to be eliminated?
Comment on the following: “History embraces ideas as well as events, and derives its best virtues from regions beyond the sphere of state.”
Discuss the problems involved in the economic rehabilitation of Central Europe.
What are the rights of minorities and how are they best secured?
Compare the foreign policies of France, Germany, and the United States during the nineteenth century.

PART II

The treatment of three of the following questions in Part II is required and will be regarded as equivalent to one-third of the examination, and should therefore occupy one hour. The three questions are to be taken from the Departments in which the student IS NOT CONCENTRATING; two questions from one of these Departments and one question from the other.

A. HISTORY

Why did Voltaire characterize the Holy Roman Empire as “neither holy, nor Roman nor an Empire”?
What do you regard as the six most important naval battles in the history of the world! When and where were they fought, and who were the victors and the vanquished in each?
Give a brief account of the relations of the United States and Canada.
What have been the principal issues involved in the struggle over Home Rule?

B. GOVERNMENT

What was the political condition of European states at the time of the Crusades!
In what sense are constitutions of states “made”?
If the principle of reparation of governmental powers is correct, why has the English cabinet system been approved?
Explain the reasons for immigration to the United States from 1870 to 1895.

C. ECONOMICS

What has been the contribution of the corporation to English and American political and economic institutions?
Trace the evolution of collective bargaining in industry.
What is “profiteering”? Explain its relation to the present high cost of living.
Describe the development, and indicate the importance, of national budgets.

PART III

The treatment of three of the following questions in Part III is required and will be regarded as equivalent to one-third of the examination, and should therefore occupy one hour. The three questions are to be taken from the Department in which the student IS CONCENTRATING.

A. HISTORY

Describe the changes in the attitude towards the Christians of the Roman Emperors down to Constantine.
Discuss the development of national assemblies during the Middle Ages.
What did the Tudors do for England?
What is now the territory within the jurisdiction of the United States has been derived, directly or indirectly, from seven European nations. What are the seven, and what territory was derived from each?
Enumerate, with dates, the principal changes in the form of government of France since 1789. How do you account for their frequency?

B. GOVERNMENT

Discuss the development of the relations of President and Cabinet in the United
Discuss and illustrate the following: “If tolerance can be allowed in a state, so much the better; that proves that the state is strong.”
What should be the disposition of Constantinople?
Give a brief sketch, explaining cause and naming period, of three of the following: (a) Dorr Rebellion; (b) Whiskey Insurrection; (c) Shay’s Rebellion; (d) Seminole War; (e) Ku-Klux Klan.
How has the change in distribution of population affected governmental organization and administration?

C. ECONOMICS

Discuss the probable future of the market for loanable funds in the United States and Europe.
State the purposes and proper limits of progressive taxation.
Describe the efforts of the Federal Government to enforce fair competition.
What considerations are involved in the maintenance of public agencies for the distribution and employment of labor? What light is thrown on the subject by American and European experience?
Sketch the history and present prospects of the American merchant marine.

_________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
ECONOMIC THEORY
[May 3, 1920.]

Answer six questions

Take from this group at least two and not more than four

“It is the business of economic theory to explain, not to justify or condemn.” Comment.
Discuss the rôle of mathematical analysis in the development of economic theory.
“The determining cause of the general rate of money incomes and wages in a country is to be found in the exporting industries.” Explain.
“The income from concrete instruments of production may be regarded as ‘rent’ or as ‘interest’ according to the point of view.” Explain and discuss.
Of what concretely do invested, of what do uninvested, savings consist? Can savings accumulate to an indefinitely large amount? Can saving be carried to excess?
“The standard of living affects wages, not directly, but through its influence on numbers. … A limitation of numbers is not a cause of high wages, but it is a condition of the maintenance of high wages.” Explain and criticize.
Discuss the theories of business profits.

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

Outline the history of mercantilism.
Give an account of an important political episode in which economic theory has had a decisive influence.
Trace the course of the rate of interest in modern times. What do you expect to be the course of the rate during the next fifteen years? Why?
Characterize the more important developments in the history of socialism.

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

What is the relation of (a) investment banking, (b) commercial banking, to capitalistic production?
What theoretical problems are involved in government regulation of security issues?
Does profit-sharing promise a solution of the problems of distribution? Why or why not?
Discuss the following statement: “If you are not advertising, then advertise, because it saves money for you and it reduces the price to the consumer.”

_________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
ECONOMIC HISTORY
[May 3, 1920]

Answer six questions

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

To what extent, if at all, and in what particulars, has the policy of high protection been of advantage to the American laborer?
How do price revolutions, such as that in progress since 1897, tend to affect the distribution of wealth?
Briefly explain the most satisfactory statistical methods for separating the different types of variation in time series.
What is a logarithmic curve? What are its merits and defects in the graphic presentation of historical series?
Trace the development of uniform accounting for railroads in this country. Indicate any connections between uniform accounting and government regulation of the railroads.

Take from this group at least two and not more than four

Discuss the economic results of the crusades.
Give a brief historical account of mercantilism.
Outline the history of the public debt of one of the following countries: (a) Great Britain; (b) France; (c) United States.
Trace the agrarian movement on the continent of Europe.
Discuss the positions of the various English political parties and social classes on the question of Corn Law Repeal.
Write a brief history of one of the following industries in the United States:

(a) Meat-packing;
(b) Tin-plate manufacture;
(c) Boot and shoe manufacture;
(d) Ship-building.

When and by what steps was silver demonetized in the United States?
Outline the development of the English textile industry.
Give a brief account of the “trust movement” in the United States since 1898.
Sketch the history of the export trade of the United States.

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

Analyze the effects of England’s early commercial policy.
What specific defects in the National Banking System was the Federal Reserve Act, 1913 intended to remedy?
Trace and explain the history of the American merchant marine since 1840. What is its probable future and why?
What industrial conditions are most conducive to the rapid growth of labor organizations? Why?

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DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
MONEY AND BANKING
[May 3, 1920]

Answer six questions.

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

Discuss the distinction between currency expansion and currency inflation.
What statistics of money and banking best serve as indices of financial, speculative, and general business conditions?
Outline a system of accounts for a small commercial bank.
What are the best sources of statistical data upon the following subjects:

(a) Bank clearings in the United States;
(b) Resources and liabilities of banks of New York City;
(c) Bank rates in the London and Paris money markets;
(d) The monetary stock of the United States;
(e) Changes in the value of gold in England?

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

Outline the currency history of one of the following:

(a) Canada;
(b) Germany;
(c) British India;
(d) the Philippines;
(e) the American colonies;
(f) Russia.

State and explain Gresham’s Law. Give four historical examples of the working of the law.
Sketch the history of the relations between the United States Treasury and the banking institutions of the country.
Compare American, British, and German banking methods and policy during the World War.
Describe in detail one of the following financial panics: 1837; 1873; 1893; 1907.

