Category: Economists

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Columbia Economists Statistics

Columbia. Promotions and Memorial Minute for Abraham Wald

 

 

Abraham Wald (1902-1950) got his foot into the Columbia economics department door thanks to a grant from the Carnegie Foundation arranged for him by Harold Hotelling in 1938. In this post we follow Wald’s Columbia career up through the faculty memorial minute that followed his tragic, untimely death in an airplane accident during a lecture tour in India in December 1950.

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Promotion to Assistant Professor

From the November 26, 1941 letter to President Nicholas Murray Butler from Robert M. Haig, Chairman of the department of economics (pp. 3-5 and supporting annex B).

“…We feel that it is important, if at all possible, that the following action be taken.

  1. Appoint Abraham Wald to an assistant professorship at $3,600 (Wald is now a lecturer at $3,000, of which $2,400 is financed by a special grant, the continuance of which is not assured.
    (See Annex B)

A recent development in the case of Wald is an offer of a permanent post (presumably an assistant professorship) at Queens College. This post will be open to him in case it proves impossible for us to give him the status recommended. Our enthusiasm for him has increased since last year when I wrote as follows:—

“The position of this recommendation at the very head of our list is attributable primarily to a conviction that Abraham Wald is an unusually interesting gamble. By risking a moderate stake, the University can put itself in a position where it may (and in our judgment probably will) be rewarded a hundred-fold. For Wald is not only a young scholar whose attainments are of a high order of merit, but one whose potentialities are obviously large.

“When Wald came to us two years ago, as a lecturer whose stipend was supplied by a special and presumably temporary grant, we were frankly apprehensive lest we should presently find ourselves indirectly committed, without adequate consideration, to a permanent addition to our staff concerning whom we might not be enthusiastic. Consequently care was exercised to make it clear to all concerned that his appointment as a lecturer supported by a special grant carried with it no future obligation. Fortunately then, we are able to approach the consideration of his case at this juncture free from any pressure of old commitments, express or implied.

“Our recommendation of Wald should be interpreted then as a free and fresh expression of our admiration for his accomplishments and of our faith in his future. As a result of our contacts with him and with his work, we are convinced that here is a man whose contributions are reasonably certain to continue to break new ground on a section of the frontier of knowledge where notable progress seems imminent.

“We recognize that Wald’s field is one that is of interest and significance to several departments of the University and that there are unsettled questions as to whether ultimately it should be attached to our own or to some other department or whether it should constitute a separate department in its own right. Irrespective of the answers that may ultimately be given to such questions of structural organization, we, in the Department of Economics, desire to express the hope that it will prove possible for the University to provide for the further development of teaching and research in statistics on a high level and we wish to take this opportunity to make it clear that, pending a final decision as to organization, we should consider it an honor to be permitted to shelter and to stand sponsor for scientific work such as that of Wald.”

[…]

ANNEX B.
BIOGRAPHIC MEMORANDUM OF ABRAHAM WALD

I was born in Cluj, October 31, 1902. I studied at the University in Cluj and at the University of Vienna, and obtained my doctor’s degree in mathematics at the University of Vienna in 1930. The subject of my doctor’s thesis was the Hilbert system of axioms of Geometry.

For the next four years I did mathematical research at the University of Vienna and collaborated with Professor Karl Menger. I was co-editor with him of “Ergebnisse eines mathematischen Kolloquiums.” During this time my interests were chiefly in general abstract and metric geometry, theory of probability, and mathematical economics, in which fields my papers were written.

In 1934 I became in addition a research associate of the Institute for Business Cycle Research in Vienna and published several papers in mathematical economics. My interest in statistics and its application in economics dates from this time, when I became the statistical expert of the Institute.

After the annexation of Austria, I came to the United States and was for several months a fellow of the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics. Thereafter I became a lecturer at Columbia University which is the position I hold at present. Since my arrival in the United States I have been interested chiefly in statistics and mathematical economics and have published a series of papers in these fields. I have been elected a fellow of both the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the Econometric Society.

LIST OF PUBLICATIONS

  1. Abstract and metric geometry
    1. Über den allgemeinen Raumbegriff, Ergebnisse eines math. Kolloquiums, Heft 3, Vienna. [1931]
    2. Axiomatik des Zwischenbegriffes in metrischen Räumen, Mathematische Annalen, Vol. 104. [1931]
    3. Der komplexe euklidische Raum [Komplexe und indefinite Räume], Erg. eines mathem. Kolloquiums, Heft 5, Vienna.
    4. Indefinite euklidischen Räume, Erg. eines mathem. Kolloquiums, Heft 5, Vienna.
    5. Vereinfachter Beweis des Steinitzschen Satzes, Erg. mathem. Kolloquiums, Heft 5, Vienna.
    6. Bedingt konvergente Reihen von Vektoren, Erg. mathem. Kolloquiums, Heft 5, Vienna.
    7. Riehen in topologischen Gruppen, Erg. mathem. Kolloquiums, Heft 5, Vienna.
    8. Eine neue Definition der Flächenkrümmung, Erg. mathem. Kolloquiums, Heft 6, Vienna
    9. Sur la courbure des surfaces, C. R. [Acad. Sci.] Paris, 1935.
    10. Aufbau [Begründung] einer kooridinatenlosen Differentialgeometrie der Flächen, Erg. mathem. Kolloquiums, Heft 7, Vienna.
    11. Eine Characterisierung des Lebesgueschen Masses, Erg. mathem. Kolloquiums, Heft 7, Vienna.
  1. Probability, Statistics and Mathematical Economics.
    1. Sur la notion de collectif dans le calcul des probabilités, C.R. [Acad. Sci.] Paris, 1936.
    2. Die Widerspruchsfreiheit des Kollektivbegriffes, Erg. mathem. Kolloquiums, Heft 8, Vienna.
    3. Die Widerspruchsfreiheit des Kollektivbegriffes, Actualités Scientifiques, 1938, Paris.
    4. Berechnung und Ausschaltung von Saisonschwankungen, Julius Springer, Vienna, 1936.
    5. Zur Theorie der Preis Indexziffern, Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie, Vienna, 1937.
    6. Über die Produktionsgleichungen der ökonomischen Wertlehre, Erg. mathem. Kolloquiums, Heft 6, Vienna.
    7. Über die Produktionsgleichungen der ökonomischen Wertlehre, zweite Mitteilung, Erg. mathem. Kolloquiums, Heft 7, Vienna.
    8. Über einige Gleichungssysteme der mathematischen Ökonomie, Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie, Vienna, 1936. [translated into English by Otto Eckstein, Econometrica, 1951, pp. 368-403]
    9. Extrapolation des gleitenden 12-Monatsdurchschnittes, Beilage zu den Berichten des Öster. Institutes für Konjunkturforschung, Vienna, 1937.
    10. Grundsaetzliches zur Berechnung des Produktionsindex, Beilage zu den Berichten des Öster. Institutes für Konjunkturforschung, Vienna, 1937.
    11. Generalization of the inequality of Markoff, The Annals of Math. Statistics, December, 1938.
    12. Long Cycles as a result of repeated integration, American Mathem. Monthly, March, 1939.
    13. Confidence limit for continuous distribution functions (co-author J. Wolfowitz), The Annals of Math. Statistics, June, 1939.
    14. Limits of a distribution function determined by absolute moments, Transact. of the Amer. Mathem. Society, September, 1939.
    15. A new formula for the index of cost of living, Econometrica, October, 1939.
    16. Contributions to the theory of statistical estimation, The Annals of Mathem. Statistics, December, 1939.
    17. A note on the analysis of variance with unequal class frequencies, The Annals of Mathem. Statistics, March, 1940.
    18. The approximate determination of indifference surfaces, Econometrica, April, 1940.
    19. On a test whether two samples are from the same population (with J. Wolfowitz), The Annals of Mathem. Statistics, June, 1940.
    20. Fitting of straight lines when both variables are subject to error, The Annals of Mathem. Statistics, September, 1940.
    21. Asymptotically most powerful tests of statistical hypotheses, Annals of Mathem. Statistics, March, 1941.
    22. Some examples of asymptotically most powerful tests will appear in the December, 1941 issue of the Annals of Mathem. Statistics.
    23. Asymptotically shortest confidence intervals paper presented at the meeting of the Amer. Math. Soc., September, 1940. Accepted for publication in the Annals of Mathem. Statistics.
    24. On the distribution of Wilks’ statistic for testing the independence of several groups of variates (in collaboration with R. Brookner), Annals of Mathem. Statistics, June, 1941.
    25. The large sample distribution of the likelihood ratio statistics, paper presented at the meeting of the Institute of Mathem. Statistics, September, 1941, Chicago. It will be published in the Annals of Mathem. Statistics.
    26. On testing statistical hypotheses concerning several unknown parameters, paper presented at the meeting of Amer. Mathem. Society, February, 1941, New York City. It will be published in the Annals of Mathem. Statistics.
    27. On the analysis of variance in case of multiple classifications with unequal class frequencies, Annals of Mathem. Statistics, September, 1941.

Source: Columbia University Archives. Central Files 1890—Box 386, Folder “Haig, Robert Murray 7/1941-6/1942”

Cf: “The Publications of Abraham Wald” [1931-1952] was published in The Annals of Mathematical Statistics 23:1 (March 1952, pp. 29-33.

___________________

Aliens in the Department of Economics

December 19, 1941

Mr. Philip M. Hayden, Secretary,
213 Low Memorial Library.

