Category: Economists

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Columbia. Munroe Smith’s history of the faculty of political science as told by A.S. Johnson, 1952.

 

The following paragraphs come from Alvin S. Johnson’s 1952 autobiography that is filled with many such nuggets of fact and context that are relevant for the work of Economics in the Rear-View Mirror. The institutional histories from which departments of economics have emerged provide some of the initial conditions for the evolution of organized economics education. Like Johns Hopkins and unlike Harvard and Chicago, Columbia University economics was to a large part made in Germany.

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[p. 164] …Munroe Smith gave me detail after detail of the history of the faculty. Dean Burgess, as a cavalry officer in the Civil War, had had much time for reflection on the stupendous folly of a war in which citizens laid waste other citizens’ country and slaughtered each other without ill will. All the issues, Burgess believed, could have been compromised if the lawyers who controlled Congress and the state legislatures had been trained in history, political science, and public law. As soon as he was discharged from the army, after Appomattox, he set out for Germany to study the political sciences. He spent several years at different universities, forming friendships with the most famous professors and imbuing himself thoroughly with the spirit of German scholarship. On his return he accepted an appointment in history at Columbia College, then a pleasant young gentlemen’s finishing school. He was permitted to offer courses in public law. Although these could not be counted for credit toward the A.B., many of the ablest students were drawn to his lectures.

From among his students he picked out four and enlisted them in a project for transforming Columbia College into a university. The four were Nicholas Murray Butler, E. R. A. Seligman, Frank Goodnow, and Munroe Smith. They were to proceed to Germany to get their doctorates. Butler was to study philosophy and education; Seligman, economics; Goodnow, administration; Munroe Smith, Roman law. The young men executed Burgess’s command like good soldiers and in due time returned to offer non-credit courses at Columbia College.

Burgess’s next move was to turn his group into a graduate faculty. Such a faculty had been set up at Johns Hopkins, the first in America, and commanded nationwide interest among educators. Burgess argued with President Frederick Barnard on the need of a graduate school in the greatest city of the country. After some years the Board of Trustees authorized in 1886 the setting up of a graduate School of Political Science, manned by Burgess and his disciples, now advanced to professorial rank.

Butler early stepped aside to develop courses he later organized into Teachers College. Burgess and his three younger colleagues watched for opportunities to enlist additional abilities: William A. Dunning in political theory, Herbert L. Osgood in American history, John Bassett Moore in international law, John Bates Clark in [p. 165] economics Franklin Giddings in sociology. This process of expansion was going on energetically while I was on the faculty; Henry R. Seager and Henry L. Moore were enlisted for the economics department, Edward T. Devine and Samuel McCune Lindsay for sociology, James Harvey Robinson and later Charles A. Beard for history. In the meantime other graduate courses were springing up throughout the institution. The towering structure of Columbia University had risen up out of Burgess’s small bottle.

Still in my time the controlling nucleus of our faculty consisted of Burgess, Seligman, Goodnow, and Munroe Smith. They all knew American colonial history well and had followed the step-by-step evolution of Massachusetts Bay from a settlement governed by a chartered company in England to a free self-governing community, germ of American liberty. Step by step Burgess and his lieutenants built up the liberties of the School of Political Science. They got the Board of Trustees to accept the principle of the absolute freedom of the scholar to pursue the truth as he sees it, whatever the consequences; the principle of absolute equality of the faculty members; the principle that no scholar might be added to the faculty without the unanimous consent of the faculty. The principle was established that the president and trustees could intervene in the affairs of the faculty only through the power of the purse.

President Seth Low, regarding himself justly as a recognized authority on administration, sought admission to the meetings of the faculty. He was turned down. A university president could not conduct himself as an equal among equals. When Nicholas Murray Butler became president he thought it would be a good idea for him to sit in with the faculty. After all, he had been one of Burgess’s first panel. We voted the proposition down, unanimously.

Since my time the faculty has grown in numbers and its relations with other departments of the university have become closer. But the spirit of liberty and equality, established by Burgess and his lieutenants, still lives on at Columbia and has overflowed into the universities of America. From time to time a board of trustees steps outside its moral sphere and undertakes to purge and discipline the faculty. But established liberties stricken down are bound to rise again.

Source: Alvin Saunders Johnson. A Pioneer’s Progress. New York: Viking Press, 1952.

Image Source: The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. “Columbia College, Madison Ave., New York, N.Y” [Architect: C. C. Haight] The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1886-09-04. Image of the Mid-town Campus from The American Architect and Building News, September 4, 1886. (cf. https://www.wikicu.com/Midtown_campus)

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Columbia Economists

Columbia. Alvin S. Johnson’s impressions of Edwin R.A. Seligman, 1898-1902

"He had a catholic mind and found some good in every author, no matter how crackbrained."

Alvin Saunders Johnson’s 1952 autobiography, A Pioneer’s Progress, provides us a treasure chest of granular detail regarding his academic and life experiences. This co-founder of the New School for Social Research in New York City went on to live another 19 years after publishing his autobiography to reach the age of 96.

Economics in the Rear-View Mirror will clip personal and departmental remembrances of Johnson’s own economics training and teaching days. This post shares a transcription of his impressions of Edwin R. A. Seligman.

Previously posted Johnson observations: John W. Burgess, Franklin H. Giddings.

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Other posts with
E.R.A. Seligman content

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Alvin Johnson reminisces
about Seligman

[p. 123] Edwin R. A. Seligman was head of the Department of Economics.

He was a strikingly handsome figure, with his thick dark beard, wavy in structure, with mahogany overtones. We called it an ambrosial beard; I doubt great Zeus had a handsomer.

No economist living had read so widely in the literature of the social sciences as Seligman. He had a catholic mind and found some good in every author, no matter how crackbrained. A man of large income, he was the foremost academic advocate of progressive income and inheritance taxes at a time when all regular economists abominated the idea of the income tax as a Populist attack on the wealthy and cultured classes. He was a staunch supporter of trade unionism and government regulation of railway rates. It was hard for me to distinguish between Seligman’s populism and mine.

As a lecturer he was systematic and eloquent. He never appeared before a class without thorough preparation, and in the seminar meetings at his house he was always primed with all the facts and ideas that might supplement the students’ papers. He was a great teacher, and most of the graduate students turned to him for direction…

*  *  *  *  *  *

[p. 137]…As the doctoral examinations approached in the spring of 1901, three of our group of students — Jesse Eliphalet Pope, Allan Willett, and I — spent much time together cramming. We were to be examined on the entire literature of our major economics — and on the courses in the minors for which we had registered, in my case sociology under Giddings. It goes without saying that we hadn’t a chance to load ourselves up for the particular questions we might be asked in a three-hour oral examination. Still we boned manfully.

Our Columbia professors were as a rule very humane. If a student seemed to be floored by a question the examiner made haste to substitute another and easier question. I felt I was getting on very satisfactorily under the questioning of Seligman and Clark. But then Giddings pounced on me with blood in his eye. He was having a feud with Seligman at the time and meant to take it out of my hide. He did, and I resented it, for he was my friend.

After the examination I waited in the corridor to hear the results of the examiners’ deliberations. Soon Seligman came out and announced that I had passed with flying colors….

We were all three candidates for teaching positions, and Seligman had a powerful reach out into the colleges of the country. Three openings came to his jurisdiction: an associate professorship at New York University, which he awarded to Pope, the faculty favorite; an instructorship at Brown University, which went to Willett; and a position as Reader at Bryn Maw College, which he reserved for me. I was [p. 138] so very young, he said — all through my undergraduate life I had felt reprehensibly old. At Bryn Maw I would give only one three-hour course and have nearly all my time for finishing my doctor’s thesis.

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[p. 151] … [At] Columbia and Barnard, in the fall of 1902, instruction presented problems quite new to me. Sometimes the problems were perplexing, often annoying, but usually capable of some sort of solution. By the end of my four years at Columbia I had been whipped into the shape of a fairly good teacher, although I was quite incapable of rising to the quizmaster heights many heads of departments at that time regarded as ideal.

My principal function was to drill classes of juniors, at Columbia and Barnard, in Bullock’s Introduction to Economics. At Columbia, Professor Seligman would lecture one hour to the assembled classes.

At Barnard, Professor Henry L. Moore would likewise assemble all the students for a general lecture. Then I would take over the students in smaller, though still large, groups and try to polish them off by quizzing them. It was on the whole a bad method.

*  *  *  *  *  *

 

Source: Alvin Saunders Johnson. A Pioneer’s Progress. New York: Viking Press, 1952.

Image Source: E.R.A. Seligman in Universities and their Sons, Vol. 2 (1899), pp. 484-6. Colorized by Economics in the Rear-View Mirror.

 

 

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Columbia Economists

Columbia. Alvin S. Johnson’s impressions of Dean John W. Burgess, October 1898

Dean John W. Burgess

 

Alvin Saunders Johnson’s 1952 autobiography, A Pioneer’s Progress, provides us a treasure chest of granular detail regarding his academic and life experiences. This co-founder of the New School for Social Research in New York City went on to live another 19 years after publishing his autobiography to reach the age of 96. In his New York Times obituary that starts on page one of the June 9, 1972 edition one reads:

“When he retired from the New School, Dr. Johnson did not leave the academic world. He came to the school each morning, and served as its elder statesman.”

What a way to go!

Economics in the Rear-View Mirror will clip personal and departmental remembrances of Johnson’s own economics training and teaching days. This post  includes his  first encounter with the founder of the Columbia School of Political Sciences, John W. Burgess, together with a tiny capsule of Burgessian Weltanschauung.

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Earlier Posts dealing with
John W. Burgess

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From Alvin S. Johnson’s Autobiography

[p. 120] … So here was I [in October 1898], a provincial, bound to Columbia for life by the calm magnificence of the Seth Low Library.

Entering, I met a janitor who directed me to the dean’s office on the third floor. The dean, John W. Burgess, looked classic too, with the classicism of highbred British stock, or rather, of the cavalier stock that first settled in Virginia. Though he had enlisted in the Northern cavalry from Tennessee, he was Virginian in his melodiously fluent speech. He treated even the rawest student or a janitor’s assistant with high courtesy and consideration….

I exhibited my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees [from the University of Nebraska] — the latter won without examination by the patriotic action of the state legislature, which voted the appropriate degrees for all volunteers who were approaching the conclusion of their requirements. He glanced at the diplomas and asked me what I wanted to study.

International relations, I said, political science, economics.

Then, he said, it would be best for me to major in economics, the strongest department. I’d need to make sociology one of my minors, according to the rules of the faculty. I could later decide what other minor I might like to take. He’d advise me to browse around freely the first year. Everybody ought to have some philosophy, and there was a famous course given by Professor Nicholas Murray Butler. Also, a course in literature might be useful.

He gave me some blanks to fill out, accepted them, and sent me to the bursar, who collected my semester’s tuition and minor fees for privileges I didn’t need.
So I was a registered graduate student in the School of Political Science. No question had been raised as to my antecedent scholarly preparation. Of course, I thought, the faculty would discover soon enough my ignorance of the field. They never did. I must have hidden it well…

[p. 122] …The Columbia School of Political Science, under which I was to work for three years, was manned by professors too distinguished to be called anywhere, except to university presidencies or high administrative office. Naturally I could not work under all of them in my first year, but I could visit all their classes and judge for myself what men of top distinction were like.

Foremost stood the dean, John W. Burgess, gentleman and scholar, reputed first authority on American constitutional history and constitutional law. He was an imperialist. At the time the problems of war and peace occupied my mind, and I classified men’s positions accordingly. Burgess had a grandiose idea of a permanent coalition among the three vital nations, America, England, and Germany, to rule the world. The decadent Latin nations were to be thrust into the role of charming museum pieces; the colored peoples and the half-Tartar Slavs were to be ruled with the firmness and justice of British rule in India…

Source: Alvin Saunders Johnson. A Pioneer’s Progress. New York: Viking Press, 1952.

Image Source: John W. Burgess in Universities and their Sons, Vol. 2. Boston: R. Herndon Company, 1899,  p. 481. Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

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Harvard. A. Piatt Andrew at his home “Red Roof”. Gloucester, MA. 1910

Abram Piatt Andrew taught monetary economics at Harvard before becoming a key player in the National Monetary Commission, Director  of the U.S. Mint, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, founder of the American Field Service, and a Republican member of the United States Congress from 1921-36. Much more has been posted about him here at Economics in the Rear-View Mirror.

This post deals with his home and private life.

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This photograph features A. Piatt Andrew at his home in Gloucester, Massachusetts, before World War I began. Prior to founding the American Field Service during the war, Andrew served as an assistant professor of economics at Harvard, director of the U.S. Mint, and assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. “Red Roof,” as his home was called, was designed and built under Andrew’s direction in 1902. Red Roof contained secret rooms, one of which necessitated dismantling a sofa to access and contained a Prohibition-era wet bar and a player piano. Guests in the living room could therefore hear the music but didn’t know its source. Another secret room contained a dugout that was later filled with AFS artifacts from the war, including posters, AFS recruitment slides, shell fuses (a favorite souvenir of AFS Drivers), and trench art.

Andrew created elaborate entertainment for guests at Red Roof by organizing themed dinner parties, musical performances, and skits in full costume. Guests to Red Roof included interior decorator and longtime AFS supporter Henry Sleeper, the portrait painter John Singer Sargent, art collector and philanthropist Isabella Stewart Gardner, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt [May 2-4, 1903].

Source: Nicole Milano, “A. Piatt Andrew and Red Roof, 1910.” American Field Service Website.

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But wait, there’s more

A blog dealing exclusively (no kidding) with “A. Piatt Andrew and Red Roof“.

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Research tips:

At the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (now called “Historic New England“) one can find “A. Piatt Andrew Guest Books, 1902-1930” among other items. These guest book pages have, in addition to the signatures, close to 700 photographs.  You can page through the pictures online (1902-1912) and (1913-1930).

At the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum you will find online 249 items (photographs, correspondence from A. Piatt Andrew).

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Henry Davis Sleeper and
A. Piatt Andrew Jr.

Plot spoiler: They were more than friendly neighbours.

Source: A. Piatt Andrew’s The Red Roof Guestbook, 1914-1930. Available at the Historic New England Website.

 Sleeper’s frail constitution prevented him from participating in the rough-and-tumble games and amusements favored by Andrew and his young male friends, mostly Harvard undergraduates. [p. 90]

Mrs. Jack

Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924) was a legend in her own time. Starting with the untimely death of her husband, John Lowell Gardner, in 1898, his widow, called Mrs. Jack, embarked on an ambitious program of art acquisition which culminated in the transformation of her fabulous Venetian-style palazzo, Fenway Court, into a beloved cultural institution. She accomplished this feat largely by relying on the skills, expertise and companionship of the coterie of attractive and talented homosexual men-mostly artists, collectors, and curators-that she gathered around her…. [p. 90]

Society Painter

By 1908 Mrs. Jack’s circle included the society painter John Singer Sargent (1856-1925). Born in Italy to American parents, Sargent had first come to Boston in 1887. After a solo exhibition in 1888 at the St. Botolph Club, he was commissioned in 1890 to design murals for the new Boston Public Library in Copley Square. Along with other commissions-for the Museum of Fine Arts and Harvard’s Widener Library-Sargent was almost fully occupied in Boston for the next twenty-five years. While circumspect about his private life, an album of male nudes that Sargent, a bachelor, kept for his own enjoyment offers insight into his predilections. [p. 91]

Seaside shenanigans

In the years preceding World War I, Isabella Stewart Gardner, John Singer Sargent, and others in their circle were drawn into the wealthy summer enclave at Eastern Point, Gloucester, where Harvard professor (later U.S. congressman) A. Piatt Andrew Jr. (1873-1936) and his neighbor, interior designer Henry Davis Sleeper (1878-1934), had homes. The letters from Sleeper to Andrew provide evidence of the intensity of his feelings.

Social life on Eastern Point revolved around ceaseless entertaining. One of Gardner’s biographers hints at the goings-on at Andrew’s home, Red Roof: “Gossip had it that often all the guests were men, their pastimes peculiar. Yet all the ladies on Eastern Point were fascinated by Piatt.” Portrait painter Cecilia Beaux (1863-1942) spent summers at her Gloucester home, Green Alley, where she enjoyed hosting evening gatherings of her neighbors. She never married. “Faithful in attendance were Harry Sleeper and Piatt Andrew, whose brilliancy of repartee has never been excelled” according to an observer. Concealment and ambiguity characterized the lives of many of the women and men who moved through this exclusive world of polite manners and material luxury. [p. 92]

Source: The History Project. Improper Bostonians: Lesbian and gay history from the Puritans to Playland. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998. [Note: you need to register at archive.org to access (borrow) the book for an hour at a time]

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October 6, 1910. A. Piatt Andrew and Isabella Stewart Gardner at “Red Roof”. Photo by Thomas E. Marr from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Cleaned and cropped by Economics in the Rear View Mirror

From Isabella Stewart Gardner’s biography

A. Piatt Andrew lived next door to Miss Davidge under his “Red Roof” – nearer the mainland than Miss Davidge and Miss Beaux, and with one more maiden lady beyond him….

Harry Sleeper, whom Mrs. Gardner already knew fairly well, lived just beyond. … Harry was sweet, gentle, affectionate. He was devoted to his mother, who protected him from the ladies when he feared they had designs on his celibacy. Still more was he the devoted slave to Piatt….

…A. Piatt Andrew had an organ installed in the passage between the living room and a recently added study. Here, Isabella sat on the couch (with a bearskin and two leopard skins on it) to listen to his music. She was probably unaware of a hidden space above the books – too low to stand up in but equipped with mattress and covers where some of Andrew’s guests could listen in still greater comfort. She had seen the Brittany bed in the living room but that there was a small hole over it, perhaps no one had told her. The sound of organ music could be heard the better through the hole – and was it just a coincidence that a person in the hidden alcove above could look down through it? Gossip had it that often all the guests were men, their pastimes peculiar. Yet all the ladies on Eastern Point were fascinated by Piatt and one especially keen observer thought that Miss Beaux was “sweet on him”.

When the fog lifted and the sun came out, the whole atmosphere at Red Roof changed. Gloucester harbor sparkled bright and blue. Isabella’s spirits lifted, macabre impressions vanished, and Isabella went out on a stone seat to be photographed with Piatt – or “A,” as she liked to call him, referring to herself as “Y,” amused to find herself at the opposite end of the alphabet.

Isabella wore a linen suit with leg o’mutton sleeves, long coat and wide gored skirt. She had on a toque with a black dotted veil over her face. Beside her, A. Piatt sat – head turned toward her, his handsome profile toward the camera.

A. Piatt Andrew had been chosen by President Eliot to work in Senator Aldrich’s monetary commission and he planned to go to Europe during the summer of 1908 to make preliminary studies. Mrs. Gardner told him to be sure to get in touch with Matthew Stewart Prichard – late of the Boston Art Museum. This Andrew did, Prichard showing him beautiful Greek and Roman coins which gave him ideas for new designs for American currency.

Source: Louise Hall Tharp, Mrs. Jack: A Biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner, Little, Brown and Company, 1965, pp. 276-278.

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M.I.T. Charles Kindleberger’s Ruminations on Professional Education, 1966

Charles P. Kindleberger

 

Today’s post was an absolute treat to prepare. It gives us an opportunity to rise above the tactical aspects of economics education (i.e. syllabi and exams) to consider issues of grand strategy in higher education.

Charles Kindleberger was one of my professors in graduate school. Though I did take his course in European economic history, I must confess that I was not ready to absorb much of the intuition and wisdom that he tried to share with us. That said, my classmates and I very much respected his old-school, gentlemanly charm and deeply appreciated the scholar-economist dutifully warning us whipper-snappers that “the second-derivative is the refuge of a scoundrel!”

While this essay from 1966 mostly appears to present a distillation of Kindleberger’s experience at M.I.T. in the economics department and as chairman of the Institute Faculty, in it you will find timeless insights into the nature of higher education in general and of training in economics in particular. 

Research Tip:  I found this jewel of an essay while trawling through the collection of Technology Review ar srchive.org.

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The following essay was one of three papers having the theme “Innovation in Education” prepared for the 1966 M.I.T. Alumni Seminar.

Charles P. Kindleberger is professor of economics and chairman of the Faculty at M.I.T. He is known for teaching and research on world trade and economic development, and he is a member of the President’s Committee on International Monetary Arrangements. As chairman of the Faculty, Dr. Kindlberger has participated directly in many of the recent developments in professional undergraduate curricula at the Institute.