Take from this group at least two and not more than four

What have been the causes of the rehabilitation of silver?
What are the arguments for and against an embargo upon gold exports from the United States at this time?
Describe the business of an American bond house.
Discuss critically the following statement made early in 1916:
“The recent enactment of the Federal Reserve Act only made our sudden riches more embarrassing, for that Act had so changed our system of banking that every $18 of gold in the banks created $82 worth of loanable credit, whereas formerly, of every $100, $25 had to sit in the vaults while only $75 went out to work in the form of loans. In other words (as a result of the War and our banking reform), we not only had enormously more gold, but every dollar of it went a good deal further than ever before in financing new enterprises. This is the situation today.”
Give a critical analysis of the policies of the Federal Reserve Board.
Compare banking in France and England since the signing of the armistice.
Why has London been the financial center of the world? What are the prospects that New York will in time displace London?

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DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
CORPORATE ORGANIZATION, INCLUDING TRANSPORTATION
[May 3, 1920]

Answer six questions

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

In discussing the problems of capitalistic monopoly, it has been stated that “the matter at issue is a question, less of relative ‘economy’ of monopoly and competition than of the kind of economic organization best calculated to give us the kind of society we want.” Explain and discuss.
What are the methods of measuring depreciation? What different policies with respect to depreciation have been advocated in the regulation of public utility rates?
Discuss comparatively the public regulation of railway accounts in England, France, and the United States.
To what extent do the reports of the Bureau of the Census furnish data upon corporate enterprise in the United States?

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

Sketch the history of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law and its enforcement.
Give a brief account of the functions and work of the United States Bureau of Corporations.
Trace the evolution of the equipment of the modern railway.
Outline the history of railroads in Germany.

Take from this group at least two and not more than four

What are the purposes and customary scope of “blue sky” laws? What is the case for and against such legislation?
What connections exist between banks and industrial combinations in the United States? Contrast the situation here with that in France.
Compare American and German public policy toward industrial combinations.
Give a critical analysis of the present railway rate structure in the United States.
Discuss the Plumb Plan for the ownership and operation of the railways of the United States.
Discuss the effects of the great inter-oceanic canals upon inland and ocean transportation.
What are the problems of excess profits taxation?

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DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
PUBLIC FINANCE
[May 3, 1920]

Answer six questions.

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

To what extent, if at all, and in what manner, are taxes a contributing cause of the present “high cost of living”?
Discuss the proposal to tax individuals in proportion to their expenditure rather than their income, thus exempting savings.
Describe the statistical features of the Census Bureau’s annual reports on “Financial Statistics of Cities.”
What course has been taken by the reform of municipal accounting in the United States?

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

Outline the development of the science of public finance.
Give a critical account of the Independent Treasury of the United States.
Trace the history of budget plans in American state and municipal government.
Compare the financing of the American and French Revolutions.
Give a brief historical account of direct taxation in Germany.
Develop and defend a classification of public revenues.

Take from this group at least two and not more than four

Compare government monopolies and internal revenue taxes as means of raising national funds.
Analyze the financial results of the operations of the United States Post Office.
Upon what bases should public utilities be valued and paid for when taken over by municipal authorities?
“Taxation, while necessarily involving political and social considerations, is essentially a problem in national economies.” Do you agree? State your reasons.
The practice of exempting government bonds from taxation is a pernicious American custom.” Comment.
Discuss the effects of national prohibition upon public finance.
Give a critical analysis of excess profits taxation.

_________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
LABOR PROBLEMS
[May 3, 1920]

Answer six questions

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

Discuss the causes of the prevailing industrial unrest.
To what extent and for what purposes should the state limit the hours of labor?
Describe the technique of analyzing workingmen’s budgets.
What statistical problems are involved in measuring labor turnover? What methods of measurement are most satisfactory?

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

Compare trade unions and trade gilds, and the industrial conditions under each.
Give a brief historical account of the employment of children in industry.
Outline the development of the Railway Brotherhoods.
Trace the history of the German Social Democratic Party.

Take from this group at least two and not more than four

Analyze labor conditions in one of the following industries: (a) cotton manufacture; (b) coal mining; (c) steel manufacture.
Discuss the main points of economic policy in the “reconstruction program” of the British Labor Party.
What is the extent and importance of industrial unemployment?
Discuss the present status of women in industry.
Characterize the organization and results of the Washington industrial conferences of 1919-20.
Discuss the aims, scope, and methods of employee representation in business management.
What public policy should be adopted in regard to labor organizations among government employees?

_________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
ECONOMICS OF AGRICULTURE
[May 3, 1920]

Answer six questions

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

To what extent are wages of management an element of cost in American agriculture?
What are the interrelations of cold storage and prices of farm products?
What statistical records are desirable for efficient operation of a dairy farm?
To what extent and in what particulars is depreciation involved in farm accounting?

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

Describe the agrarian revolution in England.
Sketch the movement of the wheat belt in the United States since colonial times.
Give a brief historical account of farm tenancy in the United States.
Trace connections between the tariff policy of the United States and wool growing in this country.
Outline the development of the work of the United States Department of Agriculture.

Take from this group at least two and not more than four

Discuss the relations between climate and the productivity of land.
Indicate the origins of the more important breeds of live stock. What contributions, if any, has this country made to the improvement of the breeds?
Describe the effects of the World War upon the wool market.
What are the relations between the wages of agricultural and factory labor?
Compare the use and importance of artificial fertilizers in American and European agriculture.
Give a brief critical analysis of the Federal Farm Loan Act.
What are the causes of the increasing urbanization of population in the United States?

_________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
STATISTICS
[May 3, 1920]

Answer six questions

Take from this group at least two and not more than four

Draft a set of rules for the construction of statistical tables.
Explain “the necessity of the logical agreement of magnitudes from which an average is to be computed” and compare this with the requirement of “the greatest possible homogeneity of series.” Which of these requirements seems to you more difficult of fulfilment? Why?
Describe the short-cut method of calculating the arithmetic mean from a frequency table. What assumptions underlie this method?
Explain briefly: (a) discrete series; (b) mode; (c) Lorenz curve; (d) average of position; (e) Galton graph.
Explain the different methods of eliminating secular trend in historical series.
Describe the construction and characteristics of a logarithmic curve. What are the merits and defects of such a curve?
What are the comparative advantages and disadvantages of chain indices and fixed-base indices in the measurement of changes in the price level?

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

Give a brief account of the evolution of Statistics.
Outline the history of the Bureau of the Census.
Trace the development of price statistics in England.
What has been the history of wage statistics in the United States?