Dear Mr. Hayden:

In reply to the request contained in your recent Memorandum to executive officers, I report the following aliens from the Department of Economics:

Harold Barger

29 West 8th Street, New York City

Nationality: British
Age: 34
Alien Registration No.: 3239174

 

Donald Bailey Marsh

106 Morningside Drive, New York City

Nationality: Canadian
Age: 30
Alien Registration No.: 1152252

 

Robert Valeur

40 Barrow Street, New York City

Nationality: French
Age: 38
Alien Registration No.: 5061531

 

Abraham Wald

241 West 108th Street, New York City

Nationality: born in Kolozsvar [Note: Hungarian spelling of Cluj-Napoca], Transylvania, Alien Registration officials were in doubt how to describe nationality.
Age: 39
Alien Registration No.: 4506027

Very truly yours,
Chairman, Department of Economics

Source: Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections. Department of Economics Collections, Faculty. Box 2, Folder “Faculty Beginning Jan 1, 1944 [sic]”.

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Promotion to Associate Professor

February 7, 1944

Professor Abraham Wald,
608 Fayerweather.

Dear Professor Wald:

I am authorized by the Provost of the University to inform you that in the provisional budget for the academic year 1944-45 you are designated associate professor of Statistics at an annual stipend of $5,000. This provisional budget goes to the Trustees with the approval of the Committee on Educational Policy. While your promotion is not final until it is adopted by the Trustees at their meeting on the first Monday in April, the Provost and I agree that there is no reason whatsoever to doubt that the recommendation for your advancement will be approved, and that you run hardly an risk in declining the offer of an associate professorship at the University of Chicago.

As an associate professor you would hold your position at the pleasure of the Trustees, i.e., you would no longer be subject to year-to-year appointment and would, in effect, have continuing tenure. The position of associate professor in this respect is the same as that of a full professor.

I should like to add my personal assurance that the Department and the Administration stand behind the recommendation for your advancement. The reputation that you have won for yourself at Columbia is a very high one indeed. You have the friendship and warm support of all of your associates in the graduate faculties. I believe that you will have here a rich and promising career of creative scholarship.

Sincerely yours,

[copy unsigned, Frederick C. Mills?]

Source Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections. Columbiana. Department of Economics Collection. Box 3 Budget, 1915-1946-47, Folder “Budget Material 1944-1945”.

___________________

Promotion to Professor

April 23, 1945

President Nicholas Murray Butler,
Columbia University.

Dear Mr. President:

A recent development makes it necessary for me to supplement my letter of November 30th, 1944, in which I submitted to you a provisional budget for the Department of Economics for the year 1945-46. Professor Abraham Wald, who occupies a place of strategic importance in our work in Mathematical Statistics, has received a very attractive offer from another institution. If we are to hold him at Columbia we must give him some advancement here. Although I am reluctant to approach you at this time, to request that you re-open the Department budget for next year, it is my strong opinion that this should be done. This opinion is shared by my colleagues who are interested in Columbia’s past and prospective accomplishments in Mathematical Statistics.

Work in Mathematical Statistics in American universities is in a pioneering stage. The fundamental bases of statistics, in mathematics and logic, have recently been materially extended. New horizons have been opened. We may expect in the next several decades further fruitful advances bearing upon the whole range of inquiry in the social and the natural sciences and in the arts of production and administration. In this field Columbia has already, through the work of Hotelling and Wald, achieved a leading position, one that is recognized throughout the world. Some indication of Columbia’s standing, and of the scientific and practical fruitfulness of our work in this field, I given by the accomplishments of the Statistical Research Group now serving the Army and the Navy as part of Columbia’s contribution to the war effort.

Columbia must hold and extend the position of preeminence we have won. We believe that in Hotelling and Wald we have men of intellectual vigor and established scientific competence who will be in the forefront of future advances in Mathematical Statistics. Their work will supplement and strengthen that of the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory, in which Columbia will cooperate with the International Business Machines Corporation, as the work of that Laboratory will enhance the effectiveness of our efforts in Mathematical Statistics.

The scholarly record of Professor Wald is set forth in an attached statement. I need only add here that Wald’s researches in statistical theory have been fundamental in character and seminal in their influence. A recent outstanding example of the fertility of his thought is provided by his contribution of a new mathematical basis for techniques of quality control in manufacturing production, techniques that have been widely adopted in the control of war production. The sequential methods utilized in Dr. Wald’s procedures are capable of application in scientific experiments, and in a wide variety of other fields.

In the conviction that Columbia should reinforce success, in planning for the future, and should build where firm foundations have already been laid, I urge that the position of the University in the field of Mathematical Statistics be maintained, and strengthened. Dr. Abraham Wald’s continuance here is crucial in such a program. I recommend, therefore, that Dr. Wald, who is now Associate Professor of Statistics at an annual salary of $5,000, be appointed Professor of Mathematical Statistics, at a salary of $7,500 a year, the appointment to be effective July 1, 1945.

Respectfully submitted,

FREDERICK C. MILLS

Source Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections. Columbiana. Department of Economics Collection. Box 3 Budget, 1915-1946-47, Folder “Budget Material 1944-1945”.

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April 27, 1951

Memorial Minute for Professor A. Wald

Professor Wolfowitz then presented a minute memorializing the late Professor Abraham Wald. It was adopted by a rising vote, and a copy was ordered sent to Professor Wald’s family.

ABRAHAM WALD

Abraham Wald, Professor of Mathematical Statistics and a distinguished member of this Faculty, was killed in an airplane accident in India on December 13, 1950. He had been on a lecture tour of Indian universities and research centers. Mrs. Wald was killed in the same accident.

Dr. Wald arrived in the United States in the summer of 1938, a refugee from Nazi persecution. In the fall of 1938 he came to Columbia as a fellow of the Carnegie Corporation. He became a member of this Faculty in 1942 and professor of Mathematical Statistics in 1945. Much of his statistical work was done here. It shed luster on Columbia and largely helped to make Columbia an important center of mathematical statistics. His work changed the whole course and emphasis of modern mathematical statistics. In addition to many other contributions the theory of statistical decision functions and the theory of sequential analysis were founded by him. He also made important contributions to mathematical economics, the theory of probability, and metric geometry.

He was a good friend to many, a genial colleague, and an inspiring teacher. By his death the University and science have sustained a grievous loss.

Source: Columbia University Archives. Minutes of the Faculty of Political Science, 1950-1962.

Image Source: Naval Ordnance Test Station, Inyokern, California from the obituary by J. Wolfowitz published in The Annals of Mathematical Statistics 23:1 (March, 1952), pp. 1-13.

 

Categories
Columbia Economists Pennsylvania Statistics

Columbia. Statistics PhD alumnus. Robert E. Chaddock, 1908

 

The post provides another life/career overview of a Ph.D. alum. Today’s Ph.D. went on to become professor of sociology and statistics at Columbia University, Robert Emmet Chaddock.

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Previous posts at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror
with Chaddock content…

Request for funding for his statistical laboratory in 1911 (with a newspaper account of his 1940 suicide).

E.R.A. Seligman’s recommendation for Chaddock’s promotion to Associate Professor in 1912.

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Chaddock obituaries by…

Frederick E. Croxton in Journal of the American Statistical Association 36:213 (March, 1941), pp. 116-119.

William F. Ogburn in American Journal of Sociology 46:4 (January, 1941), p. 595.

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Robert E. Chaddock (1879-1940)

1879 born April 16, in Minerva, Ohio

1900 A.B. Wooster College

1900-05. Taught at Wooster College

1906 M.A., Columbia University

1906-08. University Fellow in Sociology, Columbia University

1908 Worked with the boy’s club of the Union Settlement (New York City)

1907-09. Instructor, Columbia University

1908 Ph.D. Columbia University.

1909-11. Assistant Professor of Economics and Statistics. Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

1911-12. Assistant Professor of Statistics, Columbia University

1912-22. Associate Professor of Statistics, Columbia University

1917-24. Secretary-Treasurer of the American Statistical Association

1925 Publication of Principles and Methods of Statistics.

1922-40. Professor of Sociology and Statistics.

1925 President of the American Statistical Association

1925-1940. Member of the Joint Advisory Committee to the Director of the Census.

1928 Represented the Social Science Research Council as delegate to the International Conference on Population in Paris (July).

1929 LL.D. awarded by Wooster College

1933-36. Member of the Committee on Government Statistics and Informational Services (jointly established by the American Statistical Association and the Social Science Research Council)

1937 Chairman of the Joint Advisory Committee to the Director of the Census

1940 October 21. Death by suicide.

Other memberships

Member of the American Committee of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population Problems.

Chairman of the Research Committee, member of the Executive Committee of the Research Bureau of the Welfare Council of New York City.

Consultant statistician of the Commonwealth Fund

Member of the Advisory Council of the Milbank memorial Fund.

Member and Vice-Chairman of the Committee on Research in Medical Economics. Member of the editorial board of the quarterly journal Medical Care.

Fellow of the American Public Health Association

Member of the International Statistical Institute

Member of the American Sociological Society

Member of the Century Club (New York)

Phi Beta Kappa.

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Political Science Faculty Memorial Minute
Columbia University

Dec. 13, 1940

Robert Emmet Chaddock

Professor Robert Emmet Chaddock served his University for over thirty years. Born at Minerva, Ohio, 1879, he took his A.B. at Wooster College in 1900. From the time he first came to Columbia as a graduate student in 1905, his association with the University was broken only for two years, during which he was Assistant Professor of Economics and Statistics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. At Columbia he was in turn University Fellow in Sociology, Instructor in Economics, Assistant Professor of Statistics, Associate Professor, and from 1922 until his death Professor of Sociology and Statistics. In these various capacities he fulfilled his duties with unsparing devotion, giving attention to his students, whole-heartedly cooperating with his colleagues, freely participating in various organizations for the advancement of public welfare, and contributing always to the improvement of statistical application to social problems, especially those connected with population and public health. He was the author of numerous articles and reports on these and other subjects, and his work on Principles and Methods of Statistics has given guidance to a large number of students throughout the country. His recognition as a leader in this field was shown by the many calls made upon his services, from the Bureau of the Census, the Milbank Foundation, the Welfare Council of New York City, the Cities Census Committee, and the International Statistical Institute, and other bodies. To these calls Professor Chaddock never failed to respond. He won the regard of all who knew him. His death removes a man who gave himself without limit and without afterthought, to his University, to his family, to the community. His colleagues tender their respectful sympathy to those who intimately mourn for him, his wife and daughter.