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Professional Education:
Towards a Way of Thought

by Charles P. Kindleberger

Technology Review, November 1966

THE age of the amateur is dead. Professionalism rules — in the cockpit of spaceships, in football, and in learning. We have abandoned the British tradition of the amateur who was good at everything for that of the Grandes Ecoles, with rigorous scientific training leading to professional competence. “He’s a pro,” which used to be insulting in Britain, is now a compliment everywhere.

There is some room left for the amateur tradition —  in politics. It is not good enough to duck the question of where the Inner Belt road should be located by saying that these are matters for resolution by experts. In economics, also, the number of distinct opinions on a given issue is frequently greater than one and sometimes approaches the number of experts. Social scientists resent that mere people feel entitled to have opinions on issues on which popular knowledge and capacity for theorizing are limited, but they have found no way to prevent it. And there is claimed to be scope for flair, inspiration and style — the hallmarks of the amateur — at the frontiers of science, when the ordinary professionals have carried the subject as far as they can. On the whole, however, the demand for professionals and professional education is greater than it has ever been.

Part of this demand is wasteful. An economic study some years ago claimed that there was not so much a shortage of scientists and engineers as very wasteful use of those on hand. Some part of the demand for Ph.D.’s today could perhaps be satisfied with M.S.’s, and some of the jobs seeking master’s could be filled by bachelor’s. During the long years of inadequate effective demand and considerable unemployment, we have tended to upgrade job requirements throughout the economy.

But the upgrading of the educational requirements of business and the professions goes well beyond snobbism and cultural lag. Knowledge has expanded. There is 100 times more information to be obtained today than in 1900, and it is estimated that by 2000 A.D. there will be 1000 times as much knowledge. Periodicals have risen in number from 45,000 in 1950 to 95,000 currently. Librarians blanch under the prospect of coping with the accelerating torrent of periodicals, books, monographs. A major problem in research is to find out what has been done by others so as to avoid rediscovering the same information.

The result is more professional education and more specialization. Eighty-five per cent of today’s new doctors are trained as specialists rather than general practitioners. Lawyers are experts in taxation, trusts domestic or international corporate law, or anti-trust. The man who used to be merely an economist is now a specialist in international economics or African trade. The one year of internship in medicine which was normal in 1945 has been extended to two, three or even four. Business recruits directly from the universities but increasingly from graduate schools of business, and even then the bright young graduate in management is put into a training program. Increasingly the practice is to spend a year in post-doctoral work in another university to extend one’s research training even beyond the scope of the doctorate. This stretching of the educational process to the point where the first professional income is not earned until age 25, or in some lines, 30 is expensive in many, as has been widely recognized by foundations, government, and, somewhat earlier, by parents. Together with the knowledge explosion, it is putting enormous pressure on our educational institutions to break out of old patterns and to find new ways of producing and packaging professional education.

These problems can properly be discussed in three Parts — preprofessional education, professional education as such, and mid-career upgrading. The divisions are hard to keep distinct, as will become apparent, but each section presents particular problems for the university in trying to rationalize and increase the efficiency of its professional mission.

BY preprofessional education is meant the provision of the prerequisites for professional training. In some fields such as law these are nothing more than the good general education which used to be required of the British civil servant. But I refer rather to the mathematics and physics which are needed for engineering, to organic chemistry and anatomy which used to be all that were needed as prerequisites for medical school, and to the elementary courses in a given field which must be mastered before a student goes on to the advanced reaches of any subject.

Any subject can be taught as general education, as preprofessional training, and for professional uses freshman mathematics can be taught so that the student learns to differentiate and integrate, which he needs to know preprofessionally outside of professional mathematics, or he can be taught them and mathematical analysis as well, either for general education, which includes a glimpse of the beauties of the mathematician’s universe, or as part of preprofessional work in mathematics. The clash between two of the ways of addressing a subject was neatly illustrated last spring by the resignation of 11 members of the Dartmouth medical school faculty who wanted to teach biochemistry, micro-biology and cytology as professional subjects rather than as preprofessional training for medicine.

The problem in the humanities is easier. One can argue that the ability to write a simple sentence is preprofessional education widely neglected, but for the most part English is taught as general education. But mathematics, physics, and chemistry are general education of a special sort, preprofessional education more narrowly.

The Challenge of Teaching

Most professional mathematicians, physicists, and chemists — and economists, political scientists, and psychologists as well — prefer professional to general preprofessional teaching. Preprofessional teaching for the narrow group or students which you know is going to be drawn further into the professional subject being taught is challenging and fascinating, but as general education, or preprofessional training for other fields, such training often fails to engage the excitement of the ordinary as opposed to the great teacher. The ordinary teacher is more engaged by the subject than by the students as people. The result is that he may succumb to the temptation to neglect this teaching, or to make it interesting to himself by making it more professional, or both. On his side the student is either bewildered or bored, or both. It is on this account that the quality of teaching in the first two years presents a problem of particular difficulty.

The problem is met not only at the university level. In medical school, I understand, the first two years are taken up with some anatomy and physiology but with a great deal of preprofessional training in biophysics, biochemistry, and subjects like pharmacology. It is difficult to have these well taught on the one hand, and well learned on the other, when the main professional mission or the school is clinical medicine.

Articulation: Skip or Repeat?

Articulation is painful. If the superbly trained preprofessional has to follow the regular route he is bored and discouraged. If he tries to skip large portions of early professional training which his preprofessional work presumably covered, he is never quite clear what of the work the others are taking he has mastered and what he has not.

Medical schools’ admissions officers profess to be looking for broad-gauged young men and women with wide-ranging interests developed through general education rather than those who have extensive study and good grades in biology, chemistry, mathematics and physics. In their admissions choices, however, they are likely to favor the science specialist over the generalist on the score or preprofessional advantage. But this leaves the particularly well-trained young scientist likely to waste a great deal of the first two years of medical school while his generalist colleagues catch up. The problem is particularly acute for graduates of such preprofessional curricula as molecular biology at places like M.I.T. for they are catapulted somewhere into the middle of the normal first two years of training in medicine

We have a similar problem in graduate education in economics for those students who come to us with excellent training in social science from their undergraduate institutions. For them to take the first year of graduate training — the regular courses in micro- and macro-economic theory, mathematics, statistics and economic history — involves a duplication of some 60 to 75 per cent of what they have already studied. The second time around, and more systematically, this material is warmed-over porridge and not very appetizing. But to leap right into the second year of graduate work runs the risk of missing vital elements of preparation in the 25 to 40 per cent which has been missed. And we find that the undergraduate teachers have exhausted a considerable portion of the wonder and beauty of first looking into Marshall’s Principles, if I may transliterate a line from Keats; indeed, a small but disturbing fraction of our best-taught young men become sufficiently discouraged to drop out. This can be regarded perhaps a difficulty of articulating professional rather than preprofessional education, but it is a general one.

The Several Routes to a Profession

Some of these difficulties might be overcome if the choice of profession were made earlier and all students followed the same path. But this is impossible. Professional choices are not made consistently by various young people at the same stage, with the result that there must be a variety of avenues to professional education rather than merely one. And if professional choice is made only in the junior year of college, at 21, it is hard to push the preprofessional training to lower levels.

While there are children who have known since the age of five that they wanted to be involved with electricity, or machinery, or the human body as a life’s work, career choice is more and more presenting a difficult problem to American youth. Two generations ago father dominance helped, and hurt, such choice. Today fathers know enough not to push their children in directions of which they approve —  or most of them know enough. The result is that career choice is much more squarely left to youth and is consequently fraught with youthful tension. The college dropout phenomenon is one aspect. Some young men welcome the army, the Peace Corps, or a year of travel, as legitimate means of delay in facing the necessity for career choice. Certain types of graduate training — business and law — are an escape from the need for decision. But even at M.I.T. at least 30 per cent of our undergraduates end up majoring in a different field than they put down as their intended specialization when they were admitted, and 20 per cent actually switch majors after they have chosen one at the end of their freshman year.

The social sciences labor under a considerable disability here, because fixing on a social science as a career comes as a rule much later than comparable decisions in science, engineering, medicine, or humanities. Children are aware of the body, animals, earth, sky, machines, and even prose, poetry, and the existence of the past, long before they become aware of the complexities of human society. The early models for career choice, as is well known, are firemen, policemen, and, in my day, streetcar conductors.

The consequence of late career decision is that one cannot insist that all applicants for professional training have completed their preprofessional work on admission — that all M.I.T. students, for example, come with calculus, or all medical students already have molecular biology, biochemistry, and biophysics. The only equitable, and I may add efficient, system of education is to keep all options open as long as possible. In consequence preprofessional cannot be dumped completely onto other training systems — by the technological institutes on to the schools, and by the graduate training programs on to the colleges. Some preprofessional education must be kept side-by-side with the professional, to offer a chance for the later chooser to catch up. This means that professional education must maintain a several-track system.

To keep preprofessional and professional education side-by-side in the same institution presents problems of teaching, as has already been mentioned. The ordinary instructor finds it easy and productive to take on advanced professional students — undergraduates in their senior year, or graduate students who have mastered the fundamentals. They work together, as members of a scholarly team, able to communicate in two directions. Preprofessional teaching, as I have said is less interesting.

There is no good solution for this problem. To divide the university into upper and lower division, as is sometimes done, creates a two-class system with invidious overtones. To separate preprofessional training off into colleges with dedicated teachers, and admit students to the universities only into graduate school from the four-year colleges and into the upper classes from junior colleges would not only violate traditions — which are important in the lives of institutions — but also compound the problem of articulation. The solution we see at M.I.T. is to strengthen the place of preprofessional teaching in the value system of the Institute, to restore it to the high esteem it enjoyed before it slipped under the pressure on staff of research, consulting, professional service and keeping up with the literature. No one contemplates that it is possible to staff a first-rate technological institution completely with instructors who are first-rate at teaching as they are at research and professional service. But the administration, the faculty, and the students can let all instructing staff know that whatever the professional demands on their time, teaching is not the marginal and dispensable activity.

Professional Education

The central issues in professional education have mostly been touched upon already: the extension or the material to be mastered, the difficulties of starting earlier because of late career choice, the downgrading of the bachelor’s and master’s degrees, the development postdoctoral training, the need for a rigorous scientific (instead of rule-of-thumb and seat-of-the-pants) approach in the applied fields because of the rapid rate of obsolescence, and so on. But I would make three points.

First, there is a risk that the revulsion from the empirical approach to engineering and applied social science in favor of science and pure theory can be carried too far. The simplest solution to a problem is not only the most efficient; it is also the most elegant. While it is true that one can stumble on solutions to applied problems as a by-product of pure theory, it is also true that theory is sometimes pursued for its own sake beyond the point of diminishing returns. It is not clear how much biophysics should be known to the gynecologist, how much topology to the student of fiscal policy, how much communication theory to the professor of the French language. I sometimes characterize these problems by a reference to medieval scholasticism and ask how many angels can dance on the rate of interest. Theory and pure mathematics are at the top or the pecking order in the intellectual world, and this is as it should be, just as the theoretical and mathematical requirements for the lowliest professional specialties have been increased. But high power can be overdone.

Second, the question of interdisciplinary education remains complex. The practitioner continues to be trained in a variety of fields — history, law, economics and political science for the foreign service officer; contracts, property, wills, constitution and international law for the lawyer (although the Yale Law School curriculum has been altered to include a year and a half of specialization); finance, statistics, accounting, marketing, and psychology for business; and so on. At the same time, research is increasingly conducted by centers which bring different specialists to bear on a single problem with the vantage point of their own focus: aeronautical, electrical, and mechanical engineers in instrumentation, for example. But the professional teaching which produces these scholars cannot be widely interdisciplinary. A man must master one social or physical science before attempting to integrate two. In my experience, the joint degree which bridges two or more fields in one Ph.D. is satisfactory neither for the student nor the faculty involved, and not only because of jurisdictional jealousies. Each field has an intellectual integrity as a discipline, much as it may lack in providing the complete answer to a complex research problem. The attempt to master them all ends in a mastery of none.

This is a pat answer which does not fully satisfy me. More and more professional practice is becoming the equivalent of research. Architectural design of a building is no longer a simple problem of drawing and construction engineering; as we at M.I.T. are acutely conscious, an architect needs to master the Venturi principle if his skyscraper is not to set up wind currents or micro-meteorology which makes it difficult to open the building’s doors. The designer of a rehousing project has to understand sociological grouping into communities.

Third, the narrowing distinction between research and practice leads me to question the desirability or intermediate degrees between the master’s and the doctorate, which we have developed at M.I.T. in the engineer degrees. These degrees are awarded to students who have completed the course work for the doctorate but who do not write the thesis. Their justification is that the student has undertaken course work beyond the master’s level and should get academic recognition for it. I can understand awarding the intermediate degree as a consolation prize to a student who is not being allowed to go on for the doctorate because of insufficient research creativity, or to a fully competent student who is unable for one reason or another to finish his thesis and who has gone far beyond the master’s level. But these degrees should not become ends in themselves. Teachers should have had exposure to a substantial research experience. and so. if possible, should practitioners.

IF there is an overpowering amount for professionals to learn, not only in the separate fields but in combining one or more of them, there is no need to learn it all at once, in the four, five, six to ten years between high school and professional practice. One of the most interesting developments in professional education today is mid-career schooling. This began in the business schools and is spreading rapidly. At M.I.T. we have the Sloan School of Management programs for junior and senior executives, the new Center for Advanced Engineering Study, and a host of one- and two-week summer courses. The larger companies — General Motors, General Electric, I.B.M., to cite only those I have lectured to — run training programs for their own executives. The American Bar Association has a Committee on Continuing Legal Education which runs week-long, weekend and day seminars on new problems in the law. The medical associations, national, state, and specialty groups, conduct study sessions of varying length in new techniques, medicines, specialties.

Mid-career education presents serious teaching problems. The engineer returning to the Center for Advanced Engineering Study, or the young executive enrolled in the Sloan Fellowship Program at M.I.T., is likely to need preprofessional brushing up before he can handle the material taught in professional subjects. The Sloan Fellows’ beginning experience is a summer term spent in a specially designed course which gets them up to first-year graduate speed for the regular year. The Center for Advanced Engineering has had design and give special subjects in modern calculus and quantum mechanics. This preprofessional teaching, I can say from experience, has its own special rewards for the teacher, because the students have a fresh point of view, a capacity to relate theory to real situations in a way that the undergraduate and regular graduate student cannot do. But here is another special job of teaching, and that is expensive.

Mid-career education is expensive for the university, for the student (who must uproot his family for the time) and for his company, which normally pays both his salary and tuition charges. Its great contribution is not the correction of obsolescence though this has importance. The real point is to give an opportunity in today’s complex world for a man who has worked his way through one field, and demonstrated his capacity, to introduce a slight shift in orientation and train for wider responsibilities. It used to be that only the armed services were wise enough to see its desirability and budget for the expense of training at all stages of a successful career. The State Department has long had program of sending individuals to do a year of graduate work and is now beginning to operate its own foreign Service Institute course of six months. It seems inevitable that government, industry, the learned professions and, above all others, university instructors must count on continuing education and re-education in a world of changing knowledge and maturing people.

This mid-career training need not be undertaken by the universities. The costs of adding to the diversity of the multiversity are high. It is more cheaply done without uprooting families. And yet there is benefit in bringing people from different companies, backgrounds and experience to rub elbows, in plunging the man of affairs back into the scholarly environment. The profit is mutual, so long as mid-career trainees do not overwhelm the academic tradition. There are obvious limits to how far universities can respond to the demand. If mid-career education grows, as is likely, it is reasonable to expect the development of new institutions which provide the specialized preprofessional training and mix students from different backgrounds.

No pat series of answers emerges from a discussion of professional education. I feel confident in rejecting a number of proposals for major reform. Starting professional studies earlier is undesirable insofar as it cuts general education on the one hand and closes off options for late deciders on the other. Eliminating the doctoral dissertation, or converting it to a longish paper representing a couple of months’ work, abolishes the vital test of whether a man can organize and carry through a substantial research project, a test of increasing importance in a world where the distinction between research and practice is narrowing. Dividing the university into divisions for general education and professional training not only misses the point that the same treatment of a subject can be preprofessional, general, or professional education for students with different abilities, backgrounds, and programs, but divides the faculty into elite and non-elite members in a way which subverts morale and harms the teaching mission of the university. How to improve the university’s performance in discharging the mission of general and preprofessional teaching remains an imposing challenge. Social science is a long way from ability to change value systems, and the real solution to the problem of undergraduate teaching is to restore the prestige accorded to non-professional teaching in the value systems or university staffs.

We have come a long way in American education, I believe, when we recognize that we have serious problems of what, when and how to teach and are prepared to modify the traditional system and to experiment with new techniques. The exact character of the new techniques may be less important than the attitude that the subject is important and that present conditions can be improved.

My basic conclusion is the trite one: professional education is a vastly different process than providing a young man with a hatful of formulas and training him to select the right one for the right occasion. The real task is to teach — if it can be taught, or by example to train — the young to attack a problem as a good experimental physicist, biologist, engineer, or economist would; to have a feel for the data and for the limits of standard analytical techniques; to sense, after a time, the distinction between the run-of-the-mill textbook case and that with new and puzzling complications. It is not enough to do what a professional does: one must think the way a professional thinks. And this capacity is communicated in a complex osmotic process which may be independent of or only very loosely connected with prerequisites, examinations, credits, and theses, much less closed-circuit television, teaching machines, computers, and high-powered mathematics. The educational process is an elusive one, but I venture to predict that in the long run it will be found to resemble more the chemistry of slow-cooking on the back of the stove than that of infrared split-second broiling of steaks from the deep freeze.

Source: MIT, Technology Review, 69(1), November 1966.

Image Source: Portrait of Charles Poor Kindleberger at the MIT Museum website. Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Categories
Economists Harvard

Harvard. Class of 1894 reports of Oliver Mitchell Wentworth Sprague, 1895, 1897, 1902, 1904, 1909, 1914, 1919

Oliver Mitchell Wentworth Sprague

Economics in the Rear-view Mirror is always (well, almost always) on the lookout for artifacts providing autobiographical detail on the economists whose course materials have been transcribed and posted here. While trawling the hathitrust.org archive yet another time for material on the Harvard economics/business professor O. M. W. Sprague, I found seven reports of the secretaries of the Harvard Class of 1894, of which Sprague was a distinguished graduate. Sprague’s personal reports are sometimes repetitive, but it is still handy to put them together in one post.

Bonus Material: Sprague’s brief faculty bio found in the 1924-25 Harvard Business School yearbook.

A recent earlier post provides Sprague’s lifetime c.v.

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OLIVER MITCHELL WENTWORTH SPRAGUE
Class of 1894, First Report (1895)
Misc. facts

A.B. Harvard College, June 1894 [p. 4]

Second Year Honors (1892-93) in History. [p. 25]

A.B. Final Honors in Political Science (Highest Honors) [p. 26]

A.B. Honorable Mention in History and Economics [p. 30]

Oration at Commencement (12 graduating students held orations) [p. 37]

Memberships:

Christian Association [p. 62]
Historical Club [p. 67]
International Law Club [p. 68]
Phi Beta Kappa [p. 69]

Graduate School. University Scholarship. Appointed in 1894. [p. 36]

Resident of the Graduate School 1894-95. Address: 40 Kirkland St., Cambridge [p. 139]

A.M. June 1895 [p. 31]

Source: Harvard College Class of 1894. Secretary’s Report, No. I. (1895).

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OLIVER MITCHELL WENTWORTH SPRAGUE
Class of 1894, Second Report (1897)

“Have been studying economics, especially economic history, at Harvard Graduate School. Received degree of A.M. in ’95, [and Ph.D. in ’97. Subject of doctor’s thesis, ‘The English Woolen Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.’]”

Source: Harvard College Class of 1894. Secretary’s Report, No. II. (1897), pp. 96-97.

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OLIVER MITCHELL WENTWORTH SPRAGUE
Class of 1894, Third Report (1902)

“During the college year (’97-’98) was in England, holding a Rogers Fellowship. Since that time I have been teaching Economics at Harvard, aside from two months last winter on leave of absence to give a course on foreign travel at the University of Michigan. I have edited a new edition of the late Professor Dunbar’s little book on banking regularly used in Economics 1. I am now preparing essays for publication in book form.” [p. 106]

One publication listed [p. 191]:

Sprague, O.M.W. — “The German Coinage Act of 1900,” Quarterly Journal of Economics”.

Source: Harvard University Class of 1894. Secretary’s Report, No. III. (1902).

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OLIVER MITCHELL WENTWORTH SPRAGUE
Class of 1894, Fourth Report (1904)

Sprague, Oliver Mitchell Wentworth, Professor, 21 Stoughton Hall, Cambridge.

Assistant Professor of Economics at Harvard University.

Source: Harvard College Class of 1894. Secretary’s Report, No. IV. (1904), p. 37.