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

Discuss the different methods employed in estimating population.
What are the principal difficulties in the collection of mortality statistics?
Discuss critically current statistics of foreign trade in this country and abroad.
What units have been employed in the statistics of railways? Analyze and appraise the different units.
What are the best sources of statistical data upon the following subjects:

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Divisional and General Examinations, 1915-1975. Box 6, Bound volume Divisional Examinations 1916-1927 (From the Private Library of Arthur H. Cole).

Image Source: Widener Library from Harvard Class Album 1920.

Economic History Exam Questions Harvard Socialism

Harvard. Final exams in political economy and ethics of social reform, 1889-1890

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2021-05-09

The Harvard University Archives provide a fairly complete collection of final examinations for all Harvard courses. Slowly but surely Economics in the Rear-view Mirror is adding transcriptions of economics exam questions, sometimes for individual courses together with syllabi where available and sometimes as annual collections along with course enrollments. In this post we get one year closer to the turn of the twentieth century. Stay tuned or, better yet, subscribe to the blog below!

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1889-90
PHILOSOPHY 11.
THE ETHICS OF SOCIAL REFORM.

Enrollment.

[Philosophy] 11. Prof. [Francis Greenwood] Peabody. The Ethics of Social Reform. — The modern social questions: Charity, Divorce, the Indians, Temperance, and the various phases of the Labor Question, as questions of practical Ethics. — Lectures, essays, and practical observations. — Students in this course made personal study of movements in charity and reform. They inspected hospitals, asylums, and industrial schools in the neighborhood, and the various labor organizations, cooperative and profit-sharing enterprises and movements of socialism, temperance, etc., within their reach. Four special reports were presented by each student, based so far as possible upon these special researches. Hours per week: 2 or 3.

Total 112: 1 Graduate, 53 Seniors, 34 Juniors, 9 Sophomores, 15 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Annual Report of the President of Harvard College 1889-1890, p. 79.

1889-90
PHILOSOPHY 11.
THE ETHICS OF SOCIAL REFORM
[Mid-Year Examination. 1890.]

Omit one question.

“This Course of study has a twofold purpose, — an immediate and practical purpose, and an indirect and philosophical purpose.” — Lecture I. Illustrate both of these intentions of the Course in the case of either Social Question thus far treated.
Compare the “Social Organism” of Hobbes or of Rousseau with the modern conception of society.
“Here is a tenant-farmer whose principles prompt him to vote in opposition to his landlord…May he then take a course which will eject him from his farm and so cause inability to feed his children?…No one can decide by which course the least wrong is likely to be done.” — Spencer, Data of Ethics, p. 267.

“Thou love repine and reason chafe,
There came a voice without reply —
‘Tis man’s perdition to be safe
When for the truth he ought to die.’”

Emerson, Poems, p. 253. Sacrifice.

Define and compare the principles of conduct proposed in these two passages.

The doctrine of the “Forgotten Man,” — its meaning and its effect on charity and on the stability of the State. Interpret, under this principle of conduct, the parable of the Good Samaritan.
The history of the English Poor Law as illustrating the progress and the dangers of modern charity.
The Law of Marriage in the United States, — its two chief forms, its effect on divorce, and the changes proposed in the interest of Divorce Reform.
The Patriarchal Theory, — its definition, its evidence, and its place in the Philosophy of the Family.
Exogamy, — its meaning, its suppose causes, and its effect on the development of society.
The relation of the stable family type to —
1. The Philosophy of Individualism.
2. The Philosophy of Socialism.
Illustrate the dependence of the question of the home on the industrial and economic tendencies of the time.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 2. Bound volume. Examination Papers, Mid-Year 1889-90.

1889-90
PHILOSOPHY 11.
THE ETHICS OF SOCIAL REFORM
[Year-end Examination. 1890.]

[Omit one question.]

State, briefly, any general results which you may have seemed to yourself to gain from this course of study.
The facts, so far as investigated, as to the distribution of wealth in England and in this country, and the lessons to be derived from these facts in either case.
The economic doctrine of Carlyle’s “Past and Present,” and its value in the modern “Social Question.”
Distinguish Anarchism, Communism, and Socialism in their relation to: —
1. The philosophy of Individualism
2. The present industrial order.
The tendency in modern legislation which encourages the Socialist. How far, in your opinion, is his inference from this tendency justifiable?
Distinguish the logical and the practical relationships of Socialism to: (a) Religion. (b) Co-operation.
The business principles which give a commercial advantage to an English co-operative store.
State the issue between Federalism and Individualism in Co-operation.
Describe the four prevailing methods of liquor legislation, their relation to each other, and the arguments which encourage each.
Illustrate the “correlation” of the temperance question with other social questions of the time.
How far does such a study of the Social Questions as we have pursued go to establish a theory of Ethics? Illustrate this philosophical contribution in the case of any one of the questions of this Course.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination papers, 1873-1915. Box 3. Bound Volume: Examination Papers, 1890-92. Papers set for Final Examinations in Philosophy, Political Economy, History, Roman Law, Fine Arts, and Music in Harvard College (June, 1890), pp. 8-9.

______________________

1889-90
POLITICAL ECONOMY 1.

Enrollment.

[Political Economy] 1. Profs. [Frank William] Taussig and [Silas Marcus] Macvane, and Mr. [Edward Campbell] Mason. Mill’s Principles of Political Economy. — Cairnes’s Leading Principles of Political Economy. — Lectures on Social Questions (Coöperation, Profit-Sharing, Trades-Unions, Socialism). Banking, and the financial legislation of the United States. Hours per week: 3.

Total 179: 2 Graduates, 29 Seniors, 65 Juniors, 60 Sophomores, 23 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Annual Report of the President of Harvard College 1889-1890, p. 80.

1889-90
POLITICAL ECONOMY 1.
[Mid-Year Examination. 1890.]

Define wealth; define capital; and explain which of the following are wealth or capital: pig iron, gold bullion, water, woolen cloth, bank-notes.
Is there any inconsistency between the propositions (1) that capital is the result of saving, (2) that it is perpetually consumed, (3) that the amount of capital in civilized communities is steadily increasing?
On what grounds does Mill conclude that the increase of fixed capital at the expense of circulating is seldom injurious to the laborers? On what grounds does he conclude that, when government expenditures for wars are defrayed from loans, the laborers usually suffer no detriment?
Explain the proposition that even though all the land in cultivation paid rent, there would always be some agricultural capital paying no rent.
Trace the connections between the law of population and the law of rent.
What is the effect on values, if any, of (1) a rise of profits in a particular occupation, (2) a general rise in profits?
“The preceding are cases in which inequality of remuneration is necessary to produce equality of attractiveness, and are examples of the equalizing effect of competition. The following are cases of real inequality, and arise from a different principle.” Give examples of differences of wages illustrating each of these two sets of cases; and explain what is the principle from which the second set arise.
“Retail price, the price paid by the actual consumer, seems to feel very slowly and imperfectly the effect of competition; and when competition does exist, it often, instead of lowering prices, merely divides the gains of the high price among a greater number of dealers.” Explain.
What are the laws of value applying to (1) land, (2) raw cotton, (3) cotton cloth, (4) gold?
How does the legislation of the United States on National Banks provide for the safety of notes and of deposits?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 2. Bound volume. Examination Papers, Mid-Year 1889-90.

