Category: Economists

Categories
Cambridge Chicago Columbia Economists Germany Harvard History of Economics Johns Hopkins LSE Oxford Teaching Undergraduate Wisconsin Yale

Survey of Economics Education. Colleges and Universities (Seligman), Schools (Sullivan), 1911

 

In V. Orval Watt’s papers at the Hoover Institution archives (Box 8) one finds notes from his Harvard graduate economics courses (early 1920s). There I found the bibliographic reference to the article transcribed below. The first two parts of this encyclopedia entry were written by Columbia’s E.R.A. Seligman who briefly sketched the history of economics and then presented a survey of the development of economics education at  colleges and universities in Europe and the United States. Appended to Seligman’s contribution was a much shorter discussion of economics education in the high schools of the United States by the high-school principal,  James Sullivan, Ph.D.

_________________________

 

ECONOMICS
— History —

Edwin R. A. Seligman, Ph.D., LL.D.
Professor of Political Economy, Columbia University

The science now known as Economics was for a long time called Political Economy. This term is due to a Frenchman — Montchrétien, Sieur de Watteville — who wrote in 1615 a book with that title, employing a term which had been used in a slightly different sense by Aristotle. During the Middle Ages economic questions were regarded very largely from the moral and theological point of view, so that the discussions of the day were directed rather to a consideration of what ought to be, than of what is.

The revolution of prices in the sixteenth century and the growth of capital led to great economic changes, which brought into the foreground, as of fundamental importance, questions of commerce and industry. Above all, the breakdown of the feudal system and the formation of national states emphasized the considerations of national wealth and laid stress on the possibility of governmental action in furthering national interests. This led to a discussion of economic problems on a somewhat broader scale, — a discussion now carried on, not by theologians and canonists, but by practical business men and by philosophers interested in the newer political and social questions. The emphasis laid upon the action of the State also explains the name Political Economy. Most of the discussions, however, turned on the analysis of particular problems, and what was slowly built up was a body of practical precepts rather than of theoretic principles, although, of course, both the rules of action and the legislation which embodied them rested at bottom on theories which were not yet adequately formulated.

The origin of the modern science of economics, which may be traced back to the third quarter of the eighteenth century, is due to three fundamental causes. In the first place, the development of capitalistic enterprise and the differentiation between the laborer and the capitalist brought into prominence the various shares in distribution, notably the wages of the laborer, the profits of the capitalist, and the rent of the landowner. The attempt to analyze the meaning of these different shares and their relation to national wealth was the chief concern of the body of thinkers in France known as Physiocrats, who also called themselves Philosophes-Économistes, or simply Économistes, of whom the court physician of Louis XVI, Quesnay, was the head, and who published their books in 1757-1780.

The second step in the evolution of economic science was taken by Adam Smith (q.v.). In the chair of philosophy at the University of Glasgow, to which Adam Smith was appointed in 1754, and in which he succeeded Hutcheson, it was customary to lecture on natural law in some of its applications to politics. Gradually, with the emergence of the more important economic problems, the same attempt to find an underlying natural explanation for existing phenomena was extended to the sphere of industry and trade; and during the early sixties Adam Smith discussed these problems before his classes under the head of “police.” Finally, after a sojourn in France and an acquaintance with the French ideas, Adam Smith developed his general doctrines in his immortal work. The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. When the industrial revolution, which was just beginning as Adam Smith wrote, had made its influence felt in the early decades of the nineteenth century, Ricardo attempted to give the first thorough analysis of our modern factory system of industrial life, and this completed the framework of the structure of economic science which is now being gradually filled out.

The third element in the formation of modern economics was the need of elaborating an administrative system in managing the government property of the smaller German and Italian rulers, toward the end of the eighteenth century. This was the period of the so-called police state when the government conducted many enterprises which are now left in private hands. In some of the German principalities, for instance, the management of the government lands, mines, industries, etc., was assigned to groups of officials known as chambers. In their endeavor to elaborate proper methods of administration these chamber officials and their advisors gradually worked out a system of principles to explain the administrative rules. The books written, as well as the teaching chairs founded, to expound these principles came under the designation of the Chamber sciences (Camiralia or Cameral-Wissenschaften) — a term still employed to-day at the University of Heidelberg. As Adam Smith’s work became known in Germany and Italy by translations, the chamber sciences gradually merged into the science of political economy.

Finally, with the development of the last few decades, which has relegated to the background the administrative and political side of the discipline, and has brought forward the purely scientific character of the subject, the term Political Economy has gradually given way to Economics.

Development of Economic Teaching

Edwin R. A. Seligman, Ph.D., LL.D.
Professor of Political Economy, Columbia University

— Europe —

As has been intimated in the preceding section, the first attempts to teach what we to-day would call economics were found in the European universities which taught natural law, and in some of the Continental countries where the chamber sciences were pursued. The first independent chairs of political economy were those of Naples in 1753, of which the first incumbent was (Genovesi, and the professorship of cameral science at Vienna in 1763, of which the first incumbent was Sonnenfels. It was not, however, until the nineteenth century that political economy was generally introduced as a university discipline. When the new University of Berlin was created in 1810, provision was made for teaching in economics, and this gradually spread to the other German universities. In France a chair of economics was established in 1830 in the Collège de France, and later on in some of the technical schools; but economics did not become a part of the regular university curriculum until the close of the seventies, when chairs of political economy were created in the faculties of law, and not, as was customary in the other Continental countries, in the faculties of philosophy. In England the first professorship of political economy was that instituted in 1805 at Haileybury College, which trained the students for the East India service. The first incumbent of this chair was Malthus. At University College, London, a chair of economics was established in 1828, with McCulloch as the first incumbent; and at Dublin a chair was founded in Trinity College in 1832 by Archbishop Whately; at Oxford a professorship was established in 1825, with Nassau W. Senior as the first incumbent. His successors were Richard Whately (1830), W. F. Lloyd (1836), H. Merivale (1838), Travers Twiss (1842), Senior (1847), G. K. Richards (1852), Charles Neate (1857), Thorold Rogers (1862), Bonamy Price (1868), Thorold Rogers (1888). and F. Y. Edgeworth (1891). At Cambridge the professorship dates from 1863, the first incumbent being Henry Fawcett, who was followed by Alfred Marshall in 1884 and by A. C. Pigou in 1908. In all these places, however, comparatively little attention was paid at first to the teaching of economics, and it was not until the close of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth that any marked progress was made, although the professorship at King’s College, London, dates back to 1859, and that at the University of Edinburgh to 1871. Toward the close of the nineteenth century, chairs in economics were created in the provincial universities, especially at Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Bristol, Durham, and the like, as well as in Scotland and Wales; and a great impetus to the teaching of economics was given by the foundation, in 1895, of the London School of Economics, which has recently been made a part of the University of London.

— United States —

Economics was taught at first in the United States, as in England, by incumbents of the chair of philosophy; but no especial attention was paid to the study, and no differentiation of the subject matter was made. The first professorship in the title of which the subject is distinctively mentioned was that instituted at Columbia College, New York, where John McVickar, who had previously lectured on the subject under the head of philosophy, was made professor of moral philosophy and political economy in 1819. In order to commemorate this fact, Columbia University established some years ago the McVickar professorship of political economy. The second professorship in the United States was instituted at South Carolina College, Columbia, S. C, where Thomas Cooper, professor of chemistry, had the subject of political economy added to the title of his chair in 1826. A professorship of similar sectional influence was that in political economy, history, and metaphysics filled in the College of William and Mary in 1827, by Thomas Roderick Dew (1802-1846). The separate professorships of political economy, however, did not come until after the Civil War. Harvard established a professorship of political economy in 1871; Yale in 1872; and Johns Hopkins in 1876.

The real development of economic teaching on a large scale began at the close of the seventies and during the early eighties. The newer problems bequeathed to the country by the Civil War were primarily economic in character. The rapid growth of industrial capitalism brought to the front a multitude of questions, whereas before the war well-nigh the only economic problems had been those of free trade and of banking, which were treated primarily from the point of view of partisan politics. The newer problems that confronted the country led to the exodus of a number of young men to Germany, and with their return at the end of the seventies and beginning of the eighties, chairs were rapidly multiplied in all the larger universities. Among these younger men were Patten and James, who went to the University of Pennsylvania; Clark, of Amherst and later of Columbia; Farnam and Hadley of Yale; Taussig of Harvard; H. C. Adams of Michigan; Mayo-Smith and Seligman of Columbia; and Ely of Johns Hopkins. The teaching of economics on a university basis at Johns Hopkins under General Francis A. Walker helped to create a group of younger scholars who soon filled the chairs of economics throughout the country. In 1879 the School of Political Science at Columbia was inaugurated on a university basis, and did its share in training the future teachers of the country. Gradually the teaching force was increased in all the larger universities, and chairs were started in the colleges throughout the length and breadth of the land.

At the present time, most of the several hundred colleges in the United States offer instruction in the subject, and each of the larger institutions has a staff of instructors devoted to it. At institutions like Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Chicago, and Wisconsin there are from six to ten professors of economics and social science, together with a corps of lecturers, instructors, and tutors.

Teaching of Economics in the American Universities. — The present-day problems of the teaching of economics in higher institutions of learning are seriously affected by the transition stage through which these institutions are passing. In the old American college, when economics was introduced it was taught as a part of the curriculum designed to instill general culture. As the graduate courses were added, the more distinctly professional and technical phases of the subject were naturally emphasized. As a consequence, both the content of the course and the method employed tended to differentiate. But the unequal development of our various institutions has brought great unclearness into the whole pedagogical problem. Even the nomenclature is uncertain. In one sense graduate courses may be opposed to undergraduate courses; and if the undergraduate courses are called the college courses, then the graduate courses should be called the university courses. The term “university,” however, is coming more and more, in America at least, to be applied to the entire complex of the institutional activities, and the college proper or undergraduate department is considered a part of the university. Furthermore, if by university courses as opposed to college courses we mean advanced, professional, or technical courses, a difficulty arises from the fact that the latter year or years of the college course are tending to become advanced or professional in character. Some institutions have introduced the combined course, that is, a combination of so-called college and professional courses; other institutions permit students to secure their baccalaureate degree at the end of three or even two and a half years. In both cases, the last year of the college will then cover advanced work, although in the one case it may be called undergraduate, and in the other graduate, work.

The confusion consequent upon this unequal development has had a deleterious influence on the teaching of economics, as it has in many other subjects. In all our institutions we find a preliminary or beginners’ course in economics, and in our largest institutions we find some courses reserved expressly for advanced or graduate students. In between these, however, there is a broad field, which, in some institutions, is cultivated primarily from the point of view of graduates, in others from the point of view of undergraduates, and in most cases is declared to be open to both graduates and undergraduates. This is manifestly unfortunate. For, if the courses, are treated according to advanced or graduate methods, they do not fulfill their proper function as college studies. On the other hand, if they are treated as undergraduate courses, they are more or less unsuitable for advanced or graduate students. In almost all of the American institutions the same professors conduct both kinds of courses. In only one institution, namely, at Columbia University, is the distinction between graduate and undergraduate courses in economics at all clearly drawn, although even there not with precision. At Columbia University, of the ten professors who are conducting courses in economics and social science, one half have seats only in the graduate faculties, and do no work at all in the college or undergraduate department; but even there, these professors give a few courses, which, while frequented to an overwhelming extent by graduate students, are open to such undergraduates as may be declared to be advanced students.

It is necessary, therefore, to distinguish, in principle at least, between the undergraduate or college courses properly so-called, and the university or graduate courses. For it is everywhere conceded that at the extremes, at least, different pedagogical methods are appropriate.

The College or Undergraduate Instruction. — Almost everywhere in the American colleges there is a general or preliminary or foundation course in economics. This ordinarily occupies three hours a week for the entire year, or five hours a week for the semester, or half year, although the three-hour course in the fundamental principles occasionally continues only for a semester. The foundation of such a course is everywhere textbook work, with oral discussion, or quizzes, and frequent tests. Where the number of students is small, this method can be effectively employed; but where, as in our larger institutions, the students attending this preliminary course are numbered by the hundreds, the difficulties multiply. Various methods are employed to solve these difficulties. In some cases the class attends as a whole at a lecture which is given once a week by the professor, while at the other two weekly sessions the class is divided into small sections of from twenty to thirty, each of them in charge of an instructor who carries on the drill work. In a few instances, these sections are conducted in part by the same professor who gives the lecture, in part by other professors of equal grade. In other cases where this forms too great a drain upon the strength of the faculty, the sections are put in the hands of younger instructors or drill masters. In other cases, again, the whole class meets for lecture purposes twice a week, and the sections meet for quiz work only once a week. Finally, the instruction is sometime carried on entirely by lectures to the whole class, supplemented by numerous written tests.

