Category: Economists

Categories
Columbia Economist Market Economists Iowa Salaries

Columbia. Hiring Albert Gailord Hart as visiting professor. Bureaucracy light, 1946

 

Up through the academic year 1945-46, Arthur F. Burns offered the first core economic theory course, Economic Analysis (Economics 153-154), in the Columbia graduate program. The following year, 1946-47, the course was taught by the visiting professor of economics (who would be offered and accepted a regular appointment that same year), Albert G. Hart.

Materials from Hart’s core economic courses in his first year at Columbia have been posted earlier.

This post provides a few brief items regarding Albert G. Hart’s initial Columbia appointment. What I was most struck with is the relative brevity of the documentation expected (demanded) by university administrators for a visiting professor appointment.

________________________

From the budget proposals for 1946-47,
Columbia’s salary structure for economics professors

Actual professorial salary appropriations at Columbia for 1945-46
and proposed for 1946-47

Professors:

Robert M. Haig, Leo Wolman, John Maurice Clark, Harold Hotelling:  $9,000

James Waterhouse Angell, Carter Goodrich, Horace Taylor, Arthur F. Burns, Abraham Wald: $7,500

Associate Professors ranged from $4,500 to $7,500.

Assistant Professors ranged from $3, 500 to $4,000

A vacant professorship: for Hart ($7,500) and a slot proposed for a visiting professor of international economics, also budgeted at $7,500.

________________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York

[New York 27, N.Y.]

FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

March 25, 1946

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

Dear Mr. President:

I am writing to advise you that Dr. Albert Gailord Hart, formerly of Iowa State College, has accepted the invitation of the Department of Economics to serve as Visiting Professor of Economics during the academic year 1946-47. Dr. Hart’s salary for the period will be $7,500, chargeable to the vacant professorship in Economics carried in our budget for the year 1946-47.

I am requesting Professor Evans, chairman of the Committee on Instruction of the faculty of Political Science, to take what steps may be necessary in order that Dr. Hart may have a seat on the Faculty of Political Science during the period of his residence.

A brief statement on Dr. Hart’s education and scholarly background is enclosed.

Sincerely,
[signed] Frederick C. Mills

________________________

ALBERT GAILORD HART

Born in 1909.

A.B., Harvard, 1930; Ph.D., Chicago, 1936.

Sheldon Traveling Fellow, 1930-31.

Spent 1934-35 in London.

Title of Doctoral dissertation: Anticipations, business planning, and the cycle.

Full professor, Iowa State College, Department of Economics, 1944-45.

At present on research staff, Committee on Economic Development.

Major interests: Economic theory, public finance, consumption, business fluctuations.

Publications:

Debts and recovery (Twentieth Century Fund, 1938)
Paying for defense (with E. D. Allen and others). 1941.
The social framework of the American economy. (with J. R. Hicks). 1945.

Lectured in California, 1936, and served at one time as Economic Analyst with the United States Department of the Treasury.

Source:  Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Archives. Central Files 1890-. Box 396, Folder “Mills, Frederick Cecil”.

Image Source:  Columbia University Record, vol. 23, no. 5 (Oct. 3, 1997).

Categories
Cowles Economists Seminar Speakers

Cowles and IMF seminars on social welfare functions. Abba Lerner, 1952

 

In this post we have material related to a seminar on social welfare functions that Abba Lerner gave on at least two occasions in the fall of 1952–once at the I.M.F. and once at the Cowles Commission. The three items transcribed below come from a single folder in the “Abba P. Lerner Papers” at the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. The first two items are typed notes Lerner kept for himself followed by a page of handwritten notes that presumably were his presentation notes (his class lecture notes are seldom, if ever, more than a page per lesson and often no more than a list of key words). Where I have been forced to guess a word, I use boldface. Simple typos and spelling mistakes have been corrected without fanfare, Lerner was a pretty lousy typist.

Transcribed notes for Abba Lerner’s five lectures about labor (1949) can be found in an earlier post.

__________________________

SOME ASPECTS OF WELFARE ECONOMICS
IMF 9-19-52
[Lerner’s own typed notes, followed by handwritten notes]

Western Humanism—Efficient use of resources for satisfying human wants.

adding utilities, measuring utility, complementarity, weighting

For analysis avoid by indifference curves, more generally, by ordering

For Welfare Economics avoid by social welfare function also an ordering.

Democracy means deriving social decision from individual preferences.

Bergson and Samuelson seem to suggest possibility of getting social ordering from individual ordering

Arrow on the derivation. The Paradox.

More generally. Five conditions. Free choice, positive, irrelevance non-dictatorial, non-imposed.

Serious for Democracy how much consensus is needed? (Single peaked pref[erences]s.)

Much Math. Reviewers gingerly defer and repeat the paradox.

Too loose. Too severe. at the same time.

Voting is weighting. cf. “unweighted index numbers” voting excluded.

If voting should be consistent. 1+1 =1. (single peaked prefs avoid the triangle)

The third postulate. Men, not preferences, born free and equal.

Majority rule not = democracy. (tho not minority rule)

must be checked for significance of the preference to the individual.

PR [preference revelation?] as concentrating of voting.

Scale of ordering.-1-100 (voting by differences between votes)

Republican Editorial after Democratic Conference.

Must weigh individuals. Must allow individuals to weigh their preferences.

voting and pricing

[Bottom half of paper has the following handwritten notes:]

Social Welfare Function vs. process for social division.

One Commodity World

 A B C Total
x 3 1 2

6

y

 2 3 1 6
z 1 2 3

6

the middle one cannot be the worst

“indifference” [not the same as] “cannot say”

consensus about rules, not content
values vs. prefs?

__________________________

Social Welfare Functions
Discussion at Cowles Commission 10-9-52
[Lerner’s own typed summary of comments he received]

The essence of Democracy is not giving everybody equal influence or voting power but the recognition of uncertainty so that policies can be corrected. Not the determination of policy but the election of official to whom authority can be delegated. Houthakker.

How can the greater needs of some be protected? One cannot rely on those majorities who care little about anything being prevented from oppressing minorities by devoting only a little of their voting power to the oppression—what if there are not many decisions but only one which matters very little to the majority but is very important to the minority? Koopmans

The conditions for a successful democracy do include some restrictions on the preference of the members of society. If conflicts are so strong that they mean more than the preservation of the unity of the society or the keeping of the rules then the democracy cannot persist. Koopmans

Arrow’s third postulate is unnecessarily strong. His purpose would be served by having a social welfare function derived from some set of “complete” private orderings which would then continue to be used even when some of the alternatives have disappeared.  Chairman

Economics is where division between the satisfaction of the desired of different individuals is possible. Each can then get (buy) what he wants without this affecting others. Where there is an indivisibility or a non-separability of the effects on different individuals we have political rather than economic problems. Discussion after the meeting with Colin Clark.

Where there is indivisibility we have to have government and must sacrifice freedom. Colin Clark

 

Source:  Library of Congress. Manuscript Division. Papers of Abba P. Lerner, Box 21, Folder 5 “Welfare Economics, Undated”.

__________________________

The following handwritten sheet was not stapled to the previous two which were stapled together, but it does have what appear to be matching staple holes, as if the notes had been taken and used for another lecture at some other time.

Welfare Economics—Social Welfare Functions
[Lerner’s handwritten notes
(boldface indicates uncertain transcription)]

Present concerns—Sustaining Forces—Psych[ological] Warfare

deeper to Basic Ec[onomic] Analysis, Basic Political Philosophy.

                        Keynes, Adam Smith              Wilson, Jefferson, Socrates

Democratic Society. Voting. Arrow Paradox. Social ordering from individual orderings.

Is democracy possible? (Single peaked pref[erence]s, single commodity)

Political Ec[onom]y—Welfare Economics—preferred in to “Economics”.

conforming

Summation & Measurement of U[tility]. Social Welfare Function. Social States

Behaviorism + ordering OK.

If no comparison unanimity reasoning. voting means comparing – weighting.

Analyze paradox — inconsistent w[eigh]ting 1 + 1 = 1. (all preferences born equal)

(unweighted)

1 + 1 = 2 give rank ordering (not reasonable—adjust pref[erence]s equal)

\left( \text{another case  }xyz\text{  or  }zxy\,\,\to \,\,\bar{x}\bar{z}\,,\,\bar{z}\bar{y}\text{  but  }xy \right)

diff[erent] low votes is the influencing power not [number] of votes (cf P.R. [preference revelation?] etc) or majority rule

add cardinal utilities (which must also be comparable) to get social ordering

How much for each individual? How democratic

S.W. Function really impor[tant]. But do we need one?

All we need is a democratic decision

Equal influence — given a democratic result

Principle of relevance—different use of voting power. Not a S.W. Function

Inconsistency ceases to be irrational—diff[erent] circumstances

 (games, influence, voting, force, smudged-word)

Over-ambition—cf compensation issue “can’t tell” or “indifference”

output and distribution.

Democracy depends on multiplicity of items.

Consensus + Possibility of Democracy.

 

Source:  Library of Congress. Manuscript Division. Papers of Abba P. Lerner, Box 21, Folder 5 “Welfare Economics, Undated”.

__________________________

From the Cowles’ record of Commission Seminars

Oct. 9 [1952] Abba P. Lerner, Roosevelt College, “Social Welfare Functions”

Source: Yale University. Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics. Webpage: Commission Seminars, 1943-1955.

Image Source: Publicity photo of Abba Lerner as Guest Speaker February 25, 1958 in the Beth Emet 1958 Forum. Library of Congress. Papers of Abba P. Lerner, Box 6, Folder 8.

 

Categories
Economists Harvard Seminar Speakers

Harvard. Members of the Economics Seminary, 1897-1898

 

Economics in the Rear-view Mirror has posted the names and topics for presentations from 1891/92 through 1907/08 from Harvard’s Seminary in Economics. These lists were published in the Harvard Catalogues for the following academic years, providing us with the actual names and topics. I came across the following announcement for the academic year 1897/98 that provides a bit more information about the presenters but also shows us that there were a couple of deviations from the original, planned schedule. When I compared the members to the list of Harvard economics Ph.D.’s for the 1875-1926, I was somewhat surprised that the majority of presenters did not go on to complete Harvard Ph.D.’s. I decided to track down everyone listed as a member of the seminary in 1897-98, to see what I could find. Actually, I found quite a lot to include in this post.

_________________________

HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
SEMINARY IN ECONOMICS.
[Announced]
1897-98.

INSTRUCTORS.

Professor C. F. Dunbar, 14 Highland St.
Professor W. J. Ashley, 6 Acacia St.
Professor Edward Cummings, Irving St.
Professor F. W. Taussig, 2 Scott St.

MEMBERS.

Morton A. Aldrich, A.B. (Harvard), Ph.D. (Halle). Henry Bromfield Rogers Memorial Fellow. 24 Thayer Hall.

Subject: The History of the American Federation of Labor.

Frederick A. Bushée, B.L. (Dartmouth). University Scholar. 7 Wendell St.

Subject: The Growth and Constitution of the Population of Boston.

Ralph W. Cone, A.B. (Kansas Univ.), A.B., A.M. (Harvard). University Scholar. 23 Hilton.

Subject: Railway Land Grants, with special reference to the Pacific railways.

Adolph O. Eliason, L.B. (University of Minnesota), A.B. (Harvard). 34 Divinity Hall.

Subject: The Distribution of National and State Banks [in] the United States, with special regard to the States of the Northwest.

John E. George, Ph.B. (North Western Univ.), A.M. (Harvard). Paine Fellow. 10 Oxford St.

Subject: The Condition and Organization of Coal Miners in the United States.

D. Frederick Grass, Ph.B. (Iowa Coll.). 14 Shepard St.

Subject: Antonio Serra, and the Beginning of Political Economy in Italy.

Charles S. Griffin, A.B. (Kansas), A.B., A.M. (Harvard). Assistant in Political Economy. 43 Grays Hall.

Subject: The Taxation of Sugar and the Sugar Industry in Europe and America.

W. L. Mackenzie King, A.M., LL.B. (Univ. of Toronto) Townsend Scholar. 14 Sumner St.C

Subject: The Clothing Trade and the Sweating System, in the United States, England, and Germany.

H.C. Marshall, A.B. (Ohio Wesleyan), A.B., A.M. (Harvard). Henry Lee Memorial Fellow. 29 Grays Hall.

Subject: History of Legal Tender Notes after the close of the Civil War.

Randolph Paine, Senior in Harvard College. 32 Mellen St.

Subject: The Growth of the Free Silver Movement since 1860.

C. E. Seaman, A.B., (Acadia), A.B., A.M. (Harvard). Assistant in Government. 31 Holyoke St.

Subject: The Intercolonial Railway of Canada.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003, Box 1, Folder “Economics, 1897-1898”.

_____________________________

Report of the actual meetings of the Seminary of Economics, 1897-98

At the joint meetings of the Seminary of American History and Institutions and the Seminary of Economics: —

Some results of an inquiry on taxation in Massachusetts. Professor F. W. Taussig.

The Making of a Tariff. Mr. S. N. D. North.

The currency reform plan of the Indianapolis convention. Professor Dunbar.

At the Seminary of Economics: —

Trade-unions in Australia. Dr. M. A. Aldrich.

The coal miners’ strike of 1897. Mr. J. E. George.

An analysis of the law of diminishing returns. Dr. C. W. Mixter.