1889-90
POLITICAL ECONOMY 1.
[Year-end Examination. 1890.]

Arrange your answers strictly in the order of the questions.
One question may be omitted.

How does Mill explain the fact that the wages of women are lower than the wages of men? Wherein is his explanation analogous to certain propositions on which Cairnes laid stress?
“Wages, then, depend mainly upon the proportion between population and capital. By population is here meant the number only of the laboring class, or rather of those who work for hire; and by capital, only circulating capital, and not even the whole of that, but the part which is expended in the direct purchase of labor.” — Mill.
What has Cairnes added to this statement of the wages-fund doctrine?
On what grounds does Cairnes conclude that trades unions cannot raise general wages?
Explain how it may happen that a thing can be sold cheapest by being produced in some other place that that at which it can be produced with the greatest amount of labor and abstinence.
What effect does the growth of a country have on the relative values of hides and beef? How far would improvements enabling beef to be transported for great distances affect Cairnes’s conclusions on this subject?
Mill lays it down that an emission of paper money beyond the quantity of specie previously in circulation will cause the disappearance of the whole of the metallic money; but observes that if paper be not issued of as low a denomination as the lowest coin, such coin will remain as convenience requires for the smaller payments. What light does experience of the United States during the Civil War throw on the main proposition, and on the qualification?
“No nation can continue to pay its foreign debts by the process of incurring new debts to meet a balance yearly accruing against it; yet this, in truth, is the nature of the financial operation by which of late years the United States has contrived to settle accounts with the rest of the world…These considerations lead me to the conclusion that the present condition [1873] of the external trade of the United States is essentially abnormal and temporary. If that country is to continue to discharge her liabilities to foreigners, the relation which at present obtains between exports and imports in her external trade must be inverted.”
State the reasoning by which Cairnes was led to this prediction; and explain how far it was verified by the events of the years after succeeding 1873. Point out the bearing of those events on the resumption of specie payments by the United States.
“Suppose that, under a double standard, gold rises in value relatively to silver, so that the quantity of gold in a sovereign is now worth more than the quantity of silver in twenty shillings. The consequence will be that, unless a sovereign can be sold for more than twenty shillings, all the sovereigns will be melted, since as bullion they will purchase a greater number of shillings than they exchange for as coin.” — Mill.
Explain (1) the conditions assumed in regard to international trade in this reasoning; (2) the mode in which, under the double standard, the metal whose value rises in fact goes out of circulation; (3) the reasons why the coinage of silver in the United States since 1878 has not driven gold out of the currency.
Are general high prices an advantage to a country?
What were Mill’s expectations as to the future of coöperative production? Cairnes’s? What does experience lead you to expect?

______________________

1889-90
POLITICAL ECONOMY 2.

Enrollment.

[Political Economy] 2. Prof. [Frank William] Taussig and Mr. [John Graham] Brooks. First half-year: Lectures on the History of Economic Theory. — Discussion of selections from Adam Smith and Ricardo. — Topics in distribution, with special reference to wages and managers’ returns. — Second half-year: Modern Socialism in France, Germany, and England. — An extended thesis from each student. Hours per week: 3. *Consent of instructor required.

Total 24: 7 Seniors, 12 Juniors, 1 Sophomores, 4 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Annual Report of the President of Harvard College 1889-1890, p. 80.

1889-90
POLITICAL ECONOMY 2.
[Mid-Year Examination. 1890.]

Sidgwick supposes that, in a country where the ratio of auxiliary to remuneratory capital is 5 to 1, 120 millions are saved and added to the existing capital, and asks, “in what proportion are we to suppose this to be divided?” Answer the question.
On the same supposition Cairnes’s answer is expected to be that the whole of the 120 millions would be added to the wages fund. “But then, unless the laborers became personally more efficient in consequence — which Cairnes does not assume — there would be no increase in the annual produce, and therefore the whole increase in the wages fund would be taken out of the profits within the year after the rise. Now, though I do not consider saving to depend so entirely on the prospect of profit as Mill and other economists, still I cannot doubt that a reduction in profits by an amount equivalent to the whole amount saved would very soon bring accumulation to a stop; hence the conclusion from Cairnes’s assumptions would seem to be that under no circumstances can capital increase to any considerable extent unless the number of laborers increases also.”
What would Cairnes say to this?
Explain what is Sidgwick’s conclusion as to the effect of profits on accumulation; and point out wherein his treatment of this topic differs from Cairnes’s and from Ricardo’s.
In what sense does George use the term “wages”? Ricardo? Mill? Cairnes?
Explain wherein Sidgwick’s general theory of distribution differs from Walker’s.
Compare the treatment of rent by the Physiocratic writers and by Adam Smith.
What was Adam Smith’s doctrine as to labor as a means of value? What was Ricardo’s criticism on that doctrine?
What did Adam Smith say to the argument that taxes on the necessaries of life raise the price of labor, and therefore give good ground for import duties on the commodities produced at home by the high-priced labor? What would Ricardo have said to the same argument?
How does Ricardo show that the application of labor and capital to worse soil brings a decline of profits not only in agriculture, but in all industries?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination papers in economics 1882-1935 of Professor F. W. Taussig (HUC 7882). Scrapbook.
Also included in Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 2. Bound volume. Examination Papers, Mid-Year 1889-90.

Political Economy 2.
[Year-end Examination, June 1890.]

Characterize French Socialism, chiefly with reference to St. Simon and Louis Blanc.
What general differences do you note between French and German Socialism?
Summarize Lasalle’s theory of history development.
State and criticize in detail Marx’s theory of surplus value. What follows as to Socialism, if this theory fails?
Is Schaeffle a Socialist? If so, why? If not, why not?
State the present attitude of English Socialism, with special reference to the Fabian Society. Note the most important changes from the Marx type.
In what definite ways would Socialism modify the system of private property?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Examination papers, 1873-1915. Box 3, Vol. Examination Papers, 1890-92. Papers set for Final Examinations in Philosophy, Political Economy, History, Roman Law, Fine Arts, and Music in Harvard College (June, 1890), pp. 11-12. Previously posted in Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

______________________

1889-90
POLITICAL ECONOMY 3.

Enrollment.