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OLIVER MITCHELL WENTWORTH SPRAGUE
Class of 1894, Fifth Report (1909)

Both my father, William Wallace Sprague, and my mother, Miriam Wentworth Sprague, were discended [sic] from early New England settlers. I was born at Somerville, Massachusetts, and prepared for college at St. Johnsbury (Vermont) Academy.

In college I loafed egregiously the first two years, and then specialized in Political Science, in which, largely through habits acquired from an almost Scotch turn for disputation, I received at graduation, Highest Honors and therewith a summa cum. Beguiled by this rather unexpected success, I turned aside from the law — my first love — and entered the Graduate School where in due course I received the A.M. degree in 1895, and the degree of Ph.D. in 189.

The following year, I studied in England, holding a travelling fellowship. In the autumn of 1898, I returned to Harvard as Assistant in Economics, in which capacity I had the satisfaction of being of some slight use to Professor Dunbar, in his last years. From this, its lowest rung, I began the toilsome ascent of the academic ladder. From 1899 to 1901, I served as an annual Instructor, then came three years as a Faculty Instructor; and in 1904 I was appointed to an Assistant Professorship in Economics. In 1905, I resigned this position, to accept a professor ship in the Tokio Imperial University. After three years in the Orient — a delightful episode — I accepted a cabled invitation to return to Harvard as an Assistant Professor, on second appointment, in Banking and Finance in the Graduate School of Business Administration. I have published a few articles on banking subjects and expect to publish many more. Am now engaged in preparing a report for the National Monetary Commission on the experience of the national banks during crises since the establishment of the system; and also a report upon banking in Japan.

Married Fanny Knight Ide, June 21, 1905, and have one child, Katherine Ide Sprague, born at Tokio, Japan, May 1, 1906. Address: 18 Sumner Road, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Source: Fifteenth Anniversary of the Harvard College Class of 1894. Secretary’s Report, No. V (1909), pp. 227-228.

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OLIVER MITCHELL WENTWORTH SPRAGUE
Class of 1894, Sixth Report (1914)
Born Somerville, Mass., April 22, 1873.
Parents William Wallace, Miriam (Wentworth) Sprague.
School St. Johnsbury Academy, St. Johnsbury, Vt.
Years in College 1890-1894.
Degrees A.B., 1894; A.M., 1896; Ph.D., 1897.
Married Fanny Knights Ide, St. Johnsbury, Vt., June 21, 1905.
Children Katharine Ide, May 1, 1906; Theodore Wentworth, Sept. 1, 1911.
Business University Professor.
Address 18 Sumner Road, Cambridge, Mass.

In 1898, I studied in England, holding a traveling fellowship. In the autumn of 1898, I returned to Harvard as assistant in Economics, in which capacity I had the satisfaction of being of some slight use to Professor Dunbar, in his last years. From this, its lowest rung, I began the toilsome ascent of the academic ladder. From 1899 to 1901, I served as an annual instructor, then came three years as a faculty instructor; and in 1904, I was appointed to an Assistant Professorship in Economics. In 1905, I resigned this position, to accept a professorship in the Tokio Imperial University. After three years in the Orient – a delightful episode I accepted an invitation to return to Harvard as an Assistant Professor, on second appointment, in Banking and Finance in the Graduate School of Business Administration, and in March, 1913, I was appointed Edward Cogswell Converse Professor of Banking and Finance. I have written two books, a “History of Crises Under the National Banking System,” and “Banking Reform in the United States.” Member: Boston Harvard Club, American Economic Association.

Source: Twentieth Anniversary of the Harvard College Class of 1894. Secretary’s Report, No. VI (1914), pp. 207-208.

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OLIVER MITCHELL WENTWORTH SPRAGUE
Class of 1894, Seventh Report (1919)

Born at Somerville, Mass., April 22, 1873. Son of William Wallace and Miriam (Wentworth) Sprague. Prepared at St. Johnsbury Academy, St. Johnsbury, Vt.

In College, 1890-94; Graduate School, 1894-98. Degrees: A.B. 1894; A.M. 1895; Ph.D. 1897.

Married to Fanny Knights Ide at St. Johnsbury Vt., June 21, 1905. Children: Katharine Ide, born May 1, 1906; Theodore Wentworth, born Sept. 1, 1911.

Occupation: Teaching.

Address: (home) 32 Bates St., Cambridge, Mass.; (business) Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

After obtaining the degree of Ph.D. in 1897, I received a travelling fellowship and spent the following year studying in England. In the autumn of 1898, I returned to Harvard as Assistant in Economics, in which capacity I had the satisfaction of being of some slight use to Professor Dunbar, in his last years.

From this, its lowest rung, I began the toilsome ascent of the academic ladder. From 1899 to 1901, I served as an annual instructor, then came three years as a faculty instructor; and in 1904, I was appointed to an Assistant Professorship in Economics. In 1905 I resigned this position, to accept a professorship in the Tokio Imperial University. After three years in the Orient — a delightful episode — I accepted an invitation to return to Harvard as Assistant Professor of Banking and Finance in the Graduate School of Business Administration, and in March, 1913, I was appointed Edward Cogswell Converse Professor of Banking and Finance. I have written two books, a “History of Crises under the National Banking System,” and “Banking Reform in the United States,” and have revised and enlarged Dunbar’s “Theory and History of Banking.” During the war, I advocated in articles and in other ways the advisability of financing the contest mainly by taxation. I am convinced that such a policy was feasible and that it would have proved far less burdensome and much more equitable than the borrowing policy with its attendant inflation. Between July and December, 1918, I was in Washington engaged in work on reconstruction problems for the Council of National Defense. [pp. 411-12]

War Record
O. M. W. SPRAGUE

U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  Member of the War Finance Committee and the Foreign Exchange Committee, U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Reconstruction research worker, Council of National Defense, July-Dec., 1918.  [p. 550]

Publications
O. M. W. SPRAGUE

The English woolen industry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Doct. diss., 1897.

Ed. Chapter on theory and history of banking. By Charles Franklin Dunbar. 2d ed., enlarged. New York, Putnam’s, 1901, 1907, etc., pp. viii, 252, 3d ed. under title The theory and history of banking, 1917, pp. viii, 297.

Ed. Economic essays. By Charles Franklin Dunbar. New York, Macmillan, 1904, pp. xvii, 372.

History of crises under the national banking system. Washington, Gov’t Print. Off., 1910, 1911, pp. v, 484.

Banking reform in the United States. Reprints from Quart. Journ. Econ., 1910, pp. 176. Harv. Univ., 1911.

Loans and investments. (With others.) Amer. Inst. of Banking, N. Y., 1916, pp. 304.

Recent articles:

Proposals for strengthening the national banking system. Quart. Journ. Econ., xxiv (1910), pp. 44. [I. (February); II. (August); III. (November)]

The Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Quart. Journ. Econ., Feb., 1914.

The Federal Reserve system in operation. Ibid., Aug., 1916.

Loans and taxes in war finance. Amer. Econ. Ass’n Publ., Mar., 1917. [Discussion]

The crisis of 1914 in the United States. Amer. Econ. Rev., v (1915), pp. 35.

Financing “the armed nation.” Military Historian and Economist, Jan., 1916.

The relation between loan and taxes in war finance. Annals Amer. Acad. Pol. and Soc. Sciences, Jan., 1918.

Labor and capital on reconstruction. Amer. Econ. Rev., Dec., 1918.

Source: Twentieth-fifth Anniversary of the Harvard College Class of 1894. Secretary’s Report, No. VII (1919), pp. 411-12.

____________________________

OLIVER M. SPRAGUE
Edmund Cogswell Converse Professor of Banking and Finance

Degrees: A.B., A.M., Ph.D. at Harvard.

History in brief: Unofficial activities for banking reform, preceding passage of the Federal Reserve Act. Unofficial activities designed to secure imposition of adequate, i.e., heavy, taxation during the Great War. Council of National Defense and War Trade Board, July to December, 1918. Assistant Professor, 1908–1913. Professor since 1913.

Source: Harvard Business School Year-Book, 1924-1925, p. 13.

Image Source: O.M.W. Sprague in the Harvard Class Album, 1915, colorized by Economics in the Rear-View Mirror.

Categories
Economists Gender Northwestern Uncategorized Yale

Yale. Economics Ph.D. Alumna, 2nd wife of Richard T. Ely, Margaret Hahn Ely

Margaret Hane Ely née Hahn (ca. 1964)

One can imagine the raised eyebrows when colleagues learned that Professor Richard T. Ely at the tender age of 77 married his former student who was a gentle 32 years old, leaving a 45 year age gap to fill with conjugal bliss. It even became national news when it was reported that Richard T. Ely became father for the fourth and fifth times at ages 78/79, respectively. Robust Professor Ely lived another ten years and his widow Margaret Hale Ely, née Hahn, went on to teach economics at Connecticut College for Women for two decades after his passing. Along the way, she picked up her Yale economics Ph.D. Her retirement years spanned another seventeen years.

______________________

Professor Ely is Married to Former Pupil

Madison—Prof. Richard Theodore Ely, 78, honorary professor of political economy at the University of Wisconsin, was secretly married last summer to Miss Margaret Hahn, 30 [sic, 32 years is correct], once his student at Northwestern university friends here learned today.

The economist and his bride are living at Radburn, N.J., near the Institute for Research in Land Economics and Public Utilities established by Dr. Ely several years ago in New York.

He was professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin from 1892 until 1925, when he went to Northwestern. There he met the co-ed destined to become his wife.

In 1933 he received an LL.D. degree from the university.

Before coming to Wisconsin he was head of the department of political economy at Johns Hopkins university for 11 years.

His marriage to Miss Hahn was his second. In 1884 he was married to Miss Anna Morris Anderson, who died in 1923. He has three children, Richard S. Ely, John T. A. Ely and Mrs. Anna Ely Morehouse.

Dr. Ely received his A.B. and A.M. degrees from Columbia university, his Ph.D. at the University of Heidelberg, and another LL.D. from Hobart college.

He was founder of the American bureau of industrial Research, one of the organizers of the American Economics association, first president of the American Association for Labor Legislation, and founder of the Institute for Research in Land Economics and Public Utilities.

He has written several books dealing with economics.

Source:  Wisconsin State Journal, December 21, 1931, pp. 1,4.

______________________

L.A. Times exclusive, 1932

Economist Ely Becomes Father
at 79 (sic, should be 78) Years of Age

New York, July 15 (Exclusive)

Prof. Richard T. Ely, the economist, 79 years of age, who last year married Miss Margaret Hahn, still in her early thirties, became the father of an 8-pound son on the 1st, it was learned today.

Prof. Ely proudly confirmed the news at the offices of the Institute for Economic Research, Inc., of which he is the head.

“He’s a fine, big, kicking fellow,” he said. “We named him after William Brewster, a leader in the Mayflower colony and an early ancestor of his.”

Prof. and Mrs. Ely live at Radburn, N.J., the model motor-age real-estate development planned by the professor and financed by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and others.

Prof. Ely and the mother of his child, who was born in a Paterson (N.J.) hospital, met at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., where he was teaching in the summer of 1931. She was one of his students, and received a Ph.D. degree at that institution of learning (sic, she did not).

The professor, a noted economist, is the author of a number of books. He came to New York several years ago to establish the institute he heads.

Source: The Los Angeles Times (July 16, 1932), p. 1.

______________________

Associated Press, 1934

Dr. Ely Father Again at 79
Daughter Second Child
Since He Wed Former Pupil in 1931

By the Associated Press.

New York, March 30.–Dr. Richard T. Ely, 79-year-old economist and president of the Bureau of Economic Research, became the father of his sixth child last Wednesday, friends here have learned.

A nine-pound-seven-ounce daughter, named Mary Charlotte, was born to his wife, the former Margaret Hahn of Chicago, in Paterson General Hospital, Paterson, N.J. Dr. Ely will be 80 April 13. Dr. and Mrs. Ely have another child, William Brewster Ely, born in July, 1932. Mrs. Ely is the economist’s second wife. Dr. Ely, founder of the American Economic Association, married her, a former pupil, in 1931.

Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch (March 30, 1934), p. 2.

______________________

From the horse’s mouth:
Richard T. Ely’s Memoir
1938

It was at Northwestern, also, that I found the young woman who later became my wife, Margaret Hale Hahn was a member of my round table, a dynamic personality, with many varied interests. She was a Northwestern graduate and had attained distinction in athletics, as well as in scholastic work. She was a member of the debating group and was one of the first women to represent the university in a joint debate with Wisconsin; she was also president of the hockey team and had obtained her letter. We were married in 1931. Her companionship and her vitality have greatly enriched my life. We are now the proud parents of two loverly children, Billy, six, and Mary, four.

Source: Richard T. Ely. Ground Under Our Feet, p. 250.

______________________

Personal and professional timeline of
Margaret Hale Ely, née Hahn

1899. June 29. Born in Ohio to Parents Raymond C. Han and Mary Katruah Hahn née Hale.

1923. B.S. from Northwestern University.

1931, August 8. Marriage to Richard Theodore Ely in Old Lyme, Connecticut.

1932, July 1. Birth of son, William Brewster Ely in Paterson, New Jersey.

1934, March 28. Birth of daughter, Mary Charlotte Ely in Paterson, New  Jersey. [Family residing at 2 Audubon Place, Rayburn, N.J.]

1936, May 12. Third child, stillborn.

1943, October 4. Richard T. Ely dies at home in Old Lyme, Connecticut.

1944. Appointed assistant professor of economics at Connecticut College for Women.

1947. A.M. from Yale University.

1954. Ph.D. in economics from Yale University.

1966. Retires from Connecticut College for Women.

1983, May 24. Died May 24. in Waterford, Connecticut.

______________________

MRS. MARGARET H. ELY
Associate Professor of Economics

Mrs. Margaret H. Ely’s life, on this campus and away from it, has been expressive of a personal philosophy which will continue to pervade her experience after she leaves her position as Associate Professor of Economics at Connecticut. She believes strongly in a commitment to education as a challenge and as a creative process, and she considers the lack of such a commitment the main problem in education today. In accord with this belief, Mrs. Ely has taught the Senior Seminar in Economic Research since she has been here. This course emphasizes creative research and enables students to talk with experts in their particular area. Labor and investment have always been Mrs. Ely’s own favorite areas of interest and instruction. She was originally trained as a banker in the investment division of the Irving Trust Company. In addition to her love of teaching, she has actively extended her own education. Last summer she attended a Contemporary Economics Seminar and this year at Connecticut she has studied mathematical statistics. In the language of economics, Mrs. Ely feels there is a great deal of manpower, the country’s most valuable resource, which is being wasted in the form of the unmotivated student. She believes this situation can be improved and, with this in mind, she intends to continue working in the educational system: We can expect further significant accomplishments by Mrs. Ely, a woman dedicated to her field and her profession.

Source: Connecticut College for Women student yearbook, Koiné 1964, p. 74.

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Retirement note by Connecticut College President

Mrs. Margaret Ely joined the Faculty in 1944 as a recent widow and the mother of two young children. Ten years later she had received her Doctor’s degree in Economics at Yale, created new courses in Labor Economics and Corporations at this college and brought her own children into young manhood and womanhood. She likes to teach the lore of corporations by the case study method. A study of her own case suggests that she is the sort of educated American woman who has demonstrated to the undergraduates of this college that a woman of purpose and courage can do anything she wants to do. Her human warmth and ingenious teaching methods will be available to us for one year more in the absence of her Department Chairman.

Source:  Connecticut College Alumnae News, August 1964, p. 19.

Image Source:  Connecticut College Alumnae News, August 1964, p. 19. Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Categories
Columbia Economists Undergraduate Wing Nuts

Columbia. Economics instructor not rehired. Academic freedom vs. academic license. Henderson, 1933

1934 Donald Henderson

The issue of academic freedom can shock the best and worst of economics departments. Like much of what is interesting in economics, it is important to distinguish between nominal and real shocks. In 1933 Columbia College, the undergraduate arm of Columbia University, found itself in a whirlwind of controversy following the non-renewal of a contract of a radical instructor of economics. I stumbled across this case from newspaper accounts and thought it would help spice up Economics in the Rear-view Mirror (much as the Harvard/UMass saga of young radical economists in the early 1970s has) to examine the case.

I have not ever looked for or seen any archival material at Columbia regarding the protagonist of this post, Donald Henderson. Economics in the Rear-View Mirror is primarily concerned with the nuts-and-bolts of the economics curricula across time and universities. Still my curiosity has led me to examine several online newspaper archives (The Columbia Spectator archive has been especially useful), the genealogical website ancestry.com, and the usual book/text sites (archive.org and hathitrust.org), to fill in missing details about the life of Mr. Donald Henderson.

Economics in the Rear-View Mirror, theory of the case: Columbia University’s upper administration appears to have had a “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” moment once alumni letters began to pour in following the arrest of its economics instructor, Donald Henderson, at a protest in October 1932 at C.C.N.Y. in support of the English instructor Oakley Johnson, who had been dismissed by City College President Frederick B. Robinson for his “communist sympathies” (a New York Times understatement). Having left the safe-space of what goes in Vegas, stays in Vegas (i.e. Columbia College), Donald Henderson was a low-value academic pawn offered as a sacrifice to satisfy the alumni gods. Henderson had not really displayed visible indicators of a future distinguished academic career and the Columbia administration most certainly underestimated the potential of the organized mobilization by militant agitators capable of leveraging such an issue for less than pure academic freedom principles. At the time the Columbia Spectator editorial board framed the problem essentially as one of academic freedom vs. academic license. 

Who was Donald Henderson? In the historical record we find that Henderson went on to become a communist party labor organizer who had climbed high enough in U.S. union leadership circles to even attract a subpoena from no less an assistant United States Attorney than Roy M. Cohn (yes, that Roy M. Cohn, whose later client list would include… Donald J. Trump…small world?!). Some Congressional testimony with Henderson’s liberal invocation of the Fifth Amendment regarding his communist party activities is provided below. With this his labor organizing career ended in the early 1950s and he lived the rest of his life in obscurity in Miami, Florida.

Now some artifacts following a chronology of Donald Henderson’s life.

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Donald James Henderson
Timeline

1902. Born February 4 in New York City to Jean Henderson née Crawford and Daniel Robert Henderson (occupation “coachman” according to the 1898 birth certificate for his older sister Marjorie Augusta Henderson).

1910.  According to the 1910 U.S. census Mother Jean (“Married”) and all four children were living with their grandmother Estelle I. Crawford in Montpelier, Vermont where Donald went to grammar school. Donald’s father Daniel not yet found at this address or elsewhere).

1913. Donald’s father Daniel remarries August 18 to Hesper Ann Joslin.

1920. According to the 1920 U.S. census Mother Jean (“Divorced”)  and all four children were still living with their grandmother Estelle I. Crawford in Dansville, New York where Donald went to high school.

1921-22. Likely start of Donald Henderson’s undergraduate studies at Columbia University.

1924. The Columbia Progressive Club reorganized November 13.  Purpose of the club was the furtherance of a Third Party Movement. Members of the Executive Committee included Elinor Curtis and Donald Henderson.

1925. Donald J. Henderson married Elinor Curtis (Barnard, 1925) in Manhattan, August 31.

Elinor Curtis in the 1925 Barnard Yearbook

1925. A.B. with general honors, Columbia College.

1925-26. Garth Fellow, Columbia University.

1926. M.A. Columbia University.

1926. Birth of first son, Curtis Henderson (1926-2009) in New York City, September 28.

1926-27. Instructor in Economics, Rutgers University. Listed for a course on the economics (and regulation) of railroads, water, and motor transportation; a course on statistical principles.

1927-28. Summer Session [rank unclear], Columbia University.

1928-29. Instructor of Economics, Columbia University.

1929-30. Instructor in Economics. Columbia University.

1930-31. Instructor in Economics. Columbia University.

1931-32. Instructor in Economics. Columbia University.

1931. Communist Daily Worker of August 4, 1931. Henderson declared that he had rejected socialism and joined the Communist Party.

1932-33. Instructor in Economics. Columbia University.

1932. His wife, Elinor C. Henderson ran for Congress as an independent (i.e. as communists then did) in the 21st New York congressional district, receiving 7/10th of one percent of the vote.

1932. Arrested October 26 with three C.C.N.Y. students for disorderly conduct after police broke up a meeting protesting the dimissal of English instructor at C.C.N.Y., Dr. Oakley Johnson.

Note: Donald Henderson was an instructor of economics, not professor. Daily News (Nov 2, 1932).

1932. Serving as executive secretary of the American Committee for Struggle Against War, the American branch of the World Congress Against War.  Active in the Student Congress Against War and Fascism (established at Christmas).