The Secretary of the Treasury and the currency, 1865-1879. Mr. H. C. Marshall.

An inquiry on government contract work in Canada. Mr. W. L. M. King.

The sugar industry in Europe as affected by taxes and bounties. Mr. C. S. Griffin.

The security of bank notes based on general assets, as indicated by experience under the national bank system. Mr. A. O. Eliason.

The inter-colonial railway. Mr. C. E. Seaman.

Some results of the new method of assessing the income tax in Prussia. Dr. J. A. Hill.

Antonio Serra and the beginnings of political economy in Italy. Mr. D. F. Grass.

The American Federation of Labor. Dr. M. A. Aldrich.

The earlier stages of the silver movement in the United States. Mr. Randolph Paine.

The land grant to the Union Pacific Railroad. Mr. R. W. Cone.

Source: Harvard University Catalogue 1898-99, pp. 400-1.

_____________________________

Economic Seminar Members

 

 

Morton Arnold Aldrich.
(b. Jan. 6, 1874 in Boston; d. May 9, 1956 in New Orleans)

If you had to pick one individual most responsible for the founding of the A. B. Freeman School of Business [at Tulane University], that individual would be Morton A. Aldrich, the business school’s first and longest-serving dean. A summa cum laude graduate of Harvard with a PhD from Germany’s University of Halle, Aldrich joined Tulane in 1901 as an assistant professor of economics and sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences, and he wasted little time making his intentions known. A 1902 article in the Times-Picayune describes a lecture in which Aldrich declared Tulane’s intention to establish a College of Commerce. “In New Orleans, it is unfortunate that so many businessmen come from the North and from abroad,” Aldrich is quoted as saying. “We are glad to have them, to be sure, but would it not be more satisfactory if we could educate Louisianians to become leaders to a greater extent?”

Aldrich was a man of contradictions. He was a worldly and erudite scholar yet at the same time an everyman who enjoyed swapping stories with trappers and fishermen at his camp on Lake Pontchartrain. Aldrich prided himself on his ability to get along with everyone, and it was that knack for bringing disparate groups together that ultimately helped him found Tulane’s College of Commerce and Business Administration.

In 1902, business education was still viewed by many as vocational training, a field not worthy of a university of Tulane’s stature. But even if there had been more widespread support for business education within the university, Aldrich still faced obstacles. Tulane President Edwin Alderman informed Aldrich in no uncertain terms that the cash-strapped university simply did not have the resources to establish a new college.

Undeterred, Aldrich turned his attention to the business community. In 1909, he founded the Tulane Society of Economics, which sponsored lectures that highlighted the intersection of economic theory and business practice. Many of the city’s most prominent businessmen became members of the society. In 1912, Aldrich drafted a tax reform proposal for the state of Louisiana that further established his reputation in the business community. A year later, he became a charter member of the New Orleans Association of Commerce, a new organization established to help promote the city’s economic interests. With the membership of the Association of Commerce in his corner, Aldrich realized he finally had the business support he had been cultivating for the previous 10 years.

In 1913, the Association of Commerce sent a letter to Tulane President Robert Sharp asking the university to establish a College of Commerce. Sensing the shift is public sentiment regarding business education, Sharp did not rule out the creation of a commerce college. Instead, he simply said that Tulane did not have the money. That response set in motion a whirlwind of activity at the Association of Commerce. By the fall of 1914, the association presented Tulane with a plan to underwrite the cost of establishing a business college. The Board of Tulane endorsed the proposal, and Sharp appointed Aldrich as the first dean of the newly formed Tulane University College of Commerce and Business Administration.

Aldrich went on to serve as dean of the college for 25 years. In that time, he built the college from a small, part-time program to a successful degree-granting institution with 871 students spread across day and evening programs. He also personally hired each of the college’s full-time professors—the so-called “Nine Old Men” of the business school—who would serve as the core of the faculty for the next 40 years.

In a very real sense, Aldrich helped to transform Tulane from a 19th century liberal arts college to a modern 20th century university with academic divisions spanning a variety of fields and disciplines.

Besides being a significant figure in business education at Tulane, Aldrich was also a pioneer in business education nationally. He helped to establish the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), which today is the leading worldwide accrediting organization for business schools, and he served as the organization’s secretary for the first six years of its existence.

Aldrich stepped down as dean in 1939 when he reached the mandatory faculty retirement age of 65. Although he was honored by alumni on several occasions and remained friends with Tulane President Rufus Harris, he never returned to campus.

Aldrich died in New Orleans on May 9, 1956.

Each week during our Centennial Celebration, the Freeman School is highlighting some of the well-known and not-so-well-known people who helped to make the first 100 years of business education at Tulane University so special.

Source: From the Morton A. Aldrich webpage at the Freeman School of Business – Tulane University Centennial website (2013).  Morton A. Aldrich from the 1915 edition of the Jambalaya student yearbook.

Dissertation (Halle-Wittenberg, 1897)

Morton Arnold Aldrich, Die Arbeiterbewegung in Australien und Neuseeland. (Published by Barras, 1897).

 

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Frederick Alexander Bushée
(b. July 21, 1872 in Brookfield, VT; d. Apr. 4, 1960 in Bolder, CO)

Harvard 1902 doctoral dissertation: Ethnic factors in the population of Boston. New York, Macmillan (London, Sonnenschein), 1903, 8°, pp. viii, 171 (Publ. Amer. Econ. Assoc., ser. 3, 4: no. 2). Preliminary portion pub. as “The growth of the population of Boston,” in Publ. Amer. Statist. Assoc., 1899, n. s., 6: 239-274.

Image Source:  University of Colorado yearbook Coloradoan 1922 (Vol. 24), p. 32.

Timeline from:
Reminiscence of the Bushees by Earl David Crockett, the son of Bushee’s successor at the University of Colorado

1872, July 21. Born in Brookfield, Vermont.
1894. Litt. B. Dartmouth College.
1894-95. Resident South End House, Boston.
1895-96. Hartford School of Sociology.
1896-97. Resident South End House, Boston.
1897-1900. Graduate student, Harvard University.
1898. Harvard University, A.M.
1900-01. Collège Libre des Sciences Sociales, Collège de France, Paris; University of Berlin.
1901-02. Assistant in Economics, Harvard University.
1902. Harvard University, Ph.D. in Political Science.
1902-03. Instructor in Economics and History in the Collegiate Department of Clark University.
1903-08. Assistant Professor in Economics, Clark University.
1907-08. Instructor in Economics and Sociology, Clark University.
1910-12. Professor of Economics and Sociology at Colorado College.
1912. Hired by University of Colorado. Boulder, Colo.
1916. Professor of Economics and Sociology, and Secretary of the College of Commerce, University of Colorado. Boulder, Colo.
1925-32. Professor of Economics and Sociology, and Acting Dean of the School of Business Administration, University of Colorado. Boulder, Colo.
1939. Retired.
1960, April 4. Died in Boulder, Colorado.

Robert Treat Paine Fellowship
1899-1900

Frederick Alexander Bushée. Litt.B. (Dartmouth Coll., N.H.) 1894, A.M. 1898.—Res. Gr. Stud., 1897-99.—University Scholar, 1897-98; Townsend Scholar, 1898-99. Student of Economics, at this University.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1898-1899, p. 149.

 

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Ralph Waldo Cone
(b. April 21, 1870 in Seneca, KS; d. January 2, 1951 Kansas City, MO)

A.B. Univ. Kan. 1895; A.B. Harvard 1896.; A.M. Harvard 1897.

1899-1906. Assistant Professor of Sociology and Economics. University of Kansas.

1907-Associate Professor of Sociology and Economics.

1910 U.S. Census listed as professor, starting with the 1920/30/40 U.S. Census listed as farmer.

1910/11 University of Kansas Annual Catalogue (p. 194) lists Associate Professor Cone as “resigned”, probably as announcement for 1911/12.

Image Source: University of Kansas. The Jayhawker. Yearbook of the Senior Class, 1906. P. 20.

 

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Adolph Oscar Eliason
(b. May 26, 1873 at Montevideo, Minn; d. April 27, 1944 at Ramsey, Minn.)

Image Source: Harvard College Class of 1897, Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Report.
1896-97 Harvard. A.B.; A.M. 1898; Litt. B. (Univ. of Minn., 1896); Ph.D. (Univ. of Minn., 1901)

“After graduating from Harvard I received a Ph.D. degree from the University of Minnesota in 1901. I then entered the banking business, being connected with the Bank of Montevideo, Minn., was identified with other business activities, and served as president of the Montevideo Commercial Cub. I lectured on banking at the University of Minnesota, and wrote some monographs on this subject…”

Source: Harvard College Class of 1897. Twenty-fifth Anniversary Report [Number VI, 1922], pp. 173-174.

Ph.D. Thesis, University of Minnesota.

Adolph O. Eliason. The Rise of Commercial Banking Institutions in the United States. 1901.

Another Publication

Adolph O. Eliason. The Beginning of Banking in Minnesota, read at the monthly meeting of the Executive Council of the Minnesota Historical Society, May 11, 1908.

 

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John Edward George
(b. May 12, 1865 near Braceville, IL; d. Jan. 18 1905)

Born 12 May 1865, near Braceville, Ill. Prepared in Grand Prairie Seminary, Onarga, Ill. Entered college on state scholarship. Ph.B. Hinman; Sigma Alpha Epsilon; Phi Beta Kappa. Member of United States Life-Saving Crew; Cushing prize in Economics. 1896-97, student at Harvard University on Chicago Harvard Club scholarship. 1897, A.M., ibid. 1897-98, Robert Treat Paine Fellow at Harvard University; reappointed in 1898, with leave to study abroad. 1899, Ph.D., University of Halle, Germany. Instructor in Economics and History, Grand Prairie Seminary, 1895-96; secretary and statistician of Improved Housing Association, Chicago, 1899-1900; Instructor in Roxbury Latin School, Boston, Mass., 1900; Instructor in Political Economy, Northwestern University, 1900-01; Assistant Professor, 1901–. Member of American Economic Association.

Source: Northwestern University. Alumni Record of the College of Liberal Arts, 1903, p. 257.

Ph.B. (Northwestern Univ., 1895). John Edward George. The Saloon Question in Chicago. American Economic Association, Economic Studies. Vol. II, No. 2 (April, 1897).

“Mr. George’s essay was awarded the Cushing prize, offered in Northwestern University, for the best essay on the subject.”

John E. George. The Settlement in the Coal-Mining Industry. Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 12, No. 4 (1898), pp. 447-460.

Robert Treat Paine Fellowship
1897-98.

John Edward George. Ph.B. (Northwestern University) 1895, A.M., 1897.—Res. Gr. Stud., 1896-97.—Scholar of the Harvard Club of Chicago, 1896-97.—Student of the Ethical Problems of Society, at this University.
Now continuing his studies in Germany.

Source:  Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1897-1898, p. 142.

Robert Treat Paine Fellowship
1898-99.

John Edward George. Reappointed.
Ph.B. (Northwestern Univ., Ill.) 1895, A.M., 1897.—Res. Gr. Stud., 1896-98.—Non-Res. Stud., 1898-99.—Student of the Ethical Problems of Society, at this University (1897-98) and in Germany (1898-99).
Engaged in sociological investigation, in Chicago. 

Source:  Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1898-1899, p. 149.

Passport application
(sworn Boston, June 29, 1898)

John Edward George for a passport for self and wife. Born near Braceville, Illinois on May 12, 1865. “I follow the occupation of student at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.” Intend to return to U.S. in a year.  Stature 5 feet 7 ¾ inches.

Ph.D. dissertation, 1899

Die Verhältnisse des Kohlenbergbaues in den Vereinigten Staaten, mit besonderer Bezugnahme auf die Lage der Bergarbeiter seit dem Jahre 1885. Halle a.S. (Frommann in Jena), 1899.

1900 U.S. Census. Cambridge, Irving Street.

Listed as visitor (with his wife Adda G., born Sept. 1874 Illinois) of Harvard Professor Charles Eliot Norton.

Obituary

DR. JOHN EDWARD GEORGE DEAD.
Former Professor of Economics at Northwestern University Succumbs After Long Illness.
Chicago Tribune (Friday Jan 20, 1905), p. 5.

Dr. John Edward George, who was compelled to resign his position as assistant professor of economics at Northwestern university because of illness two years ago, died of heart trouble at the Wesley hospital Wednesday night.

He was graduated from Northwestern in 1895, and during the following two years studied at Harvard and then at the University of Halle, where he received the degree of doctor of philosophy. He became a member of the faculty of Northwestern in 1900.

Dr. George was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon and Phi Beta Kappa fraternities and of the American Economic association. It was in the publications of the last named organization that he won a name that has hardly been excelled by so young a student of economics. Ile left a widow and one daughter. The funeral will be held In the town of his birth, Braceville, Ill., Saturday afternoon.

 

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Donald Frederick Grass
(b. May 5, 1873 in Council Bluffs, IA; d. Oct. 2, 1941 in Sacramento, CA)

Donald Frederick Grass, Ph.D.  Professor of Business Administration. 923 Seventh
Ph.B., Grinnell; A.B., A.M., Harvard; Ph.D., Stanford. Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Grinnell, Second Semester, 1917; Associate Professor, 1918; Professor of Business Administration, 1919—.

Source:  Grinnell College Bulletin, Vol. XX, No. 1 (May, 1922), p. 17.