[Political Economy] 3. Prof. [Frank William] Taussig and Mr. [John Graham] Brooks. Investigation and Discussion of Practical Economic Questions. — Subjects for 1889-90: Profit-Sharing; the Silver Situation in the United States; Prices since 1850; the Regulation of Railways by the Interstate Commerce Act. — Lectures and discussion of theses. Hours per week: 2. *Consent of instructor required.

Total 19: 15 Seniors, 4 Juniors.

Source: Harvard University. Annual Report of the President of Harvard College 1889-1890, p. 80.

1889-90
POLITICAL ECONOMY 3.
[Mid-Year Examination. 1890.]

Define Profit-sharing, distinguishing it from Coöperation and from existing forms of the wages system.
What in your opinion are the four most successful experiments, with specific reasons for the choice?
State as definitely as possible the conditions under which Profit-sharing is most likely to succeed.
What are the advantages of immediate as against deferred participation?
How serious is the current objection that the laborer cannot or ought not to bear the losses incident to business?
What of the objection that secrecy is impossible?
What specific evidence is there that an extraordinary person is not permanently necessary to successful Profit-sharing?
State briefly the actual advantages and disadvantages of Profit-sharing as they have appeared in history.
What would be the probably effects of competition upon a larger application of Profit-sharing to our industrial system?
What is the best method of dividing the bonus? Add any criticism upon the actual division as seen in history.
Will self-interest alone insure successful Profit-sharing? If not, how can the difficulty be met without violating “business principles”?

Supplementary Questions.

What, if any, is the nature of the antagonism in Profit-sharing among capitalist, manager, and workman?
What of the objection that Profit-sharing is inconsistent with the nature of a legal contract?
Would a wider application of Profit-sharing modify any given theory (as that of Cairnes or Walker) as to the wage fund?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 2. Bound volume. Examination Papers, Mid-Year 1889-90.

1889-90
POLITICAL ECONOMY 3.
[Year-end Examination. 1890.]

In 1887 the Secretary of the Treasury suggested that the purchase by the government of silver for coinage into standard dollars should be subject only to one limitation: that whenever the silver dollars held by the Treasury, over and above those held against outstanding certificates, exceeded $5,000,000, the purchase and coinage should cease.
Explain (1) how the effects of this plan, in the years from 1887 to 1889, would have differed from those of the actual coinage and issue; (2) whether the silver currency so issued could, under any circumstances, be at a discount as compared with gold.
Give the same explanations in regard to a plan by which the government should purchase every month $4,500,000 worth of silver bullion and issue therefor certificates, redeemable, at the government’s option, in gold or silver coin; or, at the holder’s option, in silver bullion at its market value on the day of their presentation for redemption.
What are India Council Bills? How does their issue affect the price of silver?
Point out what bearing you think improvements in production have on the existence and effects of an appreciation of gold.
Explain the following terms, giving examples: (a) group rate; (b) differential; (c) relatively reasonable rates; (d) arbitraries, (e) commodity rate.
Is it unjust discrimination, under the Interstate Commerce Act, (1) to offer a discount to any consignee who receives more than a specified quantity of freight a year; (2) to give a lower rate to regular shippers than to occasional shippers; (3) to refuse to pay mileage for the use of cars furnished by a shipper of cattle, when mileage is paid for the use of cars furnished by a shipper of oil; (4) to charge more per mile on long hauls than on short hauls.
Comment on the following: “The value of service is generally regarded as the most important factor in fixing rates…The value of service to a shipper in a general sense is the ability to reach a market and make his commodity a subject of commerce. In this sense, the service is more valuable to a man who transports a thousand miles than to a man who transports a hundred miles, so that distance is an element in value of service. In a more definite and accurate sense, it consists in reaching a market at a profit, being in effect what the traffic will bear, to be remunerative to the producer or trader.”
Explain how the penalties for violating the Interstate Commerce Act can be enforced, and how they have been enforced.

______________________

1889-90
POLITICAL ECONOMY 4.

Enrollment.

[Political Economy] 4. Mr. [Adolph Caspar] Miller. Economic History of Europe and America since the Seven Years’ War. — Lectures and written work. Hours per week: 3.

Total 106: 25 Seniors, 27 Juniors, 35 Sophomores, 3 Freshmen, 16 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Annual Report of the President of Harvard College 1889-1890, p. 80.

* * * * * *

From the prefatory note to Benjamin Rand’s (ed.) Selections illustrating economic history since the Seven Years’ War (Cambridge, MA: Waterman and Amee, 1889):

These selections have been made for use as a text-book of required reading to accompany a course of lectures on economic history given at Harvard College.

* * * * * *

1889-90
POLITICAL ECONOMY 4.
[Mid-Year Examination. 1890.]

[Take all of A, and seven questions from B.]

A.

“It has often been imagined that the property of these great masses of land was almost entirely in the hands of the church, the monasteries, the nobility, and the financiers; and that before 1789 only large estates existed, while the class of small proprietors was created by the Revolution. Some consider this supposed change as the highest glory, and others as the greatest calamity of modern times; but all are agreed as to the fact. — Von Sybel, [Economic Causes of the French Revolution] in Selections, p. 52.
(a) What do you consider to be the fact?
(b) Granting the fact, how do you regard the change?
Speaking of the fall of wages in England during the French wars, Mr. Porter [The Finances of England, 1793-1815, Selections, p. 114] says: “Nor could it well be otherwise, since the demand for labor can only increase with the increase of the capital destined for the payment of wages.” Why was there no increase of the capital destined for the payment of wages when, according to J. S. Mill, “the wealth and resources of the country, instead of diminishing, gave every sign of rapid increase”?
Porter [Selections, p. 121] says: “There never could have existed any doubt of the fact that, whenever the necessity for borrowing should cease, the market value of the public funds would advance greatly…. The knowledge of this fact should have led the ministers, by whom successive additions were made to the public debt, to the adoption of a course which would have enabled them to turn this rise of prices to the advantage of the public, instead of its being, as it has proved, productive of loss.”
What was the course adopted and how was it productive of loss? Was this “loss” at all offset by any advantages?
Mention briefly the events associated in your mind with six of the following names: Sheffield; Slater; Coalbrookdale; Young; Dud Dudley; Coxe; Killingworth; Clarkson; “Rocket.”

B.