Robert M. MacIver
Carlton J. H. Hayes
Roswell C. McCrea

 

Source: Columbia University Archives. Minutes of the Faculty of Political Science, 1940-1949, p. 881.

Image Source: Robert Emmet Chaddock from Barnard College, Mortarboard, 1919.

 

Categories
Brookings Chicago Economists Gender Social Work

Chicago. Economics Ph.D. alumna. Helen Russell Wright, 1922

 

From the days when economics still had room for policies of social work, Helen Russell Wright, economics Ph.D. alumna of the University of Chicago (1922). 

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Helen Russell Wright.

1891, February 26. Born in Glenwood, Iowa.
1912. A.B. Smith College.
Studied economics and social work in the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy (CSCP) under Sophonisba Breckenridge and Edith Abbott
1912-13. Appointed research student in the Department of Social Investigation. (CSCP)
1913. Certificate of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy.
1913-14. Senior Research Studentship (honorary). Department of Social Investigation (CSCP)
1914-15. Senior Research Studentship (honorary). Department of Social Investigation (CSCP)
1917-18.  Research assistant at Department of Social Investigation (CSCP)
1918-19. Assistant in Social Investigation (CSCP).
1919-1920. Assistant in Social Investigation (CSCP).
1920-21. Fellow in Political Economy, University of Chicago.
1922. Ph.D. University of Chicago. Thesis: The political labour movement in Great Britain, 1880-1914.
1922. Children of Wage-Earning Mothers: A Study of a Selected Group in Chicago. U.S. Department of Labor, Children’s Bureau, Publication No. 102. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1922.
1922-24. Senior Staff member, Brookings Graduate Institution of Economics, Washington, D.C.
1924-28. Member of the faculty of the Brookings Graduate Institution of Economics, Washington, D.C.
1926. Co-authored with Walton Hale Hamilton, The Case of Bituminous Coal. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1926.
1928. Co-authored with Walton Hale Hamilton, A Way of Order for Bituminous Coal. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1928.
1928. Joins University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration.
1931. Associate Professor of Social Economy, Graduate School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.
1938. Professor and Assistant Dean of the School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.
1944. Social Service in Wartime. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1942-1956. Succeeded Edith Abbott as Dean of the Social Service Administration, University of Chicago.
1950-56. Editor of the Social Service Review.
1954. Received the University of Chicago’s alumni medal.
1955. Illinois Welfare association’s annual award for outstanding service in 1955.
1956. Retired from the University of Chicago
1957-58. Chief of a technical assistance team of the Council on Social Work Education to assist the development of the schools of social work in India.
Part-time teaching at the University of Southern California.
1969, August 14. Died in Pasadena, Los Angeles, California.

 

Image Source: Helen Russell Wright’s senior year portrait in Smith College, The 1912 Class-Book, p. 56.

Categories
Chicago Economists Harvard Statistics

Harvard. Semester exams for Statistics. John Cummings, 1896-1900

 

 

 

John Cummings was awarded the first Ph.D. in political economy at the University of Chicago in 1894. His doctoral thesis was “The Poor Law system of the United States”, later published as “The Poor Laws of Massachusetts and New York.” Publications of the American Economic Association, vol. X, no. 4 (July, 1895). His first real academic job was at Harvard, after which he went to have a successful career as a statistician in government service. He was apparently quite a big name in vocational education policy by the end of his career.

This post provides the questions to all of the semester exams from the times he taught the statistics course for when he taught at his undergraduate alma mater during the last five years of the 19th century.

Life and Career of John Cummings

1868. Born May 18 in Colebrook, New Hampshire.

1887. Entered Harvard College.

1891. A.B., magna cum laude, Harvard College

1892. A.M., Harvard College

1893-94. Senior Fellow, Department of Political Economy, University of Chicago.

1894. Ph.D. in Political Economy; Reader in Political Economy, University of Chicago.

1894-1900. Instructor in Economics, Harvard University.

1900-02. Editorial staff New York Evening Post.

1902. Married Carrie R. Howe in Marion, Indiana, December 3, 1902)

1902-10. Assistant Professor in Political Economy. University of Chicago.

1910-16. Expert special agent, Census Bureau.

1917-23. Statistician, Federal Board for Vocational Education, Washington, D.C.

1924-30. Statistician and economist, Division of Research and Statistics, Federal Reserve Board.

1930-1933. Chief of Research and Statistics, Federal Board for Vocational Education, Washington, D.C.

1933-. Chief of research and statistical service, vocation education, United States Office of Education.

1936. Died , June 26.  in Washington, D.C.

Buried at the Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis, Indiana.

Sources: Obituary in Washington Post, June 27, 1936, p. 8. Also “A Tribute to Dr. Cummings” in School Life (September 1936), p. 12.

_____________________

Tribute to Memory of John Cummings

At the annual meeting of the National Committee on Research in Secondary Education, of which organization Dr. Cummings was a member, the following resolution was adopted honoring his memory:

In the passing of Dr. John Cummings, of the United States Office of Education, research lost one of its most careful and effective workers. For a period of more than 20 years, Dr. Cummings was in the forefront of development in vocational education throughout the Nation. As research expert for the Joint Congressional Committee on National Grants for Education during President Wilson’s administration, he was instrumental in providing the bases upon which the legislation known as the Smith-Hughes Act was developed. Subsequently, as Chief of the Research and Statistical Service of the Vocational Educational Division in the Federal Office of Education, he was identified closely with the expansion and improvement of services in his field of work.

Dr. Cummings had the confidence and respect of his associates. By disposition he was kindly, tolerant, and friendly. He was never too busy to help those who came to him for counsel and advice. Gentle and reserved, he was at the same time an aggressive champion of objectives and principles in which he believed. His was a brilliant mind and an indomitable spirit. The National Committee on Research in Secondary Education can pay him no better or more deserved tribute than that voiced by his chief, Dr. J. C. Wright. Assistant Commissioner for Vocational Education, when he said: “As an economist, statistician, and editor, Dr. Cummings rendered invaluable service to the cause of vocational education in the United States. He was a man of outstanding ability, brilliant mentality, and quiet, unassuming personality. The Office of Education, and more particularly the cause of vocational education, has suffered a distinct loss in his death.”

Source:  School Life, vol. 22 (April, 1937), p. 236.

_____________________

Harvard Course: Statistics

Course Description
(1897-98)

[Economics] 4. Statistics. — Applications to Social and Economic Problems. — Studies in the Movements of Population. — Theory and Method. Mon., Wed., Fri., at 11. Dr. John Cummings.

This course deals with statistical methods used in the observation and analysis of social conditions, with the purpose of showing the relation of statistical studies to Economics and Sociology, and the scope of statistical inductions. It undertakes an examination of the views entertained by various writers regarding the theory and use of statistics, and an historical and descriptive examination of the practical methods of carrying out statistical investigations. The application of statistical methods is illustrated by studies in political, fiscal, and vital statistics, in the increase and migration of population, the growth of cities, the care of criminals and paupers, the accumulation of capital, and the production and distribution of wealth.

Source: Harvard University. Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Division of History and Political Science Comprising the Departments of History and Government and Economics, 1897-98, p. 37.

_____________________

Course Enrollment 1895-96
(Half-course)

[Economics] 42. Dr. John Cummings. — Theory of Statistics. — Applications to Social and Economic Problems. — Studies in movements of population. Hf. 3 hours. 2d half-year

Total 19: 2 Graduates, 11 Seniors, 4 Juniors, 2 Sophomores.

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

 

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 4.
Year-End Final Examination.

[Divide your time equally between A. and B.]

A.
I and II may be treated as one question.

  1. What do you understand by “movement of population”? What light do Statistics throw upon the law of population as stated by Malthus?
  2. What are some of the “more striking facts and more pregnant results of the vast growth of population in Europe, America, and the British Colonies within the last half century”?

 

B.
Take five.

  1. In constructing a life table what correction must be made for abnormal age and sex distributions of the population?
  2. Define the following terms: “Mortality,” “Expectation of Life,” “Mean Duration of Life.” How should you calculate the mean duration of life from the census returns for any community?
  3. How should you calculate the economic value of a population?
  4. What are some of the inaccuracies to which censes enumerations are liable?
  5. What is the nature of a statistical law? Of what categories of social phenomena may statistical laws be formulated? In what sense are they laws? How do they bear upon freedom of the will in human conduct?
  6. How do the conditions of observation in social sciences differ from conditions of observation in the natural sciences?
  7. What do you understand by the law of criminal saturation?
  8. By what considerations should the Statistician be guided in making selection of social phenomena for investigation?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination papers, 1873-1915. Box 4, Bound volume: Examination Papers 1896-97. Papers set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics, Philosophy, Fine Arts, Architecture, and Music in Harvard College. June 1896, pp.38-39.

_____________________

Course Enrollment 1896-97
(Year-course)

[Economics] 4. Dr. John Cummings. — Theory and Methods of Statistics. — Applications to Economic and Social Questions. — Studies in the Movement of Population. 3 hours.

Total 15: 8 Seniors, 7 Juniors.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1896-1897, p. 65.

 

1896-97.
ECONOMICS 4.
Mid-Year Examination.

[Divide your time equally between A. and B.]

A.

  1. The development of scientific statistics and the statistical method as employed in the social sciences.
  2. Social and economic causes of the migratory movements which have taken place in the populations of Europe and America during this century, and the laws in accordance with which those migrations have taken place where you can formulate any.