The decade 1900-1909

From his 1902 Iowa marriage record one finds that he was working as a bank cashier in Macedonia, Iowa.

Entries for “Donald Frederick Grass” in the Stanford Alumni Directory (1920)

“Assistant Professor of Economics. At Stanford 1910-17.” (p. 31)

“Ph.D. Econ., May ’14; A.B. and A.M., Harvard, ’98 and ’99; PhB., Grinnell College, ’94. m. March 30, 1904, Minnie Jones. Professor of Business administration, Grinnell College. Residence, 923 Seventh Ave., Grinnell, Ia.” (p. 234)

Source: Stanford University. Alumni Directory and Ten-Year Book (Graduates and Non-Graduates) III. 1891-1920.

Listed as Instructor in the Department of Economics and Social Science at Stanford 1912/13
Source:  Graduate Study 1912-13. Bulletin of Leland Stanford Junior University, No. 63 (April 1913), p. 28.

Listed as Assistant Professor 1916/17.
Source:  Graduate Study 1916-17. Bulletin of Leland Stanford Junior University, No. 92 (June 16, 1913), p. 34.

Sept. 12, 1918 Draft Registration Card

Donald Frederick Grass. b. May 5, 1873
Present Occupation: Professor at Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa
Nearest relative: wife Minnie Grass (also residing at 1120 Broad St. Grinnell, Iowa).

Obituary
reported in The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) October 3, 1941, Friday. Page 6.

“Donald F. Grass, professor emeritus of business administration at Grinnell college, died Thursday in Sacramento, California, according to word received here Friday morning.
Professor Grass retired from the Grinnell faculty in June. He and Mrs. Grass had been living with a daughter in Sacramento.
He came to Grinnell as an assistant professor of business in 1917. In 1919 he became a full professor and was made head of the department, a post he held until he retired.”

Image Source: Donald F. Grass in the Grinnell college yearbook The Cyclone 1931, p. 12.

 

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Charles Sumner Griffin
(b. Oct. 15, 1872 in Lawrence, KS; d. Sept. 10, 1904 at Hakone, Japan.)

Charles Sumner Griffin, A.B. (Kansas, 1894), A.B. (Harvard, 1895), A.M. (Harvard). Assistant in Political Economy.

Passport application. June 1898

Charles Sumner Griffin, born at Lawrence, Kansas on 15 October 1872, occupation student.

Charles Sumner Griffin.
Lawrence Daily Journal
October 15, 1904, p. 1.

The receipt of letters giving the circumstances of his death make it possible to write a full and final account of the life of our late friend and former townsman, Professor Charles S. Griffin. The first twenty-two years of his life were spent In Lawrence where he was born, October 15th, 1872. He received his early education in the schools of this city, graduating from the high school in 1890. He entered the university of Kansas the next autumn and received his bachelor’s degree in 1894 and with it membership in the Phi Beta Kappa society. He entered Harvard university the following fall and received the Harvard A. B. in ’95, the A.M. in ’96. In 1897 he was appointed instructor in economics In Harvard and the next year received a traveling fellowship. After holding this for one year and while still abroad he was appointed, on the nomination of the Harvard authorities, professor of political economy and finance in the Imperial University of Tokio, where he had completed five years of service at the time of his death.

Although he had been in Lawrence but little since his graduation ten years ago, Professor Griffin was well known to all but the most recent comers, having assisted his father, Mr. A. J. Griffin, in his business. Personally he was serious yet at the same time genial and he had a circle of staunch friends among the best of his instructors and his classmates. While he did not learn easily his earnestness and persistence won for him in all the institutions he attended a reputation for solid and reliable scholarship.

His special study at Harvard was the sugar industry, and his two papers on this subject, published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, were regarded by Professor Taussig and other authorities as real contributions to knowledge. He had published also in Japan an edition of Rlcardo’s Essays on Currency and Finance, Tokio 1901. Notes on Commercial Policy and Modern Colonization, pp. 130, and Notes on Transportation and Communication, pp. 215, the latter two printed privately at Tokio, 1902. In March in this year the N. Y. Evening Post printed an article by Professor Griffin on the present situation in Japan. For several years he had been preparing to write a Financial History of Japan Previous to the Present Era. To this end he had diligently applied himself to the acquisition of the written and printed languages and was making rapid progress. During the summer just past he had with him on his vacation two Japanese students who were assisting him in the difficult task of learning the Japanese characters, of which there are some ten thousand, and indexing appropriate literature for him. It is not known whether his work on the history had progressed far enough to leave any portion of it in shape for publication, but It is feared not.

Mrs. A. J. Griffin and Miss Edith Griffin visited Mr. Griffin in 1900 and found him happily situated and enthusiastic over the country and his work. In July, 1901 he was married to Mary Avery Greene, daughter of Rev. Daniel C. Greene, the first missionary sent to Japan by the American Board, and to them had been born two children, Charles Carroll and Mary Avery. Professor Griffin spent his summer vacation on the shore of Lake Hakone, about sixty miles from Tokio. As the vacation was almost over, the family was to take a last picnic tea on the shore of the beautiful lake, half an hour from the village. Before tea Mr. Griffin went to the water’s edge for a plunge. He dived in and rose but once. Either he was seized with a cramp or was, stunned by a blow on the head. He was unable to grasp an oar thrown to him and sank before his wife’s eyes in thirty feet of water By the time the body was recovered life was extinct although military surgeons from the near by hospital worked over it for four hours. He was buried September 11, on the top of a hill near the village of Hakone, the coffin decked with Japanese and American flags and covered with flowers, among them a cross sent by Japanese veterans to whom he had endeared himself. The Episcopal service was read and two of Professor Griffin’s favorite hymns sung, one of them a portion of Whitter’s “The Eternal Goodness” containing the stanza,

“I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air,
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care.”

Although there is no present palliative for the sense of loss both to his friends and to the world of learning, the memory of Charles Griffin will long remain a grateful inspiration to those who knew him well. His career, though brief, brings honor to his parents, his native city, his alma mater and his state. W.H.C.

 

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Joseph Adna Hill
(b. May 5, 1860, Stewartstown, New Hampshire; d. December 12, 1938 in Washington, D.C.)

Passport application: September 1889. Permanent residence at Temple in New Hampshire, occupation: student. About to go abroad temporarily, to return within three years.

1892 Ph.D. Dissertation

Joseph Anna Hill. Das “Interstate Commerce”-Gesetz in den Vereinigten Staaten. Halle a.S : Frommannsche Buch dr. in Jena, 1892.

1894 translation of Cohn’s History of Political Economy

Gustav Cohn. A History of Political Economy, translated by Joseph Adna Hill. Published as a Supplement to the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, March 1894. [Volume One, Book One, Chapter Three, pp. 91-181 of Cohn’s System der Nationalökonomie, 2 vols. pp. 649 and 796. Stuttgart, 1885.]

 Taught Professor Dunbar’s course in 1896

[Economics] 82. Dr. J. A. Hill.—History of Financial Legislation in the United States. Hf. 2 hours, 2d half-year

Total 64: 5 Graduates, 22 Seniors, 18 Juniors, 6 Sophomores, 4 Law, 9 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1895-1896, p. 64.

Dr. Joseph Adna Hill, Census Bureau Aide, Dies Here at 78
Held Post of Chief Statistician of Research Division Since 1933

Dr. Joseph Adna Hill, 78, chief statistician of the Division of Statistical Research, Census Bureau, died last night of a heart attack at his home 1826 Irving street N.W. Dr. Hill had been engaged in statistical work at the bureau since 1898. He was named chief statistician of a division there in 1909. In 1921 he was appointed assistant director of the 14th census, and in 1930 was made assistant director for the 15th census. He had been chief statistician of the Division of Statistical Research since 1933. He was chairman of the committee appointed by the Secretaries of State, Commerce and Labor to determine immigration quotas.

Dr. Hill was an uncle of Gen. John Philip Hill, former Representative from Maryland and former United States district attorney of that State, who lives here at the Army and Navy Club. Other survivors include a brother, the Rev. Dr. Bancroft Hill of Vassar College and two other nephews. Dr. Eben Clayton Hill, Baltimore physician, and Bancroft Hill, president of the Baltimore Transit Co. Dr. Hill was unmarried.

Secured Ph.D. in Germany.

Born in Stewartstown, N. H., Dr. Hill was a son of the late Rev. Dr. Joseph Bancroft Hill and the late Mrs. Harriet Brown Hill. He prepared for Harvard University at Exeter Academy. He was graduated with an A. B. from Harvard in 1885, received an M.A. degree there in 1887 and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Halle, Germany, in 1892. He lectured at the University of Pennsylvania in 1893 and was an instructor at Harvard University in 1895.

Last year Dr. Hill represented this country at a statistical conference in Athens. Greece. Prominently identified with many organizations, Dr. Hill was a member of the American Economic Association. the American Statistical Association, serving the latter as president in 1919, and the International Statistical Institute. He also belonged to the Cosmos Club here, the Harvard Club of New York and the Harvard Club of Boston.

Active as Harvard Alumnus.

Dr. Hill had continually maintained an active interest in Harvard University, where his father was graduated in 1821 and his grandfather, the Rev. Dr. Ebenezer Hill, was graduated there in 1786. Dr. Hill was a cousin of the historian and diplomat, George Bancroft, who served as Secretary of the Navy under President Polk.

Active as a writer, Dr. Hill was author of the “English Income Tax,” 1899; “Women in Gainful Occupations,” 1929, and had contributed to economic journals and prepared census reports on illiteracy, child labor, marriage and divorce, etc. Dr. Hill formerly lived at No. 8 Logan Circle, until moving, a short while ago, to his Irving street home.

Funeral arrangements were to be announced later.

Source: Evening Star, Washington, D.C. December 13, 1938, page 10.

 

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Willian Lyon Mackenzie King
(b. Dec. 17, 1874 in Berlin, Ontario; d. July 22, 1950 at Kingsmere, Quebec )

A.B. University of Toronto, 1895; LL.B. University of Toronto, 1896; A.M. University of Toronto, 1897; A.M. Harvard University, 1898.

Harvard Ph.D. Thesis title (1909): Oriental immigration to Canada. Pub. in “Report of the royal commission appointed to inquire into the methods by which Oriental labourers have been induced to come to Canada,” Ottawa, Government Printing Bureau, 1908, pp. 13-81.

 

1921–1926, 1926–1930 and 1935–1948. Prime Minister of Canada.

Industry and humanity: a study in the principles underlying industrial reconstruction (Toronto, 1918) was King’s report to the Rockefeller Foundation.

Image Source: “William Lyon Mackenzie King” in Wikipedia.

 

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Herbert Camp Marshall
(b. March 8, 1871 at Zanesville, OH; d. May 22, 1953, Washington, DC)

A.B. Ohio Wesleyan University, 1891; A.B. Harvard University, 1894; A.M. Harvard University, 1895.

Harvard 1901 Ph.D. thesis title: The currency and the movement of prices in the United States from 1860 to 1880.

A Later Publication

Herbert C. Marshall, Specialist in Economic Research, Bureau of Agricultural Economics. Retail marketing of meats : agencies of distribution, methods of merchandising, and operating expenses and profits.  U. S. Department of Agriculture. Department Bulletin No. 1317 (June, 1925).

Obituary
The Times Recorder (Zanesville, OH)
May 25, 1953

Dr. Marshall Succumbs Friday

Dr. Herbert C. Marshall, 83, retired economist of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, died Friday at his home in Washington, D.C. He was a native of Muskingum county.

Dr. Marshall, a brother of Carrington T. Marshall of Columbus, a former chief justice of the Ohio Supreme court, and of Charles O. Marshall of Pleasant Valley, was born in Falls township and was a graduate of Zanesville high school.

He also was graduated from Ohio Wesleyan university and received several degrees from Harvard.

He spent his boyhood in Muskingum county but had not resided in the area since that time.

He practiced law in New York city until 1916, when he Joined the federal department of agriculture, a post he held until he retired in 1941.

He was a member of the New York Bar association, the American Economics society, Phi Beta Kappa, the Harvard club of Washington and the Cosmos club of Washington.

His wife, the former Mary Emma Griffith, died in 1925.

In addition to Carrington and Charles O. Marshall, he is survived by another brother, Leon C. Marshall, of Chevy Chase, Md., and a daughter, Miss Eleanor Marshall of Washington.

Funeral services will take place in Washington but burial will be in the Bethlehem cemetery between Pleasant Valley and the Newark road.

 

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Charles Whitney Mixter
(b. Sept. 23, 1869 in Chelsea, MA; d. Oct. 21, 1936 in Washington, D.C.)

A.B. Johns Hopkins University (Md.), 1892; A.M. Harvard University, 1893.

1897 Harvard Ph.D.

Thesis title: Overproduction and overaccumulation: a study in the history of economic theory.

Edited Work

John Rae. The Sociological Theory of Capital, being a complete reprint of the New Principles of Political Economy, 1834. Edited with biographical sketch and notes by Charles Whitney Mixter, Ph.D., Professor of Political Economy in the University of Vermont. New York: Macmillan, 1905.

OBITUARY
The Burlington Free Press (Oct. 22, 1936), p. 14

Charles Whitney Mixter, for nine years a member of the University of Vermont faculty, died at a hospital in Washington, D. C., on Tuesday evening. [October 20]

Dr. Mixter was born in Chelsea, Mass., in 1867. He received his early education at Thayer Academy and Williston Seminary, and received his A.B. degree from John Hopkins University in 1892.