How was England commercially affected by the loss of her American colonies in 1783?
(a) Compare the French debt and taxation in 1789 with those of England at about the same date.
(b) Point out the significance of England’s debt in 1783 as compared with 1889.
(a) What method would you pursue in investigating the question as to the depreciation of bank notes during the Restriction?
(b) Tooke’s explanation of the high price of bullion during the Restriction. Wherein did it differ from the opinion of the Bullion Committee?
(c) How do you account for the high profits of the Bank of England during the Restriction?
(a) Describe the French assignats and point out wherein they differed from the territorial mandates.
(b) What was the tiers consolidé?
(a) In what particular ways were England and the United States peculiarly benefited by the introduction of steam navigation?
(b) What changes were introduced into the French railway system under Napoleon III.?
(a) Napoleon’s Continental System. Its effects upon England and France respectively.
(b) Point out the chief factors determining the commercial development of the United States from 1789 to 1816.
(a) General commercial and industrial nature of the period 1815 to 1830.
(b) Were the progressive changes of prices a cause or an effect of the disturbances of this period?
(c) How did the increase of pauperism affect the distribution of wealth in England during and following the Napoleonic wars?
(a) Why has the current of liberal commercial opinions been successful in influencing legislation in England, but ineffective in France?
(b) Describe the Merchants’ Petition, and point out its importance.
(a) Formation and constitution of the Zoll Verein.
(b) In what manner were the duties of the Zoll Verein levied?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 2. Bound volume. Examination Papers, Mid-Year 1889-90.

1889-90
POLITICAL ECONOMY 4.
[Year-end Examination. 1890.]

[Take all of A and eight questions from B.]

A.

Cairnes [From Cairnes’ Essays in Political Economy, “The New Gold”, in Selections, p. 211] says that “as a general conclusion we may say, that in proportion as in any country the local depreciation of gold is more or less rapid than the average rate elsewhere, the effect of the monetary disturbance will be for that country beneficial or injurious.”
1. By what process of reasoning does Mr. Cairnes reach this conclusion?
2. To what extent was it verified by the history of the new gold movement?
3. What would determine the rapidity of the local depreciation in any country?
The writer in Blackwood’s [“The French Indemnity: The Payment of the Five Milliards” in Selections, p. 250], speaking of the origin of the indemnity bills, quotes M. Say as being of the opinion “that scarcely any part of the indemnity bills was furnished by the current commercial trade of the country.” How were they furnished?
The same writer [Selections, p. 246] says that “the quantities of bills, of each kind, that were bought by the French Government as vehicles of transmission, in no way indicate the form in which the money was handed over to the German Treasury.” Why?
Wells [Recent Economic Changes, p. 218] says “the changes in recent years in the world’s economic condition have essentially changed the relative importance of the two functions which gold, as the leading monetary metal, discharges; namely, that of an instrumentality for facilitating exchanges and as a measure of value.” Describe some of the agencies and evidences of this change in the functions of gold, and point out what influence has thus been exerted upon the value of gold.

B.

Why was an additional supply of gold especially important, 1850-69?
What part did India play in the gold movement, 1851-67? How has her ability in this respect been modified?
To what extent can the decline of our tonnage be ascribed to the effects of the Civil War?
How do you account for the increase of the trading classes during the Civil War?
American wheat and its effect upon English agriculture. How were the results modified by the lord and tenant system?
German coinage and the crisis of 1873. To what extent did it contribute to the fall of prices after 1873?
How did the crisis of 1873 simplify the problem of specie resumption for the United States? Did it do the same for France?
Why did France recover so rapidly after the war of 1870-71?
The Suez Canal and Oriental trade.
Compare the period 1873-89 with the period 1815-30.

______________________

1889-90
POLITICAL ECONOMY 6.

Enrollment.

[Political Economy] 6. Prof. [Frank William] Taussig. History of Tariff Legislation in the United States. — Lectures on the History of Tariff Legislation. — Discussion of brief theses (two from each student). — Lectures on the Tariff History of France and England. Hours per week: 2 or 3. 2d half-year. *Consent of instructor required.

Total 29: 19 Seniors, 9 Juniors, 1 Other.

Source: Harvard University. Annual Report of the President of Harvard College 1889-1890, p. 80.

1889-90.
POLITICAL ECONOMY 6
[End-Year]

What grounds are there for believing that the restrictive policy of Great Britain did or did not have a considerable effect on the industrial development of the American colonies?
What was the effect of the political situation in 1824 on the tariff act of that year? in 1842 on the act of 1842?
“The tariff of 1846 was passed by a party vote. It followed the strict constructionist theory in aiming at a list of duties sufficient only to provide revenue for the government, without regard to protection.”—Johnston’s American Politics.
Was the act passed by a party vote? Did it disregard protection? Did it succeed in fixing duties sufficient only to provide revenue?
What basis is there for the assertion that the gold premium, in the years after the civil war, increased the protection given by the import duties?
Under what circumstances was the tariff act of 1864 passed? How long did it remain in force?
Is there any analogy between the effects of the duties on cotton goods after 1816 and those on steel rails after 1870?
Wherein would there probably be differences in the effects of reciprocity treaties (1) with Canada, admitting coal free; (2) with Great Britain, admitting iron free; (3) with Brazil, admitting sugar free?
Apply Gallatin’s test as to the effect of duties on the price of the protected articles, to the present facts in regard to (1) clothing wool, (2) silks.
On what grounds is the removal of the duty on pig iron more or less desirable than that of the duty on sugar?
Is it a strong objection to ad valorem duties that they depend on foreign prices and that therefore the duties are fixed by foreigners? Is it a strong objection to specific duties that they operate unequally?

______________________

1889-90
POLITICAL ECONOMY 7.
Public Finance and Banking.

[Omitted in 1889-90]

Source: Harvard University. Annual Report of the President of Harvard College 1889-1890, p. 80.

______________________

1889-90
POLITICAL ECONOMY 8.

Enrollment.

[Political Economy] 8. Mr. [Adolph Caspar] Miller. History of Financial Legislation in the United States. — Lectures and brief theses. Hours per week: 2 or 3. 1^st half-year.

Total 25: 13 Seniors, 10 Juniors, 2 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Annual Report of the President of Harvard College 1889-1890, p. 81.

1889-90
POLITICAL ECONOMY 8.
[Mid-year examination]

[Take two questions from A, and eight from B.]

The questions under A are supposed to require half an hour each for careful treatment, and those under B fifteen minutes each.

A.