B.
(Take five.)

  1. Rural depopulation and the growth of cities in the United States.
  2. Define: “mean after life,” “expectation of life,” “mean duration of life,” “mean age at death.” What relation does the mean age of those living bear to the mean age at death? To the mean duration of life?
  3. Anthropological tests of race vitality as applied to the American negro?
  4. Explain how the economic value of a population is effected by its age and sex distribution.
  5. The United States census: either (1) an historical account of it, or (2) an account of the work now undertaken by the Census Bureau.
  6. Explain the various methods of calculating the birth rate of a population.
  7. How far are social conditions in a community revealed in the birth rate, the death rate, the marriage rate? Of what are fluctuations in these rates evidence in each case?
  8. What do you understand by the “index of mortality”?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Mid-year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 4. Bound volume: Examination Papers, Mid-Years. 1896-97.

 

1896-97.
ECONOMICS 4.
Year-End Final Examination.

I.

  1. Give an historical account of the United States census, and a general statement of the ground covered in the census of 1890; also show how the census taking is supplemented by work done in the Department of Labor and in the statistical bureaus established in connection with the several administrative departments.
  2. Define Körösi’s “rate of natality,” and state any statistical evidence you know that the rate is affected by the standard of living.
  3. “It must, at all times, be a matter of great interest and utility to ascertain the means by which any community has attained to eminence among nations. To inquire into the progress of circumstances which have given pre-eminence to one’s own country would almost seem to be a duty….The task here pointed out has usually been left to be executed by the historian.” Porter: “The Progress of the Nation.”
    What contribution has statistics to make in the execution of this task? What do you understand to be the nature of the statistical method, and what are the legitimate objects of statistical inquiry?

II.
[Take two.]

  1. What light does statistics throw upon the “natural history of the criminal man”?
    Give Ferri’s classification of the “natural causes” of crime, and comment upon that classification. Of criminals.
    What do you understand by “rate of criminality”? By “criminal saturation”?
  2. To what extent in your opinion is suicide an evidence of degeneration in the family stock?
    Discuss the influence upon the rate of suicide of education, religious creed, race, climate and other facts of physical, political and social environment.
  3. Comment critically upon the tables relating to crime in the last five federal censuses taken in the United States.
  4. What difficulties beset a comparative study of criminality in different countries?
  5. How far is it possible to give a quantitative statement to moral and social facts?

III.
[Take one.]

  1. What are some of the more salient facts concerning the movement of population and wealth in the United States, England, and France during the present century, so far as those facts are evidenced in the production, consumption and distribution of wealth?
  2. Discuss the movement of wages and prices in the United States since 1890.
  3. What do you understand by “index figures,” “average wages,” “average prices,” and “weighted averages”?

IV.
[Take one.]

  1. How do you account for the increase in the proportion of urban to rural population during this century? What statistical evidence is there that the increased density of a population affects the mean duration of life? What importance to you attach to this evidence?
    Explain the effect of migratory movements upon the distribution of a population according to age, sex and conjugal condition, and upon the birth rate, death rate and marriage rate.
  2. Define and distinguish: “mean age at death”; “mean duration of life”; mean age of those living”; expectation of life.”
  3. The “law of population” as formulated by Malthus and by subsequent writers.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination papers, 1873-1915. Box 4, Bound volume: Examination Papers 1896-97. Papers set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics, Philosophy, Fine Arts, Architecture, and Music in Harvard College. June 1897, pp. 39-41.

_____________________

Course Enrollment 1897-98
(Year-course)

[Economics] 4. Dr. J. Cummings. — Statistics. — Applications to Economic and Social Questions. — Studies in the Movement of Population. — Theory and Method. 3 hours.

Total 18: 7 Seniors, 7 Juniors, 3 Sophomores, 1 Other.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1897-1898, p. 78.

 

1897-98.
ECONOMICS 4.
Mid-Year Examination.

[Divide your time equally between A. and B.]

A.
[Take two.]

  1. In what sense do you understand Quetelet’s assertion that “the budget of crime is an annual taxation paid with more preciseness than any other”?
    Comment upon the “element of fixity in criminal sociology.”
    What are the “three factors of crime”?
    Can you account for the “steadiness of the graver forms of crime”? for the increase or decrease of other crimes?
    Define “penal substitutes.”
    What determines the rate of criminality?
    Comment upon the tables relating to crime in the last federal census, and explain how far they enable one to estimate the amount of crime committed and the increase or decrease in that amount.
  2. Comment upon the movement of population in the U.S. as indicated in the census rates of mortality and immigration. Upon the movement of population in France and in other European countries during this century. Can you account for the decline in the rates of mortality which characterize these populations?
    Give an account of the growth of some of the large European cities and of the migratory movements of their populations. Can you account for the depopulation of rural districts which has taken place during this century?
  3. Give some account of the Descriptive School of Statisticians and of the School of Political Arithmetic.
    Of the organization and work of statistical bureaus in European countries during this century.
    Of the census bureau in the United States.

 

B.
[Take four.]

  1. What are some of the “positive” statistical evidences of vitality in a population? “negative”?
  2. Define “index of mortality.”
  3. Comment upon the density and distribution of population in the United States.
  4. What do you understand by “normal distribution of a population according to sex and age”? Define “movement of population.”
  5. Explain the various methods of estimating a population during intercensal years.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Mid-year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 4. Bound volume: Examination Papers, Mid-Years. 1897-98.

 

1897-98.
ECONOMICS 4.
End-year Examination.

Divide your time equally between A. and B.

A.

I.

“The wealth of a nation is a matter of estimate only. Certain of its elements are susceptible of being approximated more closely than others; but few of them can be given with greater certainty or accuracy than is expressed in the word ‘estimated.’” Why? State the several methods used for determining the wealth of a nation. Give some account of the increase and of the present distribution of wealth in the United States.

II.

What statistical data indicate the movement of real wages during this century? What facts have to be taken into account in determining statistically the condition of wage earners? State the several methods of calculating index numbers of wages and prices, and explain the merits of each method. Explain the use of weighted averages as indexes, and the considerations determining the weights. What has been the movement of wages and prices in the United States since 1860?

III.

Statistical data establishing a hierarchy of European races, the fundamental “laws of anthropo-sociology,” and the selective influences of migratory movements and the growth of cities.

 

B.
Take six.

  1. “I have striven with the help of biology, statistics and political economy to formulate what I consider to be the true law of population.” (Nitti.) What is this law? Is it the true law? Why?
  2. Upon what facts rests the assertion that “the fulcrum of the world’s balance of power has shifted from the West to the East, from the Mediterranean to the Pacific”?
  3. What factors determine the rate of suicide? Consider the effect upon the rate of suicide of the sex and age distribution of the population, of the social and physical environment, and of heredity.
  4. Statistical determination of labor efficiency, and the increase of such efficiency during this century.
  5. How far are statistics concerning the number of criminal offenders indicative of the amount of criminality? Statistics of prison populations? Of crimes? What variables enter in to determine the “rate of criminality”? What significance do you attach to such rates?
  6. The statistical method.
  7. Graphics as means of presenting statistical data.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination papers, 1873-1915. Box 5, Bound volume: Examination Papers 1898-99. Papers set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics, Philosophy, Fine Arts, Architecture, and Music in Harvard College. June 1898, pp.43-44.

_____________________

Course Enrollment 1898-99
(Year-course)

[Economics] 4. Dr. John Cummings. — Statistics. — Theory, method, and practice. — Studies in Demography. Lectures (3 hours) and conferences; 2 reports; theses.

Total 19: 10 Seniors, 4 Juniors, 4 Sophomores, 1 Other.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1898-1899, p. 73.

 

1898-99.
ECONOMICS 4.
Mid-Year Examination.

Devote one hour to A and the remainder of your time to B.

A.
Take two.

  1. The growth of modern cities and the laws governing the migrations of population as illustrated in the growth and constitution of the populations of London, Berlin, and other large cities.
  2. Define fully a “normal or life-table population,” considering its age and sex constitution and its movement.
  3. Discuss the development and predominance of the statistical method, and the gradual limitation of the field of statistical science.

B.
Take six.

  1. What do you understand by the “law of large numbers”?
    Discuss some of the principles which should govern the formation of statistical judgments.
  2. The “new law of population.”
  3. The value of criminal statistics and the nature of the statistical proofs that the value of punishments is over-estimated.
  4. “Several tests are employed to measure the duration of human life, and we are at present concerned to determine their precise value, and the relationship existing between them.” What are some of these tests, their precise value and inter-relationship?
  5. What is the nature of the statistical evidence that the “influx of the population from the country into London is in the main an economic movement”?
  6. The rate of mortality in urban an in rural populations.
  7. Decline in the rates of natality in the populations of Europe and the United States.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year Examination papers, 1852-1943. Box 5, Bound volume: Examination Papers. Mid-years, 1898-99.

 

 

1898-99.
ECONOMICS 4.
End-year Examination.

Devote at least one hour, but not more than one hour and a half, to A, and the remainder of your time to B.

A.

  1. Statistics of wages, manufactures, and capital in the eleventh census of the United States.
  2. Movement of population and the standard of living. Consider in connection with the growth of population and the movement of wages, prices, efficiency of labor and capital, the exploitation of new natural sources of power and wealth, and the relative movements of industrial groups.

B.
Take six.

  1. Average wages as an index of social condition.
  2. Statistical indexes of pauperism.
  3. What is the statistical basis for calculating the doubling period of a population and of what is that period an index?
  4. Define normal distribution of population (a) by sex, (b) by age.
  5. Show how the economic value of a population is affected by its age and sex distribution.
  6. To what extent may the prison population of the United States as given in the eleventh census be accepted as an index of criminality for the population of the United States?
  7. The growth of cities and the movement of population. Consider the effect of “urbanization” upon rates of criminality, natality, and mortality.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination papers, 1873-1915. Box 5, Bound volume: Examination Papers 1898-99. Papers set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics, Philosophy, Fine Arts, Architecture, and Music in Harvard College. June 1899, p.30.