While it cannot be said that any fixed method has yet been determined, there is a growing consensus of opinion that the best results can be reached by the combination of one general lecture and two quiz hours in sections. The object of the general lecture is to present a point of view from which the problems may be taken up, and to awaken a general interest in the subject among the students. The object of the section work is to drill the students thoroughly in the principles of the science; and for this purpose it is important in a subject like economics to put the sections as far as possible in the hands of skilled instructors rather than of recent graduates.

Where additional courses are offered to the Undergraduates, they deal with special subjects in the domain of economic history, statistics, and practical economics. In many such courses good textbooks are now available, and especially in the last class of subject is an attempt is being made here and there to introduce the case system as utilized in the law schools. This method is, however, attended by some difficulties, arising from the fact that the materials used so quickly become antiquated and do not have the compelling force of precedent, as is the case in law. In the ordinary college course, therefore, chief reliance must still be put upon the independent work and the fresh illustrations that are brought to the classroom by the instructor.

In some American colleges the mistake has been made of introducing into the college curriculum methods that are suitable only to the university. Prominent among these are the exclusive use of the lecture system, and the employment of the so-called seminar. This, however, only tends to confusion. On the other hand, in some of the larger colleges the classroom work is advantageously supplemented by discussions and debates in the economics club, and by practical exercises in dealing with the current economic problems as they are presented in the daily press.

In most institutions the study of economics is not begun until the sophomore or the junior year, it being deemed desirable to have a certain maturity of judgment and a certain preparation in history and logic. In some instances, however, the study of economics is undertaken at the very beginning of the college course, with the resulting difficulty of inadequately distinguishing between graduate and undergraduate work.

Another pedagogical question which has given rise to some difficulty is the sequence of courses. Since the historical method in economics became prominent, it is everywhere recognized that some training in the historical development of economic institutions is necessary to a comprehension of existing facts. We can know what is very much better by grasping what has been and how it has come to be. The point of difference, however, is as to whether the elementary course in the principles should come first and be supplemented by a course in economic history, or whether, on the contrary, the course in economic history should precede that in the principles. Some institutions follow one method, others the second; and there are good arguments on both sides. It is the belief of the writer, founded on a long experience, that on the whole the best results can be reached by giving as introductory to the study of economic principles a short survey of the leading points of economic history. In a few of the modem textbooks this plan is intentionally followed. Taking it all in all, it may be said that college instruction in economics is now not only exceedingly widespread in the United States, but continually improving in character and methods.

University or Graduate Instruction. — The university courses in economics are designed primarily for those who either wish to prepare themselves for the teaching of economics or who desire such technical training in methods or such an intimate acquaintance with the more developed matter as is usually required by advanced or professional students in any discipline. The university courses in the larger American institutions which now take up every important subject in the discipline, and which are conducted by a corps of professors, comprise three elements: first, the lectures of the professor; second, the seminar or periodical meeting between the professor and a group of advanced students; third, the economics club, or meeting of the students without the professor.

(1) The Lectures: In the university lectures the method is different from that in the college courses. The object is not to discipline the student, but to give him an opportunity of coming into contact with the leaders of thought and with the latest results of scientific advance on the subject. Thus no roll of attendance is called, and no quizzes are enforced and no periodical tests of scholarship are expected. In the case of candidates for the Ph.D. degree, for instance, there is usually no examination until the final oral examination, when the student is expected to display a proper acquaintance with the whole subject. The lectures, moreover, do not attempt to present the subject in a dogmatic way, as is more or less necessary in the college courses, but, on the contrary, are designed to present primarily the unsettled problems and to stimulate the students to independent thinking. The university lecture, in short, is expected to give to the student what cannot be found in the books on the subject.

(2) The Seminar: Even with the best of will, however, the necessary limitations prevent the lecturer from going into the minute details of the subject. In order to provide opportunity for this, as well as for a systematic training of the advanced students in the method of attacking this problem, periodical meetings between the professor and the students have now become customary under the name of the seminar, introduced from Germany. In most of our advanced universities the seminar is restricted to those students who are candidates for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, although in some cases a preliminary seminar is arranged for graduate students who are candidates for the degree of Master of Arts. Almost everywhere a reading knowledge of French and German is required. In the United States, as on the European continent generally, there are minor variations in the conduct of the seminar. Some professors restrict the attendance to a small group of most advanced students, of from fifteen to twenty-five; others virtually take in all those who apply. Manifestly the personal contact and the “give and take,” which are so important a feature of the seminar, become more difficult as the numbers increase. Again, in some institutions each professor has a seminar of his own; but this is possible only where the number of graduate students is large. In other cases the seminar consists of the students meeting with a whole group of professors. While this has a certain advantage of its own, it labors under the serious difficulty that the individual professor is not able to impress his own ideas and his own personality so effectively on the students; and in our modern universities students are coming more and more to attend the institution for the sake of some one man with whom they wish to study. Finally, the method of conducting the seminar differs in that in some cases only one general subject is assigned to the members for the whole term, each session being taken up by discussion of a different phase of the general subject. In other cases a new subject is taken up at every meeting of the seminar. The advantage of the latter method is to permit a greater range of topics, and to enable each student to report on the topic in which he is especially interested, and which, perhaps, he may be taking up for his doctor’s dissertation. The advantage of the former method is that it enables the seminar to enter into the more minute details of the general subject, and thus to emphasize with more precision the methods of work. The best plan would seem to be to devote half the year to the former method, and half the year to the latter method.

In certain branches of the subject, as, for instance, statistics, the seminar becomes a laboratory exercise. In the largest universities the statistical laboratory is equipped with all manner of mechanical devices, and the practical exercises take up a considerable part of the time. The statistical laboratories are especially designed to train the advanced student in the methods of handling statistical material.

(3) The Economics Club: The lecture work and the seminar are now frequently supplemented by the economics club, a more informal meeting of the advanced students, where they are free from the constraint that is necessarily present in the seminar, and where they have a chance to debate, perhaps more unreservedly, some of the topics taken up in the lectures and in the seminar, and especially the points where some of the students dissent from the lecturer. Reports on the latest periodical literature are sometimes made in the seminar and sometimes in the economics club; and the club also provides an opportunity for inviting distinguished outsiders in the various subjects. In one way or another, the economics club serves as a useful supplement to the lectures and the seminar, and is now found in almost all the leading universities.

In reviewing the whole subject we may say that the teaching of economics in American institutions has never been in so satisfactory condition as at present. Both the instructors and the students are everywhere increasing in numbers; and the growing recognition of the fact that law and politics are so closely interrelated with, and so largely based on, economics, has led to a remarkable increase in the interest taken in the subject and in the facilities for instruction.


Economics
— In the Schools —

James Sullivan, Ph.D., Principal of Boys’ High School, Brooklyn, N.Y.

This subject has been defined as the study of that which pertains to the satisfaction of man’s material needs, — the production, preservation, and distribution of wealth. As such it would seem fundamental that the study of economics should find a place in those institutions which prepare children to become citizens, — the elementary and high schools. Some of the truths of economics are so simple that even the youngest of school children may be taught to understand them. As a school study, however, economics up to the present time has made far less headway than civics (q.v.). Its introduction as a study even in the colleges was so gradual and so retarded that it could scarcely be expected that educators would favor its introduction in the high schools.

Previous to the appearance, in 1894, of the Report of the Committee of Ten of the National Educational Association on Secondary Education, there had been much discussion on the educational value of the study of economics. In that year Professor Patten had written a paper on Economics in Elementary Schools, not as a plea for its study there, but as an attempt to show how the ethical value of the subject could be made use of by teachers. The Report, however, came out emphatically against formal instruction in political economy in the secondary school, and recommended “that, in connection particularly with United States history, civil government, and commercial geography instruction be given in those economic topics, a knowledge of which is essential to the understanding of our economic life and development” (pp. 181-183). This view met with the disapproval of many teachers. In 1895 President Thwing of Western Reserve University, in an address before the National Educational Association on The Teaching of Political Economy in the Secondary Schools, maintained that the subject could easily be made intelligible to the young. Articles or addresses of similar import followed by Commons (1895), James (1897), Haynes (1897), Stewart (1898), and Taussig (1899). Occasionally a voice was raised against its formal study in the high schools. In the School Review for January, 1898, Professor Dixon of Dartmouth said that its teaching in the secondary schools was “unsatisfactory and unwise.” On the other hand, Professor Stewart of the Central Manual Training School of Philadelphia, in an address in April, 1898, declared the Report of the Committee of Ten “decidedly reactionary,” and prophesied that political economy as a study would he put to the front in the high school. In 1899 Professor Clow of the Oshkosh State Normal School published an exhaustive study of the subject of Economics as a School Study, going into the questions of its educational value, its place in the schools, the forms of the study, and the methods of teaching. His researches serve to show that the subject was more commonly taught in the high schools of the Middle West than in the East. (Compare with the article on Civics.)

Since the publication of his work the subject of economics has gradually made its appearance in the curricula of many Eastern high schools. It has been made an elective subject of examination for graduation from high schools by the Regents of New York State, and for admission to college by Harvard University. Its position as an elective study, however, has not led many students to take it except in commercial high schools, because in general it may not be used for admission to the colleges.

Its great educational value, its close touch with the pupils’ everyday life, and the possibility of teaching it to pupils of high school age are now generally recognized. A series of articles in the National Educational Association’s Proceedings for 1901, by Spiers, Gunton, Halleck, and Vincent bear witness to this. The October, 1910, meeting of the New England History Teachers’ Association was entirely devoted to a discussion of the Teaching of Economics in Secondary Schools, and Professors Taussig and Haynes reiterated views already expressed. Representatives of the recently developed commercial and trade schools expressed themselves in its favor.

Suitable textbooks in the subject for secondary schools have not kept pace with its spread in the schools. Laughlin, Macvane, and Walker published books somewhat simply expressed; but later texts have been too collegiate in character. There is still needed a text written with the secondary school student constantly in mind, and preferably by an author who has been dealing with students of secondary school age. The methods of teaching, mutatis mutandis, have been much the same as those pursued in civics (q.v.). The mere cramming of the text found in the poorest schools gives way in the best schools to a study and observation of actual conditions in the world of to-day. In the latter schools the teacher has been well trained in the subject, whereas in the former it is given over only too frequently to teachers who know little more about it than that which is in the text.

See also Commercial Education.

 

References: —

In Colleges and Universities: —

A Symposium on the Teaching of Elementary Economics. Jour. of Pol. Econ., Vol. XVIIl, June, 1910.

Cossa, L. Introduction to the Study of Political Economy: tr. by L. Dyer. (London, 1893.)

Mussey, H. R. Economies in the College Course. Educ. Rev. Vol. XL, 1910, pp. 239-249.

Second Conference on the Teaching of Economics, Proceedings. (Chicago, 1911.)

Seligman, E. R. A. The Seminarium — Its Advantages and Limitations. Convocation of the University of the State of New York, Proceedings. (1892.)

In Schools: —

Clow, F. R. Economics as a School Study, in the Economic Studies of the American Economic Association for 1899. An excellent bibliography is given. It may be supplemented by articles or addresses since 1899 which have been mentioned above. (New York, 1899.)

Haynes, John. Economics in Secondary Schools. Education, February, 1897.

 

Source: Paul Monroe (ed.), A Cyclopedia of Education, Vol. II. New York: Macmillan, pp. 387-392.

Source: E.R.A. Seligman in Universities and their Sons, Vol. 2 (1899), pp. 484-6.

 

Categories
Economists Harvard M.I.T. Yale

Yale. Transportation economist and railroad expert. Prof. Kent T. Healy (1902-1985)

 

Personal backstory to this post.

During my freshman year at Yale (1969-70) I took a double-credit seminar course “Early Concentration Economics”. The idea, I suppose, was to give me an accelerated start into an economics major. At least that is why I enrolled in the course. The first semester covered microeconomics and was taught by Professor Merton J. (“Joe”) Peck and a visiting graduate student from Harvard (Ph.D., 1971), Joseph Persky (now a distinguished historian of economics). We used the intermediate price theory textbook by Richard H. Leftwich and we were assigned the “Simple Analytics of Welfare Maximization” by Francis Bator. I loved the course. It also led to Joe Peck becoming one of my mentors in economics.

The second semester was not so successful. Now, with nearly a half-century of university life behind me, it is pretty obvious what the problem with that course was. Basically, a double-credit course is going to be incredibly hard to staff, I mean what professor is going to let himself/herself be tied down to double sessions with first year students? I believe Kent T. Healy (in his last year of teaching)  allowed himself to be drafted into covering the macroeconomics semester for us early concentrators. As you will see from the biographical and career information below, Professor Healy was a railroad expert from the old school of transportation economics. I vaguely recall an anecdote or two having to do with him travelling in a caboose.