Commenting on those provisions of the Funding Act of August 4, 1790, by which the six-per-cent stock was made “subject to redemption by payments not exceeding in one year, on account of both principal and interest, the proportion of eight dollars upon each hundred, Professor Adams remarks: —
“In our previous study of annuities it was discovered that long-time annuities did not meet the requirements of good financiering, because they unnecessarily embarrassed the policy of debt payment. The same objection attaches to this plan of Mr. Hamilton. The record of subsequent treasury operations renders it reasonably certain that a simple six-per-cent bond, guaranteed to run for twenty years, would have proved satisfactory to public creditors, and have induced them to comply with the other conditions which the Government imposed. This would have brought the larger part of the six-per-cent bonds under the control of Congress in the years 1811 and 1813, and permitted either their redemption or their conversion into stock bearing a reduced rate of interest. But since the right of redemption except at a stated rate, had been signed away, it was found necessary to continue the higher rate of interest upon the common stock till 1818, and upon the ‘deferred stock’ until 1824. As the matter turned out, the war of 1812 would have rendered such an operation upon the common stock impossible, had it been permitted by the contract; but this does not excuse the Federalists for having adopted a bad theory of funding.”
Do you consider this a sound criticism of Hamilton’s plan of funding? By what means do you determine whether or not it met the “requirements of good financiering”?
“Our sinking fund, however, differed materially from that which was adopted in the early financial history of Great Britain, as it was not exclusively applied to the liquidation of a particular debt in existence. It was also unlike that of Mr. Pitt, as the amount of the capital appropriated was not fixed before 1802….Properly speaking, the essential character of a sinking fund was not to be found in the operations of that of the United States.” — Jonathan Elliot, Funding System of the United States and of Great Britain, p. 406, note.
Discuss the above with particular reference to the alleged difference of principle between Pitt’s sinking-fund policy and Hamilton’s. In this connection, also point out carefully what changes were introduced into the sinking-fund policy of the United States in 1802. Do those changes represent any real departure from the principle of Hamilton’s sinking-fund?
“The most generally received opinion is, that, by direct taxes in the Constitution, those are meant which are raised on the capital or revenue of the people….As that opinion is in itself rational,… it will not be improper to corroborate it by quoting the author from whom the idea seems to have been borrowed. Dr. Smith Wealth of Nations, book V. chap. 2) says, ‘The private revenue of individuals arises ultimately from three different sources: Rent, Profit, and Wages. Every tax must finally be paid from some one or other of those three different sorts of revenue, or from all of them indifferently.’ After having treated separately of those taxes which, it is intended, should fall upon some one or other of the different sorts of revenue, he continues, ‘The taxes which, it is intended, should fall indifferently upon every different species of revenue, are capitation taxes, and taxes upon consumable commodities.’ And, after having treated of capitation taxes, he finally says, ‘The impossibility of taxing the people, in proportion to their revenue, by any capitation, seems to have given occasion to the invention of taxes upon consumable commodities. The State, not knowing how to tax directly and proportionably the revenue of its subjects, endeavours to tax it indirectly.’ The remarkable coincidence of the clause of the Constitution, with this passage, in using the word ‘capitation’ as a generic expression, including the different species of direct taxes, — an acceptation of the word peculiar, it is believed, to Dr. Smith, — leaves little doubt that the framers of the one had the other in view at the time, and that they, as well as he, by direct taxes, meant those paid directly from, and falling immediately on, the revenue.” — Albert Gallatin, Sketch of the Finances, p. 12.
Discuss the above with particular reference to the source and meaning of the phrase “direct taxes” in the Constitution of the United States.

B.

“The Act provided, that, if the total amount subscribed by any state exceeded the sum specified therein, a similar percentage should be deducted from the claims of all subscribers. Four ninths of the stock issued by the government for this loan bore interest at six per cent, beginning with the year 1792; on third bore three per cent interest, beginning at the same time, and the balance, two ninths, bore six per cent interest after the year 1800. The latter kind of stock was to be redeemed whenever provision was made for that purpose. And, with respect to seven ninths of the stock, the government was at liberty to pay two per cent annually, if it desired; but no imperative obligation was created to pay it.” — A. S. Boles, Financial History of the United States, vol. II. p. 28.
Is this an accurate statement, so far as it goes, of the provisions of the Act of August 4, 1790, for assuming the State debts?
How is President Madison’s approval of the Bank Act of April 10, 1816, to be reconciled with his bank veto of January 30, 1815?
“During the winter of 1833-34 there was a stringent money market and commercial distress. The State banks were in no condition to take the public deposits. They were trying to strengthen themselves, and put themselves on the level of the Treasury requirements in the hope of getting a share of the deposits. It was they who operated a bank contraction during that winter…The administration, however, charged everything to Biddle and the bank.” — W. G. Sumner, Andrew Jackson, p. 316.
Where do you consider that the real responsibility for the pressure of 1833-34 rested?
What criticism would you make on the financial management of the war of 1812? Was it a fair test of the policy of relying upon public credit for defraying the extraordinary expenses of war?
What kind of currency did the government use and where did it keep its moneys, and under what authority of law, from 1811 to 1864?
How is the extension of accommodations by the Bank of the United States from 1830 to the middle of 1832 to be explained?
What were the terms of the one hundred and fifty million bank loan of 1861, and how was it financially important?
Point out the steps by which the legal-tender notes have become a fixed and permanent part of the currency.
What is the essence of the national bank system, so far as concerns note-circulation, and what bearing does this have upon the future of the system?
Is Mr. Chase entitled to take rank in American history as a great finance minister? State carefully and concisely the grounds of your opinion.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 2. Bound volume. Examination Papers, Mid-Year 1889-90.

______________________

1889-90
POLITICAL ECONOMY 9.
Management and Ownership of Railways.

[Omitted in 1889-90]

Source: Harvard University. Annual Report of the President of Harvard College 1889-1890, p. 81.

Image Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard Square, 1885.

Tags BrooksJG, Macvane, Mason, MillerAC, Peabody, Taussig

Economics 11 Course announcement 1902-03, Spring term

Economics 11 Course Enrollment 1902-03, Spring term

Economics 11 Final Examination 1902-03, Spring term

Economics 10 Course Announcement (1902-03, first semester)

Economics 10 Course Enrollment 1902-03 (First term)

Economics 10 Final Examination (1902-03, First Semester)

Course Description Economic History 1937-1938

Semester Examinations Economic History 1937-1938

THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY MID-YEAR EXAMINATION POLITICAL ECONOMY 12 B

THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY FINAL EXAMINATION IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 12 B

JAMES HORACE PATTEN

His death

Course Announcement, 1901-1902. Economics 6

Course Enrollment, 1901-02 Economics 6.

For Undergraduates and Graduates:—

REPORTS IN ECONOMICS 6.

COLONIAL TOPICS.

COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY.

SETTLEMENT OF THE WEST.