_____________________

Course Enrollment 1899-1900
(Year-course)

[Economics] 4. Dr. John Cummings. — Statistics. — Theory, method, and practice. — Studies in Demography. Lectures (3 hours) and conferences; 2 reports; theses.

Total 10: 1 Graduate, 2 Seniors, 4 Juniors, 2 Sophomores, 1 Other.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1899-1900, p. 69.

 

1899-1900.
ECONOMICS 4.
Mid-Year Examination.

Devote one hour to A and the remainder of your time to B.

A.

  1. Urban growth and migration. Consider the sex and age distribution of migrants, the natural increase of urban and rural populations, and the causes of migration into urban centres. Illustrate by considering the actual conditions and movement in some one country or important urban centre.
  2. The data of criminal statistics as an index of amount of criminality. Consider the tables relating to crime in the United States census; the several statistical methods of dealing with crime and with the criminal classes; age, sex, and civil status as a factor in criminality; and the law of criminal saturation.

B.
Elect ten, and answer concisely.

  1. and 2. [counts as two questions]. Statistical measurements of agglomeration. Consider statistical methods of determining degree of concentration, also definition of the urban unit.

3. and 4. [counts as two questions]. Causes tending to make the rate of mortality lower for urban than for rural populations? causes tending to make it higher? the rate of natality?

  1. Methods of estimating population for intercensal years.
  2. Statistical laws and freedom of the will
  3. Define “life-table population.”
  4. Define carefully the following terms: “birth rate,” “rate of natality”; “rate of mortality”; death rate”; “rate of nuptialité”; “marriage rate”; index of mortality.”
  5. What do you understand by normal distribution of population by sex? by age? by civil status?
  6. Economic value of a population as effected by its age and sex distribution? by movement? by immigration?
  7. Of what statistical significance is the doubling period for any population?
  8. Can you account for the retardation in the rate of movement of population during this century?
  9. Tell when, if ever, the following terms are identical:—
    1. mean age at death.
    2. mean age of living.
    3. mean duration of life.
    4. expectation of life.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year Examination papers, 1852-1943. Box 5, Bound volume: Examination Papers. Mid-years, 1899-1900.

 

1899-1900.
ECONOMICS 4.
End-year Examination.

Divide your time equally between A and B.

A.

  1. Statistical methods of estimating wealth accumulated.
    Comment critically upon the census statistics of wealth accumulated in the United States.
  2. Statistical evidences of the progress of the working classes in the last half-century. Discuss the movement of wages and prices.
    What do you understand by “index figures,” “average wages,” “average prices,” “weighted averages”? Explain methods of weighting.
  3. The growth of cities and social election.

 

B.
Two questions may be omitted.

  1. How far are social conditions in a community revealed in the birth rate? the death rate? by the “index of mortality”? What do you understand by “movement of population”?
  2. In constructing a life table what correction must be made for abnormal age and sex distribution? Define “mortality,” “natality,” “expectation of life.” How should you calculate the “mean duration of life” from the census returns?
  3. The limit to the increase of population in the food supply? in other forms of wealth?
  4. Can you formulate any laws which will be true in general of the migrations of population?
  5. Methods of estimating population for intercensal years.
  6. Statistics of manufacturers in the United States census.
  7. How should you calculate the economic value of a population?
  8. Take one:—
    The rate of suicide as evidence of degeneration.
    The tables relating to crime in the Federal census of the United States.
  9. How far is it possible to give to moral and social facts a quantitative statement?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination papers, 1873-1915. Box 5, Bound volume: Examination Papers 1900-01. June 1900, p. 32.

Image Source: “A Tribute to Dr. Cummings” in School Life, Volume 22 (September 1936), p. 12.

Categories
Economists Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Exams for Economic Theory and Monetary Economics. R.G. Hawtrey, 1928-29

 

 

Sir Ralph Hawtrey (Fun fact: according to J.M. Keynes,  Alfred Marshall was his third cousin once removed) was given leave by the British Treasury to lecture at Harvard during the 1928-29 academic year. Full course outlines with assigned readings are not found in the Harvard University Archives collection of course syllabi and reading lists. Only the titles of the items for the end of semester reading periods for his graduate course “Principles of Money and Banking” could be found and are transcribed below. The first semester exam for “Problems in Economic Theory” and both semester exams for “Principles of Money and Banking” are included in this post.

_____________________

Problems in Economic Theory

Course Announcement.

[Economics] 15. Problems in Economic Theory

Mon., Wed., Fri., at 4. Mr. R. G. Hawtrey.

In this course less attention will be given to specific economic doctrines than to questions of the scope, methods, premises, and goal of economic science, and of its relations to logic and psychology and to the other social sciences.

Source: Division of History, Government, and Economics, 1928-29. Published in Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. XXV, No. 29 (May 26, 1928), p. 71.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Enrollment.

[Economics] 15. Mr. Hawtrey.— Problems in Economic Theory.

Total 6: 3 Graduates, 1 Senior, 2 Radcliffe.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1928-29, p. 72.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

1928-29
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 15
Mid-year examination

Five questions and ONLY FIVE should be answered

  1. How does the functioning of a market depend on dealers holding stocks of the goods dealt in?
  2. By what process does the investment market maintain equilibrium between the supply of savings and the supply of fresh capital?
  3. Jevons wrote: “By free capital I mean the wages of labour either in its transitory form of money or in its real form of food and other necessaries of life.”
    Is this an improvement on the Wages fund theory? Can you improve the statement further?
  4. Explain the relation of profit to (1) compensation for risk, (2) rent of ability, (3) quasi-rent.
  5. Why is the explanation of profit as the remuneration of management and organization incomplete?
  6. What are the chief objections to the doctrine that the end of economic activity is the maximum of total utility?
  7. Can justice in distribution be regarded as a part of the subject-matter of economics?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 11, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years, 1929. Papers printed for Mid-year Examinations in History, New Testament,…Economics,…Military Science, Naval Science, January-February, 1929.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
SPRING READING PERIOD—1928/29

Economics 15

No additional assignments.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Box 2. Folder “Economics 1928-29”.

_____________________

Principles of Money and Banking

Course Announcement.

[Economics] 38. The Principles of Money and Banking

Tu., Th., at 10, and a third hour at the pleasure of the instructor. Mr. R. G. Hawtrey.

The course is intended to afford training in analysis and research in the field of money and banking. The subject as a whole will be systematically reviewed. Selections from important writings dealing with monetary principles will be read and critically discussed.

Source: Division of History, Government, and Economics, 1928-29. Published in Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. XXV, No. 29 (May 26, 1928), p. 73.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Enrollment

[Economics] 38. Mr. Hawtrey. — Principles of Money and Banking.

Total 50: 32 Graduates, 10 Seniors, 1 Junior, 5 Radcliffe, 2 Others.

 

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1928-29, p. 73.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
MID-YEAR READING PERIOD—1928/29

Economics 38

Select two from the following list and read about 300 pages.

  1. Keynes, J.M.: Indian Currency and Finance.
  2. Burgess, W. R.: The Federal Reserve System and the Money Market.
  3. Hargreaves, E. L. : Restoring Currency Standards.
  4. Knapp: State Theory of Money.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Box 2. Folder “Economics 1928-29”.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

1928-29
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 38
Mid-year examination.

Six questions and ONLY SIX should be answered.

  1. What different meanings can be given to “velocity” in monetary theory?
  2. On what conditions can the use of gold coin be made to maintain a gold standard effectively?
  3. What are the essential functions of a bank? To what extent do they depend on the assignability of debts from one creditor to another?
  4. Why does a contraction of credit tend to cause unemployment?
  5. What circumstances determine the degree of sensitiveness of borrowers to the rate of discount or short-term interest?
  6. Upon what conditions does the power of a Central Bank to control credit depend? Is the issue of notes by the Central Bank essential?
  7. Describe the effect of external investment on the foreign exchange market.
  8. In what circumstances and to what extent will relatively high rates of discount and short-term interest attract balances from abroad for temporary investment.
  9. What is meant when London is called an international clearing centre?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 11, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years, 1929. Papers printed for Mid-year Examinations in History, New Testament,…, Economics,…Military Science, Naval Science, January-February, 1929.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
SPRING READING PERIOD—1929

Economics 38

Select two from the following list and read about 300 pages.

  1. Keynes, J.M.: Indian Currency and Finance.
  2. Burgess, W. R.: The Federal Reserve System and the Money Market.
  3. Hargreaves, E. L. : Restoring Currency Standards.
  4. Knapp: State Theory of Money.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Box 2. Folder “Economics 1928-29”.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

1928-29
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 38

Final examination.

Five questions and only five to be answered.

  1. Explain the advantages and disadvantages of the “elasticity” claimed for the fixed proportion system of gold reserve.
  2. How far is it true to say that gold reserve laws “exist to be broken”?
  3. To what extent can the phenomena of the business cycle, as experienced up to 1914, be traced to the working of the gold standard?
  4. What are the principal conditions likely to predispose a country to be the scene of a financial crisis?
  5. Compare, in respect of relative liquidity, the principal classes of assets usually held by banks. Criticise the idea of the “self-liquidating” bill.
  6. Show how speculation in the foreign exchanges may interfere with measures for the reestablishment of the gold standard in a country with an unstable currency.
  7. What grounds are there for supposing that it is practicable, through the coöperation of the central banks of gold standard countries to affect the purchasing power of gold?
  8. How, in your opinion, can the stability of the purchasing power of a currency unit best be tested statistically?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Bound volume (No. 71) Examination Papers, Finals, 1929. (Papers printed for Final Examinations in History, Church History,… , Economics,…, Military Science, Naval Science, June, 1929.

Image Source: Creative Commons image of Sir Ralph George Hawtrey by Walter Stoneman (1939) at the National Portrait Gallery.