1933. April. Donald Henderson’s appointment as instructor of economics is not renewed for the coming academic year. Joint committee [the Columbia Social Problems Club, Socialist Club, Barnard Social Problems Club, Economics Club, Mathematics Club, Sociology Club of Teachers College and the Social Problems Club of Seth Low] organizes campus protests for the reappointment of Henderson.
May. Further demonstrations, Henderson case attracts national attention.

“Diego Rivera Addressing Striking Students at Columbia,” New York Times, May 16, 1933, p. 3.
Note: The painter Diego Riviera was Frida Kahlo’s husband.

1933. Executive secretary of the United States League Against War and Fascism that met in New York on September 29.

1933-34. Began organizing agricultural workers across the United States for the American Federation of Labor.

1934. Daily News (New York). From Bridgeton, N.J., July 10. Wire photo caption: “Husky Official leads Donald Henderson by the wrist as police spirit the Red organizer away from meeting where striking workers at Bridgeton, N.J., threatened him with lynching.”

1935. Second son, Lynn Henderson born in New York, April 14.

1935. September. Wrote article “The Rural Masses and the Work of Our Party” in The Communist.
[e.g. “… during the past 2 years our party has been successful in developing policies and organization which are rapidly achieving a successful turn to mass revolutionary work and influence in the cities and among the industrial urban proletariat.”]

1937. Established the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America, affiliated to the CIO. Elected as its international president, holding the post to 1949.

1938. [ca.] Third son, Donald Henderson, Jr. born.

1941. Wife, Eleanor [sic] Curtis Henderson died of poisoning June 11 in their home at 7750 South Sangamon Street, Chicago. “A coroner’s jury returned a verdict saying that it was unable to determine whether or not Mrs. Henderson took the poison accidentally.” Chicago Tribune (June 12, 1941, p. 12).

1943. Married South African born actress, Florence Mary McGee [formerly Thomas from her first marriage], in New York City, October 10.

1944. “United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America” changes its name to the “Food, Tobacco and Agricultural Workers Union”.

1948. From The South Bend Tribune, Indiana (November 23, 1948), p. 1. “Donald Henderson, of Philadelphia, Pa., president of the Food & Tobacco Workers, was halted repeatedly by CIO convention delegates booing the minority report he read at Portland, Ore., opposing continued CIO support of the Marshall plan.”

1949. April. Henderson attends the (Soviet dominated) World Federation of Trade Union meeting in Paris as president of the Food, Tobacco and Agricultural Workers Union.

1949. Communist Daily Worker of August 15, 1949, entitled “FTA complies with NLRB rule”. Henderson quoted: “While it is true that I had been a member of the Communist Party, I have resigned my membership therein…” [For the union to be in compliance with the Taft-Hartley Act and have its officers sign the non-Communist affidavit, Henderson stepped down as president and was immediately appointed National Administrative Director.]

1950. October. Food, Tobacco and Agricultural Workers Union merged with the Distributive Workers Union and the United Office and Professional Workers Union to form a new international union called the Distributive, Processing and Office Workers Union of America (DPOWA). Served as administrative secretary of that international union for the first year.

1951. October. Reorganization of the DPOWA. Elected to national secretary-treasurer. [Henderson held post at least to Feb. 14, 1952 when he testified before U.S. Senate, Subcommittee to investigate the administration of the internal security Act and other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary.]

1951. Received a 30 day sentence for disobeying a Judge’s injunction against mass picketing during a brief strike at the Pasco Packing Company plant. “Donald Henderson of New York”  head of the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers Union (Ind.). From an Associated Press report, Dade City (Sept. 26) in Pensacola News Journal  Sept. 27, 1951, p. 9.

1953. From a United Press report from Washington, February 23 published in The Palm Beach Post (February 24, 1953): “Henderson, now secretary-treasurer of the Distributive, Processing and Office Workers of America (ind)” took the fifth amendment before the Senate Permanent Investigating Committee of Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy. He also refused to answer questions about Voice of America employees with suspected communist affiliations.

Post-McCarthy hearing years. “[Henderson] eventually had to become a salesman to earn a living.” [From his obituary in The Militant, December 28, 1964]

1957. The Miami News (January 26, 1957, p. 18). Report that Florence McGee moved to Miami recently with her husband, Donald Henderson, and their son. They have “been living quietly at 4335 [or 4345] SW 109th Ct.) She apparently resumed her long-paused acting career in the drama “Teach Me How to Cry” at Studio M.

1958. “By 1958 the illness which eventually took his life forced him into complete inactivity.” [From his obituary in The Militant, December 28, 1964]

1964. Donald Henderson died of a kidney ailment in Miami, Florida in December 12. [From his obituary in The Militant, December 28, 1964]

2000. Florence McGee Henderson (97 years) died in Miami, Florida on June 16.

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Obituary

THE MILITANT
(New York, NY)
28 Dec 1964

Early Organizer of Tobacco Union Dies in Florida

Donald Henderson, 62, a prominent early organizer of agricultural and cannery workers, died of a kidney ailment in Miami Dec. 12.

Henderson was an economics instructor at Rutgers and Columbia University in the mid-1920s. During this period he played a key role in the student and anti-fascist movements and was active in organizing the National Student Union and the American League Against War and Fascism. These activities led to his dismissal from Columbia.

He then devoted his efforts to the organization of agricultural workers, at that time completely unorganized in the U.S. Beginning by organizing workers in the truck farms of New Jersey, he established the Food, Tobacco and Agricultural workers union. The FTA under his leadership became one of the largest agricultural unions in the US, with a large membership of Southern Negroes, Mexican-Americans in southern California.

The deepening of the cold war, resulted in the expulsion of a large number of “left-wing” unions, including the FTA, from the CIO in 1950.

Henderson was an unco-operative witness at the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s and eventually had to become a salesman to earn a living. By 1958 the illness which eventually took his life forced him into complete inactivity.

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Articles in
Columbia Daily Spectator

Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 22, 28 October 1932.

Henderson Released on Bail
For Disorderly Conduct Hearing
Columbia Instructor, Held After Meeting
at C.C.N.Y. to Face Trial

Donald Henderson, Instructor in the Department of Economics, who was arrested on Wednesday night on a charge of disorderly conduct in connection with a demonstration at City College, was released on bail yesterday after arraignment in Washington Heights Court.

 

Mr. Henderson and three C.C.N.Y. students, who were held following a meeting of the Liberal Club at City College to protest the dismissal of Oakley defendants. Magistrate Anthony F. Burke ordered bail of $500 for each of the four under arrest. Their release could not be secured until later in the afternoon.

 

The seizure of Mr. Henderson came after the Liberal Club had been ejected from its meeting room in the College and had taken its stand on the Campus. There, after several denunciatory speeches, he was apprehended by the police and taken to night court where Magistrate Dreyer postponed the hearing until yesterday.

 

It is understood that the Columbia Social Problems Club will take steps to protest Mr. Henderson’s detention at a meeting of that organization at noon today in Room 307 Philosophy.

Frank D. Fackenthal, Secretary of the University, when asked whether the University would make any official recognition of the case, said that., the “matter is out of my jurisdiction.”

About 100 students from Columbia and C.C.N.Y. jammed the courtroom to hear the trial, with an equal number milling about outside and listening to speeches condemning the police action…

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 25, 2 November 1932.

Trial Begins For Henderson
Hearing Opens Before Crowded Courtroom.
Resumes Session Today

With the courtroom jammed to capacity and 200 students milling about in the streets outside listening to denunciations of the C.C.N.Y. administration, the trial of Donald Henderson, instructor in Economics at Columbia, arraigned on a charge of disorderly conduct, opened yesterday in Washington Heights Court before Magistrate Guy Van Amringe.

 

Mr. Henderson held with three City College students following a demonstration protesting the dismissal of Oakley Johnson from the C.C.N.Y. faculty, will reappear at 2:30 this afternoon for further hearing.

 

Session Lasted Three Hours

 

Yesterday’s session lasted for nearly three hours, with the proceedings devoted largely to the calling of witnesses for both sides. Mr. Henderson is expected to take the stand today, with Allan Taub acting as counsel for the defense.

 

Dr. George Nelson, assistant librarian at City College, testified yesterday that on the night of the disturbance which resulted in the arrests, he entered the history room of the College and found fifty students meeting there. They refused to leave, he said, and he summoned several policemen.

 

State Henderson Refused to Leave

 

Henderson: remained adamant, Nelson charged, and was finally pushed out of the room. Nelson added that he did not see the other defendants.

 

Oakley Johnson, whose removal led to the series of demonstrations in which Columbia students took a prominent part, appeared at the trial and was at first denied admittance. He finally gained entrance after several disputes.

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 29, 9 November 1932.

Henderson on Probation
After Conviction For Disorderly Conduct

Donald Henderson, instructor in Economics, who was tried on a charge of disorderly conduct as a result of his participation in a demonstration protesting the dismissal of Oakley Johnson from C.C.N.Y., is on probation for six months after receiving a suspended thirty day sentence.

 

The trial, conducted before Magistrate Guy Van Amringe in Washington Heights Court, was brought to a close Monday after a week of prolonged hearings. Allen Taub acted as counsel for the defense….

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 112, 5 April 1933.

Henderson Appointment Ended;
Conflicting Explanations Issued

Donald J. Henderson, instructor in economics and prominent radical leader, clashed with the University yesterday over the non-renewal of his appointment here, in the first phase of what loomed last night as a prolonged conflict between Mr. Henderson’s supporters and the Administration.

 

Mr. Henderson, in declaring that he had rejected a Fellowship tendered to him by the University following the termination of his teaching activities, said that the offer was “a maneuver to ease me out of the University without raising the issue of academic freedom.”

 

Concerning that allegation, Professor Roswell C. McCrea, head of the Department of Economics, maintained that Mr. Henderson, during his tenure at Columbia, “has engaged freely in any activities to which he may have been attracted.

“The fact that his position here,” Professor McCrea insisted, “was not a permanent one was clearly stated to him before he became actively connected with any political group.”

With Mr. Henderson’s stand apparently clearly defined by his statement, the Social Problems Club, with which he has been actively connected, revealed yesterday that it will meet at 3:30 this afternoon in Room 309 Business to develop “a line of action” to be followed in Mr. Henderson’s defense.

 

Immediately following the appearance of the College Catalogue on Monday, in which no mention is made of Mr. Henderson, widespread curiosity was current as to his future status. That question was clarified with the issuance of statements yesterday by Mr. Henderson and Professor McCrea.

 

The statements, sharply conflicting on several points, dealt with the circumstances of Mr. Henderson’s seemingly imminent departure from Morningside Heights.

 

Mr. Henderson, who has been a prominent figure in radical disputes on this Campus and elsewhere, charged that the University is “maneuvering to ease me out without raising any question of academic freedom,” whereas, he declared, “the facts in this situation raise clearly and definitely the issue of academic freedom.”

 

In regard to his radical exploits which have been the subject of frequent newspaper comment, Mr. Henderson said that he was told last Spring that “extreme pressure was being brought to bear for my removal.”

 

Says Protesting Letters Received

 

He maintained that Professor Rex C. Tugwell informed him the following summer that “a flood of letters from prominent Alumni” had been received protesting the activities of Mr. Henderson and his wife, who was jailed during a dispute over alleged discrimination against Negroes.

 

Declaring that Mr. Henderson has “failed consistently to apply himself seriously and diligently to his duties as instructor and to maintain the standards of teaching required by this Department,” Dean McCrea said that “those conditions make his further connection with the Department of Economics undesirable.”

 

Mr. Henderson made known that he had been offered a post as “Research Assistant” for one year by the University “at a salary $700 less than my present one.”

 

Cites Provision of Offer

 

“The one condition attached to this offer,” he claimed, “was that the year be spent in the Soviet Union… the subject matter of my thesis, with which Professor Tugwell is acquainted, requires research in the United States rather than the Soviet Union.”

 

Professor McCrea’s statement declared that non-renewal of Mr. Henderson’s contract “is consistent with long-established University policy.

 

“There never has been any understanding or intention that Mr. Henderson should stay permanently at Columbia…. An appointment to an instructorship does not imply, in any case, later appointment to a higher rank with more permanence of tenure. For this reason, such understandings are had with all graduate students who are appointed to instructorships in economics.”

 

Mr. Henderson said that in the summer of 1931 “I became more active in the revolutionary movement and received considerable publicity in the newspapers in connection with those activities.

 

“That fall,” he continued, “I was advised by Professor Tugwell to look for another job. He stated at that time that in case of lack of success in finding another position, I would not be dismissed.”

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 112, 5 April 1933.

Somebody’s Wrong
[Spectator editorial]

The statement issued yesterday by Mr. Donald Henderson obviously does not quite jibe with that of Professor Roswell McCrea. According to one statement, Mr. Henderson was not reengaged as an instructor because of his radical activities, while according to the other the close of his academic career in so far as Columbia is concerned was occasioned by his incompetence as a scholar and as a teacher. There is no denying that Donald Henderson was the most obstreperous of Columbia’s many radicals. As to his teaching ability only those who have been his pupils can testify. Radical activities are certainly not a just cause for dismissal from the faculty of a liberal university. But it is equally as certain that it is unjust to use an instructor’s radical activity as an implement with which to force a university to handle with kid gloves a disinterested and incompetent instructor.

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 113, 6 April 1933.

Problems Club Begins Defense of Henderson.
Committee Formed to Outline Campaign for Reappointment of Radical Instructor
– Attacks Dismissal

Mobilization of Donald Henderson’s defense in his clash with the University over non-renewal of his appointment was begun by the Social Problems Club yesterday.

 

While Mr. Henderson, an instructor in the department of economics and widely known radical leader, issued a second statement in which he characterized Professor Roswell McCrea’s assertions as “false” and “absurd,” the Club appealed for “effective and widespread action” in his support.

 

Committee of Ten Chosen

 

The latter move followed a meeting of the Club yesterday afternoon when a committee of ten was elected to direct the campaign for Mr. Henderson’s reappointment. The committee held its first session immediately after the club meeting and announced that it would convene again this afternoon to formulate “a complete program of action.”

 

At the same time Dr. Addison T. Cutler, instructor in economics and a member of the committee, made public four letters he said came from students who have studied under Mr. Henderson. These letters, “from students not affiliated with the Social Problems Club,” were introduced in defense of Mr. Henderson’s teaching ability.

 

Declares Action Due to ‘Pressure’

 

In his statement which was prompted by the declaration of Professor McCrea on Tuesday concerning Mr. Henderson’s status, the latter amplified his previous testimony in which he claimed that the University’s action was the result of “extreme pressure” growing out of his political activities.

 

“The assertion by Professor McCrea Mr. Henderson said yesterday, that I was engaged to teach in Columbia University on the condition that I finish my work for the doctor’s degree in two years is absolutely false.

 

Calls McCrea’s Statement ‘Absurd’

 

“As in the case of all instructors who are engaged at Columbia without doctor’s degrees, it was understood that I should continue my graduate work as rapidly as possible. The records will show that I have done this; all course credits and course requirements have been disposed of.”

 

Stating that he has been engaged in research on his thesis—”The History of the American Communist Party”—for the past two years, Mr. Henderson further charged that “the entire question of scholarly competence raised by Professor McCrea is absurd in view of the offering to me of a research assistanceship by the same department.

 

“The latter certainly could not be based on a disbelief in my scholarly competence.” The Problems Club will seek to enlist the support of other Columbia organizations, it was said yesterday.

 

The club’s statement asserted that “the Social Problems Club has been aware of administrative opposition to Mr. Henderson for many months. A careful effort has been made by the administration to get rid of Mr. Henderson without raising the issue of academic freedom.”

 

Charging that Mr. Henderson was “dismissed because of his political activities,” the statement called upon Spectator “to give the same dignified but vigorous support of academic freedom in Henderson’s case as did Henderson in the case of Spectatorat this time last year.”

 

In that regard, it was recalled yesterday that the strike on this Campus last year protesting the dismissal of Reed Harris took place exactly one year ago today.

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 115, 10 April 1933

Joint Committee Outlines Action On Henderson
Issues Statement on Case Preliminary to Drive for Widespread Support
25,000 Leaflets To Be Distributed

In the first major move of what portends to be a nationwide campaign for the reappointment of Donald Henderson, the Columbia Joint Committee representing the Social Problems and Socialist Clubs yesterday issued a statement laying the groundwork for its program of action in Mr. Henderson’s defense.

 

The declaration was formulated in concert by the two organizations which are assuming the initiative in the movement for reappointment of the prominent Campus radical leader to his present post in the Economics Department.

To Seek Nationwide Aid

 

It deals with the case as presented by Mr. Henderson last week and as set forth by Professor Roswell C. McCrea in explanation of the Administration’s stand. Twenty-five thousand copies of the statement are being printed for distribution among organizations throughout the country in an effort to enlist “widespread and effective” support, it was announced last night.

 

The statement takes up successively the question of Mr. Henderson’s status under three main divisions —”The University’s Excuses,” “The Great Maneuvre That Failed” and “Pressure for Henderson’s Removal.” It concludes with a plea for “all students, student groups and faculty members to send letters of protest to Professor Roswell C. McCrea in Fayerweather Hall.”

 

Lays Dismissal to Radicalism

 

“No one knows better,” the declaration asserts, “than the Columbia administration that Mr. Henderson has been dropped because of his political activities and his leadership in the student movement of America.”

 

The committee outlines “The University’s Excuses” as based on three grounds—the non-permanence of Mr. Henderson’s appointment, non-completion of his degree and his teaching ability.

 

Questions Second Charge

 

On the first point, the statement says that “no one claims the University is violating a legal contract in dropping Henderson.” It takes issue, however, with Professor McCrea’s assertion that Mr. Henderson’s original appointment was made “on the condition that he finish his doctor’s degree within two years.” Concerning Mr. Henderson’s failure to achieve his Ph.D., the statement asserts that “neither have many other instructors who have been teaching for many years at Columbia” and states he “has finished all course and credit requirements.” Professor McCrea’s reference to Mr. Henderson’s teaching ability is branded “the most contemptible charge of all, unsupported by facts.”

 

Professor McCrea had said “Henderson has failed consistently to apply himself seriously and diligently to his duties as instructor and to maintain the standards of teaching required by the department.”

 

Cites Praise of Henderson

 

The Joint Committee here offers commendatory avowals “by former students who are neither personal friends of Henderson or associated with his political activities, including honor students, football players and others.”

 

The statement takes note of the action of Mr. Henderson’s Economics Seminar which unanimously voted him “a competent instructor” and “his analysis of economic theory… illuminating and intellectually stimulating.”

 

Statement Attacks Fellowship Move

 

Turning to “The Great Maneuvre That Failed,” the Committee considers the offer of a fellowship to Mr. Henderson by the University, which he declined, he said, as a move “to ease me out of the University without raising any question of academic freedom.”

 

In the section devoted to “Pressure for Henderson’s Removal,” the committee declares that at the time of the student strike last year in which Mr. Henderson played an active part, “Professor Tugwell said that it was only a question of time how long the pressure (for Mr. Henderson’s removal) could be withstood.

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 117, 12 April 1933

To the Editor of Spectator:

 

The following is a statement of facts concerning a conversation I had with Dean Herbert E. Hawkes; I pass it on to you in the hope that it may shed light on the refusal of the administration to renew the appointment of Donald Henderson:—

 

The conversation took place in the Dean’s office in January, 1932. Only the Dean and I were present. We were engaged in a discussion of the teaching staff of Columbia College.

It was Dean Hawkes’ contention that the quality of instruction afforded students in the College was fully as distinguished as that to be had in any other university in this country.

To illustrate this argument he placed before me a list of the professors and instructors in the College. He read the names of the instructors, amplifying his reading with short summaries of the merits of the men in question.
I remember very clearly that he had high praise for every name on the list except of Mr. Henderson. The Dean said: “Mr.” Henderson is the only weak man we have. We are not satisfied with his work. I don’t think he will be with us next year.”

DONALD D. ROSS ’33 A.M.

 

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 117, 12 April 1933

Group Will Hold Protest Meeting On Henderson
Joint Committee Fixes Next Thursday as Date
Site Not Yet Chosen
Will Picket Library on Wednesday

The campaign for the reappointment of Donald Henderson, instructor in economics, yesterday focused on the efforts of the Columbia Joint Committee, organized to carry on his defense on this Campus.

 

Following a meeting attended by representatives of Columbia organizations, two principal decisions emerged:

  1. An outdoor demonstration will be held on Thursday, April 20, at a principal point, still undetermined, on the Campus.
  2. Pickets will be designated to surround the Main Library a week from today in preparation for an open-air meeting the following day.