CURRENCY AND FINANCE

Mid-Year Examination 1901-02 ECONOMICS 6

Year-End Examination 1901-02 ECONOMICS 6

PROBLEMS IN RUSSIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY 14.732

E.D. Domar Spring Term 1974-75

PART I – KIEVAN RUSSIA PART II – APPANAGE RUSSIA

PART III — THE DEVELOPMENT OF SERFDOM BEFORE PETER I XVI and XVII CENTURIES

PART IV – FROM PETER I TO THE EMANCIPATION OF THE PEASANTS 1700 — 1861

PART V — FROM THE EMANCIPATION OF THE PEASANTS TO THE SOVIET REGIME 1861-1917

Memorandum on General Bases of the Research Program

MEMO TO: Members of the Department FROM: R. A. Musgrave

Graduate Students’ Examinations in Political Economy Spring 1961

Previous posts (for 1921-1941)

1929-30

From Course Announcements

Enrollment

1929-30. Harvard University. Economics 231. [Mid-year Exam, 1930]

1929-30 Harvard University. Economics 25 [Mid-year Exam, 1930]

PART I

PART II

1929-30 Harvard University. Economics 25 [Year-end Exam, 1930]

1930-1931

From Course Announcements

Enrollment

1930-31 Harvard University Economics 23. [Mid-year Exam 1931]

1930-31 Harvard University Economics 25 [Mid-Year Exam, 1931]

1930-31 Harvard University Economics 25 [Year-end Exam, 1931]

1931-1932

From Course Announcements

Enrollment

1931-32 Harvard University Economics 23 [Final Exam 1932]

1931-32 Harvard University Economics 25 [Mid-Year Exam, 1932]

1931-32 Harvard University Economics 25 [Year-End Exam, 1932]

1932-1933

From Course Announcements

Enrollment

1932-33 Harvard University Economics 251 [Mid-year Final Exam, 1933]

1933-1934

From Course Announcements

Enrollment

1933-34 Havard University Economics 232 [Final Exam 1934]

1934-1935

From Course Announcements

Enrollment

Economics 21. Economic History to 1450. Readings and paper topics, Usher. 1934

1934-35 Harvard University Economics 21 [Final Exam. Jan 18, 1935]

1934-35 Harvard University Economic 23 [Mid-year Exam 1935]

1934-35 Harvard University Economics 23 [Year-end Exam, 1935]

1935-1936

From Course Announcements

Enrollment

1935-36 Harvard University Economics 23 [Mid-year Exam, 1936]

1935-36 Harvard University Economics 23 [Year-end Exam, 1936]

Summer School of Harvard University August 15, 1936 Economics S20 (Economics 23)

1936-1937

From Course Announcements

Enrollment

1936-37 Harvard University Economics 133 [Year-end Examination, 1937]

1937-1938

From Course Announcements

Enrollment

Economics 11
Course announcement
1902-03, Spring term

Economics 11
Course Enrollment
1902-03, Spring term

Economics 11
Final Examination
1902-03, Spring term

Economics 10
Course Announcement
(1902-03, first semester)

Economics 10
Course Enrollment
1902-03 (First term)

Economics 10
Final Examination
(1902-03, First Semester)

Course Description
Economic History
1937-1938

Semester Examinations
Economic History
1937-1938

THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
MID-YEAR EXAMINATION
POLITICAL ECONOMY 12 B

THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
FINAL EXAMINATION
IN
POLITICAL ECONOMY 12 B

Course Announcement,
1901-1902.
Economics 6

Course Enrollment, 1901-02
Economics 6.

Mid-Year Examination 1901-02
ECONOMICS 6

Year-End Examination 1901-02
ECONOMICS 6

PROBLEMS IN RUSSIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY
14.732

E.D. Domar
Spring Term 1974-75

PART I – KIEVAN RUSSIA
PART II – APPANAGE RUSSIA

PART III — THE DEVELOPMENT OF SERFDOM BEFORE PETER I
XVI and XVII CENTURIES

PART IV – FROM PETER I TO THE EMANCIPATION OF THE PEASANTS
1700 — 1861

PART V — FROM THE EMANCIPATION OF THE PEASANTS TO
THE SOVIET REGIME 1861-1917

MEMO TO: Members of the Department
FROM: R. A. Musgrave

Graduate Students’ Examinations in Political Economy
Spring 1961

Previous posts
(for 1921-1941)

1929-30.
Harvard University.
Economics 23¹.
[Mid-year Exam, 1930]

1929-30
Harvard University.
Economics 25
[Mid-year Exam, 1930]

1929-30
Harvard University.
Economics 25
[Year-end Exam, 1930]

1930-31
Harvard University
Economics 23.
[Mid-year Exam 1931]

1930-31
Harvard University
Economics 25
[Mid-Year Exam, 1931]

1930-31
Harvard University
Economics 25
[Year-end Exam, 1931]

1931-32
Harvard University
Economics 23
[Final Exam 1932]

1931-32
Harvard University
Economics 25
[Mid-Year Exam, 1932]

1931-32
Harvard University
Economics 25
[Year-End Exam, 1932]

1932-33
Harvard University
Economics 25¹
[Mid-year Final Exam, 1933]

1933-34
Havard University
Economics 23²
[Final Exam 1934]

Economics 21. Economic History to 1450.
Readings and paper topics, Usher. 1934

1934-35
Harvard University
Economics 21
[Final Exam. Jan 18, 1935]

1934-35
Harvard University
Economic 23
[Mid-year Exam 1935]

1934-35
Harvard University
Economics 23
[Year-end Exam, 1935]

1935-36
Harvard University
Economics 23
[Mid-year Exam, 1936]

1935-36
Harvard University
Economics 23
[Year-end Exam, 1936]

Summer School of Harvard University
August 15, 1936
Economics S20 (Economics 23)

1936-37
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Examination, 1937]

1937-38
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Mid-year Exam, 1938]

1937-38
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Exam, 1938]

1938-39
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Mid-year Exam, 1939]

1938-39
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Exam, 1939]

1939-40
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 133
[Mid-Year Exam, 1940]

1939-1940
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 133
[Year-End Exam, 1940]

1940-41
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Mid-year Exam, 1941]

1940-41
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Exam, 1941]

1941-42
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Mid-year Exam, 1942]

1941-42
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Exam, 1942]

1942
Harvard University
Economics S133

1942-43
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Mid-year Exam, 1943]

1942-43
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Exam, 1943]

1943-44
Harvard University
Economics 33a, 133a
[Final Examination, June 1944]

1943-44
Harvard University
Economics 33b, 133b
[Final Exam, February 1944]

1944-45
Harvard University
Economics 33a, 133a
[Final Exam, February 1945]

1944-45
Harvard University
Economics 33b, 133b
[Final Exam. June 1945]

1945-1946
Harvard University
Economic 133a
[Final Exam, August 1946]

1945-1946
Harvard University
Economics 133b
[Final Exam, August 1946]

1946-47
Harvard University
Economics 133a
[Final Exam, January 1947]

1946-47
Harvard University
Economics 133b
[Final Exam, May 1947]

1947-48
Harvard University
Economics 133a
[Final Exam, January 1948]

1947-48
Harvard University
Economics 133b
[Final Exam, May 1948]

1948-49
Harvard University
Economics 233a
[Final Exam, January 1949]

1948-49
Harvard University
Economics 233b
[Final Exam, June 1949]