Complicating matters, the second semester of 1969-70 was marked by academic strikes and disruption (the Black Panther Bobby Seale was on trial in New Haven, there were the Kent State shootings etc.) so that many course meetings were canceled and academic credit was fudged all around. We were assigned two of the short volumes in Otto Eckstein’s Prentice-Hall series “Foundations of Modern Economics” (Charles Schultze’s National Income Analysis and Eckstein’s own Public Finance).  I recall Myrdal’s Asian Drama was part of the original course plan, but I don’t think we did much with it.  

I do want to give Healy some credit, he took on the burden of teaching far outside his lane during the last semester of his service. It’s what a loyal, long-time colleague in a department does (yeah, right). Still, there was no infectious enthusiasm for macroeconomics coming from him during the Spring of 1970 and I feel Yale should have been held liable for charging tuition but only providing academic day-care with that course.

Besides being something of an academic anachronism as far as the discipline of economics goes, Healy was also one of the few people I have encountered who attained the rank of professor without having a Ph.D. degree. From the career information provided below, we see that Kent Tenney Healy lived a very rich and active life that combined elements of business and engineering experience, public policy, teaching, and public service. I have also been told by Gustav Ranis that Healy was a kind, thoughtful man. I do regret never having met the man in his true realm of distinction. 

______________________

Biographical Note

Kent Tenney Healy was born in Chicago, Illinois on February 2, 1902, the son of William and Mary Sylvia (Tenney) Healy. He received an A.B. [cum laude, in Physics] from Harvard College in 1921 and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1923. From 1923 to 1924, he was a student at the Harvard Law School.

On November 3, 1928, he married Ruth Emily Allen. His four children were Ruth Tenney, William Kent, Kent Allen and Sylvia Kent.

Associated with transportation and economics all his life, he began as a switchboard operator on the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad in 1922. From 1924 to 1925, he was an inspector and from 1925 to 1926, a cost engineer.

After studying transportation in Europe during the years of 1926 and 1927, he became an assistant professor of transportation at Yale University. From 1934 to 1940, he was an assistant professor of economics, becoming an associate professor in 1940. In 1945, he received an M.A., and was appointed as the T. Dewitt Cuyler Professor of transportation, a position he held until 1970.

As a recognized expert in transportation economics, he served as member or consultant with many United States Government agencies from 1940 to 1945, participated in local government planning and financial management in Killingworth, Connecticut, circa 1957 to 1970, and was a director of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company (1947-1948) and the Connecticut Company (1947-1964).

He died on January 9, 1985 at the age of 82 [in West Haven, Conn.].

Source: Connecticut State Library. Healy (Kent T.) Papers, 1935-1963. Inventory. Additions from obituary in the New York Times, January 12, 1985.

______________________

Books by Kent T. Healy

  • Electrification of steam railroads.New York: McGraw-Hill, 1929.
  • Cases on railroad economics, supplemented by selected statistics, (1938).
  • The Economics of Transportation in America: The Dynamic Forces in Development, Organization, Functioning and Regulation. New York: Ronald Press, 1946.
  • Performance of the U.S. railroads since World War II: A quarter century of private operation. New York: Vantage Press, 1985.

______________________

Yale Career from the Yale Archives.

Kent T. Healy was born in Chicago on February 2, 1902. He received his B.A. from Harvard in 1921, and his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from M.I.T. in 1923. Healey was an assistant professor of transportation at Yale from 1928-1937, an assistant professor of political economy from 1937-1938, an assistant professor of economics from 1938-1940, an associate professor from 1940-1945, and the Thomas DeWitt Cuyler Professor of Transportation from 1945-1970.

Source: Yale University Archives. Kent Tenney Healy papers.

______________________

Extra-academic career

Kent Tenney Healy was born in Chicago, IL on February 2, 1902. A recognized expert in transportation economics, he taught at Yale University from 1934-1970. Due to his expertise, he often served as a consultant to many United States government agencies or as a member of various commissions from 1940-45. He also participated in state and local government planning and financial management especially in Killingworth, CT. Mr. Healy served as a director of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Co., 1947-48 and the Connecticut Co., 1947-64.

Commission on Reorganization of State Departments, 1935-1937. Special Act No. 242 of 1935 established a five member commission appointed by the Governor, with the advice and consent of the General Assembly to study the “organization, powers and duties, personnel and expenditures” of each agency and prepare recommendations and propose legislation. The commission held its first meeting in Governor Wilber Cross’ office on June 21, 1935. Col. Thomas Hewes served as chairman. The commission appointed Benjamin P. Whitaker, Research Director, on July 1, 1935. A small staff and a number of expert consultants prepared the report, approved by the commission, for submittal to the governor on January 25, 1937. The General Assembly extended the commission authorization to March 30, 1937. Even after that date, the commission members and the Research Director provided advice and assistance to the governor and the General Assembly.

State Planning Board. Advisory Committee on Transportation, ?-1936. The State Planning Board adopted a policy of appointing advisory committees to assist the board and its staff in developing research studies. The Transportation Committee consisted of the Highway Commissioner, the Motor Vehicle Commissioner, and a member of the Public Utilities Commissioner. The committee was to make the state’s transportation program more definite and practical, review past accomplishments, draw up plans for further work and prepare and interpret a report for the State Planning Board. On April 10, 1935, the committee issued “Transportation in Connecticut. Part I: Passenger Transportation.” There is no evidence that it issued any other parts.

Highway Advisory Committee, 1943-1945. Special Act 456 of 1943 directed the governor to appoint a five member committee to study and advise the highway commissioner concerning post-World War II highway improvements, the problem of just and equitable distribution of highway funds for cities and towns, problems with the system, the departments procedures and practices and existing laws to determine what is desirable for an efficient highway program. Highway Commissioner William J. Cox, first mentioned such a committee in his biennial report to the governor for 1939-1940. He again recommended the committee to Governor Baldwin in December 1942. Baldwin put the recommendations into his inaugural speech and saw it through the General Assembly. After hearing testimony from the Highway, Motor Vehicle and State Police departments and inspecting the new Fairfield County route (I-95) to replace Route 1, the committee submitted its report to the governor in December 1944.

Savings Banks’ Railroad Investment Committee, 1945-1963. The General Assembly created a six member committee to certify railroad company bonds as eligible for investment by savings banks for the banking commissioner. The governor appointed members to three-year terms from nominations given him by the Executive Committee of the Savings Banks’ Association of Connecticut, the Banking Commissioner, the Executive Committee of the Connecticut Bankers Association, and the Executive Committee of the Savings Banks’ Deposit Guaranty Fund of Connecticut. A nominee had to be either a bank officer or director or trustee of one of the above organizations or its members. The statute allowed reimbursement of travel expenses only to be paid by the Savings Banks’ Association. In 1961, the General Assembly changed the committee’s name to the Railroad Legal Investment Commission. In 1963, it disbanded the committee and placed its responsibilities solely with the banking commissioner.

Source: Social Networks and Archival Context website.

______________________

Report to the 25th Reunion of the Harvard Class of 1922

KENT TENNEY HEALY

HOME ADDRESS: 245 Lawrence St., New Haven 11, Conn.

OFFICE ADDRESS: Strathcona Hall, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

BORN: Feb. 2, 1902, Chicago, Ill. PARENTS: William Healy, ‘97, Mary Sylvia Tenney.

PREPARED AT: Evanston Academy, Evanston, Ill.; Browne and Nichols School, Cambridge, Mass.; Wellesley High School, Wellesley, Mass.

YEARS IN COLLEGE: 1918-1921. DEGREES: A.B. cum laude, 1922 (21); S.B. (Massachusetts Inst. of Technology), 1923; A.M. hon. (Yale Univ.), 1945.

MARRIED: Ruth Emily Allen, Nov. 3, 1928, Cheshire, Conn. CHILDREN: Ruth Tenney, Aug. 4, 1929; William Kent, July 5, 1930; Kent Allen, Sept. 30, 1932; Sylvia Kent, Dec. 3, 1941.

OCCUPATION: T. DeWitt Cuyler Professor of Transportation; chairman, Economics Department; chairman, Committee on Transportation, Yale University.

WARTIME GOVERNMENT POSTS: Transportation consultant, Bituminous Coal Division, Department of Interior, Office of Defense Transportation, Administrator of Lend Lease and Office of Strategic Services.

OFFICES HELD: Public utility consultant, Commission of Reorganization of State Departments, Connecticut, 1935-36; member, Connecticut Highway Advisory Commission, 1943-45, New Haven Traffic Commission, since 1946; chairman, Savings Bank Railroad Investment Committee, since 1945; president, Family Service of New Haven, since 1944; treasurer, The Foote School Association, Incorporated, 1937-46.

MEMBER OF: Graduate Club; Delta Psi.

PUBLICATIONS: Steam Railroad Electrification, McGraw-Hill, 1929; Cases on Railroad Economics (private), 1938; The Economics of Transportation in America, Ronald, 1940; numerous articles.

 

THE twenty-five years since graduation have slipped by awfully fast and I don’t feel a day older than I did when I left Cambridge. Certainly the years have been full of interest and enjoyment.

One of the things that has made the years particularly challenging has been that I have consciously changed my course on several occasions. Starting out with a career of electrical engineer in the public-utility field, I fairly quickly shifted over to transportation and joined the Operating Department of the New Haven Railroad. If anybody had told me at this point that I was going to become a teacher, I would have been thoroughly dismayed. But when I left the New Haven to broaden myself by studying transportation operation in Europe, I started a sequence which was to lead to the doors of good old Eli.

If one writes a book, it apparently can easily lead to a college post. My first one, built around what I learned in Europe, led to an appointment in transportation at Yale. The teaching part of this job has been a continuous challenge because every year has given me a chance to introduce new ideas and methods. Further, the satisfaction of helping to develop the intellectual process of a loyal group of students cannot be matched by anything else. Along with the teaching has been research and consulting, which are some of the ways in which one can sharpen one’s thinking. help the world at large, and also keep abreast of the practicalities of life.

Along with all this, I was fortunate enough to team up with the ideal girl, and together we’ve gone through all the pains and pleasures of bringing up four children.

When the war came along, I naturally put what talents I have to work for the country, starting with the Bituminous Coal Division of the Department of Interior on coal transportation problems, working with the O.S.S. particularly on the North African problem, and with Lend Lease and the Office of Defense Transportation. Not the least interesting part of all this was the chance to compare the different government agencies in war time as well as contrast them with the peace-time agencies I had seen something of before.

In the meantime my work at Yale was shifting from just transportation to a combination of that and economics. Finally, by the end of the war, I found myself chairman of the Economics Department as well as head of the transportation group. I am not so sure that the administrative responsibilities, challenging though they are, are quite as worth while as the teaching and research.

Along with all this, I have always felt that one should play a part in the local community in which one lives, and I have for a goodly number of years maintained an association with various social agencies. More recently my contribution has been as president of the largest family casework agency in New Haven. At the same time I have done my stint in both state and city government, ranging from being a member of the State Highway Advisory Commission to now being chairman of the State Savings Bank Railroad Investment Committee and a member of the City Traffic Commission (trying to solve the unsolvable in this latter).

This all adds up to a full and happy existence and, I hope, a useful one.

 

Source: Harvard Class of 1922. Twenty-fifth Anniversary Report (Cambridge, Mass.: 1947), pp. 427-429.

Image Source:Kent T. Healy (1922 and 1947). Harvard Class of 1922. Twenty-fifth Anniversary Report, Portraits of the Class (Cambridge, Mass.: 1947), p. 97.

 

Categories
Chicago Economist Market Economists Harvard Radical

Harvard/Chicago. Gottfried Haberler and Milton Friedman on Samuel Bowles, 1970

 

The following exchange between Gottfried Haberler and Milton Friedman is really quite remarkable. It is the second observation by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror of Gottfried Haberler trashing a liberal/radical economist on the q.t. The first instance involved John Kenneth Galbraith in 1948 (though I cannot say that I would personally fault Haberler for his having ranked Paul Samuelson above John Kenneth Galbraith as an economist). It will come as a surprise to some people that Milton Friedman defended the scholarly honor of one of the leading, if not the leading, radical economists in 1970. As we see below Friedman in no uncertain terms let Haberler know that he still considered his earlier support of Samuel Bowles for an untenured appointment at the University of Chicago to have been based solely on the analytical merits displayed by Bowles. 

You do not want to miss the Harvard anecdote relayed by Roy Weintraub that is posted below as a comment!