Seven Clubs Send Members

 

While non-Campus groups were coming to the aid of the Columbia Committee, seven clubs from the University sent delegates to the meeting which determined upon the outdoor demonstration and the picketing plan.

 

These groups include:

 

The Columbia Social Problems Club, the Socialist Club, the Barnard Social Problems Club, the Economics Club, the Mathematics Club, the Sociology Club of Teachers College and the Social Problems Club of Seth Low.

 

Leaflets Distributed on Campus

 

2,000 leaflets bearing the title, “The Henderson Case” and containing the statement issued last Sunday by the Joint Committee were distributed on the Campus yesterday with 3,000 additional copies to be delivered today.

 

Meanwhile, the plan to enlist support from organizations throughout the country continued apace with the National Student League circularizing groups on 100 campuses. A city-wide meeting on the case will be held this Saturday at the New School for Social Research when delegates will be sent from the National Student League, the Intercollegiate Council of the League for Industrial Democracy, the Student Federation of America and other groups.

 

Teachers Send Protest

 

The Association of University Teachers yesterday sent a telegram of protest to President Nicholas Murray Butler and Professor Roswell C. McCrea. It read: “The Association of University Teachers, having examined all evidence available believes the dismissal of Donald Henderson unjustified and urges his reappointment.”

 

It was also made known that the Association has appointed a committee to cooperate in the campaign for Mr. Henderson’s reappointment.

 

The pickets will be stationed at positions around the Main Library where the offices of several prominent administrative officers are situated.

 

The Joint Committee yesterday made public a letter from Professor McCrea addressed to Miss Margaret Schlauch, a graduate of the University. Miss Schlauch has written protesting the nonrenewal of Mr. Henderson’s contract.

 

McCrea Replies to Letter

 

Professor McCrea, in reply, stated that “unfortunately, I fear that the public fails to understand the real merits of the situation. “These I think were adequately set forth in a statement which was furnished to the press but which did not appear in its entirety,” he wrote.

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 118, 18 April 1933

Group Plans Picket Protest For Henderson
Supporters Will Circle Main Library—Howe Bans Mail Distribution Of Campaign Leaflets in Dormitories

While organizations and individuals throughout the city were being enlisted in the campaign for reappointment of Donald Henderson, the Columbia Joint Committee yesterday speeded preparations for bringing the case before the Campus this week.

 

Preliminary to an outdoor meeting on Thursday at which representatives of Campus groups affiliated with the committee will speak, thirty pickets tomorrow will surround the Main Library, where the offices of Administrative leaders are situated.

 

Bans Distribution of Leaflet

 

Distribution of the leaflet entitled “The Henderson Case” which has been circulated on the Campus was temporarily halted yesterday when it was revealed that the University had denied the committee permission to insert the statements in dormitory mail-boxes.

 

Herbert E. Howe, director of Men’s Residence Halls, told Spectator yesterday that “the University does not allow advertising material in local mail distribution.” He said that he considered the leaflet in that classification.

 

Committee leaders asserted that the circular on “What Is the Social Problems Club” and the announcements of the Marxist lectures had been recently distributed in dormitory boxes with Mr. Howe’s permission.

 

To Demonstrate at Sun Dial

 

As the Association of University Teachers assumed a leading role in organizing city-wide groups for Mr. Henderson’s defense, the Columbia Committee announced that the first of a contemplated series of demonstrations will be held at the Sun Dial in front of South Field. Leaders said yesterday that the meeting will be a “Columbia demonstration limited to Columbia speakers.”

 

The Association of University Teachers is drawing up a detailed statement on the case, it was made known yesterday, with the intention of submitting it to individuals and groups as the basis of an appeal for widespread support.

 

Say Henderson Expelled for Beliefs

 

The Association stated that “it has considerable evidence justifying the opinion that Mr. Henderson was expelled for his political activities and beliefs” and declared that “this is the most important case of violation of academic freedom since the war.”

 

A committee representing eight college organizations in this city has been formed to aid the protest movement, it was learned yesterday, following a conference at the New School for Social Research last Saturday.

 

Professor Henry W. L. Dana, who was dismissed from the University during the World War and is now at Harvard, has written to Professor Roswell C. McCrea concerning the Henderson case, it was revealed yesterday, with publication of a copy of the letter by an official of the National Student League.

 

Text of Letter

 

Professor Dana wrote:

 

“Considering the cases of other teachers who have been forced to leave Columbia University in the past (Professors MacDowell, Woodberry, Ware, Peck, Spingarn, Cattell, Beard), not to mention my own name, I cannot help smiling at the unconscious irony in your statement that the case of Mr. Henderson ‘is consistent with long-established University policy.’ “

 

Members of the Joint Committee indicated yesterday that a strike may be called for next week if ensuing developments “warrant such a move.” They said that demonstrations at colleges throughout the city are being planned.

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 119, 19 April 1933

Will Picket Library Today
Henderson Supporters To Stage Three-Hour Demonstration

Student pickets will surround the Main Library at ten o’clock this morning for a three-hour siege of administrative offices to protest against the non-renewal of Donald Henderson’s appointment.

 

Preparatory to an outdoor demonstration in front of South Field at noon tomorrow, thirty representatives of organizations affiliated with the Columbia Joint Committee will form a cordon encircling the Library where they will maintain their stand until 1 P.M. this afternoon.

 

15 of Class Sign Petition

 

Meanwhile, fifteen members of Mr. Henderson’s Economics 4 class yesterday signed a petition, circulated by a student, which terms him a “thoroughly competent instructor and a definite asset to the course.” There were seventeen students present at the class meeting. Twenty-one students are registered in the course, a member of the Economics department said.

 

This move followed the action of students in Mr. Henderson’s Economics Seminar who last week unanimously voted him “a competent instructor” and said “his analyses of economic theory have been illuminating and intellectually stimulating.”

 

Announcements Posted on Campus

 

Posters appeared on the Campus yesterday announcing tomorrow’s demonstration and stating that seven speakers from Columbia organizations would address the meeting. The protesting students will assemble at the Sun Dial. The Joint Committee yesterday released data that a Faculty member and student had compiled, relative to the number of staff members in Columbia College who have not yet received Doctor’s degrees. This investigation was prompted, it was said, by Professor McCrea’s reference to Mr. Henderson’s failure to achieve his Ph.D. during his tenure here.

 

The survey asserted:

  1. Of ninety-four Faculty members with the rank of assistant professor or above, twenty-two have not obtained doctor’s degrees.
  2. Of eighty instructors in Columbia College, fifty are without doctor’s degrees. Of those fifty, thirty-three have served four years or more at Columbia.
  3. Of the thirty who have received Ph.D.’s, the average time for completion of all requirements was 4.9 years.
  4. Of thirty-three instructors without doctor’s degrees, the average time elapsed since they received their last degree is 7.6 years.

This data was made public with a statement pointing out that Mr. Henderson is serving his fifth year at Columbia and received his M.A. degree in 1926. Committee leaders said yesterday that from present indications a series of demonstrations, leading to a call for a student strike next week, will be staged. They declared there is a possibility that later meetings would be transferred to the Library steps, despite the University ruling restricting outdoor assemblages to South Field.

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 120, 20 April 1933

Group to Stage Protest Meeting
Henderson Adherents to Mass Today — Pickets Surround Library

A mass meeting to protest the University’s failure to renew Donald Henderson’s appointment will be staged at noon today at the Sun Dial in front of South Field.

 

The demonstration, called by the Columbia Joint Committee which organized in Mr. Henderson’s defense last week, will be addressed by two Faculty members and representatives of Campus groups.

 

Patrol Library Area

 

In preparation for the meeting, thirty student pickets yesterday patrolled the area around the Main Library, bearing placards which urged Mr. Henderson’s reappointment. The pickets maintained their stand for three hours, attracting curious groups of spectators and several newspaper photographers.

 

The Columbia Committee revealed last night that a delegation is being formed to confer with Dr. Butler tomorrow on Mr. Henderson’s status and to present its plea for renewal of his contract.

 

Cutler Will Speak

 

Dr. Addison T. Cutler, instructor in economics, and Bernard Stem, lecturer in sociology, will be the faculty speakers at today’s demonstration. Other addresses will be delivered by John Donovan ’31, president of the Social Problems Club; Ruth Reles, of Barnard; John Craze, of the Mathematics Club; Jules Umansky, of the Socialist Club; Edith Goldbloom, of New College and Nathaniel Weyl ’31, now a graduate student.

 

The picketing continued for three hours yesterday with some students carrying varied placards along the Library Steps, while others formed a cordon encircling the building.

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 121, 21 April 1933

Large Crowd Attends Protest For Henderson
150 Hear Addresses by Cutler, Donovan — Term Dismissed Instructor ‘Too Good for Most of People in University’

Agitation for the reinstatement of Donald Henderson continued yesterday when the Columbia Joint Committee staged a demonstration attended by about 150 students at the Sun Dial in front of South Field.

 

Leading off a series of addresses by members of the Faculty and Student Body, John Donovan ’31, president of the Social Problems Club, declared the Economics instructor was expelled “not because he was too poor a teacher but because he was too good for most of the people in this University.”

 

Cutler Praises Henderson

 

Dr. Addison T. Cutler of the Economics Department, one of the two Faculty speakers, stated that “Mr. Henderson has carried out as few educators have done, the maxim that theory and practice should be united.

 

“It has always been a Columbia tradition,” he declared, “that its teachers should be active in community life. It is now becoming recognized that this means they should be active in their communities along class lines. But if they want reconstruction of the social order they aren’t acceptable to the administration.”

 

Distribute Protest Postcards

 

Terming the charge of “academic incompetence” levelled at Mr. Henderson by the University a subterfuge, Dr. Cutler lauded the instructor’s ability and characterized the reasons given for his dismissal by Dean Roswell C. McCrea of the School of Business, as “the thinnest kind of a fictitious peg upon which to hang a hat.”

 

During the course of the demonstration, members of the Joint Committee distributed postcards addressed to President Butler and bearing the statement: “I, the undersigned student, join the protest against the dismissal of Donald Henderson and demand his reappointment.”

 

Committee to Meet Butler

 

A committee delegated by the protest group today will confer with Dr. Butler regarding the non-renewal of Mr. Henderson’s appointment and to urge his reinstatement. Meanwhile, petitions protesting the teacher’s dismissal will be ready for distribution Monday, Donovan stated.

 

Jules Umansky, of the Socialist Club, also spoke yesterday, asserting that “Mr. Henderson is incompetent from the point of view that he taught what he wasn’t supposed to teach. He is incompetent because he has been teaching young people to think in terms of current problems. He is the only one who has taught this subject.”

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 122, 24 April 1933

Group to Meet With Dr. Butler
Henderson Supporters Pick Delegation to Seek Administration Stand

The Administration’s stand regarding the renewal of Donald Henderson’s appointment is expected to receive expression when a special delegation chosen by the Columbia Joint Committee confers today with Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler.

A conference with Dr. Butler was to have taken place last Friday, leaders of the protest group declared, but was postponed until this afternoon “because of some mechanical obstructions.” These, it was stated, were removed with the appointment of a special committee of ten students and one Faculty member and the arrangement with Dr. Butler for a definite appointment.

 

Delegation Has 11 Members

 

The delegation which will meet with the president at 3:45 this afternoon is composed of: Bent Andresen ’36; Reginald Call ’33; Dr. Addison T. Cutler, economics instructor; John L. Donovan ’31, president of the Social Problems Club; Edith Goldbloom, of New College; James E. Gorham ’34; Leonard Lazarus, Law School student; Angus MacLachlan ’33; Victor Perlo, graduate student; [a brief biography]; Ruth Relis, of Barnard College and Charles Springmeyer ’33.

 

National Campaign Planned

 

Meanwhile, Henderson sympathizers off the Campus moved to obtain widespread backing for their campaign. Invitations have been sent to ten nation-ally-constituted student, teacher and professional groups asking them to a conference for the organization of concerted action on the Henderson to be held Thursday of this week.

 

The Association of University Teachers has already entered the drive to reinstate Henderson, having sent a telegram to Dr. Butler protesting the dismissal of the instructor.

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 124, 26 April 1933

The Case of Donald Henderson
[Spectator Editorial]

What is academic freedom? Obviously, the right of a faculty member to express his convictions, political or social, without the dread that such expression will cost him his position or his chances of promotion. Columbia University, despite Dr. Butler’s reputed statement to the contrary, has violated this code — notably, in the expulsion of outstanding Faculty members during the war hysteria of 1917.

 

Now comes the cry that the refusal of the University to renew the contract of Donald Henderson is another clear-cut case of disregarding academic freedom. The non-reappointment of Mr. Henderson is said to be a direct result of his economic and political creed. The obvious question is then — Has the University’s action been due to Mr. Henderson’s radical activities?

 

At Monday’s conference with President Butler, Dr. Addison T. Cutler, member of the Columbia Joint Committee, is quoted as having said:

 

“Mr. Henderson told me a year ago last Fall that he had been asked to get another job.”

 

A year ago last Fall would be 1931 — prior to the Reed Harris expulsion, prior to the Kentucky student trip, prior to his arrest at City College. Certainly, his activity in radical circles was: comparatively obscure up until the time when Mr. Henderson says he was told his contract would not be renewed.

 

From the evidence presented up to the present time, the case of Donald Henderson is not one of clear-cut violation of academic freedom even though his supporters have attempted to make it appear so.

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 126, 28 April 1933

From Mr. Henderson

To the Editor of Spectator:

 

The editorial in Wednesday morning’s Spectator concerning my case raises very sharply one question of fact which I feel requires a statement from me. This point concerns the time when pressure began to be applied for my removal, and the reason for this pressure.

 

During May 1931 Professor Tugwell informed me that my status as instructor at Columbia was not in question, that the people “downstairs” were satisfied with my work. In October 1931 during the first week of the session, Professor Tugwell. called me into his office and informed me that the situation had radically changed and that I had better look for a position…somewhere else for the following year. It was made clear, however that this was in no sense a case of “firing” but rather a suggestion that I find a position somewhere else if possible.

 

I immediately raised the question with Professor Tugwell concerning the abrupt change in attitude toward me between May 1931 and October 1931. No definite answer was given by Professor Tugwell beyond a general statement that I was spending too much time in “agitation” and not enough in “scholarly education.”

 

ln point of fact, what happened between May and was this. As my original statement pointed out I became extensively and publicly active in the Communist movement during the summer and though present members of the editorial board of Spectator may not have been aware of it at that time and know nothing of it now, these activities were attended with considerable publicity.

 

It is also true that with increased activity and publicity during the past year this pressure has taken on the form of blunt refusal to reappoint. The complaints about my activities were not in any way concealed from me. On the contrary they were several times brought to my attention, and it was well understood in the department that such was the case.

DONALD HENDERSON

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 127, 1 May 1933

Groups Rally To Defense Of Henderson
General Committee for Instructor’s Support Is Formed — Speakers at Meeting Call Educational System ‘Sterile’

The campaign for the reinstatement of Donald Henderson assumed nationwide significance over the week-end as the result of three conferences staged by the New York Committee for the instructor’s reappointment.

 

As the culmination of a week of general organization of the Henderson defense and presentation of the instructor’s case at several city colleges, a meeting was held at the Central Plaza last night at which addresses attacking the University’s failure to renew Mr. Henderson’s appointment were delivered by five speakers, including, for the first time in his own public defense, Mr. Henderson.

 

200 Attend Protest Meeting

 

Amid the sounding of a call for a “permanent organization to prevent future violations of academic freedom and to: put forward immediately mass pressure to reinstate Donald Henderson,” the speakers at the meeting, attended by 200 persons, generally condemned the “narrowness, dryness and intellectual sterility,” of the existing educational system.

Mr. Henderson termed Columbia “a liberal university where you may believe anything you please and discuss it freely under academic auspices, provided you hold these beliefs educationally and not agitationally.” Putting into practice personal doctrines which run counter to the “dominant social institutions” will result in “academic suicide,” he said.

 

Predicts Student Fascist Move

 

“Both for students and teachers the range of freedom in thought and action is constantly narrowing,” Mr. Henderson stated, predicting the crystallization of a Fascist student movement in America with increasing “tightening of educational lines.”

 

At an organization meeting Saturday, eight national student, teacher and professional groups, in addition to fifteen college clubs, allied themselves in a “General Committee for the Reinstatement of Donald Henderson.”

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 129, 3 May 1933

Henderson to Lecture

Donald Henderson, instructor in economics, will speak on the “Revolutionary Student Movement” at the next of the Social Problems Club’s Marxist Lectures tonight at 8:30 o’clock in Casa Italiana.

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 129, 3 May 1933

To Hold Protest At Noon Today
Henderson Supporters Will Mass at Sun Dial For Demonstration

Three radical leaders and ten students will speak at noon today at the second Columbia outdoor mass meeting protesting the University’s failure to renew the appointment of Donald Henderson, instructor in economics.

 

Characterized by Henderson supporters as “undoubtedly the most important event in the fight,” the protest demonstration to be held at the Sun Dial is expected to draw a city-wide crowd of sympathizers.

 

Niebuhr to Speak

 

Speakers at the meeting, according to a statement issued yesterday by the Columbia Joint Committee for the Instructor’s reinstatement will be Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr of Union Theological Seminary, J. B. Matthews of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and Robert W. Dunn of the Labor Research Association. Ten students will also deliver addresses, representing various Campus organizations.

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 130, 4 May 1933

Flays Faculty In Marxist Talk
Henderson Says Staff Quit Harris ‘Cold’-Plan Demonstration Today

Charging that American college faculties have failed to give support to student radical movements, Donald Henderson, instructor in economics, declared yesterday evening in one of the Social Problems Club’s series of Marxist Lectures that members of the Columbia teaching staff quit the Reed Harris and other cases “cold” when they thought they might “burn their fingers.”

 

With a plea for solidarity among student bodies of the nation on issues of importance, Mr. Henderson told a small audience at the Casa Italiana that “it is doubly important to get students of other campuses to come and demonstrate at Columbia.” The most pressing problem facing organized student movements, he said, is the “isolated character” of the individual student bodies.

 

Students Not Revolutionary

 

“The total student body in the United States is not revolutionary material,” Mr. Henderson declared, pointing out that the great bulk of present undergraduates came to college in the period when they were justified in looking forward to “a hopeful cultural future,” as well as important jobs on graduation. The depression has not greatly altered the points of view of many students, declared the instructor whose reappointment is being sought by the National Student League.

 

A fight on academic freedom should not be undertaken only on the basis of its own importance, but should be regarded as “merely the reflection of the broader social situation,” Mr. Henderson declared. Struggles taken up at colleges must be carried on with the intention of calling attention to the revolutionary program as a whole, he added.

 

A protest demonstration for the reappointment of Mr. Henderson will be held this noon at the Sun Dial in front of South Field, according to supporters, yesterday’s meeting having been postponed on account of rain.

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 131, 5 May 1933

500 Attend Demonstration For Henderson
Instructor’s Case Held An Instance of General ‘Academic Repression’ in U. S.
 — Sykes Presents Opposition Viewpoint

The case of Donald Henderson is merely a single instance of a general situation of academic repression in this country, it was asserted yesterday by eleven of twelve speakers addressing a demonstration in protest against the failure of the University to renew Mr. Henderson’s appointment.

 

A crowd of 500 persons, assembled at the Sun Dial, variously expressed, by either cheering or booing, their opinions of the several speakers, among whom was J. B. Matthews, of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. He demanded student support of the Henderson case “as part of an issue we shall be forced in the future to combat in a bigger way, an issue which is now raising its head on the Columbia Campus.”

 

Tells Group to Organize

 

“This is the time to awaken, to organize, to stop now the tendency toward academic repression and servility to the prevailing social order,” he declared.

 

Mr. Henderson’s crime consisted in “functioning effectively in the social order and getting his name in the papers,” according to Robert W. Dunn of the Labor Research Association. “Had he been a respectable liberal and confined himself to harmless academic matters he would have been retained, at full pay, even if he never met his classes,” Mr. Dunn asserted.

 

Will Picket Today

 

During the demonstration two committees were organized to picket, commencing at noon today, the home of Dr. Butler and the Columbia University Club rooms. Agitation for Mr. Henderson’s reinstatement will continue Tuesday with another demonstration, followed by a march around the Campus, it was announced to the assembled crowd. An opposition viewpoint was expressed at the meeting by Macrae Sykes ’33, Student Board member who, when asked his opinion of the case, declared “there is a confusion of issues in this case. Academic freedom is not involved in Mr. Henderson’s expulsion. Many teachers at Columbia are expressing to their students the same ideas for which you claim Henderson was fired. These teachers weren’t asked to resign.

 

“This is no question of academic freedom,” Sykes continued, “but of the right of department heads to hire and fire their subordinates at will.”