 

Categories
Chicago Economists Salaries

Chicago. Selected salaries. Hayek visiting, Friedman as associate professor, 1946

 

 

Since economists put much store in the notion of people putting their (own or other people’s) money where their mouths are, Economics in the Rear-view Mirror provides from time to time some historical faculty salaries to shine a little light on where those professors of economics before us stood in the willingness-to-pay of their respective departments and university administrations. In this post we see how the brief visiting professorship of Friedrich Hayek and the tenured associate professorship of Milton Friedman fit into the 1946 salary structure at the Univerity of Chicago’s department of economics.

Note: For his half-quarter service Hayek was offered $2,000 (quoted in a January 23, 1945 note  from the director of the U of Chicago Press to VP E. C. Colwell). I presume the $4,000 figure includes $2,000 compensation from (or on behalf of) Stanford University.

_______________________

Comparison: Selected 1945-46 Chicago Salaries
(and recommendations for 1946-47)

Jacob Viner. $10,000
Frank Knight. $9,000 ($10,000)
S.E. Leland. $9,000 ($9,500 Note: resigned to go to Northwestern)
T.W. Schultz. $9,000 ($9,000)
John U. Nef. $8,000 ($8,000)
Jacob Marschak. $8,000 ($8,500)
Paul H. Douglas. $7,000 ($8,000)
Oscar Lange. ($6,000) ($6,000) on leave 1 Oct 1945 to 30 June 1947
Henry Simons. $6,000 ($6,000)
L. W. Mints. $5,500 ($6,000)
Tjalling Koopmans $5250 ($6,740. Note: new salary effective 1 January 1946)

Source:  “Budget and Appointment Recommendations 1946-47 (December 7, 1945)”

_______________________

Hayek’s Half-Quarter, Spring 1946

 

May 10, 1946

Mr. Robert Redfield Social Sciences
R. G. Gustavson Central Administration

On May 9, 1946 the Board of Trustees approved the following recommendations:

It is recommended that Friedrich A. Hayek be appointed Visiting Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics for the period April 8, 1946 to May 11, 1946. For this service and a similar period of service at Stanford University it is recommended that an honorarium of $4,000 be approved.

cc:
Mr. T. W. Schultz
Mr. L. A. Kimpton)      Salary not mentioned
Mrs. K. Turabian)        Salary not mentioned

 

Board—5/9/46:

It is recommended that Friedrich a. Hayek be appointed Visiting Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics for the period April 8, 1946 to May 11, 1946. For this service and a similar period of service at Stanford University it is recommended that an honorarium of $4,000 be approved.

Form sent to Comptroller—5/13/46

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Milton Friedman’s tenured associate professorship
Effective October, 1946

March 19, 1946

Mr. Robert Redfield Social Sciences
R. G. Gustavson Vice President

On March 28, 1946 the Committee on Instruction and Research approved the following recommendation:

It is recommended that Milton Friedman be appointed Associate Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics on indefinite tenure on a 4E Service basis at an annual salary of $6,000 effective October 1, 1946.

cc:
Mr. T. W. Schultz
Mr. L. A. Kimpton)      Salary not mentioned
Mrs. K. Turabian)        Salary not mentioned

 

I & R. 28 March 1946:

It is recommended that Milton Friedman be appointed Associate Professor in the Department of Economics on indefinite tenure on a 4E service basis at an annual salary of $6,000 effective October 1, 1946.

 

Source: University of Chicago Library. Department of Special Collections. Office of the President. Hutchins Administration Records. Box 284. Folder “Economics, 1943-1947”.

Image Source: National Portrait Gallery. Photographs Collection. NPG x187289. Friedrich August von Hayek by Walter Stoneman, half-plate glass negative, June 1945. The portrait has been cropped to fit the format of this webpage.
Creative Commons License Creative Commons license. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Categories
Columbia Economists Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania. Economics Ph.D. alumnus. Columbia professor Henry R. Seager, 1894

Another post in the irregular series “Meet an economics Ph.D.” Henry Rogers Seager’s education and career took him from Ann Arbor (University of Michigan) through Baltimore (Johns Hopkins University), Germany/Austria (Halle, Berlin, Vienna), and Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania before ending up in New York City (Columbia). 

______________________

Earlier posts for Henry Rogers Seager
at Economics in the Rear-View Mirror:

List of papers published as of Seager’s appointment by Columbia in 1902.

Syllabus for “The Trust Problem”, 1907.

Published Lecture on Economics, 1907-08.

Memorial minute, 1930

______________________

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Seager, Henry Rogers (July 21, 1870-Aug. 23, 1930), economist, was born in Lansing, Michigan, the son of Schuyler Fiske Seager, a lawyer, and Alice (Berry) Seager. Graduating at the University of Michigan in 1890, he did further work during the succeeding years at the Johns Hopkins University, at the Universities of Halle, Berlin, and Vienna, and at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received the Ph.D. degree in 1894. That year he was appointed instructor in economics in the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, and in 1896 he was made an assistant professor; in 1902 he became adjunct professor and in 1905, professor, in Columbia University, where he served till death. On June 5, 1899, he was married to Harriet Henderson of Philadelphia who died in 1928; their son survived him.

Seager’s training as an economist was in English classicism, in the German historical method and in the peculiar Austrian approach. His published work shows clearly the influence of each. His greatest admiration was for Simon N. Patten (q.v.), with whom he served at the University of Pennsylvania but whose influence on his thought was slight. Seager’s mind was orderly and compressive rather than brilliant and generalizing; conservatism was perhaps its distinguishing characteristic. He was solid and patient, slow to conclude, and even slower to write his conclusions. One result of this was that he was less a writing scholar than one who worked with students. Literally hundreds of dissertations passed through his careful hands at Columbia and many generations of students heard his lectures on labor and on corporation problems. Always active in meliorative activities, he assisted materially in the establishment of a system of workmen’s compensation in New York; he was a supporter of the Survey (formerly Charities and the Commons) and for many years a member of its board of directors. During the war he served as secretary of the Shipbuilding Labor Adjustment Board, and in 1919-20, he was executive secretary of the President’s Second Industrial Conference. He was one of the founders and three times president of the American Association for Labor Legislation. He was frequently consulted by philanthropists, legislators and publicists; he was a member of the editorial board) of The Political Science Quarterly, and in 1922 was president of the American Economic Association. In all these varied activities he had one purpose: to better social conditions within the framework of laissez-faire. He possessed a determined faith that this could be done and worked constantly to show the way. Melioration consisted in making changes here and there, which while not disturbing fundamental arrangements, reduced their burden on less favored individuals. Improvement consisted in legal change and a large part of his effort was always directed toward reform by legislation.

His most considerable work is Principles of Economics, first published under this title in 1913, which grew out of his Introduction to Economics (1904 and later editions [3rd edition, 1910]) and appeared in its final form [3rd edition] in 1923. The most important of his other writings are Trust and Corporation Problems (1929), with C.A. Gulick, Jr. and the posthumous volume, Labor and Other Economic Essays (1931), to which is attached his complete bibliography. Somewhat more than the final half of the Principles of Economics is devoted to essays on important problems: banking, the tariff, railroads, trusts, taxation, labor and social insurance. The theoretical section begins with a consideration of consumption, progresses through value and production, and ends with distribution. There were many books published during this period with much the same outline; but Seager’s was characterized by emphasis on all that pertained to human welfare. This led to stress on consumption and on the demand side of the value equilibrium, as well as to extra consideration of monopoly gains. The discussion of distribution was carried out within the framework of the “specific productivity” analysis but with more than usual weight given to such subjective influences as the balancing, in consumers’ and producers’ minds, of marginal disutilities over against marginal utilities. The conclusions were usually optimistic. Seager believed in progress and believed that, under the going system, it was being achieved. He felt, for instance, that capital goods were multiplying more rapidly than population and that this would tend to raise standards of living. He did not believe, however, that the possibilities of progress which inhere in the system insure automatic betterment. Groups of interested people, with journals and propaganda, need to be vigilant in the public interest. This duty of the good citizen, as Seager saw it, was best exemplified in his own career. He never became aware of a duty that he did not forthwith perform. In his posthumous Labor and Other Economic Essays his program is outlined: “The two great objects to be aimed at are: 1. To protect wage-earners in the continued enjoyment of standards of living to which they are already accustomed. II. To assist them to attain to higher standards of living” (p.131). The contingencies which were the principal threats to existing standards were “(1) industrial accidents, (2) illness, (3) invalidity and old age, (4) premature death, (5) unemployment” (ibid.) All these, Seager felt, were legitimate objects of collective action. As for raising standards, this was largely dependent on industrial advance and on better education.

To all persons of Seager’s generation the rather the sudden rise of a complete alternative system in Russia offered a shock to which adjustment was necessarily slow. Because everything there was so antithetical to the system to which so many theoretical hostages had been given, the immediate impulse was to belittle Soviet accomplishments. Seager was exposed to the full force of the new ideas. Gradually they gained weight in his mind until at last his essential honesty compelled, not acceptance, but exploration. In 1930, with a group of companions, he undertook a journey to the scene of these new economic adventures, in the midst of which he was taken ill. He died in Kiev of pneumonia, August 23, 1930. He was thus lost to the world at the close of an old period and the beginning of a new one. His identification with economy of the opening decades of the nineteenth century was a fortuitous one, but his progress into the new years cannot be said to have fairly started. He remains an economist of laissez-faire, of more than usual significance in foreshadowing the ameliorative program which so soon became a center of Interest.

Source: Cornell University Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives. Henry R. Seager Research Notes and Monographs (Collection Number: 5249).

Image Source: From a 1915 portrait of Henry Rogers Seager at Wikiwand. Includes a survey of his books.

Categories
Economists Harvard

Harvard. Life and works of political economy and philosophy professor Francis Bowen (1811-1890).