__________________

PERSONAL

May 14, 1970

Professor Milton Friedman
Department of Economics
University of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois 60637

Dear Milton:

I was told that Chicago has made an offer to Sam Bowles and that you supported it warmly. Frankly, I am somewhat surprised. He has certainly some analytic abilities but in general he is very radical, almost as wild as Arthur MacEwan, and thoroughly demagogic in his interventions in faculty meetings and talks to students. I would really like to know whether it is true that Chicago offered him a job.

Sincerely yours,

Gottfried Haberler

H:w

__________________

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
1126 EAST 59THSTREET
CHICAGO—ILLINOIS 60637

May 19, 1970

Professor Gottfried Haberler
Department of Economics
Harvard University
326 Littauer Center
Cambridge, Masachusetts 02138

Dear Gottfried:

Some years back I had occasion to read some of the work which Bowles had done in connection with our consideration of him at that time. I was very favorably impressed indeed by the intellectual quality of the work and the command that it displayed of analytical economics. At that time I was very much in accord with our decision to make him an offer of a position. He turned us down to stay at Harvard.

I have very vague recollections about what has happened this year. I do not know for certain whether or not we did make an offer to him this year. We may have done so; and if so, I would not have objected since the only consideration I would have considered relevant would have been his intellectual qualities.

I will try to find out more definitely and let you know.

Sincerely yours,
[signed, “Milton”]
Milton Friedman

ah

[Handwritten addition: P.S. I have checked. No offer was made to him this year. We made an offer some years ago at the Ass’t Prof level when he first went to Harvard. We made a later offer a couple of years ago again on a term basis. There is no offer outstanding now.]

Source:  Hoover Institution Archives. Gottfried Haberler Papers. Box 12, Folder “GH—Milton Friedman”.

Image Source: University of Massachusetts Amherst . Police Department, “Board of Trustees fee increase demonstration: Economics professor Samuel Bowles speaking to protesters, April 15, 1976“, University Photograph Collection (RG 110-176). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries.

Categories
Economists Gender Harvard Socialism

Harvard. Economics Ph.D. alumnus, later collector of Soviet nonconformist art. Norton T. Dodge, 1960

 

That John Maynard Keynes was an art collector/investor is well-known. Economics in the Rear-view mirror has earlier posted about the Columbia economic historian Vladimir Simkhovich, one of Milton Friedman’s professors, who turned out to be quite the collector himself. My old professor of comparative economic systems, John Michael Montias of Yale, later became a well-renowned authority on Vermeer as well as the art market in Amsterdam in the 17th century.

This post is another in the series “Get to know a Ph.D. economist”. Norton Dodge was one of the legion of young scholars who launched their research careers at the Harvard Russian Research Center. Somehow Dodge went from being a mild-mannered economist who wrote a doctoral dissertation on labor productivity in the Soviet tractor industry (don’t try that at home unless you are a professional) to the passionate collector of Soviet nonconformist art. Apparently Dodge was able to fly under the radar long enough to establish a network to help satisfy his urge to collect, often discretely sometimes openly, and to assemble an enormous collection. According to John McPhee’s 1994 book (see below), Norton Dodge spent $3 million dollars of his personal fortune buying Soviet underground art. Dodge inherited a bundle from his father, Homer Levi Dodge, physicist who also became dean of the graduate school at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. Homer Dodge was an early Warren Buffett investor.

In 1995 the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Soviet Nonconformist Art was donated to Rutgers University.

________________

Norton Townshend Dodge

1927 June 15. Born in Oklahoma City.

Began his studies at Deep Springs College.

1948. Graduated from Cornell University.

1951. A.M. in Russian studies at Harvard

1955. First trip to USSR. Dissertation research.

1960. Harvard economics Ph.D. Thesis: Trends in Labor Productivity in the Soviet Tractor Industry; a Case Study in Industrial Development.

1962. Second visit to Soviet Union. Meets dissident artists.

1966. Women in the Soviet Economy: Their Role in Economic, Scientific, and Technical Development(Johns Hopkins University Press).

1976. Following death of artist Evgeny Rukhin under suspicious circumstances, Dodge ceased his travel to the Soviet Union, relying on his personal network

1980. Retired from University of Maryland, College Park, begins teaching at St. Mary’s College, Maryland.

1989. Retired from St. Mary’s College, Maryland.

1995. Opening of the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Soviet Nonconformist Art to Rutgers University [17,000 items donated valued at $34 Million] (permanent display at Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum)

From Gulag to Glasnost: Nonconformist Art in the Soviet Union, edited with Alla Rosenfield.

2011 November 5. Died in Washington, D.C.

________________

For more, especially about Dodge’s art collecting

John McPhee. The Ransom of Russian Art (1994).

Andrew Solomon. “Produced in the Soviet Dark, Collected by a Secret Admirer”. New York Time, October 15, 1995.

Emily Langer, Norton T. Dodge, U-Md. Economics professor and Soviet art collector, dies at 84. Washington Post, November 10, 2011.

Margalit Fox, “Norton Dodge Dies at 84; Stored Soviet Dissident Art. New York Times, November 11, 2011.

Image Source: US Post News, Deaths November 2011.

Categories
Economists

Roosevelt College. Five lectures about Labor. Abba Lerner, 1949

 

 

Abba P. Lerner was quite a pack rat when it came to his lecture notes (but also his correspondence!). This post offers a glimpse into the archival record of  lecture outlines and keywords preserved as found in these notes. Sometimes we have a polished outline, sometimes there is what appears to be a brief lecture synopsis, and in this case we also have both handwritten drafts of notes as well as his typed notes (on note cards…who would have thought?) for the lectures.

All the material transcribed below comes from a single folder in Abba P. Lerner’s papers:

Source: Library of Congress. Papers of Abba P. Lerner, Box 23. Folder “Lectures and speeches: Other”.

I have added a source note to each item with a brief description of its physical form (typed, handwritten, paper v. notecards).

Abbreviations encountered in Lerner’s notes:

ap–average product (of labor)
DF–Democratic Functionalism
FE–Full Employment
FF–Functional Finance
mp–marginal product (of labor)
NG–no good
TU–Trade Union

________________________

An
Economist…
Looks
at Labor

Series of Five Lectures
by Abba P. Lerner

Tuesday Evenings, 7:30-9:30, March 1 to 29, 1949

March 1—Philosophy—Capitalism, Socialism, Laborism

March 8—Ideology—Labor and Democracy

March 15—Theory—Bourgeoisie, Marxist and Laborist Economics

March 22—Policy—Labor and Prosperity

March 29—Prophesy—Labor Under Full Employment

THE SPEAKER

Mr. Lerner is an economist of international reputation. One of the leading exponents of the Keynesian school, he contributed to the development of the concept of functional finance which underlies the Employment Act of 1946 and the British White Paper on Full Employment of 1944. He started his academic career as a lecturer at the London School of Economics, and has lectured at the Universities of California and Virginia, at Columbia University, and at the New School for Social Research in New York. His book, “The Economics of Control,” published in 1944 by Macmillan, is an outstanding exposition of the theory of planning for economic welfare. Mr. Lerner is Professor of Economics at Roosevelt College.

 

ADMISSION

Tickets for the whole series (five lectures): $4.00
Single lecture tickets, if available, may be purchased at the door at $1.00

 

CREDITS

One hour of college credit will be given for the series of five lectures if a written examination is taken at a sixth session on April 5.

Students who wish to secure credit will be charged at the regular rate of $10.00 for one semester hour. They should register in advance at the main floor information desk.

 

PREREQUISITES FOR CREDIT

Students may enroll for credit if they have complete six semester hours of introductory courses in the social sciences or introductory courses in economics, sociology, or political science. Consent of the lecturer may replace these prerequisites

Series tickets may be secured from the Business Office in Room 818.

Sponsored by
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
Roosevelt College—Chicago

430 SOUTH MICHIGAN AVENUE, CHICAGO 5—Wabash 2-3580

 

Source:  Official printed event poster.

________________________

The Role of Labor
in Present-Day Society

Ever since Karl Marx, social reformers and progressives have looked upon labor organizations as the carriers of economic and social progress.

Since the inception of trade unionism, organized labor has come a long way. From revolutionary institutions outside the framework of private property and free enterprise, they have become part and parcel of our social and economic system. Labor leaders, once impotent outlaws, are now the holders of great political and economic power. The discussion of unionism used to center around the problems of the underdog; but today we are concerned with the responsibilities that should go with the increasing power of labor.

The following questions are frequently raised: “Which are the goals that organized labor tries to attain by the use of its power?” “Can the exercise of this power be harmful to society and should it be restricted?” How is “Economic Democracy” related to political and social democracy? Are the ideals of a free society compatible with the goal of “class liberation”?

Professor Lerner will endeavor in this series of lectures to analyze these and similar problems. He will pay particular attention to the problems of monopoly, both of capital and of labor, and to the role of labor in a society which has succeeded in achieving and maintaining full employment.

 

Source:  From the printed announcement flyer.

________________________

Typed draft description

There is much loose talk nowadays about the rise of labor to power and the responsibility that should go with this power. This can be interpreted positively as directing attention to ways in which labor would exercise this power toward the end of implementing the ideals that are associated with the labor movement, But it can also be interpreted negatively as suggesting that labor should be so careful to avoid using its power in ways that would harm society that it would simply not exercise its power at all. No judgment can properly be made on the meaning of Labor’s responsibility without first clarifying the nature of both the ideals and the dangers; and this cannot be done without first distinguishing between the ideals and the interests of the working people on the one hand and of the organizations that we often call “labor” on the other. It is also necessary to explore the relationships between the liberal ideals of a free society and labor’s ideals of class liberation, between democracy and “economic democracy”, and between the economic theories that are often identified with the interests or prejudiced of capitalists, and those that are more closely associated with labor and its economic and political organizations.

Professor Lerner will endeavor in this course of lectures to analyse these problems and will pay particular attention to the problem of monopoly, both of capital and of labor, to the problems connected with achieving and maintaining full employment and to the special problems that would arise in connection with labor in a society which had succeeded in achieving and maintaining full employment.

 

Source:  Carbon copy of typed single page.

________________________

Outline of the Five Lectures

Abba P. Lerner

An Economist Looks at Labor Five Lectures March 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, 1949 at 7:30 P.M.

(For those taking the course for credit an examination period following the lectures.

Prerequisite Soc. Sc. 102 or Ec. Pol Sci and Soc 101)

  1. Philosophy—Capitalism, Socialism and Laborism.
    What does labor want? What can Labor get? The nature of social cooperation. The means and the ends. Labor and labor organizations.
  2. Ideology—Labor and Democracy.
    The interest of Labor and the general interest. Property and privilege. [handwritten note:“T.U.’s (trade unions’) & workers’ dignity”] Welfare economics. Laborism and Liberalism. Economic Democracy. Democratic Functionalism. Output, effort and income. Labor organizations and liberty. Progress and the progressive Democracy. Dictatorship and Efficiency. Imports and wages.
  3. Theory—Bourgeoise, Marxist, and Laborist Economics.
    The share of labor. Marginalism. Bargaining power. The labor theory of value. The International Labor Office. Labor legislation. Capitalism Cooperation and Competition. Monopoly in business and in labor. The dictatorship of the proletariat. Payment and productivity. [handwritten note:“wages & efficiency”] Minimum wages. [handwritten note:“Wider meaning of exploitation”]
  4. Policy—Labor’s stake in and responsibility for prosperity.
    The determinants of employment. Labor’s freedom from some dogmas. Inflation and Deflation. Wage rates and cost of living. Full employment policy. Anti-labor objections to Full employment policy. Functional Finance.
  5. Prophesy—Labor under Full Employment.
    Inflationary pressure. Excessive bargaining power. Function of the Trade Unions. Residue of fear of unemployment. Dangers to Capitalism. Dangers to Freedom. Dangers to Progress. A substitute for collective bargaining. Effects on Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

 

Source:  Typed single page outline.

________________________

Typed draft of notes for Lecture 1 (Version A)

Lecture I Capitalism, Socialism, Laborism. Philosophy

I am feeling my way[.] Sentimental associations and loyalties[.] Humanism basic. Identification with Labor organisations. We must check. In case the organization claiming to enhance the dignity of the working man may not be lowering it instead.

means not ends—

Labor organisations as part of the organization of our whole society.

Capitalism. From the point of view of the private capitalist and th[at] from the point of view of the collectivist (anti-capitalist) socialist.

Two extreme dogmas.

Socialism from the extreme points of view. Labor org[anisation]s as means to communism.

Enlightened capitalism-enlightened capitalists who still seek profit—and enlightened socialism—meet in Democratic Functionalism.