This was followed by graduate studies at Berlin, Goettingen and Harvard, from which he received his doctorate in 1897. Then followed a series of teaching positions: Assistant in economics at Harvard, 1897-98; Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., 1899-1900; instructor in economics, Harvard, 1901-1903; professor of economics, University of Vermont, 1903-1912.

Then Dr. Mixter served as efficiency expert for Towne and Yale at New Haven, Conn., and later for several manufacturing concerns in New Hampshire. For a year he was professor of economics at Clark University, and for a brief period he was an investigator in the service of the United States Chamber of Commerce.

For the last 13 years he had been connected with the tariff commission in Washington.

Professor Mixter had an unusually fertile mind, was an accomplished scholar in his special field, and widely read in related subjects. he became an enthusiastic student of scientific management introduced by the late Frederick W. Taylor and an active exponent of the system. He was a member of the leading economic organizations and a frequent contributor to economic journals.

He was a strong advocate of free trade. Interment was made in Plymouth, Mass.

 

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Simon Newton Dexter North
(b. Nov. 29, 1848 in Clinton, NY; d. Aug. 3, 1924 in Wilton, CT)

S. N. D. North. Old Greek: An Old Time Professor in an Old Fashioned College. New York, 1905.  The story of his father Edward North, Professor of Ancient Languages in Hamilton.

Obituary, Evening Star (Washington, D.C.)
August 4, 1924, p. 7.

SIMON D. NORTH, EX-OFFICIAL DIES
Former Director of Census Succumbs in Summer Home in Connecticut.

Word was received here last night of the death in Wilton, Conn., of S. N. D. North, former director of the United States Census Bureau and a resident of this city for more than 25 years. Mr. North was accustomed to going to Connecticut each summer, and, with his wife, Mrs. Lillian Comstock North, he was spending the summer there. He lived at 2852 Ontario road here.

Mr. North first came to this city as chief statistician of manufacturers for the twelfth census, and in 1903 he was made director of the census. He had been prominently connected with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, with headquarters here, since that organization’s foundation.

Born at Clinton, N. Y.

Simon Newton Dexter North was born in Clinton, N. Y., November 29. 1849. He was the son of Dr. Edward and Mrs. Mary F. Dexter North. He was graduated from Hamilton College in 1869 and received an LL.D. degree from Bowdoin in 1902 and later the same degree from the University of Illinois in 1904. He was married to Miss Lillian Sill Comstock of Rome. N. Y., July 8, 1875.

He was a prominent newspaper man and was well known in journalistic circles. He was editor of the Utica Morning Herald from 1869 to 1886 and the Albany (N. Y.) Express from 1886 to 1888. He also was prominently connected with business organizations, having been secretary of the National Association of Woolen Manufacturers at Boston and editor of that organization’s quarterly bulletin from 1888 to 1903. He also had served as a member of the United States Industrial Commission and as president of the New York State Associated Press.

Wrote Many Pamphlets.

Mr. North was a member of the Washington Academy of Sciences, Cosmos Club and the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity of New York. He also was editor of several historical magazines, of industrial publications and numerous memoirs and pamphlets. Outstanding among these were his works, “An American Textile Glossary” and “A History of American Wool Manufacture.” In addition to this, he wrote many pamphlets and delivered lectures on economics. He was for many years a member of the board of trustees of the National Geographic Society.

Besides his wife, he is survived by a son, Dexter North of the United States Tariff Commission, and two daughters, Mrs. Eloise C. Jenks of Philadelphia and Miss Gladys North. No definite arrangements have been made for the funeral, but interment will be in Clinton, N. Y.

 

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Randolph Paine
(b. Nov 3 November 1873 in Denton, TX; d. June 13, 1937 in Dallas TX)

Harvard A.B. 1898; Harvard LL.B. 1901

1900 U.S. Census.

Randolph Paine: Born Nov 1873 in Texas. Residing in Cambridge, Mass

Harvard Law School.  

Paine, Randolph, A.B. 1898, Denton, Tex. 32 Mellen St.

Source:  Harvard University Catalogue 1898/1899, p. 130.

1910 U.S. Census.

Randolph Paine:  36 years old, born in Texas. Attorney. Living in Dallas, Texas. Wife Maude

Obituary
Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, TX) June 14, 1937, p. 5

Former Denton Man Dies in Dallas

Randolph Paine, 63, veteran Dallas attorney, who was born in Denton in 1873, died in a Dallas hospital Sunday after a brief illness. He had retired from active law practice four years ago…Surviving Paine are his widow and three sons, Dr. John R. Paine of Minneapolis; Henry C. Paine and Roswell Paine, both of Dallas.

 

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Charles Edward Seaman
(b. Oct. 4, 1866 in Picton, Canada; d. Aug. 19, 1937 in Los Angeles)

A.B. 1892, Acadia. A.B. 1895 and A.M. 1896 Harvard.

University of Vermont

Officers of Instruction and Government, 1901. Professor of Political Economy and Constitutional Law. University of Vermont.  p. 33.

Instructor:  1900-01 of Political Economy and Constitutional Law. University of Vermont., p. 21

Source: General Catalogue of the University of Vermont and State Agricultural College. 1791-1900.

 

Ariel vol. 17 (1904) University of Vermont yearbook

Charles Edward Seaman, A.M., 49 Williams St. Professor of Political Economy and Constitutional Law, 1901; and Dean of the Department of Commerce and Economics. Instructor of Political Economy and Constitutional Law, 1900-01.

Declaration of Intention for Naturalization.
Los Angeles County. 18 September 1908.

Charles Edward Seaman aged 41 years, occupation retired. Born in Picton, Canada on 4th day of October 1866. Residing at 2151 Harvard Blvd, Los Angeles.

Married into a wealthy Indiana family

Charles Edward Seaman and Florence Leyden DePauw married 10 Sept 1902 in Marion, Indiana.

From obituary [ Los Angeles Express, Apr. 2, 1913] for wife’s mother (Frances Marion DePauw, widow of Washington Charles DePauw who endowed DePauw university at Greencastle, Ind.): “Mrs. DePauw is survived by a daughter, Mrs. Charles Edward Seaman, 2151 Harvard boulevard, whose husband formerly held the chair of economics in the University of Vermont.

1913 Harvard University Alumni directory

Charles Edward Seaman, 2151 Harvard Blvd. Los Angels, CA.

Obituary
August 19, 1937. The Los Angeles Times, p. 42

Seaman. August 19, Charles Edward Seaman, beloved husband of Florence De Pauw Seaman and loving father of Mrs. William D. Witherspoon and Mrs. James H. Meriwether. Services at the residence, 2151 South Harvard Boulevard, Saturday at 2:30 p.m.

 

 

Categories
Chicago Economists Princeton

Chicago to Princeton. Jacob Viner’s Resignation Letter, 1946

 

 

Jacob Viner was 53 years old when he decided to leave the University of Chicago for Princeton. The letter transcribed below presents the personal and professional reasons for his resignation. Viner’s letter reveals the soft note of a late mid-life crisis motivating the move — no need for a new wife and fancy sports car, but rather the scholar sought retreat to an ivory-tower library, comfort from the families of his adult children and a significantly shorter commute to points East. 

___________________

Resignation Letter of Jacob Viner

COPY SENT TO ALL MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE ON INSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH.
ORIGINAL TO MISS STROMWALL

 

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
Chicago 37, Illinois
Department of Economics

January 24, 1946

Chancellor Robert M. Hutchins
Office of the Central Administration
Faculty Exchange

Dear Mr. Hutchins:

I am sorry to have to tell you that I am hereby resigning from the University of Chicago as of the end of this academic year to take a professorship at Princeton University. As I am to be at the London School of Economics from April to July, I am leaving the University in March, on leave without pay for the spring quarter.

The Princeton offer first came to me over a year ago, and I definitely declined it twice. It has been renewed and I now have definitely accepted it. For many reasons the offer had great attractions for me from the start, and I am sure that it was loyalty to Chicago which led me at first to decline it — as was true also in the case of Yale. I have been associated with the University of Chicago for 30 years, and the University has always treated me, both before and since your regime, with the utmost generosity. I have never in the thirty years had any cause to feel a personal grievance against you, or any other administrative officer, or any colleague. I am not leaving because of any dissatisfaction with the way the University has treated me, or with my colleagues, with you, or with any of your aides. I did disapprove at times of some aspects of what I thought to be your policy for the University. I still do on some points. But I had my full day in court; and my disapproval of some of your ideas — which it is not impossible that I misunderstood — never carried with it any lessening of my respect for yourself, or any ill-will toward you, and was always accompanied by enthusiastic approval of other of your educational ideas. I have been very happy about the way the new Council of the University has been operating, and if there were any criticism I would venture to offer of your behavior as its presiding officer, it would be that you have been too self-effacing and have not given as much leadership as the Council would welcome and would benefit from. I assure you that when I leave it will be with the friendliest feeling toward you and with strong affection for the University which I so cherish and which has dealt so kindly with me.

Why then am I leaving? A variety of factors have played their part. Most important, probably, is that our children, although born here, never took root in Chicago, that our daughter is already living in New York, and that our son, when he gets out of the Coast Guard, is sure of only one thing, that he will not live in Chicago. They have been pressing us very hard to move East, and what with their four years at eastern colleges, Arthur’s military service, and Ellen’s removal to New York, we have not been able to have the family together except for very short intervals over a period of some seven years. While we don’t expect them to live in Princeton, we do hope that we will at least have them frequently for week-end and vacation guests.

As for myself, as I get older, the physical aspects of the routines of teaching and of committees, of inadequate secretarial help, of a library physically difficult to use, and of frequent inescapable trips East, have grown progressively more burdensome to me. I know that as time goes on, these matters will become still more important to me. In the past ten years I have done what looks to me like a great deal of research, but most of it was done while I was on leave of absence from the University and I have put little of it into print. Even when I was in Washington, the secretarial and library privileges I had enabled me to do nearly as much of my personal research in my spare time as I could do in all my time while at the University.

It is not that the University imposed unfair burdens on me. Some of my heaviest chores were self-imposed. But at Chicago I did not want special privileges which equally-deserving colleagues did not have, and some of the things I wanted badly I would for this reason not have accepted at Chicago if they had been offered to me. At Princeton I come now, without obligations going beyond my contract, and with no reason for not accepting all the facilities voluntarily offered me. If after a while I should acquire Princeton loyalties which consume time and energy, I will at least have had a long spell during which I had been free to realize some of my ambitions as a scholar. I want to be able to get some of my accumulated research into shape for print, and if I don’t succeed, it will not be Princeton’s fault, provided it delivers on all the things I have been promised. These things are not financial: my salary will be the same at Princeton as here, and was not an issue. It’s all a matter of easy access to a library easy to use, light teaching load, no journal to edit, no burdensome eastern trips for committees, government advice, work on eastern library collections, etc., a secretary, a research assistant, a good office layout, and so forth. As I could not ask you to build a new library building for me, or to give me facilities that my colleagues could not get, or to transfer the University to the East, I thought it would be easier for all concerned if I did not let anyone here  know about my negotiations.

I may be wrong in deciding that I will be happier and a more productive scholar at Princeton. No matter how well things go there, I know that I will always have a warm feeling for Chicago and a regret that I did not prove to be one of those rare creatures: a professor who passed all his working life at a single institution of which he was not a graduate. I will always be ready upon request to render any service to the University within my power, and I will carry out scrupulously my obligations to Chicago students who are working on theses under my direction or have any other claims upon me.

I hope it will be satisfactory to you if President Dodds announces my appointment on February 1st. I think it only fair to resign at once as a member of the Council and also as a member of the Social Science Research Committee where I would be participating in the making of decisions without staying to take the blame should there be any. I will continue on my other committees at your pleasure and the pleasure of their Chairmen until I leave.

I have never written an academic letter of resignation before. If there is any further action I need to take, I trust you will let me know. I am sending a copy of this letter to Dean Redfield, who has also deserved better of me.

Very sincerely yours,
/a/ Jacob Viner

JF-w

Source: University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center. Office of the President, Hutchins Administration Records 1892-1951. Box 73, Folder “Economics Department, 1946-1950”.

___________________

Noted Economist Is Appointed To Princeton Staff

Princeton, Feb. 27. The appointment of Professor Jacob Viner, of the University of Chicago, internationally known as one of America’s most distinguished economists and editor of the “Journal of Political Economy,” to the faculty of Princeton University was announced today by President Harold W. Dodds. He will join the Princeton faculty next September.

“The addition of Professor Viner to the Department of Economics and Social institutions will contribute to the attractiveness of the university as a center of under graduate and post-graduate studies. President Dodds said. “He is distinguished as a professor and as an economist in the fields of international finance and trade. The program of our International Finance Section will benefit, but his usefulness to the university will not be limited to the activities of the section. He is a scholar whose Interests embrace the whole field of economics.”

Professor Viner, a native of Montreal, received his B.A. degree from McGill University in 1914; his M.A. from Harvard University in 1915, his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1922 and an LL.D. degree from Lawrence College in 1941.

He was a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, 1916-17; special expert with the U.S. Tariff Commission, 1917-19, and the U.S. Shipping Board during part of 1918. He returned to the University of Chicago in 1919 as an assistant professor of economics, was appointed associate professor in 1923 and professor in 1925. Since 1940 he has been Morton Hull Distinguished Service Professor at that institution.