 

This post is dedicated to the life and works of Harvard professor Francis Bowen who taught political economy courses when not teaching philosophy and constitutional law courses decades before economics became an established department of its own. The biography comes from a reference work published at the turn of the 20th century “Universities and their Sons”. I managed to add links to all of the works by Bowen cited in the biographical article transcribed below. 

Here a less than flattering description of Francis Bowen’s pedagogical style with respect to political economy written by Harvard President Charles W. Eliot looking back to the start of his election in 1869.

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Exams for courses of Francis Bowen
transcribed at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror

1867-68

Seniors, Political Economy, January 1868

1868-69

Seniors, Political Economy, June 1869

1869-70

Seniors, First-term. Political Economy, December 1869.

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BOWEN, Francis, 1811-1890.

Born in Charlestown, Mass., 1811; graduate of Harvard, 1833; Instructor in Intellectual Philosophy and Political Economy at the same Institution, 1835-1839; Editor and Proprietor of the North American Review; delivered Lowell Institute Lectures in Boston; succeeded Dr. Walker in the Alford Professorship at Harvard; and “Emeritus” Professor at the time of his death, (1890).

FRANCIS BOWEN, LL.D., Alford Professor at Harvard, was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, September 8, 1811. He was graduated at Harvard in 1833, two years later becoming Instructor in Natural Philosophy and Political Economy. While studying in Europe (1839-1841) he formed the acquaintance of such noted scholars as Sismondi and De Gerando. Returning to Cambridge, he, in 1843, took charge of the North American Review, as Editor and proprietor, and conducted that magazine for nearly eleven years. During the years 1848-1849 he lectured before the Lowell Institute, Boston, on the application of Metaphysical and Ethical Science to the Evidences of Religion. On account of his having taken the unpopular side in the Review on the “Hungarian Question,” the Board of Overseers of Harvard would not concur with the Corporation in appointing him to the McLean Professorship of History in 1850. In the winter of that year he again lectured before the Lowell Institute on Political Economy, and in 1852 his subjects were the Origin and Development of the English and American Constitutions. Upon the election of Dr. Walker to the Presidency of Harvard (1853), Mr. Bowen received almost unanimous confirmation by the Overseers as Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy and Civil Polity, holding that Chair continuously until 1888, when he became Professor “Emeritus.” He was also for some time the Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Phillips-Exeter Academy. His subsequent Lowell Institute lectures were devoted to the English metaphysicians and philosophers from Bacon to Sir William Hamilton. Professor Bowen died in 1890. He was a fellow of the American Academy and a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society. His published works consist of: Virgil, with English notes; Critical Essays on the History and Present Condition of Speculative Philosophy; Lowell Lectures; an abridged edition of Dugald Stewart’s Philosophy of the Human Mind; Documents of the Constitution of England and America, from Magna Charta to the Federal Constitution of 1789; the lives of Steuben, Otis, and Benjamin Lincoln, in Sparks’ American Biography; Principles of Political Economy Applied to the Condition, Resources and Institutions of the American People; a revised edition of Reeve’s translation of de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America; a Treatise on Logic; American Political Economy, with remarks on the finances since the beginning of the Civil War; Modern Philosophy, from Descartes to Schopenhauer and Hartmann; Gleanings from a Literary Life, 1838-1880; and A Layman’s Study of the English Bible, considered in its Literary and Secular Aspect.

Source: “Francis Bowen” in Universities and their sons. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, ed. Vol. 2 (Boston: R. Herndon Company, 1900), pp. 144-145.

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Links to Bowen’s Work Cited

Virgil, with English Notes (Boston: David H. Williams, 1842).

Critical Essays on the History and Present Condition of Speculative Philosophy (Boston: H.B. Williams, 1842).

Lowell Lectures on the Application of Metaphysical and Ethical Science to the Evidences of Religion. Lectures at the Lowell Institute, Winters of 1848-49. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1849).

Abridged edition of Dugald Stewart’s [Elements of the] Philosophy of the Human Mind (Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1859).

Documents of the Constitution of England and America, from Magna Charta to the Federal Constitution of 1789(Cambridge, MA: John Bartlett, 1854).

The lives of Baron Steuben (Vol. 9), Sir William Phips, (Vol. 7), James Otis (Vol. 2), and Benjamin Lincoln, (Second Series, Vol. 13) in Jared Sparks, ed. The Library of American Biography.

The Principles of Political Economy applied to the Condition, the Resources, and the Institutions of the American People (2ndedition, 1859).

Revised edition of Reeve’s translation of de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Volume I (2nd ed., 1863); Volume II (2nd ed., 1863). Cambridge: Sever and Francis.

A Treatise on Logic. (Cambridge, MA: Sever and Francis, 1864)

American Political Economy; including Strictures of the Currency and the Finances since 1861 ((New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1870). 

Modern Philosophy, from Descartes to Schopenhauer and Hartmann (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1877).

Gleanings from a Literary Life, 1838-1880 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1880), in which are reprinted:

A minority Report on the Silver Question. Presented to the Senate of the United States, in April, 1877

The Perpetuity of National Debt. A suppressed Chapter of Political Economy, read before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in March, 1868

The Financial Conduct of the War. A Lecture delivered before the Lowell Institute, in Boston, in November, 1865.

The Utility and the Limitations of the Science of Political Economy. From the Christian Examiner for March, 1838.

A Layman’s Study of the English Bible, considered in its Literary and Secular Aspect (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1885).

 

Image Source: “Francis Bowen” in Universities and their sons. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, ed. Vol. 2 (Boston: R. Herndon Company, 1900), p. 144.

 

 

 

 

Categories
AEA Bibliography Economists Johns Hopkins

Johns Hopkins. Life and career of economics Ph.D. (1901) alumnus, George Ernest Barnett

 

The economist George E. Barnett (b. 19 February 1873; d. 17 June 1938) was briefly glimpsed in the previous post as one of three colleagues who covered the undergraduate course offerings in economics at the Johns Hopkins University in 1919-20. Unlike many an economics professor who has gone on to relative obscurity, Barnett actually served a term as President of the American Economic Association (1932) that should have been sufficient to double the half-life of his afterlife. Barnett even served on an advisory committee for the director of the national census.

To partially fill in the historical blank, today’s post provides a local obituary that reported Barnett’s suicide, presumably related to a severe, chronic illness. Links to books mentioned in his obituary and a Johns Hopkins’ bibiliography up through 1913 have been included as well. Apparently a more complete bibliography was prepared in 1938.

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J.H.U. Teacher Dies of Wound; Had Been Ill
Dr. George E. Barnett Is Found In Apartment, Pistol Near By
Succumbs at Hospital. Was Expert on Labor Problems, Statistics

Dr. George Ernest Barnett, 65 years old, professor of statistics at the Johns Hopkins University and an international authority on labor problems, was found fatally wounded in the bathroom of his third-floor apartment at 827 Park avenue early today. A .38-caliber revolver lay on the floor near by.

An ambulance was summoned and he was taken to the Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he was pronounced dead a short time later.

Found by Friend

The wounded professor was found by a friend, Dr. Lucien Brun, a dentist with offices on the first floor of the apartment building, and the latter’s secretary. Dr. Brun told Sergt. Lawrence Stevens, Central district officer who investigated the case, that he knew Dr. Barnett had been ill for some time.

The dentist said when he heard a shot from upstairs he and his secretary rushed up to find Dr. Barnett slumped on the floor, a bullet wound in his temple.

Born in Cambridge, Md.

A native of Cambridge, Md., Dr. Barnett graduated from Randolph-Macon College in 1891 with his bachelor’s degree, and was presented with his doctorate by the Johns Hopkins University in 1902 [sic, 1901 appears correct] after teaching school for some years in North Carolina.

He served as instructor, associate and associate professor in economics from 1901 to 1911. Made a full professor in 1911, he has made a special study of labor problems since that time. His studies of labor in the Antipodes were undertaken because he felt the federation type of government in these two countries was so similar to that of the United States that such studies would be appropriate and helpful.

Member of Faculty 37 Years

Dr. Barnett had been a member of the Hopkins faculty for thirty-seven years and had lived for many years at the Park avenue address. His brilliant conversational abilities and his amiable personality had won him hundreds of friends among students, colleagues and a wide circle of Baltimoreans.

His specialization in the field of labor, unionism, arbitration and other labor problems had made him widely known as a scholar and led to his final assignment—a trip to New Zealand and Australia to study the labor arbitration court systems in use in the antipodes.

Granted a year’s leave of absence from the university, he went to New Zealand to begin his studies. He was stricken with a fever, however, and upon medical advice returned to Baltimore to undergo treatment. He remained at the Hopkins Hospital for a time, then moved back into his apartment.

His portly figure was a familiar one as he walked along North Charles street between his residence, the University Club, and the Johns Hopkins University. For many years it was his custom to walk the distance daily, often stopping to talk to a wide range of acquaintances.

Active in Club’s Affairs

For many years, too, he had been a member of the University Club, having his meals there and taking an active part in the affairs of the club.

He was a member of the Hopkins Faculty Club, and the Academic Council of the university.

Dr. Barnett is survived by two brothers, D’Arcy Barnett, of Caldwell, N. J., and Charles Barnett, of Cambridge, Md.

A member of the American Economic Association, the American Statistical Association and the American Association for Labor Legislation, Dr. Barnett has published numerous books in his field.

Wrote Numerous Books

He was the author of “State Banking in the United States,” in 1902; “The Printers,” in 1909; “State Banks and Trust Companies,” in 1911; “Mediation, Investigation and Arbitration in Industrial Disputes,” in 1916, with D. A. McCabe, and “Machinery and Labor,” in 1926.

He also edited “A Trial Bibliography of American Trade Union Publications” in 1904 and was coeditor of “Studies in American Trade Unionism” in 1906. He was a member of the University Club.