Parallel in the price mechanism. DF [“Democratic Functionalism”]

none of these views is that of Laborism. Getting more.
as narrow as any private capitalism. Re prices until very lately and that not very clear. More on this in lecture 3. degree of monopoly and rate of markup.

combinations of narrow interests remains narrow log rolling pork barrels.

interests of the TU [trade union] bureaucrat, loyalty works the same way. (like national sovereignty)

[handwritten note:“Labor as agent for extending Democracy – Univ(ersal) Suff(rage), Univ(ersal) Education”]

Source:  Typed single page of notes.

________________________

Typed draft of notes for Lecture 1 (Version B)

Lecture 1 March 1st 1949 Philosophy. Capitalism, Socialism, Laborism.

Not Work, or even working men, but the organisations of working men. In relation to the interests of working men as a majority of all men in which I am interested.

This what is meant by “not believing in the class struggle”. Humanism is the basic philosophy that I start with and that I find all decent people do to when you get down to rock bottom. Sometimes it is difficult to get down to rock bottom.

Dogmas get in the way. The class enemy as an excuse for inhumanity, just like the National or Racial enemy. Labor organisations as means. Always check whether it really does work for the interests of working men, to raise their dignity rather than to lower it. And incidentally, we find that a wider interest in all men helps rather than hinders the well-being of working men.

Capitalist view. 1.2. The two extreme views go together. Profit, Exploitation 3: A social organization enlightened capitalism, (not enlightened capitalists—capitalists must seek profit)

Socialism: Robbery, millennium through abolition of profit. class collaboration the greatest sin.

Democratic Functionalism. Serving society, Property, private and social, as means for serving society. serving people better. providing wealth, freedom, opportunity, maximum freedom which includes wealth.

Laborism, something else. Getting more. As narrow as any business man, applies not to labor but to the particular group. like “business” Works on relative shares.

Degree of monopoly or rate of markup determine rel[ative] share of labor as a whole, not the wage bargain.

The price mechanism parallel. Cap[italism]. Soc[ialism]. DF [Democratic Functionalism].

The interests of the labor organization, its officials etc. (bureaucracy) rationalisations; higher wages lead to greater productivity assumes higher real wages, assumes greater productivity.

 

Source:  Typed page of notes.

________________________

Typed notes for Lecture 1 (one note card)

Fancy Outline

I Philosophy. Cap[italism], Soc[ialism], Laborism.

Not work. Orgn of workers,
for working men, all men. Not
Class Struggle. Humanism
Decency.vs. Dogmas & Inhumanity.
Harmony of Workers and Men.

What Lab org can get for Workers.

Extreme Cap view

Profit as right, public be damned.
Lab org as enemy.
narrow
ignorant

Extreme Soc view

Propty as theft
Millenium by abolition of Prpty
Class war. Collaboration sin.

Reasonable views meet. Serve Socty.

D.F. max freedom. Equality, free
sectors, inequality if functional.
Freedom and Welfare the same.

U.S Soc?

Laborism 1. Group, narrow just like Bus.

2. Org. means & ends.

Dogma –worse—

If widened
Social cooperation: Max Freedom.

force can increase freedom. Place for State. Law—avoid arbitrariness.

Money wages to illustrate all.
(stands for all bargaining)

 

Source:  Typed note card.

________________________

Typed notes for Lecture 2 (one note card)

Lecture II March 8th 1949

Ideology—Labor and Democracy

Repeat

Humanism vs. Class view.
narrowness of interest
narrowness of ignorance. Social [point of] view.
organization as means.
DF functional inequality only.
vs. revolutionary demands.
Capitalism, Socialism, Laborism

 

Capitalism & Democracy—

Identification of Labor with Democracy

suffrage, education
Economic Democracy? meaningless?
Dignity of the worker in collective
bargaining. If not lost in the
bargaining organisation. Rackets.

The real job is real wages. scale of living.

derived from this are hours and conditions
paradox of lower pay for meaner work.
marginalism. Dtermination of real wge.

Raising money wges does not help. Illusion
from the particular. Capitalist form in
objecting, in blaming for unemployment.

Laborist form in demanding and blaming for
unemployment. Communists more consistent.

ILO            Ideal layout for rev. demands.

preventing hyperdeflation. sparking infl.

I.e. useful in depression.

Offsetting monopsony. Making a market

But the real protection is the dignity of
full employment.

Full employment brings us to the political
field.

 

Source:  Typed note card.

________________________

Typed notes for Lecture 3 (one note card)

III Theory—Bourgeoise, Marxist, Laborist

Last week:

Particularist Illusions, Cap & Lab.
TU cant raise gen real wage
Can prevent hyperdeflation.
reove [sic , “remove”?] monopsony

Real Wage determination

mp. Monopoly a factor. Exaggerated.

Bargaining, indeterminacy
irrelevant for general.

As long as private enterprise
significant. (rationality)
(Bourgeoise Theory OK)

Exploitation theory
Sentimentality (of Laborism) exploited by Marxism.
demagoguery of nationalization Profits.

Vulgar Marxism.

Marx and Pigou ap & mp
Justice and efficiency
Both (comp. a means)

Equality. Functional inequality
Non-functional inequality
is the test of expltn.

Source:  Typed note card

________________________

Typed synopsis of Lecture 3

Abba P. Lerner

Lecture III. An Economist Looks at Labor March 15th 1949

Trade Unions are comparable to Governments rather than to free associations. The pressure on workers to belong and pay for the benefits they get whether they belong or not is just like the pressure on citizens to pay taxes to the State or Municipality toward the cost of services from which they would benefit whether they paid their taxes or not.

The parallel extends to the way in which governments use their sovereignty for the benefit of their nationals as against the nationals under other governments. In the same way the benefits provided by trade unions are largely at the expense of the members of other unions, and there is the same kind of resistance to unification as there is to world government. We even have in this country two labor organizations although their rivalry is not anything like as dangerous as the counterpart in world power organization.

The opposition to the only explanation of the level of real wages, the explanation in terms of marginal analysis, springs from a sentimental attachment to the labor theory of value which is being exploited by the servants of present-day totalitarianism. Modern marxists in particular are doing just what Marx excoriated in what he called “Vulgar Political Economists” so that the proper name for them would be “Vulgar Marxists”. They extol the elimination of a particular kind of “exploitation” as the end of all “exploitation” closing their eyes to the fact that it may be replaced by New forms of exploitation that from any human point of view is much worse than what is abolished.

Source:  Typed page of notes.

________________________

PRESS RELEASE
for Lecture 3

FOR RELEASE TUESDAY, MARCH 22 [1949]

“Labor and Prosperity” will be discussed by Abba P. Lerner, noted economist, in a Roosevelt College public lecture March 22, 7;30 p.m., in Altgeld Hall at the college.

Dr. Lerner will make the parallel between the practices of unions which place pressure on workers to belong and pay for the benefits they get and the pressures exerted by governments on their citizens to pay taxes toward the cost of services from which they would benefit whether they paid taxes or not.

The lecture is part of an institute titled “An Economist Looks at Labor.”

Dr. Lerner, professor of economics at Roosevelt College, has been a member of the faculty of the London School of Economics and has lectured at leading American universities. He is the author of “The Economics of Control,” an outstanding exposition of the theory of planning for economic welfare.

Sent to: 4 Met. Papers, Journal of Commerce, Christian Science Monitor

cc: Dr. Sparling, Dean Hart, Dean Leys, Mr. Dibble, Mr. Lerner, E. Morrison, Information Desk, Torch, Community News Service, Al Morey—WBBM, Consolidated Clipping Serv., FILE

 

Source:  Lerner’s copy of Press Release.

________________________

Draft notes for Lecture 3 (typed with hand corrections)

Lecture III March 15th 1949

  1. Last week:

Illusion of the particular, capitalist and laborist.

TU’s unable to raise general real wage level.
prevent hyperdeflation. Responsible neither for employment or unemployment.

except monopsony—providing a given rate to the employer.

 

  1. Real wage determination—marginal productivity—degree of monopoly a factor.

difficulty of figuring marginal really irrelevant.

bargaining and indeterminacy misses the point, passed on anayway.

except for measures that reduce degree of monopoly.

 

  1. Exploitation. Marx a.p., Pigou m.p. Justice and Efficiency. Both by different methods.

Equality (basic to socialism) and functional inequality.

National dividend equal (according to need) and wage equal to vmp. is the ideal. –competition (a means)

Vulgar Political Economy and Vulgar Marxism. Sentimentality exploited by Marxists. Demagoguery.

Exploitation need not be by private property any more than by slavery or serfdom. The test is non-functional inequality.

 

  1. How then can wages (real) be raised (in general)
    1. productivity. (TU’s are often tempted to hinder this. Lester and Shister)
      Insights into Labor Issues
      Unionism and Marginal Productivity Theory. Belfer and Bloom
      TU Policy under Full Employment. Forsey

[handwritten addition: “Werth, Nation.”]

    1. Decrease monopoly, increase competition,
      Limits to this. Rents not eliminated.
    2. By redistributive taxation.
    3. By Full employment which helps all three of these.

 

  1. TU as sovereign bodieswith governmental functions

Political Power, narrow, like Nationalism.

Resistance to unification may be [two words illegible].

Monopoly on way to socialism.

Imperialism on way to World government.

Full employment prior to all of these.

 

Source:  Lerner’s single typed page and handwritten additions for Lecture III.

________________________

Typed notes for Lecture 4 (three note cards)

IV Policy—Lab & Prosperity

Last week—

No function for TU
Real wages by prod x monply
Exploitation—Justice, Efficiency
Vulgar Marxism

Test—Nonfunctional inequality.

Eff & Justice. (cf Welfare & Freedom)

TU do not help. Sentiments. exploited.

TUs explicable rather in political terms.

Sovereignty.

Dues like taxes—for benefit
Power of Govts—before benefits to workers (dem helps)
Narro—like Nations.
Resist Unification—cf World Government.
Nothing more obvious.
Loyalty.

Monopoly of partial combn.
–cf Imperialism on way to World Gvt.

Economic representation difficulty of fitting in
with Geographical constituencies. Syndicalism.

How then raise Real Wages?

  1. Productivity
    TU’s often hinder
  2. Increase competition
    [leaves rents (ap-mp)]
  3. Redistribute Income & Wealth

FE prior to all these.

FE prior to these

Cf England labor restriction
increases competition
mobility useful, possible

How FE?.

Low wage and high wage fallacies.
particularism.
FE automatic, impossible Doctrinaire
Labor freer from Sound Finance dogma.

Governmental responsibility.

both Bus and Lab suspicious.

Unemployment in nobody’s interest.

Functional Finance.

Next Week: Problems in FE

 

Source:  Three typed note cards

________________________

Loose typed notes for Lecture 4 [?]

The responsibility of labor for maintaining the value of money and thus of the price system and the free society.

Technique for maintaining a wage structure compatible with a constant cost of living. See older writings like The State Theory of Money (?)

one percent rise every four months with adjustments for deviations from the national average percentage of unemployment.

I shall have to develop the machinery for establishing wage rates, relative, without harming the interests of the working people. Avoid the word class though explain why before the analysis.

Why the free market will not do the trick—it depends on the use of mass unemployment as an instrument of adjustment.

Why control wages and not prices. See article on Inflation. In forthcoming RESt.

[handwritten note:“What are the prospect for CIO & AFL & Labor Party. Labor’s past contribution to dignity and democracy.”]

 

Source:  Typed single page of notes

________________________

Lecture notes for Lecture V

 

V Prophesy—Labor Under Full Employment

Last week—

TU’s [Trade unions] not economic but political, narrow, jealous
sovereignty,
loyalty
imperialism
protectionism (e.g. seniority)

raise real wages by

efficiency
competition
redistribution

Chief instrument full employment.

TU’s  [Trade unions] freer from prejudices which prevent full employment policies. (business prejudices)

Fe via FF [Full employment via Functional Finance]

 

With Full Employment

Depression and inflation. cumulative movements. TU  [Trade unions] prevent hyperdeflation.

inflationary pressure. Excessive bargaining power.

Preaching no use. price stability via unemployment,

price control no use, it also works only via unemployment.

Formula for wage determination (tentative) has to be fair.

One big union—Union responsibility, no obvious solution.

The formula 1%, 2% every 4 months.

no restrictions on entry, maximise mobility, full employment basic.

fair to those in, fair to those out. Fair to workers, fair to employers. Prevents exploitation, demands for more are demands for preferential treatment, demand to pay less is demand for maintaining substandards.

the functions of Trade Unions, negotiations, understanding, belonging

sliding scales no good.

 

Source:  Typed, single page.