Meanwhile, he has served variously as visiting professor at the Institute Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales, Geneva. Switzerland, 1930-31 and 1933-34 visiting professor at Yale University, 1942-43; special assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury, dur[ing] part of 1934; consulting expert to the U.S. Treasury, 1935-39; special assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury during parts of 1939 and 1942; and consultant U.S. Department of State since 1943.

Professor Viner is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He is a member and former president of the American Economical [sic] Association and the author of: “Dumping a Problem in International Trade”; “Canada’s Balance of International Indebtedness”; “Studies in the Theory of International Trade”; and numerous articles on economic subjects.

Source: The Morning Call (Paterson, N.J.), February 28, 1946. Page 7.

Image Source: Jacob Viner (left); Theodore W. Schultz (right).  University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-07483, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Categories
Chicago Columbia Economists Gender Wellesley

Chicago. Economics Ph.D. alumna, Anna Prichitt Youngman, 1908

 

This entry in the series “Get to know an economics Ph.D. alumna/us” is dedicated to the life and professional career of Anna Prichitt Youngman, the third woman to receive a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago. I have spent several hours verifying that her middle name is indeed spelled “Prichitt”, though even University of Chicago alumni publications and references have sometimes gotten it wrong as have later historians.

A timeline, a linked list of publications, and miscellaneous artifacts documenting her life, e.g. courses taught at Wellesley and salaries paid her while working at the Federal Reserve Board have been assembeled for this post.

________________________

Barbara Libby provides a brief discussion of Youngman’s more important publications in “Anna Pritchett [sic] Youngman” in A Biographical Dictionary of Women Economists, Robert W. Dimand, Mary Ann Dimand, and Evelyn L. Forget (eds.). Northampton, Mass : Edward Elgar, 2000. Pages 486-489.

________________________

Anna Prichitt Youngman.

1882, August 21. Born in Lexington, Kentucky.
1901. Graduated from Female High School in Louisville, Kentucky. Highest grade point average of her class, winning her a scholarship to University of Chicago.
1904. Ph.B. University of Chicago.
1908. Ph.D. University of Chicago.
1908-14. Instructor in economics, Wellesley College.
1911-2. Winter Semester at the University of Berlin. Later at the University of Frankfurt/Main.  August 1911 to July 1912 in Germany.
1914-20. Associate Professor, Wellesley College.
1919-20. Leave of absence from Wellesley College to work at the Federal Reserve Board.
1920-21. Lecturer in Banking, School of Business, University Extension, Columbia University.
1921-22. Research Assistant, Division of Analysis and Research, Federal Reserve Board;
1922. July 5.  Sailed from New York for a three month trip to Europe: countries listed on passport application were Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, France, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, British Isles.
1924-1933. Editorial writer, Journal of Commerce, 46 Barclay St., New York, N.Y.
1933-52. Editorial Writer, The Washington Post, Washington, D.C.
1974. February 16. Died in Silver Spring, Maryland.
1974. February 21. Buried in Cave Hill Cemetery, Louisville Kentucky

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Publications of Anna Prichitt Youngman

“The Growth of Financial Banking,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 14, No. 7 (July, 1906), pp. 435-443.

“The Tendency of Modern Combination. I,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 15, No. 4 (April, 1907), pp. 193-208.

“The Tendency of Modern Combination. II,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 15, No. 5 (May, 1907), pp. 284-298.

“The Fortune of John Jacob Astor. [I],” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 16, No. 6 (June, 1908), pp. 345-368.

“The Fortune of John Jacob Astor. II. Investments in Real Estate,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 16, No. 7 (July, 1908), pp. 436-441.

“The Fortune of John Jacob Astor. III. Conclusion,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 16, No. 8 (October, 1908), pp. 514-530.

The Economic Causes of Great Fortunes [University of Chicago Ph.D. Thesis]. New York: Bankers Publishing, Co., 1909.

The New York Times Saturday Review for February 12, publishes a review of Miss Youngman’s new book which considers the source of some of our large American fortunes. We quote the first paragraph of the review:
“There is nothing feminine about the discussion of the ‘Economic Causes of Great Fortunes,’ by Anna Youngman, Ph.D., (the Bankers’ Publishing Company). She is Professor of Economics in Wellesley College for Women, but she writes as a man to men, rather than as a woman to women…”

Source: Wellesley News (February 16, 1910), p. 6.

“The Tobacco Pools of Kentucky and Tennessee,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 18, No. 1 (January, 1910), pp. 34-49.

Review of History of the Great American Fortunes by Gustavus Myers. Journal of Political Economy Vol. 18, No. 8 (October, 1910), pp. 642-643.

Review of Untersuchungen zum Maschinenproblem in der Volkswirtschaftslehre. Ruckblick und Ausblick. Eine dogmengeschichtliche Studie mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der klassischen Schule by Carl Ergang. American Economic ReviewVol. 1, No. 4 (December, 1911), pp. 806-808.

“Frankfort-on-the-Main: A Study in Prussian Communal Finance Part I,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 27, No. 1 (November, 1912), pp. 150-201.

“Frankfort-on-the-Main: A Study in Prussian Communal Finance Part II,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 27, No. 2 (February, 1913), pp. 329-372.

Review of Der Wandel des Besitzes. Versuch einer Theorie des Reichtums als Organismus by Emaneul Sella (trans. by Dr. Bluwstein). American Economic ReviewVol. 3, No. 3 (September, 1913), pp. 627-629.

Review of Die Lohntheorien von Ad. Smith, Ricardo, J. St. Mill und Marx by Fredinand von Degenfeld-Schonburg. American Economic ReviewVol. 5, No. 1 (March, 1915), p. 55.

“The Revenue System of Kentucky: A Study in State Finance,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 32, No. 1 (November, 1917), pp. 142-205.

Review of The Conflict of Tax Laws by Rowland Estcourt. American Economic ReviewVol. 8, No. 4 (December, 1918), pp. 831-832.

“The Efficacy of Changes in the Discount Rates of the Federal Reserve Banks,” American Economic Review, Vol. 11, No. 3 (September 1921), pp. 466-485.

“A Popular Theory of Credit Applied to Credit Policy,” American Economic Review, Vol. 12, No. 3 (September, 1922), pp. 417-446.

Review of Money, Banking and Exchange in India by H. Stanley Jevons. American Economic ReviewVol. 13, No. 3 (September, 1923), pp. 512-513.

Participant in Discussion: Liquidating the War. Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, Vol. 14, No. 2 (January, 1931), pp. 45-50.

The Federal Reserve System in wartime. National Bureau of Economic Research Occasional Paper No. 21, Jan 1945.

________________________

High School Class Rank

Miss Anna Prichitt Youngman, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. C.A. Youngman, of 1313 Second street, received the highest average of the class of 1901 at the Female High School, and by a unanimous vote of the faculty she was awarded the scholarship at the Chicago University.

Source: The Courier-Journal of Louisville Kentucky (June 8, 1901), p. 6.

_______________________

Appointed at Wellesley to succeed Edith Abott in 1908

The fact that Dr. Edith Abbott of the Economics Department has refused reappointment in order to take up research work in Chicago is a source of sincere regret to all who have been brought into contact with her here this year. Miss Abbott will live at Hull House and work in the research department of the Chicago Institute of Social Science.

Dr. Abbott’s successor in the department of Economics is to be Miss Anna Youngman of Louisville, Kentucky. Miss Youngman graduated from the University of Chicago in 1904 and since that time has been doing graduate work in Economics and Political Science. She has held one of the University Fellowships in Political Economy and will receive the Ph.D. degree in June. Miss Youngman’s special studies have been in the line of Trusts and Corporation Finance. During the past year she has published a series of articles in the Journal of Political Economy on “Tendencies in Modern Combination” and her doctor’s thesis on “Great Fortunes” is already in press. Miss Youngman has been assisting in editorial work on the Journal of Political Economy during the past year.

Source: [Wellesley] College News (May 13, 1908), p. 3.

_______________________

Berlin and Frankfurt a.M.
Winter Semester, 1911/12

…During her stay at Wellesley, Youngman took time off to study economics at Berlin for the Winter Semester of 1911/12. At Berlin and later at the University of Frankfurt/Main, she concentrated on taxation and banking.
In 1919 Youngman took a leave of absence from Wellesley to work as an economist for the Federal Reserve Board. Youngman then resigned from Wellesley to continue her work with the Federal Reserve Board. From 1924 to 1933 she held a position as an eidtorial writer for the Journal of Commerce in New York City. She left that position to become an editorial writer for the Washington Post, where she remained until her retirement in 1952. At the Post, she wrote columns on financial and business topics. After retiring, Youngman continued to write for the Journal of Commerce.

Source: Sandra L. Singer. Adventures Abroad: North American Women at German-speaking Universities. Contributions in Women’s Studies, Number 201 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 203) p. 141.

_______________________

Wellesley College
1912-13
ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY

Professor: Katherine Coman, Ph.B. (on leave 1912-13)
Associate Professor: Emily Greene Balch, B.A.
Instructors: Anna Youngman, Ph.D., Emilie Josephine Hutchinson, M.A.

 

  1. Elements of Economics. I

Open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors, but intended primarily for sophomores. Three hours a week for the year.

Miss Youngman

An introductory course designed to give the student acquaintance with economic facts and training in economic reasoning. Illustrations will be drawn from actual observation of the conditions determining prices, land values, wages, profits, and standards of living. In the second semester, certain legislative problems relating to currency, banking, the tariff, etc., will be discussed in class.

[…]

  1. Statistical Study of Certain Economic Problems. III [not offered 1912-13]

Open to juniors and seniors who have completed two courses in Economics. Three hours a week for the first semester.

Miss Youngman

The course is introduced by lectures on the principles of statistical research. Each member of the class undertakes the investigation of a particular problem, and reports the results of her inquiry in the form of a final paper. Emphasis is placed upon the critical examination of statistical methods.

[…]

  1. The Trust Problem. III.

Open to juniors and seniors who have completed one course in Economics. Three hours a week for the second semester.

Miss Youngman

This course will deal with the various forms of monopolistic organization, the growth of the movement toward large scale production, the history of characteristic combinations, federal and state legislation and judicial decisions relating to the subject, the alleged advantages and evils of trusts, and proposed remedies for the latter.

[…]

  1. Money and Banking. III.

Open to juniors and seniors who have completed one course in Economics. Three hours a week for the first semester.

Miss Youngman

This course deals mainly with the principles of money and banking, but it is also designed to give the student some acquaintance with the history and chief characteristics of typical modern systems of banking.

[…]

  1. Conservation of our Natural Resources. III.

Open to juniors and seniors who have completed two courses in Economics. Three hours a week for the second semester.

Miss Youngman

A consideration of the wastes involved in the exploitation of forests, mineral resources, soil and water power, and the means proposed for scientific conservation. The work of the Department of Agriculture, the Bureau of Forestry, the Reclamation Service, the Bureau of Mines, etc., will be studied in detail.

 

  1. The Distribution of Wealth. III. [not offered 1912-13]

Open to juniors and seniors who have completed course 1 or 15. Three hours a week for the second semester.

Miss Youngman

A discussion of the principles regulating wages, interest, and rent. The course will involve a critical and comparative examination of the distributive theories of such leading exponents of the classical school, as Ricardo, Mills, and Cairnes, and of certain important economists of the present day.

Source:  Wellesley College Bulletin, Calendar 1912-13, pp. 72-77.

_______________________

Salaries of the Federal Reserve Board Employees, 1919

ANALYSIS & RESEARCH Present Basic Salary, including Extra Compensation (1919)
Olive M. Bode $1,200
Ruth Cornwall $1,800
Mary Johnson $1,320
W. H. Steiner $2,750
Anna Youngman $2,500

Source: Meeting Minutes of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, December 18, 1919, 3:30 PM, Volume 6, Part 3, page 5.

_______________________

Salaries of the Federal Reserve Board Employees, 1920

Dated June 21st [1920] recommending approval of increases in salaries of employees of the Division of Analysis and Research, as follows:

From To
W. H. Steiner $3,500 $4,000
Miss Anna Youngman $2,750 $3,000
Miss Katherine Snodgrass $2,000 $2,750
F. W. Jones $2,400 $2,750
Miss Ruth Cornwall $2,000 $2,400
Miss Faith Williams $1,800 $2,250
J. M. Chapman $1,200 $1,500 ($750 half time)
M. R. Adams $1,500 $1,560
Miss Alice Ross $1,500 $1,560
Miss Rose Heller $1,080 $1,440
Miss Mary Johnson $1,440 $1,560
Miss Helen S. Grant — $1,440
Miss Olive M. Bode — $1,500

Approved.

Source: Meeting Minutes of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, June 22, 1920, 11:00 AM, Volume 7, Part 2, page 7.

_______________________

Anna Youngman’s (final) annual salary, 1922

“Letter dated May 8th, from the Director of the Division of Analysis and Research, requesting approval of the appointment of Mr. Woodlief Thomas as an employee in that Division at annual salary of $2600, said authority being requested in view of the retirement of Miss Anna Youngman, who has previously been employed in the Division of Analysis & Research, at annual salary of $3500.”

Source: Meeting Minutes of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, May 10, 1922, Volume 9, Part 1, page 1.