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 132, 8 May 1933

An Unanswered Question
[Spectator Editorial]

On April 28, Mr. Donald Henderson, in reply to an editorial published two days previous, stated:

  1. In May, 1931, Professor Rexford C. Tugwell had told Mr. Henderson that his status as an instructor “was not in question.”
  2. In October of the same year, Mr. Henderson said in his letter, Professor Tugwell “called me into his office and informed me that the situation had radically changed and that I had better look for a position somewhere else for the following year.”
  3. When Mr. Henderson asked Professor Tugwell the reason “for the abrupt change in attitude toward me between May, 1931, and October, 1931,” the letter declares, “no definite answer was given by Professor Tugwell beyond a general statement that I was spending too much time in ‘agitation’ and not enough in ‘scholarly education.'”

Mr. Henderson’s statements are serious enough to warrant an answer. What happened between the months of May and October, 1931, is a question which silence on the part of Professor Tugwell cannot clear up.

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 133, 9 May 1933

Broun, Harris Will Address Mass Meeting
Will Speak Today at Henderson Protest — 26 Prominent Liberals Ask A. A. U. P. tor Inquiry Of Instructor’s Case

Preparations for the third outdoor protest demonstration in behalf of Donald Henderson were completed yesterday as leaders of the Columbia Joint Committee for the instructor’s reappointment made public a letter sent by twenty-six educators, writers and radical leaders, to the American Association of University Professors requesting an investigation of the Henderson case.

 

Heywood Broun, columnist, Reed Harris, former Spectator editor and Joshua Kunitz, author, in addition to ten student speakers, will deliver addresses in Mr. Henderson’s defense in another protest meeting at noon today at the Sun Dial.

 

The signers of the communication declare themselves to be “deeply concerned with the issues of academic freedom and free speech” raised in the Henderson case, and request the Association to conduct a “thoroughgoing” investigation.

The full text of the letter follows:

 

“Professor Walter Wheeler Cook, President,
The American Association of University Professors
Johns Hopkins University

Dear Sir:

The undersigned individuals are deeply concerned with the issues of academic freedom and free speech raised by the release from Columbia University of Donald Henderson, instructor of economics. Mr. Henderson, who has been an instructor at Columbia for four years, has been notified that he will not be reappointed for 1933-34. The alleged reasons for this refusal to reappoint him are failure to complete work for a Ph.D. degree, and his poor teaching.

 

“Students and teachers at Columbia and other universities charge that the reasons given by the University for this action are hypocritical and misleading, and that the real reason for his release is his continued radical student and labor activities.

 

“We believe that the issues involved in Mr. Henderson’s release are of sufficient importance to justify a thoroughgoing inquiry by the American Association of University Professors. Accordingly, we ask you to instigate such an investigation at the earliest possible moment, and to make a report of your findings to the American people.”

 

The communication was signed by the following: George Soule and Bruce Bliven, of The New Republic; Lewis Gannett, of The New York Herald-Tribune; Freda Kirchway, of The Nation; Alfred Bingham and Selden Rodman, of Common Sense; Harry Elmer Barnes; Sidney Howard; Waldo Frank; Granville Hicks; Professors Broadus Mitchell, Johns Hopkins University; Newton Arvin, Smith College, Robert Morss Lovett and Maynard C. Krueger, University of Chicago, Harry A. Overstreet, C.C. N.Y., Willard Atkins, Edwin Burgum, Margaret Schlauch and Sidney Hook, New York University; Dr. Bernhard J. Stern, Columbia; Norman Thomas, A. J. Muste, Corliss Lamont, Elizabeth Gilman, Paul Blanshard and J. B. Matthews.

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 134, 10 May 1933

Broun Asks Student Strike For Henderson
Calls University’s Action ‘Unfair’ — ‘Liberalism’ of Butler Hit by Instructor, Speaking on Own Case — Reed Harris Talks

Heywood Broun, noted columnist, yesterday called upon Columbia students to strike in protest against the University’s “unfair treatment” of Donald Henderson.

 

Declaring the economics instructor was “fired” solely for his radical activity, Mr. Broun told a crowd of 750 at a protest meeting on 116th Street that they should “come out and fight openly” to affirm the fact that “this University is ours and belongs to nobody else.”

 

Calls Students’ Judgment Important

 

“It is a strange thing,” the newspaper man asserted, “that an instructor is incompetent as soon as he becomes interested in radical activities. A remote Administration is not a judge of competence in this matter. The most important thing is what his classes think of Donald Henderson.”

 

In his second public address on his own case, Mr. Henderson, last speaker at the demonstration, attacked Columbia’s “liberal reputation,” declaring that “the essence of Columbia University’s liberalism is that it permits you freedom of thought as long as you don’t carry your beliefs into action.”

 

Attacks Liberals’ Policies

 

The practical application of such doctrines, if they run counter to the “dominant institutions,” causes the University to “distinguish between academic freedom and academic incompetence,” he declared.

 

“Effective unity of opposing thought and action of this sort,” Mr. Henderson stated, “immediately puts the liberal in a position where he must join the forces of reaction.”

He called upon teachers and students everywhere to “rouse into action and discover the meaning of this liberalism and all the other doctrines that are hung around our necks.”

Reed Harris, former Spectator editor, returning to the University to defend the Faculty member who supported him after his expulsion from Columbia last year, also spoke. He termed Mr. Henderson “one of the most important instructors in America” and called his non-reappointment “a rotten deal for Mr. Henderson and for the students.”

 

“Education,” he declared, “is a little like beer. It needs ferment to keep it from becoming flat. It needs activity, and teachers like Henderson provide this activity, dispel the unhealthy serenity bred of College Studies and dimly lighted rooms.”

 

Says Officials Are ‘Hypocrites’

 

Attacking the Administration’s stand on the case, Harris charged Columbia officials with being “hypocrites.” A charge of “absolute incompetence” and “nincompoopery” was levelled at a majority of Faculty members, some by direct reference, by Joshua Kunitz, writer and Phi Beta Kappa member who received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees here.

 

Plans for continuance of agitation were drawn up by Henderson adherents immediately after the protest meeting. Two principal decisions emerged:

 

Will March by Torchlight

  1. A torchlight procession around the Campus will take place tonight, commencing at 8:30 o’clock from the Sun Dial. Preliminary to this event, sympathizers will picket the Main Library steps for two hours.
  2. Tomorrow, a mass picketing of the grounds, conducted by a city-wide group of Henderson supporters, will be held. Dr. Butler’s home will also be picketed.

Other speakers at yesterday’s demonstration included Nathaniel Weyl ’31; Robert Gessner, of the N. Y. U. faculty.

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 135, 11 May 1933

Roar, Lion, Roar
[Spectator editorial]

Last night the supporters of the movement to reinstate Donald Henderson held a demonstration on 116th Street. Their intentions were simply to carry on the fight for a cause which they felt was justified.

 

But the self-styled “intelligent group of Columbia students” determined that the only way to beat the Henderson supporters was by egg-throwing. Dr. Addison T. Cutler, a courageous member of the Faculty, was subjected to the humiliation of having his coat spattered with eggs thrown by a gentleman who dared not come up front and state his case.

This exhibition by a supposedly intelligent group of undergraduates—their complete reversion to howling lynch-law—must leave the-ordinary bystander amazed.

 

When an alumnus of Columbia College—not a supporter of Mr. Henderson, but one who was merely passing by—got up and pleaded with the undergraduate group to be square and decent, he was greeted with hoots and jeers. It was rowdyism of the worst sort. It was inexcusable.

 

Students of this calibre will someday be graduated from Columbia College as capable, competent and educated young men.

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 136, 12 May 1933

Joint Committee Calls Strike For Henderson
Instructor’s Backers to Stage Walkout Monday – Ask General Student Participation—Will Issue Leaflet on Case Today

A call to all University students to strike Monday in protest against the “continued silence” of the administration regarding the reappointment of Donald Henderson was sounded yesterday by the Columbia Joint Committee for the instructor’s reinstatement.

 

Declaring that “increasing manifestations of student sympathy and the incontrovertible evidence which has been presented” justify a general walkout, a statement issued yesterday by the Henderson defense group urged students to employ “the most potent weapon of student expression” to fight “this latest attempt to stifle freedom of action.”

 

Administration Is Silent

 

“Our campaign has moved forward,” the statement asserted, adding that the administration has been silent “despite the mass of testimony” offered to answer its original statement of the reasons for not reappointing Mr. Henderson.

 

Complete plans for the strike were speeded overnight with student sympathizers throughout the city voicing support of the move. Pickets to dissuade Columbia students from attending classes Monday will be selected over the weekend, leaders of the protest group announced.

 

Will Distribute Leaflets

 

This morning leaflets will be distributed on this and other campuses reviewing the case of Donald Henderson and urging students to participate in the walkout.

 

It is planned to circulate a petition urging the instructor’s reappointment among members of the teaching departments in an attempt to line up concerted student and Faculty opposition.

 

From noon till late afternoon yesterday Henderson adherents picketed the Main Library steps and the home of Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, bearing twenty-foot banners stating “Reappoint Henderson,” and numerous placards.

 

Many Students Indifferent

 

Repercussions of the open battle Wednesday night between Henderson supporters and the newly-manifested student opposition sounded from all quarters of the Campus yesterday. While many students hitherto undecided as to their sentiments on the Henderson case have definitely aligned themselves with either opposing or supporting forces as a result of the clash, many expressed continued indifference to the matter.

 

The opposition ranks, as yet not openly organized, were silent last night regarding plans for further action, but it was considered likely in informed circles that they will intensify their activity and seek to enlarge their numbers, preliminary to a mass counter-move on the day of the walkout.

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Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 137, 15 May 1933

100 to Picket University in Henderson Strike Today
Walkout to Last All Day—
‘To Be Peaceful, Disciplined Meeting,’ Committee Promises—Rivera to Speak

Culminating six weeks of continuous agitation, the supporters of Donald Henderson will go on strike today.

One hundred pickets, drawn from Columbia and other colleges in the city, will patrol all University buildings commencing at 9 o’clock this morning to dissuade students from attending classes in protest against the Administration’s failure to reappoint Mr. Henderson, Henderson sympathizers will enter classrooms to urge students and Faculty to join the protest forces.

 

Strike to Last Until 5 P.M.

 

The walkout, continuing until 5 o’clock this afternoon, will be a “disciplined, peaceful affair,” leaders of the Columbia Joint Committee for the economics instructor’s reinstatement promised yesterday. Pickets and striking students have been instructed to “cause no trouble.”

 

Throughout the day, a continual procession of speakers will mount the Sun Dial to lead protest meetings demanding Mr. Henderson’s reappointment. Included in the list are the following: Diego Rivera, Mexican artist; McAlister Coleman, Socialist leader; Donald Henderson; Paul Blanshard, of the City Affairs Committee; Joseph Freeman, editor of New Masses; Alfred Bingham, son of Senator Hiram Bingham of Connecticut and editor of “Common Sense”; Clarence Hathaway, Communist Party Leader; William Browder; and E. C. Lindeman, of the Social Science Research Council.

 

Opposition to Demonstrate

 

Opposition forces could not be reached last night, but it was reporter [that a] counter-demonstration is planned for today. Having organized over the weekend, they are understood to be enlarging their ranks and are expected to offer resistance to pickets and protesting groups for the duration of the walkout.

Friday members of the Joint Committee distributed leaflets urging students to Strike Monday to Reappoint Henderson.” Reviewing the Henderson case thus far, the paper declares

“On Monday students of; Columbia University will once again be called to strike in defense of academic freedom. The time has come when we must resort to that weapon to protect the right of Donald Henderson and instructors after him to carry their beliefs into effective action.”

 

Leaflet Discusses Case

 

Discussing the case under four headings, “Why Was Henderson Fired?” “Facts,” “Who Supports Henderson?”, and “Who Opposes Henderson?” the leaflet points out that Mr. Henderson “has been dismissed from his teaching position at Columbia because of his activities in the revolutionary student and labor movement.”

 

Following a list of the student, teacher and professional groups supporting the economics instructor, the statement of The Joint Committee challenges the opposing student faction, and concludes: “At one and the same time they (the opposition) maintain ‘this is no case of academic freedom and Henderson Should be fired for his Communism! Sweep all radicals Out of Columbia!’ “

 

“Which is it, ‘gentlemen’ of the opposition,” the leaflet asks, was Henderson fired for radicalism or not? Do you or do you not want Columbia closed to all but goose-steppers? Make up your minds!”

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LVI, Number 137, 15 May 1933

Manners
[Spectator editorial]

Today a group of students sincerely devoted to the fight for the reappointment of Donald Henderson will leave their classes and hold an all-day demonstration in front of the Sun Dial. Thus far they have carried on their activities with as much dignity as the opposition would allow. In one specific case they were treated to an adolescent display of rowdyism by a group of students.

 

We believe that student expression should have every opportunity for full and unrestricted expression, bounded only by certain standards of courtesy and fairness. The Henderson supporters have invited their opponents to speak. They have striven to prevent their meetings from degenerating into brawls upon provocation by a band of egg-throwers.

 

We hope that the Columbia College students who have made of themselves public examples of irresponsibility will be absent today. By staying away from that which they don’t want to hear, they will restore to themselves some of their fast disappearing dignity.

______________________

Seabrook Farms, N.J. Strike

Daily News (New York, 11 July 1934).

N.Y. Red Run Out as Farm Strike Ends
By Robin Harris (Staff Correspondent of TheNews)

Bridgeton, N.J., July 10.—The sixteen-day strike of the Seabrook Farms workers whose riots and disorders reached a climax in yesterday’s “Bloody Monday” gas bomb attacks was ended today when the strikers overthrew Communistic leadership and threatened to lynch Donald Henderson, Red organizer and former Columbia University economics instructor.

            As the resentment of the strikers flamed into anger toward their discredited leader, the authorities slipped Henderson out of town in an automobile, taking him to his bungalow at Vineland, about eight miles from here.

 

Workers Against Him.

 

            Henderson, whose wife, Eleanor (sic), was one of the twenty-seven strike leaders arrested after yesterday’s riots, found the opinion of the workers solidly against him when he urged them to reject the peace agreement drawn up by Federal Mediator John A. Moffitt.

 

            Shouts of “Run him out of town!” and “Lynch him!” interrupted the pint-sized [According to Henderson’s 1942 Draft registration card his approximate height and weight were 5 foot 10 inches, 140 lbs.] agitator’s flow of oratory when he persisted in addressing the highway mass meeting at which the workers voted 2 to 1 to accept the Moffitt agreement.

Surrounded by deputy sheriffs, Henderson left the meeting and returned to the offices of the Seabrook Farms, where he was greeted with jeers and renewed threats from the workers.

 

            While police officials and members of the farmers’ vigilantes committee strove to mollify the booing crowd, County Detective Albert F. Murray slipped Henderson out of the rear door and departed for Vineland….

 

            The twenty-eight prisoners, twenty-seven seized after the riots yesterday and the other when recognized today, were ordered released by Cumberland County Prosecutor Thomas Tuso after he learned of the strike settlement.

 

            Twenty-one of the prisoners were granted unconditional freedom, while the other seven, including Henderson, his wife, and Vivian Dahl, were continued in $500 bail pending the action of the Grand Jury, which meets in September.

 

            The seven continued in bail were charged with inciting to riot and suspicion of possessing dangerous weapons.

 

            Following the release of the prisoners, Col. H. Norman Schwarzkopf [Fun Fact: father of Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. commander of U.S. Central Command who led coalition forces in the Persian Gulf War], head of the New Jersey State Police, announced that he would give the New York Reds twenty-four hours to leave town. Those failing to get out under the deadline will be clamped into jail.

______________________

Grand Jury Probing

The New York Times Sept 11, 1951

“A nationwide search by the Government for Donald Henderson, president of the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers Union of America, independent, was called off yesterday after the leftist labor leader agreed by telephone to appear here tomorrow before the Federal grand jury investigating subversive activities.

 

Roy M. Cohn, assistant United States Attorney in charge of the investigation, said that since last Wednesday United States marshals had been trying to locate Mr. Henderson to serve a grand jury subpoena. Late yesterday afternoon, Mr. Henderson called Mr. Cohn from Charleston , S. C., and agreed to appear before the panel.

 

The grand jury has been questioning labor officials who signed the non-Communist affidavit under the Taft-Harley Law after resigning from the Communist party. …

 

…Yesterday three other leftist union officials were witnesses before the grand jury. They were James H. Durkis, president of the United Office and Professional Workers of America, independent, who resigned publicly from the Communist party, and Julius Emspak, secretary-treasurer, and James Maties, (or Matles) director of organization, of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers, independent….

At the conspiracy trial of the eleven convicted Communist leaders, Louis F. Budenz, former editor of The Daily Worker, testified that Mr. Emspak attended a June 1945 meeting of the Communist party national committee….

______________________

February 14, 1952 Testimony

U.S. Senate, Subcommittee to investigate the administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary.  [pp.165-185]

[p. 166]
…Mr. Arens. Will you kindly give us the date and place of your birth?

Mr. Henderson. I was born in New York City, February 4, 1902.

Mr. Arens. And where were you educated? Give us a word about your education, if you please.

Mr. Henderson. I went to grammar school in Montpelier, Vt. I went to high school at Dansville, N.Y. I went to college at Columbia University.

Mr. Arens. Give us, if you please, a brief résumeé of your occupation after you completed your formal education.

Mr. Henderson. I taught at Columbia University for 7 years as an instructor in economics, and since that time I have been a labor organizer in one or another labor union.

Mr. Arnes. Could you be a little bit more specific on the labor organizations which you have been identified with?

Mr. Henderson. Starting in 1933-34, I started organizing agricultural workers throughout the country.

Mr. Arens. For what organization, if you please?

Mr. Henderson. For the American Federation of Labor. And in 1937, we established an international union affiliated to the CIO.

Mr. Arens. What was the name of that union?

Mr. Henderson. It was called the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America. That changed its name to the Food, Tobacco and Agricultural Workers Union in 1944. It affiliated to the CIO in 1937.

Mr. Arens. And what was your particular office or position with the union?

Mr. Henderson. I was elected international president of that union in 1937 and held that post until 1949. In October 1950, we merged with two other organizations, the Distributive Workers Union and the United Office and Professional Workers Union, to form a new international union called the Distributive, Processing and Office Workers Union of America, and I am the national secretary-treasurer of that new international union.

Mr. Arens. And how long have you held this post of national secretary-treasurer of DPOWA?

Mr. Henderson. At the time of the merger, I held the post of administrative secretary of that international union until October of 1951, when there was a reorganization and I was elected to the post of national secretary-treasurer of that union, and I have held that post since that time.

Mr. Arens. Would you give us, if you please, just a word of your personal history? Are you a married man?

Mr. Henderson. I am married; have been married twice. My first wife died. I have three children by my first wife, aged 25, 16, and 14, living on Long Island at the present time.

[…]

[p. 172]
…Mr. Arens. Did you join the Communist Party in 1931?

Mr. Henderson. I must refuse to answer that question on the same ground. [5th amendment]

Mr. Arens. I put it to you as a fact that on or about August 4, 1931 you joined the Communist Party and I ask you to affirm or deny that fact.

Mr. Henderson. I must refuse to answer that question on the same ground, sir.

[…]

Mr. Arens. The Daily Worker, Mr. Henderson, of August 4, 1931, contains an article which states that you had rejected socialism and [p. 173] joined the Communist Party. Do you have any recollection of that article?

Mr. Henderson. I must refuse to answer on the same ground.

Mr. Arens. I lay before you, Mr. Henderson, a photostatic copy of an article appearing in the Communist Daily Worker of August 4, 1931, and I ask you if you recognize that article.

[…]

Mr. Arens. Now I lay before you an article, a photostat of an article, in the Communist Daily Worker of August 15, 1949, entitled “FTA complies with NLRB rule” in which the following appears:

… “While it is true that I had been a member of the Communist Party, I have resigned my membership therein…”

[…]

[p. 176]
…Mr. Arens. Why did you sever your connections with Columbia University?

Mr. Henderson. I must refuse to answer that on the same ground, sir.

Senator Watkins. Were you teaching at Columbia University?

Mr. Henderson. Yes, sir.

Senator Watkins. What position did you occupy?

Mr. Henderon. I was an instructor there for 7 years in the department of economics. [sic, probably added one year Rutgers and six years at Columbia, see timeline above]

Senator Watkins. Department of economics?

Mr. Henderson. That is correct, sir.

Mr. Arens. What period of time?

Mr. Henderson. 1926 to 1933, I believe, were the years.

Mr. Arens. Did you resign, or was there a severance of relationships?

Mr. Henderson. There was a severance of relationships.