________________________

 Typed notes for lecture 5 (two note cards)

V Prophesy Lab under FE

Last week: TU’s Political

Sovereignty
loyalty
imperialism
protectionism
World govt.

Efficiency, Comptn, Redistn
Via FE—Lab can help, freer from Prej.

FE via FF

With FE

Depn and Infln. Cumulatn.
Hyper defl, infl.

Excessive bargaining power
Preaching no use.

One Big Union, ?

Responsibility?

The Formula (with FE)
1%. 2%. Max mobility.
Fair to all.

Why control wages without controlling prices?
works via unemployment.

prevents all exploitation
functional inequality

Sliding scales NG [no good]

Other problems other means

redistribution
public utilities
compensation

Fairness, privilege, or under privilege

TU’s have other functions

feeling of belonging
human dignity
handling grievances
negotiation, clrifiction [sic]
Most important, work for FE.

Source:  Two typed note cards

________________________

Draft of handout[?] for Lecture V 

Abba P. Lerner 5th Lecture (also the last) March 29th 1949
An Economist Looks at Labor
V. — Prophesy[:] Labor Under Full Employment.

The objectives of Labor organizations, as far as labor as a whole is concerned, can be reached most effectively by a full employment policy. This would not only give workers security of livelihood, that would enhance their human dignity more than it could be enhanced even by the most successful of labor organizations and labor legislation, and would also increase the share of the national product enjoyed by labor by leading to an increase in the degree of competition or in other words to the diminution of the degree of exploitation of labor by monopoly. Full employment would also increase the efficiency of the economy as a whole and so actually enlarge the cake of which labor would also get a larger share.

But in full employment conditions, the bargaining power of workers’ organizations would be too strong.

From the point of view of each workers’ organization it seems essential that their strength be maintained. This is because any group of workers whose bargaining power is relatively weaker would be left behind in the struggle between wages and prices that ensues. But from the general or even from the workers’ point of view taking all the workers together, the bargaining power of the workers is too strong for their own good. The pressure on wages would result in continually rising wages and consequently in continually rising cost of production and of prices of products. The workers as a whole would not gain from this because they would lose in higher prices what they gain from higher wages, and would lose further from the disturbances and dislocations of the economy from the inflation. It would therefore be advisable for some other method to be adopted for the determining of wages which would maintain stability while still giving fair wages, as high as is permitted by the productivity of the country. Professor Lerner will suggest some lines on which such a method of determining wages could be developed that would not be an excuse for hiding or perpetuating any kind of exploitation, either of workers by employers, or of some group of workers in the interests of other groups.

 

Source:  Typed single page of notes

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

Categories
Economists Gender Johns Hopkins Pennsylvania

John Hopkins. Economics Ph.D. alumna Peggy Richman née Brewer, later Musgrave. 1962

 

Assortative mating is often observed among the Econ. The last post was dedicated to the Harvard economics Ph.D. alumnus, Richard Abel-Musgrave (1937) and what was good for that gander should be presumed to be good for today’s goose as well, meaning here, the Johns Hopkins economics Ph.D. alumna (1962) and future spouse of Richard Musgrave, Peggy Brewer Musgrave.

The official obituary reproduced in this post comes from the collection of emeriti obituaries at the University of California, Santa Cruz. I casually note that we discover that the young Englishwoman Peggy Brewer worked in the O.S.S. during World War II. I presume if there were more to her service than being a desk jockey in an analytic or clerical capacity, a story would have found its place in the obituary.

Let us note that Peggy Richman née Brewer, later Musgrave, received her Ph.D. at age thirty-eight…Nevertheless she persisted! And she succeeded both personally and professionally.

______________________

Johns Hopkins Dissertation

Peggy (Brewer) Richman. Taxation of Foreign Investment Income: An Economic Analysis. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1963. Based on the author’s Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 1962.

______________________

University of California, Santa Cruz
Obituary

Peggy B. Musgrave
(1924-2017)

Professor Emerita Peggy B. Musgrave has died in New Jersey, at the age of 93. Born in Maldon, England in 1924, Peggy’s parents, Herbert and Blanche Brewer, were of modest means. Her father, however, was a self-taught intellectual; one whose writings had attracted the attention of George Bernard Shaw and Sir Norman Angell, among others. Surrounded, as she was, by his books on science, natural history, and philosophy, it was inevitable that her own intellectual curiosity would lead her to pursue a life of academic research and scholarship; she wasted no time. At the age of eleven, she passed the entrance examination to the local Grammar School, and at eighteen matriculated to Cambridge University, the first student from her school to have done so; in celebration, the school was given a holiday.

Unfortunately in 1944, in the midst of WWII, Peggy’s approaching Cambridge graduation was short-circuited by conscription into war service. Consequently, she served in the American OSS until the end of the war, in London, and it is there that she met and married a fellow OSS officer, and moved to the U.S.

Following a stint at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Peggy concurrently completed her B.A. and M.A. in economics at American University in Washington D.C., and shortly thereafter an economics PhD. at Johns Hopkins; her thesis was published in book form. Also, during this time she worked as a summer intern at both the Federal Reserve and the International Tax Division of the Treasury Dept.

She began her professional life as a senior research associate at Columbia University and a member of a study group on economic integration in Common Markets headed by Prof. Carl Shoup. The mid-sixties found her teaching international economics at the University of Pennsylvania, where she had been appointed as an assistant professor. It was at this point that Peggy was with her second husband, soul-mate and love of her life, Richard A. Musgrave, who was then teaching at Princeton University. Now together, they moved to Cambridge, MA., where he had taken up the H.H. Burbank Professorship in public economics at Harvard. Peggy then joined the International Tax Program at the Harvard Law School where she produced further publication.

Peggy continued her academic career, first as an associate and then full professor at Northeastern University in Boston; and it was at this point that she and Richard, full-bore academic collaborators, were invited to San Francisco as visiting Ford Research Professors at Berkeley; and while working at Berkeley, the University of California offered the professorship at Santa Cruz. She served at UCSC until 1992, and was heavily involved in both teaching and administration. She was provost of Crown College at UCSC from July 1, 1987-1989.

Her husband, the noted scholar on public finance, then retired from Harvard, also spent two years as an adjunct professor at UCSC. He died in 2007 at the age of 96.

Peggy’s economics scholarship followed from her principal interest in the taxation of foreign investment; a subject concerning which she testified at several Congressional hearings; and about which she wrote a white paper for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

She was a member of the American Economic Association, the National Tax Association, and was an Honorary member of the International Institute of Public Finance; as well, an honorary board member of the Center for Economic Studies at the University of Munich. The International Institute of Public Finance (IIPF) created the “Peggy and Richard Musgrave Prize” in 2003 to honor and encourage younger scholars whose work meets the high standards of scientific quality, creativity and relevance that has been a mark of the Musgraves’ contribution to public finance.

Peggy is survived by three children, Pamela Clyne of New Jersey, Roger Richman of Malibu, Ca., and Thomas Richman, of Boulder, Co., four grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. Her ashes will be buried with those of her husband and his father in Cambridge, MA. The memorial will be private.

Source (and image): From the emeriti obituaries collection at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Categories
Economists Germany Harvard Johns Hopkins Michigan Princeton Swarthmore

Harvard. Economics Ph.D. alumnus, Richard Abel-Musgrave, 1937

 

The German-born economist Richard Abel-Musgrave was one of many German/Austrian educated economists who came to the United States in the 1930s, much to the enrichment of economics. He was one of the many truly outstanding economists to have left Harvard in the 1930s with an economics Ph.D. Richard Musgrave wrote a principal textbook for the field of public finance.  More biographical information can be found in Hans-Werner Sinn’s lecture “Please Bring Me the New York Times: On the European Roots of Richard Abel Musgrave” (2007).

A Musgrave-artifact posted earlier at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror: 

External examination questions for honors A.B. at Swarthmore College, 1946.

_____________________

Harvard Ph.D.

RICHARD ABEL-Musgrave, DIPLOM-VOLKSWIRT (Univ. of Heidelberg, Germany) 1933, A.M. (Harvard Univ.) 1935.

Subject, Economics. Special Field, Public Finance. Thesis, “The Theory of Public Finance and the Concept of ‘Burden of Taxation.’” Instructor in Economics and Tutor in the Division of History, Government, and Economics.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1937-38, p. 155.

_____________________

Short Bio from Harvard Law School Yearbook

Richard Musgrave
H. N. Burbank Professor of Political Economy

Born: Königstein, Germany, 1910; Education: Diplom Volkswirt (Economics) U. of Heidelberg 1930, M.A. (Economics) Harvard 1936, Ph.D. (Economics) Harvard 1937; Subsequent Experience; 1941-8 Economist on the Federal Reserve Board, 1948-58 Professor of Economics at the University of Michigan, 1958-62 Professor of Economics at Johns Hopkins, 1962-5 Professor of Economics at Princeton; Married: 1964 to the former Peggy Brewer, one child; Joined the Faculty; 1965; Subjects: Federal Tax Policy, Economics for Lawyers, Taxation and Economic Development; Publications: Fiscal Systems (1969), The Theory of Public Finance (1958), Public Finance in Theory and Practice (1974); Extra-legal Activites: Consultant to the U.S. Treasury, the Council of Economic Advisers, and Foreign Missions; President, Tax Reform Commission for Columbia (1969), director, Fiscal Reform Project, Bolivia; Editor Quarterly Journal of Economics. (1968-75), President, International Seminar in Public Economics.

Source: Harvard Law School Yearbook 1979, p. 63.

_____________________

Obituary from UC Santa Cruz

Musgrave, renowned pioneer of public finance, dies at 96

January 16, 2007
By Jennifer McNulty, Staff Writer

SANTA CRUZ, CA–Richard A. Musgrave, widely regarded as the founder of modern public finance and an adviser on fiscal policy and taxation to governments from Washington to Bogota to Tokyo, died Monday, Jan. 15.

Musgrave, 96, was an adjunct professor of economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and professor emeritus of economics at Harvard University. His wife, Peggy Boswell [sic, “Brewer” was her maiden name] Musgrave, said Musgrave died of natural causes.

A staunch believer that government can play a positive and constructive role in society, Musgrave also believed deeply that economists can contribute to making government work well, thereby contributing to a better society. His work on public finance has been described as his “attempt to marry the theory and practice of good government.”

“Richard Musgrave transformed economics in the 1950s and 1960s from a descriptive and institutional subject to one that used the tools of microeconomics and Keynesian macroeconomics to understand the effects of taxes,” says Martin Feldstein, George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard and president of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

“Richard Musgrave was a giant – a towering figure who transformed the field of public economics,” adds David M. Cutler, Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics and dean for the social sciences in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

An academic economist for the last 60 years, Musgrave mixed his university work with a wide range of public service and consultation. Starting in the 1940s, he advised governments in Colombia, Chile, Myanmar, Japan, Puerto Rico, South Korea, and Taiwan on taxation and fiscal policy, and led tax reform commissions in Colombia and Bolivia.

Similarly, domestic agencies and congressional committees repeatedly sought Musgrave’s advice on public finance policy questions. He worked with or as a consultant to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Treasury, the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the World Bank.

Musgrave described the setting of tax policy as a delicate orchestration of factors including employment, inflation, economic growth, and the fair distribution of the tax burden – with the latter generally assigned outsize importance, in Musgrave’s view.

“Clearly, tax policy is not simply a matter of raising revenue in an equitable fashion,” he and his wife, then an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote in the Boston Globe in 1978. “The entire performance of the economy must be allowed for as well, though this should be done with least damage to the fairness of the tax system.”

Two of Musgrave’s books became classics in their field: The Theory of Public Finance: A Study in Public Economy (1958) and Public Finance in Theory and Practice, coauthored with Peggy Musgrave (1973).

“Intelligent conduct of government is at the heart of democracy,” Musgrave wrote in the introduction to The Theory of Public Finance. “It requires an understanding of the economic relations involved; and the economist, by aiding in this understanding, may hope to contribute to a better society. This is why the field of public finance has seemed of particular interest to me; and this is why my interest in the field has been motivated by a search for the good society, no less than by scientific curiosity.”

The Theory of Public Finance transformed the study of public finance to a discipline in which questions are analyzed in general equilibrium terms, where changes in tax policy take into account the resulting changes in the economy. Musgrave’s many intellectual contributions included studies on tax incidence, tax progressivity, public goods, fiscal federalism, the effects of taxation on risk taking, and the role of fiscal policy in stabilizing the economy.