________________________

From Passport Application.
Sworn May 3, 1922

Permanent residence 35 Schermerhorn St., Brooklyn, New York.
Occupation: research assistant.
Height: 5 feet 7 ½ inches

July 5, 1922 to sail from New York on the “Mongolia” to Europe: Germany, Austria, Czecho-Slovakia, Hungary, France, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, British Isles (“intend to return to the United States within 3 months”)

_______________________

Internal Memorandum

February 18, 1954
Washington, D.C.

Interview with Miss Anna Youngman at her new
residence in the Marlyn Apartments

Miss Youngman worked with Parker Willis on the Journal of Commerce. She was an editorial writer but the rumor that she wrote some of the Willis editorials is something which she denies. She says she did not agree with Mr. Willis on banking policies and would not have written editorials attributed to him. She has kept no files and was by no means as useful in connection with the Willis papers as I had had reason to think she would be.

Miss Youngman confirmed what I had heard from other sources that Mr. Willis headed the first Research Division of the Federal Reserve Board and that on being asked to teach at Columbia he took the Division to New York and kept it there for three years. During this time a running fight went on with Mr. Jacobson (now deceased) and Mr. Goldenweiser and Mr. Adolf Miller.

Obviously the distance between the Research Division and the Board for which research was being done caused a great deal of the difficulty and at the end of three years the division was restored to Washington and put into other hands.

When Mr. Eugene Meyer bought the Washington Post he took Miss Anna Youngman with him to write editorials there. She did financial editorials for the Post for many years. Her last job at the Post was the classification of Mr. Myer’s own papers. Miss Youngman says that these papers have now been brought from New York and the summer place belonging to Mr. Meyer at White Plains and are in Washington. She says that they include seven or eight volumes of diaries carefully typed and indexed.

Obviously some of these diaries which, according to Miss Youngman, are better in the earlier period than the later ones will have material which is important to this project. Miss Youngman says that Mr. Floyd Harrison, who is Mr. Meyer’s right hand man in New York, is the person who can give further information about the papers and who will know if any provision has been made for their disposal after Mr. Meyer’s death.

Miss Youngman lives alone with her sister. Both ladies are far from young and any information which is needed from Miss Youngman should be gained as soon as possible.

Concerning Mr. Willis she said that he was not a difficult man to work with because he protected the people who worked with him. Assumed responsibility for the things they did and gave them credit when he thought they deserved it. He was on the other hand a man of lively mind and extremely fond of argument. She suggested that Mr. Jules Bogen, Mr. John M. Chapman of the school of business at Columbia University, who was at one time assistant to Mr. Williams and Mr. W. H. Stiner (correction that might be Steiner but I am not sure [Note: “W. H. Steiner” is correct spelling). At 328 Riverside Drive, New York[.] Might at all of them have further information about Mr. Willis.

Source: Committee on the History of the Federal Reserve System. Interview with Miss Anna Youngman at her new residence in the Marlyn Apartments, Washington, D.C. (February 18, 1954). Entry 167, Box 2, Folder 1, Item 42.

Image Source: Passport application of Anna Youngman (May 3, 1922).

 

 

 

Categories
Chicago Columbia Economists Gender Minnesota Social Work

Columbia. Economics Ph.D. Alumnus Max Ira West, 1893.

 

 

Max Ira West (b. Nov. 11, 1870 in St. Cloud, MN; d. Jan 7, 1909 in Washington, D.C.) entered government service relatively soon after being awarded his Ph.D. in economics at Columbia University with a dissertation on the inheritance tax. He was a student of E.R.A. Seligman. West died at age 38, leaving a wife and five children. 

Max West and his future wife Mary Mills were fellow officers of the University of Minnesota’s Class of 1890. She was the designated class “prophet” and he served as the class “statistician”. Max was a professional economist of the family and rightly the main subject of this post. Max’s widow deserves some mention in Economics in the Rear-view Mirror for her later work. Mary attained great prominence for her pamphlets on pre-natal and infant care for the Children’s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor that were analogous to Dr. Benjamin Spock’s Baby and Child Care for later generations of parents. The Children’s Bureau was an absorbing state for the careers of many a professional woman economist of the time.

________________________

Announcement of death of Max Ira West

The following communication with reference to the unfortunate death of Dr. Max West is printed at the request of the committee whose names appear below:

The members of the Association have no doubt read of the recent death, under most unfortunate circumstances, of Dr. Max West, of the Bureau of Corporations, Department of Labor, Washington, D. C.

Dr. West died after a short illness, a slight cold developing into pneumonia. He has left a wife and five children, ranging from thirteen years to only nine months, with no visible means of support, save a very small annuity terminable in ten years. Friends in Washington have contributed a considerable sum for immediate needs, including the expenses pertaining to Dr. West’s sickness and death, and have secured for Mrs. West a temporary position in the Government, which we hope will become a permanent position. This, with the closest economy, will enable Mrs. West to look after the bare physical needs of her five little children, but will leave no margin at all either for education or for contingencies.

It has therefore occurred to us and to some of the other friends of Dr. West that it might be possible to solicit and collect a fund for such a purpose. It is hoped to raise a fund of at least $5000. The suggestion is to be sent to all those who may be supposed to have known Dr. West personally, or to be in sympathy with the scholarly work for which he stood, and the committee will be very glad to receive any subscriptions that you may deem fit to make.

Checks may be sent to Mr. Edwin R. A. Seligman, at No. 324 West 86th street, New York, who has consented to act as treasurer for the committee.

Respectfully yours,

EDWIN R. A. SELIGMAN, Columbia University.

JACOB H. HOLLANDER, Johns Hopkins University.

E. DANA DURAND, Dept. of Commerce and Labor, Washington.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Dr. Max West died of pneumonia at his home in Washington, D. C., on January 7, 1909.

Dr. West was born at St. Cloud, Minnesota, in November, 1870. He was graduated from the University of Minnesota at nineteen, and went at first into newspaper work. In 1891 he went to Columbia University as a fellow in economics. There he received his master’s degree the next year, and his doctorate the year following. From 1893 to 1895 he was connected with the University of Chicago, first as an honorary fellow and then as a docent. The great railroad strike of 1894 drew him again into newspaper work; he reported it for the Chicago Herald. In 1895 he was an editorial writer for the Chicago Record. During the academic year 1895-1896 he lectured at Columbia.

In 1896 he entered the government service, to which the rest of his life was chiefly devoted. For four years he was connected with the Division of Statistics of the Department of Agriculture, and for nearly two years with the Industrial Commission. During the latter part of this period, from 1900 to 1902, he was also associate professor of economics in Columbian University, Washington, and in 1902 he again lectured at Columbia. In that year he became assistant registrar of the Tenement House Department of New York City. In 1903 he went to Porto Rico as chief of the island Bureau of Internal Revenue. His health did not permit him to continue there, and in 1904 he returned to Washington as a special examiner of the Bureau of Corporations. Here he remained until his death.

Dr. West’s chief published work was The Inheritance Tax, which appeared in 1893, was translated into French in 1895, and was republished in a revised and enlarged edition in 1907. A projected work, entitled Principles of Taxation, is left unfinished. He wrote many articles for periodicals, dealing oftenest with taxation, but sometimes with sociological subjects, questions of constitutional law, and other topics.

More of Dr. West’s scanty strength than he could well spare was devoted to the promotion of public well-being. During his two years in Chicago he was a resident successively of Hull House, the University of Chicago Settlement, and the Chicago Commons. At Washington he was warmly interested in social settlement work and in the Associated Charities, and he was the most active and efficient member of the Civic Center.

Source: American Economic Association, The Economic Bulletin, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Apr., 1909), pp. 12-14.

________________________

Mary Mills West, ca. 1926

The following photograph was from a short alumna feature in the University of Minnesota yearbook The Gopher (1926). It is noted there that she was a member of the class of 1890, an editor of that year’s Gopher, and a member of the Delta Sigma literary society. The entry adds:

In 1909, she entered the Government service and filled various offices for the following ten years. She took a great interest in the newly created Children’s Bureau, and while there wrote three pamphlets regarding the health and care of mothers and babies which are widely distributed throughout the United States.

Mrs. West resigned her position with the Children’s Bureau in 1919, and moved to Berkeley where she engaged in newspaper syndicate work and other writings. She is, at present, an instructor in short-story writing for the University of California, and is gaining a considerable foothold in fiction writing for herself. She recently submitted a story to the Forum short story contest of 1924 and was awarded second place by a jury of noted writers and critics.

Image Source: University of Minnesota, The Gopher, 1926, p. 181.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Production of Mary Mills West’s pamphlets

West’s publications became the best-selling pamphlets of the Government Printing Office in the 1910s. The first edition of West’s pamphlet, Prenatal Care, sold out in two months. Only six months later, the Bureau had distributed 30,000 coopies and could have sent out twice that number but for the inability of the printeres to keep up with the demand. …Nearly a million and a half copies of West’s second pamphlet, Infant Care, were disseminated between 1914 and 1921.

Source:  Robyn Muncy. Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935 (Oxford University Press, 1991) p. 55.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Children’s Bureau Publications of Mary Mills West

(with Nettie McGill) Child-Welfare Programs: Study Outlines for the Use of Clubs and Classes. U.S. Department of Labor, Children’s Bureau. Bureau Publication No. 73, Children’s Year Follow-up Series, No. 7. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1920.

Prenatal Care. Care of Children Series, No. 1 Children’s Bureau Publication No. 4. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913.

Infant Care. Care of Children Series, No. 2 Children’s Bureau Publication No. 8 (Revised) Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1921. (first published in 1914)

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Mary Mills West’s obituary

Mrs. Mary West, Writer, Dies at 88

BERKELEY, Aug. 13. Mrs. Mary Mills West, whose pamphlets’ on infants and children’s care have been distributed by the United States Children’s Bureau to millions of American homes, died here yesterday. Her home was at 549 Santa Barbara Road.

Mrs. West, 88, was the widow of Dr. Max West, an economic consultant for the U.S. Departments of Labor and Commerce. She became associated with the Children’s Bureau when it was organized in 1915. After moving to Berkeley 30 years ago, she was associated with the University of California Extension Division as a writing instructor.

Surviving Mrs. West are two daughters, Mrs. W. R. Lorimer of Honolulu and Mrs. Charles Manson of Wausau, Wis., and a son, Philip S. West of Berkeley. Three grandchildren also survive.

Funeral services will be held at 2:30 p.m. tomorrow; in the Berkeley Hills Chapel, Shattuck Ave. and Cedar St .The Rev. Ray L. Wells, assistant pastor of the First Congregational Church, will officiate.

Source: Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California), August 3, 1955, p. 30.

________________________

Image Source: Alumnus feature on Max West published in University of Minnesota, The Gopher, 1896, p. 133.

 

 

Categories
Chicago Economics Programs Economists Fields

Chicago. Schedule of the preliminary economics exams for the Ph.D. and A.M., Summer 1951

 

The following schedule for preliminary examinations in economics at the University of Chicago from the summer quarter of 1951 comes from Milton Friedman’s papers at the Hoover Institution Archives. We see that he was on the two economic theory examination committees along with Lloyd Metzler and Frank Knight. Besides providing the names of the faculty members serving on the nine committees, the schedule also provides the names of the sixty students registered for the examinations during that quarter.

____________________

DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

SCHEDULE FOR PRELIMINARY EXAMINATIONS
FOR THE PH.D. AND FOR THE A.M.

Summer Quarter, 1951

The schedule below shows the examinations requested for the current quarter. Will the chairman of each committee please be responsible for turning in the complete examination at least one week before the date on which it is to be given?

 

Date

 Examination Committee

Students Registered

Thurs., Aug. 2
8:30
Law Court

Agricultural Economics

 D.G. Johnson, chr.
C. Hildreth
T.W. Schultz		 Dunsing, Marilyn (A.M.)
Fox, Kirk (Ph.D)
Hughes, Rufus (Ph.D.)
Taylor, Maurice (Ph.D.)

Tues., July 31
8:30
Law Court

Economic Theory I

 L. Metzler, chr.
M. Friedman
F. Knight		 Baskind, Irwin (Ph.D.) in abs.
Bassett, Marjorie (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Blumberg, Lionel (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Chen, Ho-Mei (Ph.D.)
Chen, Sze-te (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Chien, Chih Chien (Ph.D.)
Cleaver, George (Ph.D.)
Dunsing, Marilyn (A.M.)
Emmer, Robert (Ph.D.)
Fox, Kirk (Ph.D.)
Frank, Andrew (Ph.D.-A.M.) in abs
Gustus, Warren (Ph.D.)
Heizer, Raymond (Ph.D.)
Herlihy, Murray (Ph.D.)
Hoch, Irving (Ph.D.)
Hughes, Rufus (Ph.D.)
Krawczyk, Richard (Ph.D.-A.M.) in abs
Lerner, Eugene (Ph.D.)
Liang, Wei K. Liang (Ph.D.)
Lininger, Charles (Ph.D.)
Lurie, Melvin (Ph.D.)
McGuire, Charles (Ph.D.)
Malhotra, Man Mohan (Ph.D.)
Malone, John (Ph.D.)
Mitcham, Clinton (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Morrison, George (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Sonley, Lorne (Ph.D.)
Taylor, Maurice (Ph.D.)
Terrell, James (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Toscano, Peter (Ph.D.)
Traeger, Gordon (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Viscasillas, Felipe (Ph.D.)
Waldorf, William (Ph.D.)
Weir, Thomas (Ph.D.)
Weiss, Roger (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Zelder, Raymond (Ph.D.)