Mr. Arens. At whose request was there a severance of relationships?

Mr. Henderson. I must refuse to answer that question on the same ground.

Mr. Arnens. I respectfully suggest that the witness be ordered and directed to answer the question: At whose request was there a severance of relationships between this witness and Columbia University?

Senator Watkins. You are ordered and directed to answer.

Mr. Henderson. I must refuse to answer on the same ground.

Mr. Arens. I put it to you as a fact that you were forced to resign from the faculty of Columbia University because of your activities in behalf of the Communist Party, and I ask you to affirm or deny that fact.

Mr. Henderson. I must refuse to answer the question on the same ground.

Mr. Arens. In 1937 you registered to vote as a Communist, did you not?

Mr. Henderson. I must refuse to answer that on the same ground.

Mr. Arens. Did you attend the Tenth National Convention of the Communist Party as a delegate in 1938?

Mr. Henderson. I must refuse to answer that question on the same ground, sir.

Mr. Arens. I put it to you as a fact that, on November 16, 1940, you attended the 1-day national emergency convention held by the Communist Party in New York City, and I ask you to affirm or deny the fact.

Mr. Henderson. I must refuse to answer that question on the same ground.

[…]

[p. 177]
…Mr. Arens. Did you ever live in Chicago, Ill.?

Mr. Henderson. I did.

Mr. Arens. Did you ever live at 234 South Wells Street, Chicago?

Mr. Henderson. That may have been, I don’t recall the exact number. I lived at three diffent places there.

Mr. Arens. Did you ever live on South Wells Street, in Chicago?

Mr. Henderson. I think so; yes.

Mr. Arens. I put it to you as a fact that on February 1, 1941, you were present at a Communist Party executive board meeting held at 234 South Wells, Chicago, Ill., and ask you to affirm or deny that fact.

Mr. Henderson. I must refuse to answer that on the same ground, sir.

______________________

From the CIO Convention
in Portland, Oregon (Nov. 1948)

Murray Lashes Leftist Head of CIO Union

By Seymour Korman
Chicago Tribune (November 23, 1948, p. 26)

Portland, Ore., Nov. 22 — With hoots, jeers and shouts of “go back to Russia,” right wing delegates at the CIO convention today lashed out at the leftist minority in one of the most tumultuous sessions in the labor organization’s history. For more than three hours, the pro and anti-Communist factions hurled bombastic rhetoric at each other before the report of CIO President Philip Murray, embodying support of the Marshall plan, was carried with only one small leftist group abstaining among the 600 delegates.

[…]

The oratorical explosion was touched off by Donald Henderson, leftist president of the Food and Agricultural Workers union. In a minority report, he condemned the Marshall plan as being an aid to Fascists. He was interrupted by the shouts of, “Go back to Russia.”…

… Murray accused Henderson and the other leftists of employing the same tactics as European Communists and styled the Henderson group “ideological dive bombers.”

______________________

Image Source: Press photo of Donald Henderson in Daily News (New York, NY). July 11, 1934.

 

Categories
Bibliography Economists M.I.T.

M.I.T. Writings and addresses of Francis A. Walker, 1857-1897

General Francis Amasa Walker

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS
AND REPORTED ADDRESSES
OF FRANCIS A. WALKER.

The following bibliography, based upon memoranda and scrap books left by General Walker, has been prepared under the supervision of the Secretary of the [American Statistical] Association. It will be observed that references to newspapers have been included containing reports of addresses delivered on various occasions, but these have been mentioned only when the report was fairly complete, and appeared to be in the main accurate. The Secretary of the Association [David Rich Dewey] will be glad to receive corrections or additions.

1857. More Thoughts on the Hard Times. (Signed W.) National Era (Washington), October 29.

1858. Mr. Carey and Protection. (Not signed.) National Era (Washing top), January 21.

Why Are We Not a Manufacturing People? (Signed F. A. W.) National Era, January 28.
Mr. Carey on the History of Our Currency. (Signed F. A. W.) National Era, June 3.
Mr. Carey’s Letters.-Continued. (Signed F. A. W.) National Era, June 17.

1858-60. Contributions to the Ichnolite: a monthly magazine published by the students of Amherst College. Vols. 5, 6, 7, and 8.

1860. Contributions to The Undergraduate, New Haven. (After No. 1 the name of the magazine was changed to University Quarterly.) Vols. 1 and 2.

1868. On the Extinguishment of The National Debt. By “Poor Richard.” Bankers’ Magazine, July, vol. 23, pp. 20-34.

1868. Mr. Grote’s Theory of Democracy. Bibliotheca Sacra, October, vol. 25, pp. 687-733.

1868. Many editorial articles in the Springfield Republican.

1868-69. Editor of the Monthly Reports of the Bureau of Statistics, Treasury Department, on the Commerce and Navigation of the United States. Series 1868-69, Nos. 21-29, pp. 287. Series 1869-70, Nos. 1-3, pp. 152.

1869. Is It a Gospel of Peace? Lippincott’s Magazine, August, vol. 4, pp. 201-05.

1869. Annual Report of the Deputy Special Commissioner of the Revenue in charge of the Bureau of Statistics on the Commerce and Navigation of the United States for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1868. (Dated August 20, 1869.) Part 1, pp. 729; Part 2, pp. 352; Part 3, pp. 144. Also 40th Congress, 3d Session. House Ex. Doc., vol. 16. Washington.

1869. The National Debt. Lippincott’s Magazine, September, vol. 4, pp. 316-18.

1869. Annual Report of the Operations of the Bureau of Statistics to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Year 1869. (Dated October 13.) Pp. 6. Also 41st Congress, 2d Session. House Ex. Doc. No. 2, vol. 4, pp. 337-42. Washington.

1869. American Industry in the Census. Atlantic Monthly, December, vol. 24, pp. 689-701.

1870. What to do with the Surplus. Atlantic Monthly, January, vol. 25, pp. 72-86.

1870. A Reply to Mr. Kennedy on the Errors of the Eighth Census. Letter in Washington Chronicle, January.

1870. An Oration at the Soldiers’ Monument Dedication in North Brookfield, Mass., January 19. Pph., pp. 5-35. Also in Springfield Republican, January 20.

1870. The Report of the Special Commissioner. Lippincott’s Magazine, February, vol. 5, pp. 223-30.

1870. The Legal Tender Act (With Henry Adams). North American Review, April, vol. 110, pp. 299-327. Also published in Chapters of Erie and Other Essays, by Charles F. Adams, Jr., and Henry Adams, pp. 302-32.

1870. Annual Report of the Deputy Special Commissioner of the Revenue in charge of the Bureau of Statistics on the Commerce and Navigation of the United States for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1869. (Dated February 7, 1870.) Pp. viii. Part 1, pp. 227; Part 2, pp. 436; Part 3, pp. 94. Also 41st Congress, 2d Session. House Ex. Doc., vol. 15. Washington.

1870. Communication from the Superintendent of the Census submitting a draft of an Act amendatory of the Census Act of 1850. (Dated February 17.) 41st Congress, 2d Session. House Ex. Doc. No. 161, pp. 3.

1870. A Statement of the Superintendent of the Census relating to the amount to be saved to the Treasury by dispensing with certain copies of the Census Returns required by the Act of 1850. (Dated April 6.) 41st Congress, 2d Session. Senate Ex. Doc. No. 79, vol. 2, pp. 3. Washington.

1870. The Indian Problem. Review of Keim’s Sheridan’s Troopers on the Borders. The Nation, June 16, vol. 10, p. 389.

1871. Letter from the Superintendent of the Ninth Census addressed to Hon. W. B. Stokes relative to field-work performed by assistant marshals. (Dated January 14.) 41st Congress, 3d Session. House Mis. Doc. No. 31, vol. 1, pp. 3.

1871. Report of the Superintendent of the Census on Estimates of Expenditures, etc. (Dated December 20, 1870.) 41st Congress, 3d Session. House Ex. Doc. No. 29, vol. 7, pp. 4.

1871. Report of the Superintendent of the Census, December 26. Reprinted as a preface to vol. 1 on Population. Pp. xlviii. Washington.

1872. Letter from the Commissioner of Indian Affairs upon the action of the Department relating to the Kansas Indian Lands in the State of Kansas. (Dated December 2, 1871.) 42d Congress, 2d Session. Senate Mis. Doc. No. 10, vol. 1, pp. 4. Washington.

1872. Letter from the Superintendent of the Census containing a report of the number of persons employed in obtaining the Ninth Census, time employed, amount paid to each, etc. (Dated December 6, 1871.) 42d Congress, 2d Session. Senate Ex. Doc. No. 4, vol. 1, pp. 186.

1872. Reports of the Ninth Census, 1870. 3 quarto volumes and Compendium.

1872. Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to the Secretary of the Interior for the year 1872, November 1. Washington. Pp. 471. Also 42d Congress, 3d Session. House Ex. Doc. No. 1, vol. 3, Part 5, pp. 389-847. Washington.

1873. The Indian Question. North American Review, April, vol. 116, pp. 329-88. Also republished in book The Indian Question.

1873. Some Results of the Census of 1870. Read before the Social Science Association, Boston, May 15. Published in Journal of Social Science, No. 5, pp. 71-97. Also printed separately.

1873. American Irish and American Germans. Scribner’s Monthly, June, vol. 6, pp. 172-79.

1873. The Relations of Race and Nationality to Mortality in the United States. Read before the American Health Association. Published in Reports and Papers of the American Public Health Association, vol. 1, pp. 18-35. Also republished in Statistical Atlas, 1874.

1873. Our Population in 1900. Atlantic Monthly, October, vol. 32, pp. 487-95.

1874. Report of the Superintendent of the Census, November 15, 1873. 43d Congress, 1st Session. House Ex. Doc. No. 1, Part 5, vol. 4, pp. 757-63.

1874. Indian Citizenship. International Review, May-June, vol. 1, pp. 305-26. Also republished in book The Indian Question.

1874. Handbook of Statistics of the United States, compiled by M. C. Spaulding. Review in The Nation, May 14, vol. 18, p. 319.

1874. Mr. D. A. Wells and the Incidence of Taxation. Letter in The Nation, June 11, vol. 18, pp. 378-79.

1874. The Wages Question. Address before the Alexandria and Athena Societies of Amherst College, July 8. Published in New York Times, July 9; also Springfield Republican, July 9.

1874. Statistical Atlas of the United States based on the results of the Ninth Census, 1870, with contributions from many eminent men of science and several departments of the Government. Compiled with authority of Congress. (The Preface and Introduction, and of the Memoirs and Discussions, The Progress of The Nation, and Relations of Race and Nationality to Mortality in the United States, were written by General Walker.) Washington. Plates 54.

1874. Legislators and Legislation. Letter in Providence Journal.

1874. Wages and the Wages-Fund. Letter to the Financier, August 29. (In reply to Prof. A. L. Perry.)

1874. The Indian Question. Boston. Pp. 268.

1874. Cairnes’s Political Economy. Review in The Nation, Nov. 12, vol. 19, p. 320.

1874. Our Foreign Population. Chicago Advance, November 12, December 10, and January 14, 1875.

1875. Report of the Superintendent of the Census, November 1, 1874. (Dated New Haven.) 43d Congress, 2d Session. House Ex. Doc. No. 1, Part 5, vol. 6, pp. 721-30. Washington.

1875. The Wage-Fund Theory. North American Review, January, vol. 120, pp. 84-119.

1875. The Hard Times. Address before the New Haven Chamber of Commerce, February 23. Abstract in Springfield Republican, February 25.

1875. The First Century of the Republic: Growth and Distribution of Population. Harper’s Monthly, August, vol. 51, pp. 391-414. Also published in book First Century of the Republic, pp. 211-37.

1875. Our Domestic Service. Scribner’s Monthly, December, vol. 11, pp. 273-78.

1876. Maps (three) in History of the United States, by J. A. Doyle. New York.

1876. Census. Encyclopædia Britannica (9th edition), vol. 5, pp. 334-40.

1876. The Wages Question. A Treatise on Wages and the Wages Class. New York; London, 1877. Pp. iv, 428.

1877. The Philadelphia Exhibition. Part 1. — Mechanism and Administration. International Review, May-June, vol. 4, pp. 363-96.
The Late World’s Fair. Part 2. — The Display. July-August, vol. 4, pp. 497-513.
The Late World’s Fair. Part 3. — The Display. September October, vol. 4, pp. 673-85.
These are also published in The World’s Fair: Philadelphia, 1876; A Critical Account, pp. 68; also in A Critical View of the Great World’s Fair, pp. 68.

1878. The United States. Johnson’s Cyclopædia (1st edition), vol. 4, Part 2, pp. 1029-56.

1878. United States Centennial Commission. International Exhibition, 1876. Editor of Reports and Awards. Philadelphia, 1878; also Washington, 1880. 6 vols.

1878. Money. (Lectures, Johns Hopkins University.) New York and London. Pp. xv, 550.

1878. Remarks addressed to the International Monetary Conference, Paris, August 22. 45th Congress, 3d Session. Senate Ex. Doc. 58, pp. 73-79. Also printed separately.

1878. Report of the Superintendent of the Census, January 17. (Dated New Haven.) Pp. 21. Also 45th Congress, 3d Session. House Ex. Doc. No. 1, Part 5, vol. 9, pp. 839-57. Washington.

1878. Interview of the Select Committees of the Senate of the United States and of the House of Representatives to make provision for taking the Tenth Census, with Prof. Francis A. Walker, Superintendent of the Census, December 16. 45th Congress, 30 Session. Senate Mis. Doc. No. 26; pp. 20.

1879. The Monetary Conferences of 1867 and 1878, and the Future of Silver. Princeton Review, January, vol. 3, N. S., pp. 28-54.

1879. Money in Its Relations to Trade and Industry. (Lectures, Lowell Institute, Boston.) New York and London. Pp. iv, 339.

1879. The Present Standing of Political Economy. Sunday Afternoon, May, vol. 3, pp. 432-41.

1879. Report of the Superintendent of the Census, November 15. Pp. 16. Also 46th Congress, 2d Session. House Ex. Doc. No. 1, Part 5, vol. 10, pp. 307-20. Washington.

1880-82. Census Bulletins, Nos. 1-305. Also Extra Census Bulletins.

1880. The Principles of Taxation. Princeton Review, July, vol. 6, N. S., pp. 92-114.

1881-88. Reports of the Tenth Census, 1880. 22 quarto volumes and Compendium (Parts 1 and 2). Washington.

1881. Report of the Superintendent of the Census, December 1, 1880. 46th Congress, 3d Session. House Ex. Doc. No. 1, Part 5, vol. 10, pp. 423-26. Washington.

1881. Letter to Secretary of Interior giving complete returns of the population of each State and Territory on the 1st day of June, 1880. Letter of January 17 to Hon. S. S. Cox, pp. 5-18. The Alabama Paradox — Letter to Hon. S. S. Cox, January 17, pp. 19-20. The Moiety Question. — Letter to Hon. S. S. Cox, January 15, pp. 20-24. 46th Congress, 3d Session. House Ex. Doc. No. 65, vol. 18, pp. 1-2. (The Moiety Question reprinted in 1891.)

1881. Letter from the Superintendent of the Census respecting the execution of the law for taking the Tenth and subsequent censuses, with accompanying schedules. (Dated January 25.) 46th Congress, 3d Session. Senate Ex. Doc. No. 28, vol. 1, pp. 35.

1881. Report of the Superintendent of the Census, November 1, pp. 65. Also 47th Congress, 1st Session. House Ex. Doc. No. 1, Part 5, vol. 10, pp, 665-727. Washington.

1882. American Agriculture. Princeton Review, May, vol. 9, N. S., pp. 249-64.

1882. The Growth of the United States. The Century, October, vol. 24, pp. 920-26.

1883. Remarks on the Character of President W. B. Rogers, October 12, before the Society of Arts. Published in Proceedings of the Society of Arts, 1882-83, pp. 5-7. Also printed separately.

1883. American Manufactures. Princeton Review, March, vol. 11, N. S., pp. 213-23.

1883. Remarks on Giving the Name of William B. Rogers to the Main Building, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, May 29. (Printed for private distribution.)

1883. Political Economy. New York and London. Pp. iv, 490.

1883. The Unarmed Nation. Our Duty in the Cause of International Peace. Address delivered at Smith College, Northampton, June 20. Published in the Springfield Republican, June 21.

1883. Henry George’s Social Fallacies. North American Review, August, vol. 137, pp. 147-57.

1883. Land and Its Rent. Boston and London. Pp. vi, 232.

1884. President’s Report, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, December 12, 1883. Boston. Pp. 31.

1884. The Second and Third Army Corps. Letter in The Nation, March 27, vol. 38, p. 274.

1884. Political Economy. (Briefer Course, abridged from work of 1883.) New York. Also republished under the title A Brief Political Economy. London, 1886. Pp. iv, 415.

1884. Industrial Education. Read before the American Social Science Association, September 9. Published in Journal of Social Science, No. 19, pp. 117-31.

1884. Public Revenue. Lalor’s Cyclopædia of Political Science, Political Economy, and United States History, vol. 3, pp. 618-29; The Wage Fund, ditto, pp. 1074-77; Wages, ditto, pp. 1077-85.

1884. President’s Report, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, December 10. Boston. Pp. 20.

1885. Letter to the Secretary of the Interior, February 24, regarding the Accounts of Richard Joseph. 49th Congress, 1st Session. House Ex. Doc. No. 127, pp. 5-7.

1885. Shall Silver be Demonetized? North American Review, June, vol. 140, pp. 489-92.

1885. President’s Report, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, December 9. Boston. Pp. 24.

1886. Gettysburg. Lecture in Lowell Institute Course, Boston, March 4. Published in Boston Herald, March 5.

1886. What Industry, if Any, Can Profitably be Introduced into Country Schools? Science, April 15, vol. 9, p. 365.

1886. History of the Second Army Corps in the Army of the Potomac. New York. Pp. xiv, 737. Second edition, 1891, pp. xx, 737.

1886. The Military Character and Services of Major-General W. S. Hancock. Address delivered at the meeting of the Vermont Officers’ Reunion Society, Montpelier, Vt., November 3. Published in Free Press (Burlington), November 5. Read (revised and corrected) before the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, February 13, 1888. Published in the Papers of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, vol. 10, pp. 49-67. Under the title Hancock in the War of the Rebellion, read before the New York Commandery of the Loyal Legion, February 4, 1891. Published in Personal Recollections of the War of the Rebellion. (New York Commandery of the Loyal Legion.). Vol. 1 (1891), pp. 349-64. Published in the Brooklyn Standard Union, February 7 and 14, 1891.

1886. Geography of New England: A Supplement to Maury’s Manual of Geography. Pp. 24.

1886. Sumner at Fair Oaks. National Tribune (Washington), October 14. Couch at Fredericksburg, ditto, October 21. Hancock at Gettysburg, ditto, October 28. Warren at Bristoe, ditto, November 4.

1886. President’s Report, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, December 8. Boston. Pp. 32.

1887. Socialism. Scribner’s Magazine, January, vol. 1, pp. 107-19. Also published in Phillips Exeter Lectures (1885-86). Boston, 1887, pp. 47-78.

1887. A Plea for Industrial Education in the Public Schools. Address to the Conference of Associated Charities of the City of Boston, February 10. Pph., pp. 34.

1887. General Hancock and the Artillery at Gettysburg. The Century, March, vol. 33, p. 803. Also published in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (The Century Co.), vol. 3, pp. 385-86.

1887. The Source of Business Profits. Read before the Society of Arts, March 24. Published in Proceedings of the Society of Arts, 1886-87, pp. 76-90. Also published, with additions and alterations, in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, April, vol. 1, pp. 265-88. Printed separately, Pph., pp. 26.

1887. Wolseley on Lee. Letters in The Nation, March 31, vol. 44, p. 269; April 28, pp. 362-63.

1887. Arithmetic in Primary and Grammar Schools. Remarks before the School Committee of Boston, April 12. Published as School Document No. 9, 1887. Pp. 20. Also Pph., pp. 29.

1887. Sketch of the Life of Amasa Walker. In History of North Brookfield, Mass. The same expanded in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, April, 1888, vol. 42, pp. 133-41. Also printed separately, Pph., pp. 14.

1887. Meade at Gettysburg. Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (The Century Co.), vol. 3, pp. 406-12.

1887. Memoir of William Barton Rogers, 1804-82. Read before The National Academy of Sciences, April. Published in Biographical Memoirs of National Academy, vol. 3, 1895, pp. 1-13. Also Pph., pp. 13.