Source: The Evening Sun (Baltimore, MD), June 17, 1938

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Barnett, George Ernest.
Bibliography through 1913

A. B., Randolph-Macon College, 1891; fellow in political economy, Johns Hopkins, 1899-1900; instructor in political economy, 1900-1904; Ph. D., 1902 [sic, 1901 appears to be the correct year]; associate in political economy, 1904-1907; associate professor of political economy, 1907-1911; professor of statistics, 1911 —; co-editor of Johns Hopkins Studies, 1908 —. Marshall Prize, Johns Hopkins, 1910.

State Banking in the United States since the Passage of the National Bank Act (J. H. U. Studies, ser. xx, nos. 2-3).

A Method of Determining the Jewish Population of Large Cities in the United States (Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, 1902, no. 10, pp. 37-45).

The Jewish Population of Maryland (American Jewish Year Book, 1902-1903, pp. 46-62).

The Economic Position of Germany (J. H. U. Circular, p. 80, June, 1902).

The Maryland Workmen’s Compensation Act (Quarterly Journal of Economics, xvi, 591-594, August, 1902).

A Working Bibliography of Trade Unions (J. H. U. Circular, pp. 36-37, April, 1903).

Editor, A Trial Bibliography of American Trade-Union Publications (J. H. U. Studies, ser. xxii, nos. 1-2. Second edition, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press. 1907. Pp.139).

Shop Rules of the International Typographical Union ( J. H. U. Circular, pp. 3-8, May, 1904).

The Introduction of the Linotype (Yale Review, xiii, 251-273, November, 1904).

________ and J. H. Hollander, editors. The Economic Seminary, 1904-1905, 1905-1906, 1906-1907, 1907-1908, 1908-1909, 1909-1910, 1910-1911 (J. H. U. Circular, June, 1905, March, 1906, April, 1907, May, 1908, April, 1909, April, 1910, April, 1911).

The End of the Maryland Workmen’s Compensation Act (Quarterly Journal of Economics, xix, 320-322, February, 1905).

The Origin of the Constitution of the Typographical Union (J. H. U. Circular, pp. 3-6, June, 1905). and J. H. Hollander, editors. Studies in American Trade Unionism (New York: H. Holt and Co. 1906. Pp. v, 380).

The Government of the Typographical Union (Studies in American Trade Unionism, pp. 13-41).

Collective Bargaining in the Typographical Union (Studies in American Trade Unionism, pp. 153-182).

The Standard Wage as a Bargaining Device (J. H. U. Circular, pp. 7-11, March, 1906).

The Budget of the Typographical Union (J. H. U. Circular, pp. 9-12, April, 1907).

Territorial Jurisdiction of the International Typographical Union (J. H. U. Circular, pp. 11-18, May, 1908).

The Printers; A Study in American Trade Unionism (American Economic Association Quarterly, third ser., vol. x, no. 3. Pp. vii, 387. Marshall Prize).

Labor Organization in the South (The South in the Building of the Nation, v, 144-146, vi, 36-40. Richmond, Va.: The Southern Historical Publication Society. [c1909-1913] ).

The State Finances of North Carolina (The South in the Building of the Nation, v, 529-532, vi, 507-511).

Economic Statistics in the South (The South in the Building of the Nation, v, 563-564, vi, 542-545).

The Piece System of Remuneration in the Printing Trade (J. H. U. Circular, pp. 5-11, April, 1909 ).

The Growth of State Banks and Trust Companies (Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, xxxvi, 613-625, November, 1910).

The “One Man Office” and the Typographical Union (J. H. U. Circular, pp. 8-15, April, 1910).

State Banks and Trust Companies since the Passage of the National Bank Act (Publications of National Monetary Commission. 61st Cong., 3d sess. Sen. Doc. No. 659. Pp.366).

Recent Tendencies in State Banking Legislation (Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York, i, 270-284).

The Breaking Down of the Distinctions between the Classes of Banks in the United States (J. H. U. Circular, pp. 8-12, April, 1911).

National and District Systems of Collective Bargaining in the United States (Quarterly Journal of Economics, xxvi, 425-443, May, 1912).

A Documentary History of American Labor (Political Science Quarterly, xxvii, 298-304, June, 1912).

The Dominance of the National Union in American Labor Organization (Quarterly Journal of Economics, xxvii, 455-481, May, 1913).

 

Source: Publications of Members and Graduates of the Departments of History, Political Economy, and Political Science, 1901-1915 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1915), pp. 9-11.

Note: [have not consulted yet]
Lavarello, Angela. Bibliography of the writings of George E. Barnett (Baltimore: Typescript (7 leaves), 1938).  Copy at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Image Source: From a portrait of George Ernest Barnett at Johns Hopkins University graphic and pictorial collection.

Categories
Bryn Mawr Columbia Economists Gender

Columbia. Economics Ph.D. alumna. Mildred B. Northrop, 1938

 

For this post I have put together a timeline for the life and career of the Columbia University economics Ph.D (1938), Mildred Benedict Northrop. Other than her dissertation (cited below), I could find little of substantive research by her. Nonetheless she did attract an obituary notice by the New York Times (see below) and I was able to find an instance of Congressional testimony given by her in 1948:

United States Senate. Eightieth Congress, Second Session. Extending Authority to Negotiate Trade Agreements. Hearings before the Committee on Finance on H. R. 6566. Washington, D.C.: June 1-5, 1948. [Incidentally Alger Hiss testified at those hearings.]

During the twenty-five years that she was on the faculty at Bryn Mawr College, Northrop taught a broad portfolio of courses that included industrial organization, Keynesian macroeconomics, international economics, comparative economic organization, history of economic thought, and development of underdeveloped areas.

For a backgrounder on women researchers at Bryn Mawr before Mildred Northrop, see:

Mary Ann Dzuback. Women and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College, 1915-40. History of Education Quarterly,  Vol. 33, No. 4, Special Issue on the History of Women and Education (Winter, 1993), pp. 579-608.

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Mildred Benedict Northrop, life and career

1899. July 12. Born in Kansas City, Missouri.

1922. A.B. University of Missouri

From University of Missouri yearbook: 1922 Savitar, p. 55.

1923. A.M. University of Missouri

1923-26. Executive Secretary of the Social Service League, Easton, Pennsylvania

1926-31. Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Economics and Sociology, Hood College

1931-34. Instructor in Economics, Hunter College

1934-35. Fellow of The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.

1935-38. Division of Research and Statistics, United States Treasury Department

1938. Ph.D., Columbia University. Thesis adviser: James W. Angell

Published Ph.D. dissertation Control Policies of the Reichsbank, 1924-1933 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938).

1938-39. Lecturer in Economics, Bryn Mawr College

1939-41. Assistant Professor in Economics, Bryn Mawr College

1941. Associate Professor (elect), Bryn Mawr College

War service: chief of export-import branch of the War Production Board; Foreign Economic Administration

1945-46. Adviser to State Department’s Office of Finance and Development Policy

1946-47. Acting Director of the Carola Woerishoffer Graduate Department of Social Economy and Social Research, Bryn Mawr College

1948-49. Professor (elect), Bryn Mawr College

1949-. Professor, Bryn Mawr College

1949-50. Leave of absence.

1963. November 19. Died in Bryn Mawr. According to the coroner’s report (November 20, 1963), the immediate cause of death was pneumonia that was due to burns to over 30% of her body resulting from a fire from smoking in bed.

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Mildred Benedict Northrop, Ph.D., Assistant Professor and Associate Professor-elect of Economics.

A.B. University of Missouri 1922 and M.A. 1923; Ph.D. Columbia University 1938. Executive Secretary of the Social Service League, Easton, Pennsylvania, 1923-26; Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Economics and Sociology, Hood College, 1926-31; Instructor in Economics, Hunter College, 1931-34; Fellow of The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., 1934-35; Division of Research and Statistics, United States Treasury Department, 1935-38. Lecturer in Economics, Bryn Mawr College, 1938-39, Assistant Professor, 1939-41 and Associate Professor-elect 1941.

Source: Bryn Mawr College Catalogue and Calendar, 1941-1943, p. 20.

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Northrop’s entry in the AEA Handbook, 1956

NORTHROP, Mildred Benedict, Bryn Mawr Col., Bryn Mawr, Pa. (1942) Bryn Mawr Col. Prof., teach., dept. head, res.; b. 1899; A.B., 1922, M.A., 1923, Missouri; Ph.D., 1938, Columbia. Fields 9ab, 3b, 2c. Doc. Dis. Control policies of the Reichsbank, 1924-33 (Columbia Univ. Press, 1938). Dir. Amer. Men of Sci., III, Dir. Of Amer. Schol.

Source: Handbook of the American Economic Association in American Economic Review, Vol. 47, No. 4 (July, 1956), p. 220.

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Obituary. New York Times.

Dr. Mildred B. Northrop, Economist at Bryn Mawr.

Bryn Mawr, Pa., Nov. 19—Dr. Mildred B. Northrop, chairman of the department of economics at Bryn Mawr College, died today in Bryn Mawr Hospital after a brief illness.

Dr. Northrop joined the Bryn Mawr faculty in 1938. She taught previously at Hood and Hunter Colleges.

She was born in Kansas City, Mo., and was graduated from the University of Missouri in 1922. The following year she earned a master’s degree there. She received her doctorate from Columbia University in 1938.

During World War II, Dr. Northrop was chief of the export-import branch of the War Production Board and an adviser to the Foreign Economic Administration. In 1945 and 1946 she was adviser to the State Department’s Office of Finance and Development Policy.

Dr. Northrop is survived by a brother Eugene S. Northrop, of Darien, Conn., and a sister, Mrs. Robert D. Ayars of Cuernavaca, Mexico.

Source: New York Times (November 20, 1963), p. 43.

Image Source: Bryn Mawr Yearbook 1942.