Tues., Aug. 7
8:30
Law Court

Economic Theory II

 L. Metzler, chr.
M. Friedman
F. Knight		 Chen, Ho-Mei (Ph.D.)
Herlihy, Murray (Ph.D.)
Hoch, Irving (Ph.D.)
Toscano, Peter (Ph.D.)
Weir, Thomas (Ph.D.)

Thurs., Aug. 9
8:30
Law Court

Government Finance

 P. Thomson, chr.
J. Marschak
D.G. Johnson		 Frank, Andrew (Ph.D.-A.M.) in abs
Haskell, Max (Ph.D.) in abs
Henry, Edward L. (Ph.D.)
Horwitz, Bertrand (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Lininger, Charles (Ph.D.)
Selden, Richard (Ph.D.)

Thurs., Aug. 9
8:30
Law Court

Industrial Relations

 F. Harbison, chr.
E. Hamilton
H.G. Lewis		 Barghout, Saad (Ph.D.)
Bechtolt, Richard (Ph.D.)
Hoch, Irving (Ph.D.)
Liang, Wei K. (Ph.D.)
Mullady, Philomena (Ph.D.)
Ness, David (Ph.D.)

Thurs., Aug. 2
8:30
Law Court

International Economics

 L. Metzler, chr.
B. Hoselitz
A. Rees		 Alberts, William (Ph.D.)
Anderson, Edwin (Ph.D.) in abs
Chen, Sze-te (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Chien, Chih Chien (Ph.D.)
Cleaver, George (Ph.D.)
Frank, Andrew (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Glick, Milton (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Gustus, Warren (Ph.D.)
Lukomski, Jesse (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Mitcham, Clinton (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Morey, Donald J. (Ph.D.-A.M.)

Tues., Aug. 7
8:30
Law Court

Money, Banking, and Monetary Policy

 L. Mints, chr.
E. Hamilton
J. Marschak		 Alberts, William (Ph.D.)
Bauer, Milton (Ph.D.)
Blumberg, Lionel (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Chen, Sze-te (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Chien, Chih Chien (Ph.D.)
Cleaver, George (Ph.D.)
Conomikes, George (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Davis, George (Ph.D.) in abs
Emmer, Robert (Ph.D.)
Heizer, Raymond (Ph.D.)
Horwitz, Bertrand (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Hughes, Rufus (Ph.D.)
Krawczyk, Richard (Ph.D.-A.M.) in abs
Lerner, Eugene (Ph.D.)
Liang, Wei K. (Ph.D.)
Lukomski, Jesse (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Meckling, William (Ph.D.)
Mitcham, Clinton (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Morey, Donald (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Ogawa, George (Ph.D.)
Smulekoff, Suzanne (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Sonley, Lorne (Ph.D.)
Taylor, Maurice (Ph.D.)
Terrell, James (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Traeger, Gordon (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Zelder, Raymond (Ph.D.)
Zingarelli, Carla (Ph.D.-A.M.)
Rayack, Elton  (Ph.D.) in abs

Thurs., Aug. 2
8:30
Law Court

Statistics

 T. Koopmans, chr.
C. Hildreth
H.G. Lewis		 Cagan, Phillip (Ph.D.)
Hogan, Lloyd (Ph.D.)
Katzman, Irwin (Ph.D.)
Malhotra, Man Hohan (Ph.D.)
Waldorf, William (Ph.D.)

Thurs., Aug. 2
8:30
Law Court

Economic History

 E. Hamilton Mullady, Philomena (Ph.D.)
Toscano, Peter (Ph.D.)

Source: Hoover Institution Archives. Papers of Milton Friedman. Box 76, Folder “University of Chicago ‘Economic Theory’”.

Categories
Economists Gender Radcliffe Wellesley Yale

Yale. Economics Ph.D. alumna Sarah Scovill Whittelsey, 1898

 

This post adds a few details to Claire H. Hammond’s sketch of the life and brief academic career of the second woman to have received a Ph.D. in economics in the United States (note: Sarah Scovill Whittelsey tied for second place with Hannah Robie Sewall at the University of Minnesota). A link to Whittelsey’s 1894 Radcliffe portrait, note of her success in women’s college tennis, testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives, and her newspaper obituary are among the tidbits to be found below.

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Life and Career of Sarah Scovill Whittelsey

Claire H. Hammond. American Women and the Professionalization of Economics. Review of Social Economy. Vol. 51, No. 3 (Fall 1993), 347-370.   (here pp. 362-366)

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1892, College women’s tennis champion

The first intercollegiate tennis invitational for women is held at Bryn Mawr College. Radcliffe College’s Sarah Whittelsey wins the tournament. Vassar, Wellesley, and Smith Colleges turn down the invitation; many faculty members fear women cannot handle the competitive nature of sports.

Source: From the milestone timeline at the ITA Hall of Fame.

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1898, Yale Ph.D.

Sarah Scovill Whittelsey (Mrs. Percy T. Walden), B.A. Radcliffe College. In how far has Massachusetts labor legislation been in accordance with teachings of economic theory? Ann. Amer. Acad. Pol. and Soc Sci., Supplement, 1901, 1:1-157. 210 St. Ronan St., New Haven, Conn.

Source: Doctors of Philosophy of Yale University With the Titles of Their Dissertations, 1861-1927. New Haven, p. 65.

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President Hadley’s Introduction
to the published dissertation

Amid the many things which are valuable in the earlier reports of the Massachusetts Labor Bureau, none possess more permanent importance than the dispassionate analyses of the effects of labor laws which were prepared by Colonel Wright and his associates. The investigation of the workings of the ten-hour law in Massachusetts mills is a historic example of economic study which is as good as anything of its kind that has been done in the United States. But in more recent years the work of the Massachusetts Bureau has run in somewhat different channels. It has been to some degree crowded out of the fields of legislative investigation by the mass of purely statistical work which has been entrusted to its charge. And while the activity of its former chief is continued in his work as the head of the United States Bureau of Labor, the very breadth of the investigations which he is conducting forbids that complete treatment of any one field of legislation which was possible in his earlier labors.
Under these circumstances, the economic effects of Massachusetts labor legislation as they had worked themselves out in recent years seemed an appropriate subject for a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Yale. In her treatment of this theme Miss Whittelsey has presented the subject under three distinct aspects: an analysis, a history, and a criticism. Her analysis shows what is the present condition of the Massachusetts statute books on the various subjects connected with labor. The history shows when these statues were passed, and what were the motives and causes which led to their passage. The criticism undertakes to show what have been the effects, economic, social and moral, of the various forms of statutory regulation.
In a field of this kind it is hardly to be expected that the results will be startling. If they were, the method and the impartiality of the thesis would be open to great distrust. It is for the serious student of legislation rather than for the doctrinaire or the agitator that a painstaking criticism of this kind is intended. It has special value at the present day, when so many other states are following the example of Massachusetts in this line, and when there is a tendency to introduce similar methods of regulation into other departments of economic life besides those which are involved in the contract between the employer and the wage earner. Whether this tendency is to be regarded as a good or an evil thing is a matter of opinion on which thoughtful men differ; but there can be no question among thoughtful men of all parties that the maximum of good and the minimum of evil are to be obtained by studying dispassionately the results of past experience before we make experiments in new fields.

Arthur T. Hadley.
Yale University.

Source: Ann. Amer. Acad. Pol. and Soc Sci., Supplement, 1901, 1:5-6.

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CALLED TO WELLESLEY.

Miss Sarah Scovill Whittelsey Will Probably Accept.

NEW HAVEN. Jan 16—Miss Sarah Scovill Whittelsey of this city has been offered the chair of political economy at Wellesley college for one year. She has been summoned to Boston for a conference with the Wellesley authorities relative to the offer. She is to take the place of Miss Balch, who will leave Wellesley next fall to go to Europe for her Sabbatical year. Miss Whittelsey will, it is understood, accept the position.

She is the daughter of Joseph T. Whittelsey of this city, of national prominence as an authority in tennis, golf and college sports.

Source: The Boston Globe, 17 January 1902, p. 8.

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Sarah Scovill Whittelsey (Mrs. Percy T. Walden)
B.A. Radcliffe College 1894.

Miss Whittelsey received her Doctor’s degree in 1898. During the year 1902-1903 she was Instructor in Economics at Wellesley College.

In 1905 she married Percy T. Walden, Ph.D. Yale 1896, now Professor of Chemistry in the University. They have two children, Sarah Scovill, born in 1906, and Joseph Whittelsey, born in 1911.

Since 1914 Mrs. Walden has served on the New Haven Board of Education.

Her dissertation was published in 1901, in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Supplement I, under the title “Massachusetts Labor Legislation : An Historical and Critical Study.”

Her present address is 210 St. Ronan Street, New Haven, Connecticut.

Source: Alumnae Graduate School, Yale University. 1894-1920 (New Haven: Yale University, 1920), pp. 46-47.

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Statement of Mrs. Percy T. Walden, New Haven, Conn., Chairman of Child Welfare, National League of Women Voters

Source: Hearing before the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives. Seventieth Congress, Second Session. H.R. 14070 to provide a child welfare extension service and for other purposes.  Washington, D.C.: January 24 and 25, 1929. Pages 86-87.

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Obituary

Mrs. Sarah Walden.

New Haven, Aug. 7. — (AP.) — Mrs. Sarah Walden, 73, former economics teacher at Wellesley College, first woman member of the New Haven Board of Education and founder and long time president of the Connecticut Child Welfare Association, died at a hospital here yesterday after a short illness. She was the widow of Professor Percv T. Walden of Yale University.

Mrs. Walden. who was born In Paris but spent nearly all her here, was graduated from Radcliffe College in 1894, the year she won the women’s intercollegiate tennis championship at Byrn Mawr, Pa. She was a trustee of Wellesley College. She leaves a son, Joseph Walden of Elizabeth, N.J.; a daughter, Mrs. Richmond H. Curtiss of New Haven, and a sister, Mrs. Frank Dunn Berrien of New Haven.

Source: Hartford Courant. August 8, 1945, page 5

 

Image Source:  Radcliffe Archives. Portrait of Sarah Scovill Whittelsey by James Notman. Radcliffe College, Class of 1894.

Categories
Economists Gender Radcliffe

Radcliffe. Economics Ph.D. Alumna, Ada M. Harrison, 1952

 

John Bates Clark and his student Thorstein Veblen are the two most famous economists associated with Carleton College. Less famous but having a greater direct impact on more generations of Carleton students was the Radcliffe Ph.D., Ada M. Harrison. With this post she now joins our series “Meet an economics Ph.D. alumna”.

An oral history Interview with Ada M. Harrison recorded in 1993.

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Ada M. Harrison, A.M.
Radcliffe Ph.D. in Economics, 1952

Special Field, Business Organization and Control.
Dissertation, “The Competitive Structure of the Wood Household Manufacturing Furniture Industry”.

Source: Radcliffe College. Reports of Officers Issue, 1951-52 Sessions.  Official Register of Radcliffe College, Vol. XVIII, No. 5 (December, 1952), p. 22.

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Carleton College Emerita Professor Ada M. Harrison Dies

Ada M. Harrison, one of Carleton College’s most admired and beloved professors, died Monday, Dec. 27, [1999] in Northfield, Minn. She was 85. A respected economist and devoted teacher, Harrison taught economics for 31 years at Carleton, specializing in industrial organization, economic theory, and accounting. A public memorial service was held Friday, Jan. 28, 2000, in Carleton’s Skinner Memorial Chapel.

Harrison was born Feb. 2, 1914, in Saskatchewan, Canada. She received her bachelor’s degree from the State College of Washington, Pullman, in 1941 and earned her Ph.D. in economics from Radcliffe College in 1952. Before coming to Carleton in 1948, Harrison was a statistician for a Chicago investment firm and served as an economist with the Office of Price Administration in Washington.

“In her many years of teaching at Carleton, Ada Harrison had a profound impact on her students,” Carleton President Stephen R. Lewis, Jr. said. “A diminutive but demanding teacher of accounting and microeconomics, she expected analytical rigor and high standards of precision. With a quick mind and sharp wit, she often struck fear in the hearts of hundreds of future business leaders, who testify abundantly to her lasting effect on their lives.”

Michael S. Hunt, a 1968 graduate of Carleton and principal with Life Science Advisors in Carmel, Ind., remembered Harrison as a great teacher of economics and a dear friend. “As a freshman in her Introductory Economics class, I felt stark terror that I will always remember because she would accept only our best, critical thought and made it painfully clear when we didn’t produce. As I got to know her during my four years at Carleton I realized that she was not only a brilliant economist but also a woman with a great sense of humor and a deep concern for our professional and personal growth after Carleton.”

In 1957-58, Harrison was the only female among five college professors in the country to be awarded a National Research Professorship in Economics by the Brookings Institution of Washington, D.C. She was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and of the American Economic Association. During the 1950s and ’60s, Harrison traveled extensively to speak on economic issues. She also sponsored Carleton’s debate team for several years.

Harrison officially retired from Carleton in June 1979, but continued to teach for several years after her retirement.

George Lamson, the Wadsworth A. Williams Professor of Economics at Carleton and a friend and colleague of Harrison’s, recently asked her what she was most thankful for in her life. According to Lamson, Harrison answered without hesitation, “That I became a teacher and that I taught at Carleton.”