Musgrave’s influence endured throughout his lengthy career. In 1998, he was invited by the University of Munich to join his “archrival” in the study of political economy, James M. Buchanan, in a five-day debate. The results were published in 1999 as Public Finance and Public Choice: Two Contrasting Visions of the State. [At the CESifo Mediathek one can find videos from this five day conference. Search “Two visions” or “Buchanan” or “Musgrave”]

“Two towering pillars of 20th-century public economics examine the deep foundations of their own thought and their common subject,” economist Robert M. Solow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote of the work. “Who could resist the chance to eavesdrop on their reflections? Certainly not anyone who cares about the role of government in modern society.”

Born Dec. 14, 1910, in Koenigstein, Germany, Richard Abel Musgrave studied at the University of Munich, Exeter College, and the University of Heidelberg, where he received his Diplom Volkswirt (the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree) in 1933. He continued his studies at the University of Rochester and at Harvard, where he received an A.M. degree in 1936 and a Ph.D. in 1937.

Musgrave was an instructor in economics at Harvard until 1941, when he became an economist at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, a position he held until 1947. He taught economics at Swarthmore College from 1947 to 1948, following which he was an economics professor at the University of Michigan from 1948 to 1958; at Johns Hopkins University from 1958 to 1961; and at Princeton University from 1962 to 1965.

In 1965 Musgrave joined Harvard as professor of economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and at Harvard Law School. He was named H. H. Burbank Professor of Economics in 1969, when he also became chair of Harvard’s standing committee on Afro-American studies. In 1981 he was named professor emeritus at Harvard and became an adjunct professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, remaining affiliated with that campus through 2004.

Among his numerous awards and honors, Musgrave was a Fulbright professor in Germany in 1956 and held a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1959. He was named honorary president of the International Institute of Public Finance in 1978, the same year he was elected a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economics Association. He received the Frank E. Seidman Distinguished Award in Political Economy in 1981. In 1983, 50 years to the day after he received his Diplom Volkswirt, Musgrave was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Heidelberg, his alma mater. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1986, and in 1994, he received the Daniel M. Holland Medal from the National Tax Association.

Musgrave is survived by his wife, Peggy Boswell [sic,  “Brewer” was her maiden name] Musgrave, and three stepchildren: Pamela Clyne of New Jersey, Roger Richmond [sic, “Richman” is correct] of California, and Thomas Richmond [sic, “Richman” is correct] of Colorado. He is also survived by numerous nephews and nieces, including Harry Krause, the Max L. Rowe Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois College of Law. Details regarding a memorial service have not been finalized.

Source:  UC Santa Cruz. University News. January 16, 2007.

_____________________

Harvard Crimson Obituary

Renowned Economist Musgrave Dead at 96
Former professor ‘transformed’ public sector economics

By Tina Wang, Crimson Staff Writer
January 19, 2007

During the lifetimes of most Harvard undergraduates, Richard A. Musgrave—a founder of modern public sector economics—was in retirement.

Musgrave, who died Monday at age 96, also came from an era preceding current economics faculty. But his ideas about the state’s role in the economy left a lasting impact felt by Harvard faculty and alums today.

Having taught public finance at Harvard for about two decades, Musgrave had been an emeritus professor since 1981.

“The training I received well after he had retired was different because he was around,” said Dean for the Social Sciences David M. Cutler ’87.

Concerned with the government’s equitable and efficient distribution and redistribution of resources through taxation and spending, “he transformed the whole way people thought about public economics,” said one of Musgrave’s former students, James M. Poterba ’80, who now chairs the economics department at MIT.

Born in 1910 in Germany, Musgrave, who received a Ph.D in political economy from Harvard, taught here from 1937 until 1941, when he left for a post at the Federal Reserve.

After various teaching stints, including at Princeton, Musgrave returned to Harvard in 1965 with tenured appointments in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and at Harvard Law School.

He also took prominent economic advising roles in Washington, as well as with foreign governments, from Colombia to South Korea.

Musgrave died in Santa Cruz, Calif., where he and his wife had moved to teach at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

‘THE MUSGRAVE TRICHOTOMY’

In his senior year of college—and the last year Musgrave taught at Harvard—Poterba audited Musgrave’s graduate course, co-taught with Baker Professor of Economics Martin S. Feldstein ’61.

“He didn’t just study the tax system or government policies in an abstract classroom, or in a theoretical way. He studied these questions because he believed they were incredibly important in making the lives of individual citizens better,” Poterba said.

The ground-breaking “Musgrave trichotomy” identified three separate roles of government—redistributing income, allocating resources, and stabilizing the macroeconomy, Cutler and Poterba said.

“Everything that’s taught in public economics now is completely different than what was taught from before,” said Cutler, who co-teaches Economics 1410, “Public Sector Economics.” “You look at textbooks before him and you wouldn’t even recognize them.”

Cutler said that when he teaches his students to think about questions of efficiency and redistribution in public sector economics separately, “all of that comes from Musgrave.”

“Generations of students who used his textbook [The Theory of Public Finance] think about the world very differently,” Cutler said.

Musgrave strove for much of his life to find ways for the state to play a positive role in the economy, which entailed understanding the trade-offs between allowing the government to provide some goods versus allowing the private sector to provide them.

As a student who came to Harvard in the mid-1930s during the Great Depression, when Keynesian views about the benefits of government intervention in the economy were starting to enter economic discourse, “Musgrave was always very deeply of the view that the government could make things better,” Poterba said.

ECONOMIC OUTLIER

Musgrave’s economic principles, particularly with their focus on social equity, did not always square perfectly with mainstream thinking in his field.

“He was probably a little bit frustrated that the profession has moved as far as it has toward the efficiency direction,” said Cutler. “Although I think it would’ve moved even farther had he not been around.”

An emphasis on equity may have eroded in conventional economics discourse, partially because “it’s really hard to say how equitable should things be,” Cutler said. “You’re saying, ‘gee, what’s the right distribution of income.’”

Contrary to trends in his field, Musgrave “probably moved a bit in the direction of thinking there was an activist role of government,” Poterba said.

The German school of thought— “thinking about the whole community almost as though it was one actor”—was another influence that Musgrave brought to bear on U.S. economic thinking, Poterba said.

“That was a perspective that was somewhat different from what most U.S. economists were using,” Poterba said.

Concerned with questions of how to set up an equitable tax system, Musgrave was a vocal critic of President Reagan’s conservative economic program.

In 1982, Musgrave, with 33 other economists, sent a letter to the White House criticizing Reagan’s economic policy as “extremely regressive in its impact on our society, redistributing wealth and power from the middle-class and poor to the rich,” The Crimson reported.

“One never knows if this will have any effect on the President, but we felt it was important to speak out,” Musgrave told The Crimson at the time.

‘DEEPLY COMMITTED’

Cutler said he first met Musgrave in the early 1990s when Musgrave was on the East Coast and had contacted him, saying he had heard Cutler had joined the Harvard faculty and wanted to meet him.

They met about every other year through much of the 1990s to chat about economics research and the goings-on of the department, according to Cutler, who joined the Harvard economics faculty in 1991.

“Every time after meeting him, I would think, ‘I hope I’m in as good a shape at 40 as he is at 80,’ ” Cutler said.

“Even though Musgrave was in his 80s and 90s at the time, he kept very well up-to-date…not very many people will do that,” he said.

He was still “very interested in the world of economics and how it could be used in policy areas,” he said.

Poterba has fond memories of Musgrave’s energy as well.

In Musgrave’s class, “even at that stage, one of his last years at Harvard, he was incredibly energetic and enthusiastic about the whole study of government and taxation, deeply committed to training students, and maintained long connections and ties to students,” Poterba said.

A stone in Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge will bear Musgrave’s name, his wife, Peggy Brewer Musgrave, told The Boston Globe.

Source:  Tina Wang. Renowned Economist Musgrave Dead at 96. Harvard Crimson(January 19, 2007).

Image Source: Harvard Law School Yearbook 1970, p. 31.

 

Categories
Columbia Economists NBER Swarthmore

Columbia. Economics PhD alumnus, Joseph David Coppock. 1940

 

 

In the previous post several external examiners for the honors B.A. degree at Swarthmore College in the 1940s were identified. That list included several prominent names, such as Paul Samuelson (MIT), Lloyd Metzler (Federal Reserve), Friedrich Lutz (Princeton), but also a repeat examiner was one Joseph David Coppock, considerably less prominent in the great sweep of 20th century economics. Never having heard of Coppock myself, I decided to dedicate this post to the academic and professional career of this Swarthmore alumnus (A.B., 1933) and Columbia University Ph.D. (1940).

His academic arc began with an instructorship in economics at his Swarthmore alma mater while completing his Columbia University doctoral degree and ended at Penn State University. Government service, including work as a civilian in uniform with the Office of Strategic Services during the Second World War, provided years of economic-policy experience. A link to a very interesting oral interview with Coppock at the Truman Presidential Library covering his government experience is included below.

__________________

AEA Biographical Listing, 1969

Coppock, Joseph David, academic, government; b. Peru, Ind., 1909; A.B., Swarthmore Coll., 1933; M.A., Columbia, 1934, Ph.D., 1940. DOC. DIS. Government Agencies of Consumer Installment Credit, 1940. FIELDS 5, 1ab, 2d. PUB. International Economic Instability, 1962; Economics of the Business Firm, 1959; Foreign Trade of the Middle East, 1966. RES. International Economic Relations. Econ. Adv., U.S. Dept. State, 1945-53, 1961-62; prof. econs., Earlham Coll. [Richmond, Indiana], 1953-63, American U. Beirut, 1963-65, Pa. State U. Since 1965.

Source: Biographical Listings of Members [American Economic Association], American Economic Review, Vol. 59, No. 6 (1969). Handbook of the American Economic Association (Jan., 1970), p. 86.

__________________

Joseph David Coppock
Books

Joseph D. Coppock, Government Agencies of Consumer Instalment Credit.  Research Program of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Studies in Consumer Instalment Financing: Number Five (1940), p. xii.

From the author’s acknowledgment to doctoral dissertation published by NBER

Finally, I wish to thank Swarthmore College for granting me a leave of absence to participate in the National Bureau’s investigation of consumer instalment financing.

Joseph D. Coppock
Financial Research Staff
(National Bureau of Economic Research)
and
University of California

_____________, International Economic Instability: The Experience After World War 2(McGraw-Hill, 1962).

_____________, Economics of the Business Firm: Economics of Decision Making in the Business Enterprise(McGraw-Hill, 1959).

_____________, Foreign Trade of the Middle East: Instability and Growth, 1946-1962 (Economic Research Institute, American University of Beirut, 1966).

__________________

From the Finding Aid to the Joseph D. Coppock Papers at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum

The papers of Joseph D. Coppock relate primarily to his work with the U. S. Department of State, the Office of Price Administration, the War Production Board, and the National War College. International trade was the main focus of his work at the Department of State and the War Production Board. Most of the documents are memoranda and correspondence involving foreign trade, along with financial records, handwritten notes, reports, speech drafts, and a transcript of a debate. The papers also contain the syllabi used by Coppock during his tenure as a visiting professor at the National War College.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

1909 (February 10), Born in Peru, Indiana

1933                A.B., Swarthmore College

1940                Ph.D., Columbia University

1941                Economist, U.S. Department of Agriculture

1942                Special Assistant to Vice Chairman, War Production Board

1943                Price Executive, Chemical and Drugs Division, Office of Price Administration

1945-1953      Economic Adviser, Office of International Trade Policy, U.S. Department of State

1946-1952      Member of U.S. delegation to Economic and Social Council of the United Nations: New York, Geneva, and Santiago

1951-1953      Visiting Professor, National War College

1965                Became professor of economics at Penn State University

2000 (July 31) Died in Redmond, Washington

Coppock took a position as a visiting professor at the National War College in 1951. While there, he served as the chairman of the Civilian Faculty. After his term at the National War College, Coppock worked as a visiting professor at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon, and as a professor of economics at Earlham College in Indiana and at Pennsylvania State University.

__________________

Research Tip:
Oral History Interview
Covering Coppock’s extensive experience as an economist in government

Oral History Interview with Joseph D. Coppock (July 29, 1974) by Richard D. McKinzie. Harry S. Truman Presidential Library & Museum (Independence, Missouri).

__________________

Image Source: Swarthmore College yearbook, Halcyon 1940, p. 11.

 

Categories
Economic History Economists Suggested Reading Syllabus Undergraduate Yale

Yale. Undergraduate European Economic History through the Industrial Revolution. Miskimin, 1971

 

Reflecting on my own academic upbringing, I am increasingly amazed at the sheer abundance of economic history courses still offered at Yale and MIT in the 1970s. My first taste of economic history came with Harry Miskimin’s course on the economic history of Europe up through the Industrial Revolution. I later took a graduate course he offered on French mercantilism. I remember well the sage advice he gave me to postpone work in economic history to first get trained in the analytic tools of economics, since he thought I apparently could handle the demands of economics graduate school. I believe he was the only professor I ever had who actually smoked (cigarettes) in class. 

From the Yale Daily News Archives I learned that Harry Miskimin later served as president of the Yale chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). There is a low-resolution picture of Miskimin in his mature years in the article linked.

Below are the assigned readings for the European economic history course from the Fall Term, 1971-72.

_________________

Harry Miskimin
100% Yalie

Harry Alvin Miskimin, Jr. was born September 8, 1932 in Orange, New Jersey. He died October 24, 1995.

B.A. Yale, 1954; M.A. Yale, 1958; Ph.D. Yale, 1960. From instructor to professor history Yale University, New Haven, since 1960, associate professor, 1964-1971, professor history, since 1971, chairman department history, 1986-1989, Charles Seymour Professor of History, since 1991.

_________________

Harry Miskimin
Obituary Note

Post by Wendy Plotkin
H-Urban Co-Editor
14 January 1996

1995 saw the death of Harry A. Miskimin, the Charles Seymour Professor of History at Yale University in October. According to a press release received from H-Net Central in December, Professor Miskimin was

“An authority on the economic history of medieval and early modern Europe” and “the author of five books, including The Economy of Early Renaissance Europe, 1300-1460and The Economy of Later Renaissance Europe, 1460-1600both of which were translated in Spanish and Portuguese; Money and Power in Fifteenth Century France, Money, Prices and Foreign Exchange in Fourteenth Century Franceand Cash, Credit and Crisis in Europe, 1300-1600.”

Professor Miskimin was general editor of four volumes of the Cambridge University Press series “The Economic Civilization of Europe.”

Of special interest to H-Urban subscribers, Miskimin co-edited THE MEDIEVAL CITY with A. Udovitch and D. Herlihy (Yale University Press, 1977). This collection included:

    1. The Italian City

Herlihy, “Family and property in Renaissance Florence”
Krekic, B., “Four Florentine commercial companies in Dubrovnik (Ragusa) in the first half of the fourteenth century”
Lane, F. C. “The First Infidelities of the Venetian Lire”
Cipolla, C. M. “A Plague Doctor”
Kedar, B.Z. “The Genoese Notaries of 1382”
Hughes, D. O. “Kinsmen and neighbors in Medieval Genoa”
Peters, E. Pars, parte: “Dante and an Urban Contribution to Political Thought”

    1. The Eastern City

Udovitch, A. L. “A Tale of Two Cities”
Goitein, S. D. “A Mansion in Fustat”
Prawer, J. “Crusader Cities”
Teall, J. “Byzantine Urbanism in the Military Handbooks”

    1. The Northern City:

Miskimin, H. A. “The Legacies of London”
Munro, J. “Industrial Protectionism in Medieval Flanders”
Strayer, J.R. “The Costs and Profits of War”
Hoffmann, R. C. “Wroclaw Citizens as Rural Landholders”
Cohen, S. “The Earliest Scandinavian Towns”

Professor Miskimin was noted for his work on the “beginning of the transition from medieval to modern economies.” I am interested in reflections on this and other work of Professor Miskimin.

After obtaining his undergraduate and graduate education at Yale, he spent the rest of his career teaching at Yale College, serving as director of graduate studies for the Economic History Program after 1967.

On leave from Yale, Miskimin was for a period director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris. Although his intellectual work was on the medieval period, he participated in present day activities in his community, serving as a zoning commissioner for the Town of Woodbridge 1976-85, a member of the Woodbridge Democratic Town Committee and a board member of the Woodbridge Town Library.

Professor Miskimin was born in 1932 in East Orange, New Jersey, graduated from Phillips Andover Academy in 1950, and was in the U.S. Army from 1955-57.

Source: Humanities and Social Sciences Net Online

_________________

Yale University
History 51 a – Economics 80a
Mr. Miskimin
Fall Term 1971-72

The readings from this course will be in diverse sources but the student may find it convenient to purchase the books of Herbert Heaton (Economic History of Europe rev. ed., Harper & Bros., New York, 1948) and Henri Pirenne (Economic and Social History of Mediaeval Europe, Harvest Books, Harcourt, Brace, New York.)

Sept. 17

 First Class

20

 Heaton, Chapters 4, 5

22

 Heaton, Chapters 6, 7

24

 Pirenne, pp. 38-86

27

 Pirenne, pp. 87-140

29

 Pirenne, pp. 141-188

Oct. 1

 Heaton, Chapter 8

4

 Heaton Chapters 9, 10

6

 Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. 2, pp. 433-441, 456-92

8

 Pirenne, pp. 188-end
(Rec. Miskimin, The Economy of Early Renaissance Europe.)

11

 Heaton, Chapters 11, 12

13

 Hamilton, E. J., American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1601-1650. Scan thoroughly

15

 Continue Hamilton

18

 Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. IV, pp. 1-95.

20

 Nef, J. U., Industry and Government in France and England, 1540-1640, Great Seal Books, Cornell University Ithaca, 1957. Also in Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, vol. XV, 1940. First half.

22

 Finish Nef

25

 Green, R.W., ed., Protestantism and Capitalism—The Weber Thesis and its Critics, D.C. Heath & Co., Boston. First half.

27

 Finish Green

29

 Heaton, Chapters 13, 14

Nov. 1

 Heaton, Chapter 15

3

 Heaton, Chapter 16

5

 Viner, Jacob, Studies in the Theory of International Trade, Harper Brothers, New York. Chapter 1

8

 Viner, Chapter 2

10

 Cipolla, C. M., “The Decline of Italy,” Economic History Review, 1952, pp. 178-87. Hamilton, E. J., “The Decline of Spain,”Economic History Review, 1938, pp. 168-79

12

 Review Heaton, Chapters 13-16

15

 Hour Test (paper may be substituted)

17

 Wilson, C.H., “The Economic Decline of the Netherlands,” Economic History Review, 1939, pp. 111-127

19

 Heckscher, Eli, Mercantilism. Rev. ed., George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London, 1955, Vol. I, pp. 78-109

22

 Heckscher, Vol. I, pp. 137-78

24

 Heckscher, Vol. I, pp. 178-220

26

 Helleiner, K.F., ed., Readings in European Economic History, University of Toronto Press, 1946. Section by R. H. Tawney, pp. 143-82

29

 Helleiner, Section by Tawney, pp. 183-223

Dec. 1

 Bowden, Karpovitch, and Usher, An Economic History of Europe since 1750, pp. 45-66; Cambridge Economic History, IV, chapter V, pp. 276-308

3

 Bowden, Karpovitch, and Usher, pp. 146-96

6

 Ashton, T.S., The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830. First third.

8

 Ashton, Second third

10

 Finish Ashton

13

 Taylor, Philip, ed., The Industrial Revolution—Triumph or Disaster? D.C. Heath & Company, Boston.

15

 Rostow, W.W., The Stages of Economic Growth, a Non-Communist Manifesto, Cambridge University Press, 1960, pp. 1-35

17

 Rostow, W.W., The Stages of Economic Growth, a Non-Communist Manifesto, Cambridge University Press, 1960, pp. 36-72

 

Source: Personal copy of Irwin Collier.

Image Source: Harry Miskimin’s 1954 Yale yearbook portrait.

Categories
Economists Gender Harvard Radcliffe Vassar

Harvard/Radcliffe. Economics Ph.D. alumna, Ethelwynn Rice Beckwith, 1925

 

Economics in the Rear-view Mirror is conceived as a long-term project. I am seeking artifacts and information about the curriculum that has shaped young economists as well as the about the “products” of the curriculum, i.e. the undergraduate economics majors and Ph.D. graduates.

Yesterday I randomly went into the annual report of the President of Radcliffe College to begin to follow another career of a woman Ph.D. in economics. And so the post for today was born. Who was Ethelwynn Rice Beckwith, Radcliffe Ph.D. 1925?

The first item below is  all that is easy to know about her biography and career. From that point it takes some digging into genealogical archives (www.ancestry.com) and luck. Her vital dates: b. January 7, 1870 in Hartford, Connecticut; d. August 31, 1955 in Manitawoc, Wisconsin. She was married right out of college to William Erastus Beckwith [b. October 17, 1870 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts; d. June 26, 1904 in Wailuku, Hawaii] on July 2, 1900 in Lorain County Ohio. The couple moved to Hawaii where William was a “clerk at Custom House” at least as early as 1898. In 1905 she was living alone as a teacher at the Emma Willard School in Troy, N.Y. In the U.S. Census of 1910 she was recorded as a widow, living in Cleveland, Ohio as a boarder (April 16, 1910). To make things more complicated I have found a ship manifest that indicates Ethelwynn Beckwith was a cabin passenger, designated as “married”, on a ship from Yokohama (!) that arrived in Honolulu September 16, 1910 (with her ultimate destination given as San Francisco). We can go on to follow the young woman mathematician moving from Bryn Mawr to Western Reserve University to Göttingen in Germany and to Vassar before going for her graduate work at Radcliffe. From mathematics to economics, but then back to mathematics and astronomy at the Milwaukee women’s Downer College. 

So why didn’t Ethelwynn do mathematics at Radcliffe? I’ll leave that to a historian of U.S. mathematics. Feel free to leave a comment below.

The maternal genealogy of William Erastus Beckwith (p. 80) is covered back to 1635. The best I can determine through the ancestry.com, William Erastus Beckwith was no close relation to Holmes Beckwith (Columbia Ph.D., 1913).

___________________

Radcliffe Ph.D., 1925

Ethelwynn Rice Beckwith, A.M.

Subject, Economics. Special Field, Statistics. Dissertation, “Inequalities in the Distribution of Income, their Meaning and Measurement.”

Source: Radcliffe College. Report of the President of Radcliffe College 1924-25, p. 26.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Dissertation included in the bibliography of Arthur Lyon Bowley (ed.) Studies in the National Income, 1924-1938,  (Cambridge UK, 1942), p. 218.

___________________

C.V. through 1925

Ethelwynn R. Beckwith, A.B., M.A. Assistant Professor of Mathematics

A.B., Oberlin, 1900; [Ph.B.]
M.A., Western Reserve University, 1909;
Principal of Wauluku, Hawaiian Islands, 1902-03
Teacher of Mathematics, Emma Willard School, 1905-07 [Troy, New York]
Graduate Student, Bryn Mawr, 1907-08
Graduate Student, Western Reserve University, 1908-09
Graduate Student, University of Göttingen, 1912-13
Instructor, Western Reserve University, 1913-17; Assistant Professor, 1917-20
Acting Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Vassar, 1921-.
Member Mathematic Association of America.

Source: Vassar College Yearbook, The 1922 Vassarion, vol. 34. p. 25.

Note:  In the Poughkeepsie City Directory of 1925, Ethelwynn R. Beckwith was still listed as assistant professor at Vassar.

___________________

Downer College (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)
Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy
1925-1947

Lawrence University (Appleton, Wisconsin) Archives

Milwaukee-Downer College People Files, 1850-1964. Series 1: A-L
Folder 15: Beckwith, Ethelwynn Rice, professor of Mathematics 1925-1947.

Finding aid on line.

___________________

Died as a result of an automobile accident

From a Sheboygan Press (Wisconsin) article published Saturday, August 27, 1955.

Mrs. Ethelwynn R. Beckwith, 77, of 2827 N. Farwell Ave., Milwaukee…was reported still in critical condition this morning at Holy Family Hospital in Manitowoc.

A retired professor of mathematics and astronomy at Milwaukee-Downer College, Mrs. Beckwith was still unconscious 28 hours after the accident. She sustained a skull fracture.

Driver of the other car, Louis Leischow, 66, of Forestville, died several hours after the accident. The coroner attributed death to a crushed chest.

Killed outright in the two-car collision was Miss Elizabeth Rossberg, 67, of 2512 E. Harford Ave., Milwaukee…

…The accident occurred shortly before 9 a.m. Friday [August 26] when cars driven by Leischow and Mrs. Beckwith collided head on on Highway 141, 1 1/2 miles south of Newton.

Sheriff deputies said the crash occurred when Mrs. Beckwith’s northbound car veered across the center line into the path of an auto driven by Leischow.

Miss Rossberg, professor of German at Milwaukee-Downer since 1912 and chairman of the curricula committee of the women’s college, was a passenger in the Beckwith auto.

She and Mrs. Beckwith had left Milwaukee early Friday morning to spend a week with friends near Ellison Bay in Door County, according to officials of the college….

___________________

Image Source: Two faculty portraits of Ethelwynn Rice Beckwith from the Yearbook for Wilwaukee-Downer College, Cumtux (1930, 1931).