1887. The Socialists. The Forum, May, vol. 3, pp. 230-42.

1887. Political Economy. (Revised and enlarged.) New York and London. Pp. vi, 537.

1887. Reply (before the Boston School Board) to Supervisor Peterson on the Study of Arithmetic in Grammar Schools, June 14. Published in Popular Educator, September, vol. 3, pp. 209-11.

1887. The Labor Problem of Today. Address delivered before the Alumni Association of Lehigh University, June 22. Printed by the Association. New York. pp. 29.

1887. Manual Education in Urban Communities. Address before The National Educational Association, Chicago, July 15. Published in Addresses and Proceedings of The National Educational Association, 1887, pp. 196-205.

1887. What Shall We Tell the Working Classes? Scribner’s Magazine, November, vol. 2, pp. 619-27.

1887. Arithmetic in the Boston Schools. Read before the Grammar School Section of the Massachusetts Teachers’ Association at Boston, November 25. Published in The Academy, Syracuse, N. Y., January, 1888. vol. 2, pp. 433-44. Also printed separately.

1888. United States: Part III.-Political Geography and Statistics. Encyclopædia Britannica (9th edition), vol. 23, pp. 818-29.

1888. President’s Report, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, December 14, 1887. Boston. Pp. 39.

1888. Remarks at the Opening of the Sixteenth Triennial Exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, September 27, 1887. Published in Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of January 18, 1888, p. 56.

1888. The Eleventh Census of the United States. Quarterly Journal of Economics, January, vol. 2, pp. 135-61. Also printed separately, Pph., pp. 27.

1888. The Military Character and Services of Major-General Hancock. (See 1886.)

1888. The Bases of Taxation. Political Science Quarterly, March, vol. 3, pp. 1-16.

1888. A Reply to Mr. Macvane: On the Source of Business Profits. Quarterly Journal of Economics, April, vol. 2, pp. 263-96. Also printed separately; Pph., pp. 36.

1888. Economy of Food. Science, May 18, vol. 11, pp. 233-34.

1888. Efforts of the Manual Laboring Class to Better Their Condition. Address as President, American Economic Association, May 21. Publications of the American Economic Association, vol. 3, pp. 7-26.

1888. The Intermediate Task.—Protection and American Agriculture. The National Revenue. A Collection of Papers by American Economists. Edited by Albert Shaw. Pp. 135-151. (Pp. 137-151 reprinted from the revised edition of Political Economy. New York, 1887.)

1888. The Knights of Labor. Princeton Review, September, vol. 6, N. S., pp. 196-209.

1888. President’s Report, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, December 12. Boston. Pp. 50.

1888. Philip Henry Sheridan. Eulogy delivered before the City Government of Boston, December 18. Published in Sheridan Memorial, pp. 41-117; Boston Herald, December 19. Also printed separately.

1889. Recent Progress of Political Economy in the United States. Address as President, American Economic Association, December 27, 1888. Publications of the American Economic Association, vol. 4, pp. 17-40.

1889. Memoir of E. B. Elliott. Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. 24, pp. 447-52.

1889. Census. Johnson’s Cyclopædia (Revised, 1889-90), vol. 1, pp. 78-88 (New edition, 1895); vol. 2, pp. 152-59.

1889. Ventilating Public Buildings. Letter in Boston Post, January 22.

1889. Can Morality be Taught in the Public Schools without Sectarianism? Christian Register, January 31.

1889. The Laborer and His Employer. Lecture delivered at Cornell University, February. Published in Scientific American, June 1, Supplement No. 700.

1889. The Growth of The Nation in Numbers, Territory, and the Elements of Industrial Power. Oration before the Phi Beta Kappa, Brown University, June 18. Published in Providence Journal, June 19.

1889. Indian Schools. Letter to General Armstrong in Southern Workman, October, 1889; quoted in Proceedings of Seventh Annual Meeting, Lake Mohonk Conference, pp. 36-37.

1889. First Lessons in Political Economy. New York; London, 1890. Pp. viii, 323.

1889. The Nation’s Celebration. The Independent (New York), September 26.

1889. Address before the Newton Tariff Reform Club, November 20. Abstract in Springfield Republican, November 22.

1889. Industrial Training. A Talk to the Commercial Club of Providence, November 17. Reported in Providence Journal.

1889. Civil Service Reform. Thanksgiving-Day Discourse. The Independent (New York), November 28.

1890. Annual Report of the President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, December 11, 1889. Boston. Pp. 48.

1890. The Nation That Was Saved. Oration at Reunion of New Hampshire Soldiers, Weirs, August 29, 1889. Printed in Veteran’s Advocate, Concord, N. H., January, vol. 7, pp. 2-3.

1890. The Study of Statistics in Colleges and Technical Schools. Technology Quarterly, February, vol. 3, pp. 1-8.

1890. Mr. Bellamy and the New Nationalist Party. Atlantic Monthly, February, vol. 65, pp. 248-62. (Address delivered before the Economic Association of Providence, December, 1889. Reported in Providence Journal.) Also printed separately, Pph., pp. 15.

1890. America’s Fourth Centenary. The Forum, February, vol. 8, pp. 612-21.

1890. The Eight-Hour Agitation. Address before the Young Men’s Christian Union, Boston, March 1. Published in Boston Journal, March 3.

1890. Protection and Protectionists. Quarterly Journal of Economics, April, vol. 4, pp. 245-75.

1890. Address at the Memorial Exercises of the Thomas G. Stevenson Post, G. A. R., May 30. Published in Boston Journal, May 31.

1890. The Eight-Hour Law Agitation. Atlantic Monthly, June, vol. 65, pp. 800-10. Also printed separately, Pyh., pp. 22.

1890. The Great Review. Oration before the Society of the Army of the Potomac, Twenty-first Annual Reunion, Portland, Maine, July 3. Published in Report of the Proceedings of the Society of the Army of the Potomac, 1890, pp. 18-32; also in Boston Journal, July 4.

1890. Address on Presenting Diplomas of Graduation, June 3. Boston Journal, June 4; also Technology Quarterly, August, vol. 3, p. 202.

1890. Statistics of the Colored Race in the United States. Publications of the American Statistical Association, September-December, vol. 2 (Nos. 11-12), pp. 91-106.

1890. Democracy and Wealth. The Forum, November, vol. 10, pp. 243-55.

1890. The Changes of the Year. Technology Quarterly, November, vol. 3, pp. 281-86.

1890. Why Students Leave School. Letter in Boston Herald, December 14.

1890. The Tide of Economic Thought. Address as President of the American Economic Association, December 26. Publications of the American Economic Association, vol. 6 (1891), pp. 15-38. Also printed separately, Pph., pp. 24.

1891. Annual Report of the President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, December 10, 1890. Boston. Pp. 52.

1891. Panic from Coinage. Evidence before the Committee on Coinage, January 29. 51st Congress, 2d Session. House Report 3967, Part 3. Reports and Hearings, pp. 54-58.

1891. Against Free Coinage of Silver. Speech in Faneuil Hall, January 20. Published in Boston Journal, January 21.

1891. Hancock in the War of the Rebellion. (See 1886.)

1891. Testimony before Committee of New York Legislature, March 7, regarding Eleventh Census of the United States in New York. Reported in New York Times, March 8.

1891. Charles Devens. An address delivered before the Commandery of the State of Massachusetts Military Order of the Loyal Legion, March 19. Published in Circular No. 7, Series 1891, March 20; Boston Journal, March 20; also Pph., pp. 20.

1891. Usefulness of a Five-Year Course. Letter in The Tech, April 9, vol. 10, pp. 177-79.

1891. The United States Census. The Forum, May, vol. 11, pp. 258-67.

1891. The Great Count of 1890. The Forum, June, vol. 11, pp. 406-18.

1891. The Place of Schools of Technology in Education. Remarks at the Graduating Exercises of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, June 18. Published in W. P. I., Worcester, July 15, pp. 79-80.

1891. A Reply to the Article: The Economists and the Public. Letter in Evening Post (New York), June 27.

1891. The Place of Scientific and Technical Schools in American Education. Address delivered at the 29th University Convocation of the State of New York, Albany, July 8. Published in Regents’ Bulletin, No. 8, January, 1893, pp. 375-88; also the larger portion in Technology Quarterly, December, vol. 4, pp. 293-303; and in the Educational Review under the title The Place of Schools of Technology in American Education, October, vol. 2, pp. 209-19.

1891. The Colored Race in the United States. The Forum, July, vol. 11, pp. 501-09.

1891. The Doctrine of Rent and the Residual Claimant Theory of Wages. Quarterly Journal of Economics, July, vol. 5, pp. 417-37.

1891. Immigration and Degradation. The Forum: August, vol. 11, pp. 634-44.

1892. Annual Report of the President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, December 9, 1891. Boston. Pp. 56.

1892. Growth and Distribution of Population in the United States. The Chautauquan, March, vol. 14, pp. 656-58.

1892. Dr. Böhm-Bawerk’s Theory of Interest. Quarterly Journal of Economics, July, vol. 6, pp. 399-416.

1892. Immigration. Yale Review, August, vol. 1, pp. 125-45.

1892. Normal Training in Women’s Colleges. Educational Review, November, vol. 4, pp. 328-38.

1893. Annual Report of the President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, December 14, 1892. Boston. Pp. 65.

1893. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. — Length of Course. — Degrees at Scientific Schools. Letter in Engineering News, January 26, vol. 29, pp. 90-91; February 2, p. 108.

1893. Scientific and Technical Schools. Address delivered at opening of Engineering Building, Pennsylvania State College, February 22. Published in Proceedings at the Formal Opening of the Engineering Building, Pennsylvania State College, pp. 23-30; also in Pennsylvania School Journal, April, vol. 41, pp. 435-38.

1893. Remarks on the Dedication of the New Science and Engineering Buildings of McGill University, Montreal, February 24. Published in Technology Quarterly, April, vol. 6, pp. 65-68. Also printed separately.

1893. The Free Coinage of Silver. Journal of Political Economy, March, vol. 1, pp. 163-78.

1893. Sickles at Gettysburg. Letter in The Nation, May 11, vol. 56, p. 346.

1893. College Athletics. Address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, Alpha of Massachusetts, at Cambridge, June 29. Published in Boston Transcript, June 30; Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, September, vol. 2, pp. 1-18; Technology Quarterly, July, vol. 6, pp. 116-31. Also printed separately, Pph., pp. 16.

1893. How Far Do the Technological Schools, as They Are at Present Organized, Accomplish the Training of Men for the Scientific Professions, and How Far and for What Reasons Do They Fail to Accomplish Their Primary Purpose? Address on opening Congress of Technological Instruction, Chicago, July 26. Published in Addresses and Proceedings of International Congress of Education, Chicago, pp. 528-34.

1893. The Technical School and the University. A Reply to Prof. Shaler. Atlantic Monthly, September, vol. 72, pp. 390-94. Technology Quarterly, October, vol. 6, pp. 223-29. Also printed separately, Pph., pp. 7.

1893. Address on Taking the Chair as Président-Adjoint, International Statistical Institute, Chicago, September 11. Published in Bulletin L’Institut International de Statistique, Tome viii, 1895, pp. xxxvi-ix.

1893. Value of Money. Paper read before the American Economic Association, September 13. Published in Quarterly Journal of Economics, October, vol. 8, pp. 62-76. Also printed separately, Pph., pp. 17.

1893. Annual Report of the President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, December 13. Boston. Pp. 61.

1894. International Bimetallism. Address delivered before the Liberal Club of Buffalo, N. Y., February 16. Published in book The Liberal Club, pp. 107-38.

1894. [Neo-Bimetallism in Boston.] Letter in Evening Post (New York), February 24.

1894. State House Reconstruction. Remarks at a Hearing at the State House, March 1. Published in Boston Transcript, March 6. Also in Pph. Save the State House, pp. 20-24.

1894. Bimetallism: A Tract for Times. Pph., pp. 24.

1894. Bimetallism. Address delivered before the Boston Boot and Shoe Club, March 28. Published in The Shoe and Leather Reporter, April 5. Also printed separately, Pph., pp. 15.

1894. Par of Exchange. Letter in Evening Post (New York), April 3.

1894. General Hancock. (Great Commanders Series.) New York. Pp. vi, 332.

1894. How May Closer Articulation Between the Secondary Schools and Higher Institutions be Secured? Discussion of the question at the Ninth Annual Meeting of the New England Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools, October 12. Published in Addresses and Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Meeting of the New England Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools, pp. 22-25. Also published in School Review, December, vol. 2, pp. 612-15.

1894. The Relation of Professional and Technical to General Education. Educational Review, December, vol. 8, pp. 417-33.

1894. Annual Report of the President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, December 12. Boston. Pp. 86.

1895. Bimetallism. Address delivered before the Springfield Board of Trade, March 27. Published in Springfield Union, March 28.

1895. The Making of The Nation. (The American History Series.) New York. Pp. xv, 314.

1895. Reply to Criticism on Springfield Address. Letter in Evening Post (New York), April 5.

1895. The Restriction of Immigration. Address delivered at Cornell University, April 12. Published in the Transactions of the Association of Civil Engineers of Cornell University, 1895, pp. 73-85.

1895. The Growth of American Nationality. The Forum, June, vol. 19, pp. 385-400.

1895. Obituary: Samuel Dana Horton. The Economic Journal, June, vol. 5, pp. 304-06.

1895. The Relation of Manual Training to Certain Mental Defects. Paper read at the Sixty-fifth Annual Meeting of the American Institute of Instruction, July 9. Published in Journal of Proceedings of American Institute of Instruction, 1895, pp. 23-32. Also printed separately, Pph., pp. 12.

1895. The Quantity-Theory of Money. Quarterly Journal of Economics, July, vol. 9, pp. 372-79.

1895. The Argument for Bimetallism. The Independent (New York), October 10.

1895. “Severe Work at the Tech.” Letter in Boston Herald, November 20.

1895. The Restriction of Immigration. Address delivered before the Manufacturers’ Club of Philadelphia, December 16. Published in Manufacturers’ Record, December 21.

1896. Annual Report of the President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, December 11, 1895. Boston. Pp. 74.

1896. Reply to General Greeley Curtis regarding General Hooker. Letter in Boston Herald, February 5.

1896. Bimetallism in the United States. The Bimetallist (London), February, vol. 2, pp. 38-41.

1896. Currency and Prices. Letter in The Economist (London), April 18, vol. 54, pp. 491-92. Also published under the title A Criticism of the Right-Hon. G. J. Shaw-Lefevre, in The Bimetallist (London), May, vol. 2, pp. 97-98.

1896. The Relation of Changes in the Volume of the Currency to Prosperity. Paper read before the American Economic Association, December 28, 1895. Published in Economic Studies (American Economic Association), April, vol. 1, pp. 23-45.

1896. Letter to Senator Teller on the Silver Question, April 13. Quoted as an appendix to Senator Teller’s speech in the Senate, April 29.

1896. On Teaching English Composition in Colleges. Boston (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Pph., pp. 5.

1896. Something About the Par of Exchange. Letter in Evening Post (New York), May 29.

1896. Money. Dictionary of Political Economy (Edited by R. H. Inglis Palgrave), vol. 2, pp. 787-96. Quantity-Theory of Money. (To be published in vol. 3.)

1896. Henry Saltonstall. Technique, 1897, pp. 32-34.

1896. Restriction of Immigration. Atlantic Monthly, June, vol. 77, pp. 822-29.

1896. Address before the British Bimetallic League, London, July 13. Published in The Bimetallist (London), July, vol. 2, pp. 139-45. Also published in The National Review, under the title The Monetary Situation and the United States, August, vol. 27, pp. 783-92.

1896. International Bimetallism. (Lectures delivered at Harvard University.) New York and London. Pp. iv, 297.

1896. International Bimetallism: A Rejoinder. Yale Review, November, vol. 5, pp. 303-12.

1896. International Bimetallism. Address delivered before the School masters’ Club of Massachusetts, November 7. Published in the Boston Herald, November 7; also in The Bimetallist (London), December, vol. 2, pp. 218-29.

1896. Technical Education. Address delivered at the Dedication of the Thomas S. Clarkson Memorial School of Technology, Potsdam, N. Y., November 30. (To be published.)

1897. Annual Report of the President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, December 9, 1896. Boston. Pp. 80.

1897. Remarks at the First Meeting of the Washington Members of the American Statistical Association, Washington, December 31, 1896. Publications of the American Statistical Association, March, vol. 5 (No. 37), pp. 180-87.

1897. General Gibbon in the Second Corps. Paper read before the New York Commandery of the Loyal Legion, May 6, 1896. (To be published in Personal Recollections of the War of the Rebellion. New York Commandery of the Loyal Legion. Vol. 2.)

Source: D. R. D. [David Rich Dewey], Bibliography of the Writings and Reported Addresses of Francis A. Walker. in Publications of the American Statistical Association, vol. 5 (1896-1897), pp. 276-290.

Image Source: MIT Museum website. Francis Amasa Walker file. Colorized by Economics in the Rear-View Mirror.

Categories
Economists International Economics Princeton

Princeton. The Frank D. Graham Memorial Lecturers. 1950-2023

This post is reproduces a table found in the Princeton economics department’s website that lists 69 distinguished economists who were invited by its International Economics Section (formerly known as the International Finance Section) to give the annual Frank D. Graham Memorial Lecture from 1950/51 through 2022/2023. It is quite the who has been or still is who of international economics. Some later post will deal with the historical record of the International Economics Section. For now, one more artifact added to the collection.

____________________________

Frank D. Graham taught at Princeton from 1921 until 1949, and served as the second Walker Professor of Economics and International Finance from 1945 to 1949.  Professor Graham published widely on international trade and international monetary issues. He is perhaps best known for his 1923 paper, “Some Aspects of Protection Further Considered.”  Graham’s contributions to Princeton and to international economics are honored by the Frank D. Graham Memorial Lecture, which is delivered annually by an eminent international economist.

Frank D. Graham Memorial Lecturers
(1950-2023)

1950-1951 Milton Friedman
1951-1952 James E. Meade
1952-1953 Sir Dennis Robertson
1953-1954 Paul A. Samuelson
1955-1956 Gottfried Haberler
1956-1957 Ragnar Nurkse
1957-1958 Albert O. Hirschman
1959-1960 Robert Triffin
1960-1961 Jacob Viner
1961-1962 Don Patinkin
1962-1963 Friedrich A. Lutz
1963-1964 Tibor Scitovsky
1964-1965 Sir John Hicks
1965-1966 Robert A. Mundell
1966-1967 Jagdish N. Bhagwati
1967-1968 Arnold C. Harberger
1968-1969 Harry G. Johnson
1969-1970 Richard N. Cooper
1970-1971 W. Max Corden
1971-1972 Richard E. Caves
1972-1973 Paul A. Volcker
1973-1974 J. Marcus Fleming
1974-1975 Anne O. Krueger
1975-1976 Ronald W. Jones
1976-1977 Ronald I. McKinnon
1977-1978 Charles P. Kindleberger
1978-1979 Bertil Ohlin
1979-1980 Bela Balassa
1980-1981 Marina von Neumann Whitman
1981-1982 Robert E. Baldwin
1983-1984 Stephen Marris
1984-1985 Rudiger Dornbusch
1986-1987 Jacob A. Frenkel
1987-1988 Ronald Findlay
1988-1989 Elhanan Helpman
1988-1989 Michael Bruno
1989-1990 Michael L. Mussa
1990-1991 Toyoo Gyohten
1991-1992 Stanley Fischer
1992-1993 Paul Krugman
1993-1994 Edward E. Leamer
1994-1995 Jeffrey Sachs
1995-1996 Barry Eichengreen
1996-1997 Wilfred J. Ethier
1997-1998 Maurice Obstfeld
1998-1999 Jeffrey A. Frankel
1999-2000 T.N. Srinivasan
2000-2001 Lars Svensson
2001-2002 Jean Tirole
2002–2003 Joseph Stiglitz
2003–2004 Kenneth Rogoff
2004–2005 Guillermo Calvo
2005-2006 Alan Deardorff
2006-2007 Robert E. Lucas, Jr.
2007-2008 Jonathan Eaton
2008-2009 J. Peter Neary
2009-2010 Avinash K. Dixit
2010-2011 Ricardo Caballero
2011-2012 Anthony Venables
2012-2013 Olivier Blanchard
2013-2014 Robert C. Feenstra
2014-2015 Sir Mervyn King
2015-2016 Pascal Lamy
2016-2017 Jaume Ventura
2017-2018 Robert W. Staiger
2018-2019 Samuel Kortum
2020-2021 Andrew Atkeson
2021-2022 Pinelopi (Penny) Koujianou Goldberg
2022-2023 Hélène Rey

Source: Historical list of Graham lecturers posted at the website of the Princeton economics department’s International Economics Section (formerly the International Finance Section). From the copy at the Internet Archive WaybackMachine.