“Miss Harrison loved to teach, and she loved her students,” said Wally Weitz, Carleton class of 1970 and president of Wallace R. Weitz & Co. in Omaha. “She was demanding-there was no place to hide for the unprepared-and she taught us to think clearly and to express ourselves precisely. She had a major impact on me, and I am grateful.”

Source: Carleton College, Press Release of December 29, 1999.

Image Source: Carleton College Yearbook, Algol 1959, p. 24.

Categories
Cornell Economists Harvard Race

Harvard. Economics Ph.D. alumnus, Michael Francis McPhelin, S.J., 1951

 

 

This post in the series, “Get to know an economics Ph.D.”, began unintentionally with a check of the proper capitalization for the name of a relatively obscure Harvard economics Ph.D. alumnus. The crop of 1950-51 Ph.D.’s was large (41) and included Thomas Schelling, Robert M. Solow, and William Parker who already have dedicated posts here at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.  I discovered that the Jesuit priest-economist, whose name I double-checked, had been awarded a bronze star as an army chaplain in World War II and later went on to become the founding faculty member of the department of economics at the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. This post presents a variety of artifacts associated with Rev. Michael Francis McPhelin, S.J. that I collected after a half-day’s worth of internet trawling.

In the history of U.S. academic economics Professor McPhelin turns out to be associated with a major moment at the intersection of the politics of race and academic freedom. There are quite a few cases of external forces attempting to influence hiring decisions and curricula involving economists (e.g. Samuelson’s textbook), but McPhelin’s case was an inside-the-ivory-tower-job. He put himself in the cross-hairs of student activists who wanted him dismissed for alleged racism in the classroom. A fairly complete accounting of the “McPhelin affair” that included an occupation of the Cornell economics department offices can be found in:

Downs, Donald Alexander. Chapter 4 “Racial Justice Versus Academic Freedom” in his Cornell ’69: Liberalism and the Crisis of the American University. Ithaca, NY Cornell University Press, 1999. pp. 68-96.
A book review by Jon Porter. 

With respect to Father McPhelin, Downs gives the benefit of the doubt:

McPhelin was treading into an area of delicate expectations and sensitivities, and he was doing so in front of the leading advocates of Black Power on campus. Worse, McPhelin entered this fray with fewer strategic skills than other professors who managed to get away with similar remarks in class. According to Nathan Tarcov, who lived in the same house as the visiting priest, McPhelin was a friendly, decent man who had the misfortune of being obtuse. “He really just could not fully comprehend what was happening to him,” Tarcov said. “He just didn’t get it.” [Downs, p. 72]

I have included a considerably less than flattering portrayal of McPhelin by a Philippine businessman/politician/journalist who clearly bore an anti-colonial grudge against the Jesuit academics, his “Great White Father(s)”.

The former president of the Philippines (Benigno Aquino III) appears to have had a much higher opinion of McPhelin.

The post ends with a list of papers that Professor Michael McPhelin published in the journal Philippine Studies.

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Michael Francis McPhelin (Ph.D., 1950-51)

Michael Francis McPhelin, A.B. (Woodstock Coll.[Baltimore, MD]) 1935, A.M. (ibid.) 1936, S.T.L. (ibid.) 1942.

Special Field, The History of Economic Thought.
Thesis, “The Meaning and Requirements of Economic Order.”

Source: Report of the President of Harvard College, 1950-51, pp. 111.

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New York Times obituary

The Rev. Michael F. McPhelin, a Jesuit who was a former dean of the Fordham University School of Business, died Jan. 21 in Manila. He was 70 years old.

In 1950 he was assigned to the faculty of Ateneo de Manila and had returned there for service over the last two decades. A native of New York, he completed his seminary studies at Woodstock College in Maryland. He served as a chaplain with the 275th Infantry in World War II and then received a doctorate from Columbia University [sic].

He became an assistant professor of economics at Fordham in 1950 and later taught at Gregorian University, Rome. He became dean at Fordham in 1954.

He is survived by a brother, James, and a sister, Ann Young.

Source: The New York Times, January 31, 1981, section 1, page 11.

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War record as Chaplain in the Infantry

McPhelin, Michael F. (New York)

Born: 16 May 1911. Entered Society: 14 Aug 1929. Ordained: 22 Jun 1941. Present Province: Philippines.

Appointed to the Army 6 Jan 1944. Serial number: 0543081. To the rank of Captain 9 Dec 1944; to Major 21 Aug 1946. Assignments: Harvard Chaplain School (10 Feb 1944) ; Monterey, Cal., and Camp Cooke, Cal. (1944) ; 275th Infantry Regiment, 70th Infantry Division, at Camp Adair, Ore., at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., and in France (1944) ; 275th Infantry Regiment, France (1945) ; 23rd Corps Artillery, Germany (1945) ; 30th Infantry Regiment, Germany (1946) ; Division Artillery, 3rd Infantry Division (1946). Reverted to inactive status 20 Oct 1946. Award: Bronze Star.

Source: Woodstock Letters, vol. 89, no. 4 (November 1, 1960), p. 402.

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War Anecdote

Jan 7, 1945 (-4 to +5 deg F!!!)

…following is the story of Father Michael McPhelin…This being Sunday, he is making his rounds to say Mass. In the daylight, the men cannot stick their heads up without being shot at from Germans on higher ground. When he arrives at Co F in the forward-right sector below Baerenthal, he is told that the men could not possibly risk coming together for Mass. Chaplain McPhelin replied, “Well, if that’s the case, I will have to go to them. That’s my job.” While there is every expectation that the Germans will shoot him, since they can clearly see him move from foxhole to foxhole, they don’t.”

Source: Timothy McG. Millhiser and Ross R. Millhiser (June, 2000) “Operation Northwind” History of Company A, 275th  Regiment, 70th Division.

Cf. Charles Whiting. The Other Battle of the Bulge: Operation Northwind. The History Press (2007). Chapter 3.

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Ateneo Economics Department:
A BRIEF HISTORY

Over the past fifty years, the Ateneo Economics Department has distinguished itself with its rich history and the countless contributions its alumni have made to Philippine society.

The Economics Department started out as a subdepartment of Social Science. Although it was recognized as a separate department, Economics had no official head and was under control of the chair of Social Science. When the Economics Department was finally established in 1953, it had only Rev. Michael McPhelin, S.J. as its lone faculty member. He became the first moderator of the Economics of the Ateneo (ESA) when it was founded in 1962.

In the school year 1957-1958, the Economics Department achieved greater autonomy with the appointment of a chair separate from that of the Department of Social Science. This was Rev. William J. Nicholson, S.J., who was one of four faculty members in 1955. A notable faculty member who also became chair of the Department was Dr. Vicente Valdepeñas, who would subsequently become the director-general of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA). He is currently a member of the Monetary Board of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

The year 1970 was significant for the Economics Department. For the first time, it acquired female faculty, among them Victoria Valdez, Ellen Palanca, and later Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The last two would go on to acquire doctorates and continue teaching in the Department. Mrs. Macapagal –Arroyo would eventually leave the academe to become a member of the Aquino cabinet, senator, vice president, and President of the Republic.

Today, the Ateneo Economics Department is widely recognized as one of the most important academic groups in the country. It boasts of faculty members who not only provide analytical assistance to government agencies, multilateral organizations and non-government organizations, but also lead their students into careers that are dedicated to the improvement of the national economy and national well-being.

The Department tirelessly and resolutely charts new directions for growth and development. It continues to offer the bachelor’s and master programs begun in 1951, the Management Economics Program introduced in 1984, and the Ph.D. program initiated in 2002. Three thousand men and women have graduated with degrees in the Department’s various courses, and thousands more will follow in the coming years.

Indeed, the Economics Department of the Ateneo de Manila is keeping alive the Jesuit tradition of academic excellence and service to God and the Filipino people.

Source: Ateneo de Manila University Economics Department website.

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The Great White Father
by Hilarion M. Henares, Jr.

Hilarion

Philippine Daily Inquirer
September 24, 1986

…Abrasive in manner and speech, a cruel glint in his eyes, inveterate party goer, he was a racist who was thrown out of Cornell University for lectures telling the Negroes they were bioogically inferior to the whites. He was Father Michael McPhelin, head of the Economics Department of Ateneo University, suspected CIA agent, a hanger-on at Malacañang as some sort of Rasputin, and the beloved mentor of NEDA Director Vince Valdepeñas…

The first time I met Father McPhelin was as a young businessman just fresh out of college invited to speak before the Ateneo Economic Society. He was the rudest person I ever met, he kept interrupting me, making insulting remarks about the integrity and competence of Filipino businessmen, and made no bones about his conviction that American multinationals should be given free rein to exploit our country…

Finally, I spoke to him thus: “McPhelin, you have me at a disadvantage. In the first place, you are a priest; that means God must be on your side. In the second place, you are a Jesuit priest, which means that you are probably one of the most brilliant of holy men. Above all, you are an American Jesuit priest, which makes you in the worst and most ominous sense of the term, a Great White Father about whom we Ateneans and Filipinos have a colonial mentality. But mark this, McPhelin, from here on, there will be no public forum you will ever attend that I will not grace with my presence.  And I promise you when we meet in debate, I will wipe the floor with the two protuberances of your ischia–that is, with your butt!” He was shocked out of his wits at the first Pinoy that ever talked back to him.

This big bully Father McPhelin browbeat an entire generation of Ateneo students into being Little Brown Brothers, without pride of race or faith in the Filipino. I hounded him for years, challenging him to a debate, questioning him in the open forum period, till he developed diarrhea at the very sight of me. Everywhere he went, he brought his assistant with him, a nice harmless young man named Vicente Valdepeñas Jr.; and when he saw me, he rushed out leaving poor Vince to face me as I complained: “Must I spend the rest of my life debating with altar boys?” And golly I still am….

Source:  From Hiarion M. Henares, Jr. Make My Day. 

For a personal report about Henares: see the blogpost in honor of his 88th birthday by Bel Cunanan “How to solve a problem like Larry Henares” from April 10, 2013.

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President (2010-2016) Benigno Aquino III
recalls his economics professor

President Aquino “…was the keynote speaker at the opening program of the Ignatian Festival 2013 on his alma mater’s [Ateneo de Manila University] campus in Loyola Heights, Quezon City, with the theme “Lahing Loyola Para sa Kapwa (A Loyola Race for Others)…

…He said he “owed a debt of gratitude” to his former teachers and mentors for molding his character.

Ateneo teaches that “I am in the position to help” improve the lives of others, he said, without adding that state universities and other schools also do the same.

Repeating the age-old dichotomy between success and public service (or servant leadership, as Ateneans like to call it), Mr. Aquino asked: “Isn’t this more sensible than the other institutions’ drive to enhance their students ability to quickly ascend the ladder of wealth and prestige?”

He cited the pivotal role played by his economics professor, Fr. Michael McPhelin, a Harvard alumnus, in enriching his knowledge of the subject.

He recalled debating with McPhelin matters dealing with economics and statistics during the “last 15 minutes of each and every class” held three times a week.

After passing the course, he was told by McPhelin that “he just wanted me to be like my father so he pressured me… into getting used to going through a lot of tests,” Mr. Aquino said.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer Sunday July 21, 2013.

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Papers by Michael F. McPhelin
published in Philippine Studies

Vol 7, No 4 (1959) The Margin Act

Vol 7, No 4 (1959) Economic Freedom: Adam Smith vs. The Papacy

Vol 8, No 1 (1960) Political Transmission 15 I. Economics of the Transmission

Vol 8, No 2 (1960) The “Filipino First” Policy

Vol 8, No 3 (1960) Post-Summit Reflections

Vol 8, No 3 (1960) Inducement to Invest: The United States Investment Guaranty Program and Foreign Investment

Vol 9, No 1 (1961) Financial Achievement of 1960

Vol 9, No 2 (1961) The Chinese Question

Vol 9, No 2 (1961) Where Angels Fear To Tread: Too Many Asians

Vol 9, No 3 (1961) The Purchase of Meralco

Vol 10, No 2 (1962) Not One But Ten: Southeast Asia Today and Tomorrow

Vol 10, No 4 (1962) Boeke’s Thesis Examined: Indonesian Economics

Vol 12, No 2 (1964) A Philippine Economic Geography: Shadows on the Land

Vol 12, No 4 (1964) The Economic Development Foundation

Vol 13, No 2 (1965) A Practical Man’s Economics Guide: The Planning and Execution of Economic Development

Vol 13, No 4 (1965) National Development and Human Resources: Manpower and Education

Vol 14, No 1 (1966) Wages and Justice

Vol 14, No 1 (1966) A Source Book For Economic Geography: World Economic Development

Vol 14, No 4 (1966) Philippine: International Trade and Problems of Modernization

Vol 17, No 2 (1969) Economic Dilemma of Asian Countries Asian Drama

Vol 17, No 3 (1969) On the Diversity of Philippine Geography: The Philippine Island World

Vol 17, No 4 (1969) Manila: The Primate City

Vol 18, No 1 (1970) Economic Nationalism and Planned Stagnation

Vol 18, No 3 (1970) An Inquiry into Economic Nationalism

Vol 20, No 4 (1972) The Philippines: Problems and Prospects

Vol 20, No 4 (1972) Sicat: Economic Policy and Philippine Development

Vol 24, No 4 (1976) The Philippines: An Economic and Social Geography

Vol 24, No 4 (1976) Foreign Trade Regimes and Economic Development: The Philippines

Vol 25, No 4 (1977) The Tropics and Economic Development A Provocative Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations