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Economists Gender Harvard Smith

Radcliffe/Harvard. Economics Ph.D. alumna Eleanor Martha Hadley, 1949

 

This addition to our intermittent series “Get to know an economics Ph.D. alumna” is dedicated to the Radcliffe expert on Japanese industrial organization whose government career prospects were blocked for some seventeen years after she had been denied a security clearance. This was the work of General MacArthur’s “lovable fascist”, Maj. Gen. Charles Willoughby [a bit of backstory to Willoughby’s purge of Hadley is provided below]. 

Incidentally, The Diplomat (January 27, 2019) ran a story about Charles Willoughby with the title “Is This the Worst Intelligence Chief in the US Army’s History?” Plot spoiler: He and his boss MacArthur share the blame for the Yalu River disaster for the United Nations forces.

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Eleanor Hadley’s Memories of Radcliffe and Harvard

…Being somewhat at loose ends upon my return from Japan in the spring of 1940, I ended up attending the University of Washington in Seattle for the academic year 1940-1941. There I took courses in economics and in the Far East Institute, and found the Japanese-language instruction a great improvement over that I had known in Tokyo.

Finally pulling myself together, I decided to embark on a Ph.D. program in economics. It was not that economics was my favorite subject; but I assumed that I needed to build on my undergraduate work, which had been a degree in politics, economics, and philosophy. It had not occurred to me that I could choose any subject I wanted. Much as I loved philosophy, I did not see taking a graduate degree in it. Between politics and economics, I believed that the latter favored classroom discussion; and I thought that I could do reading about politics on my own.

I wanted to attend Radcliffe College; but the problem was how to finance it. Then, out of the clear blue sky, my great-aunt in Honolulu, who had lost her sister earlier that year, said that if I would spend the summer with her there, she would make it financially possible for me to enter Radcliffe that fall. I could scarcely believe my good fortune.

In Honolulu that summer, one of my America-Japan Student Conference friends from the University of Washington was enrolled in the U.S. Marines’ Japanese-language course. The Marines had decided that their service required some competency in the Japanese language. One thinks of Marines as ramrod straight. In fact, the course was so strenuous that every week my friend’s shoulders were slightly more rounded.

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Thanks to my great-aunt, I entered Radcliffe in the fall of 1941 to begin a Ph.D program in economics. I remember that, so splendidly ignorant as I was of the college’s setup, I said to the dean of graduate students with a catalogue in my hand, “I see Harvard faculty listed here, but where is the Radcliffe faculty?” She replied: “Don’t you know that we are medieval? There is no Radcliffe faculty.”

Radcliffe College, both graduate and undergraduate, consisted of students and administrators but no faculty. Harvard did not admit women; Radcliffe existed to provide a Harvard education to women. For undergraduate students, Harvard faculty crossed the Cambridge commons and delivered an identical lecture to the women. For graduate courses, women crossed the commons to Harvard Yard and attended classes with the men. And though Radcliffe’s graduate final exams were identical to what the men took, they were administered in Radcliffe buildings. It was the advent of World War II, and the consequent scarcity of both faculty and students, that disrupted the pattern of duplicative lectures at the undergraduate level. Graduate women were first admitted to Harvard classes in September 1941, just three months before Pearl Harbor.

The fall of 1941 was also the first time Radcliffe graduate women were permitted to sit in the reading room of Widener Library, then the main library for Harvard students. We sat at one designated table, and this table bore signs that could be seen from whatever angle one approached it, announcing, “This table reserved for Radcliffe students taking graduate courses.” Previously, female graduate students had been permitted to sit only in a room separate from the reading room about twenty by twenty feet in size.

In all, the college informs me, there were eighteen students in economics in 1941-1942, and fourteen in 1942-1943. I believe that most of these must have been in the Ph.D. dissertation stage, because when it came to graduate students that one actually saw in classes or in the dormitory, there were only three or four of us. The college speaks of total enrollment in the graduate school of the year 1941-1942 as having been 241; it was 253 in 1942-1943.

Much of the time in classes with the Harvard men I sat petrified with fear. The men were so knowledgeable-that is, most of the time. A number of them had previously held positions bearing on the topics under discussion. Economics was not a Mills College point of strength. If I had entered graduate school in philosophy I would have felt comfortable, but not in economics. Although Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money was published in 1936, it had not made the eco- nomics department of Mills College by the time I graduated in 1938. And in Japan, of course, I had had no exposure to the latest work of Western economists. Thus the General Theory was brand-new to me while familiar to most of my colleagues.

Graduate study in economics in the early 1940s was far from being a purely academic exercise. Students and faculty alike were in constant debate about how to apply what they knew to the urgent issues of the day. In the face of a catastrophic depression in the United States, where in 1933 one-fourth of the labor force was unemployed, Herbert Hoover had seen solutions in smaller government expenditures and balanced budgets. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, although campaigning in 1932 for balanced budgets, rapidly changed his mind once he was in office and saw solutions in terms of government expenditure in excess of tax income. The role of government in the economy was the defining point of a New Deal Liberal. Republicans were afraid of a large government role; Democrats were not. The difference was accounted for by differing views of market forces: would they always equilibrate demand and supply or were there times when they would be incapable of doing so?

The economics department of Harvard University was superb in the time period I was there. Among the faculty were Joseph Schumpeter (economic, thought, capitalism and socialism), Alvin Hansen (business cycles), Gottfried Haberler (international trade), Sumner Schlichter (labor), Wassily Leontief (input-output), Alexander Gerschenkron (economic development), John Williams (money and banking). The problem with a small institution such as Mills was that the department tended to depend on one individual. As one example, Harvard’s economics department was divided on the subject of Keynes, which made for great liveliness.

While the department had its share of outstanding men, it also had its share of prejudices. The faculty had only one Jew, Seymour Harris, and one was “enough.” Paul Samuelson, a few years ahead of me, would find no teaching offer from Harvard. Accordingly, he went slightly downriver and accepted MIT’s offer. In retrospect, how the department must have rued this decision.

The department, at this time, did not like the master’s degree, so in consequence the difference between the master’s and doctoral degree was the dissertation. As explained by the college’s official register: “The general examination for the Ph.D. is the same examination as for the Master’s degree.”

At a party I was introduced to Mrs. Chamberlin, a Frenchwoman who was the wife of Edward Chamberlin, the well-known Harvard economist who had already published his influential Monopolistic Competition. She asked me what field I was in and I said economics. Her wonderful reply was “Well, you don’t look like one,” which I regarded as a compliment.

I continued to study the Japanese language, this time using a text that included grammar. It was prepared by Sergei Elisseeff and Edwin Reischauer. Elisseeff had gone to Japan from St. Petersburg after the Russo-Japanese War, becoming the first Westerner to graduate from Tokyo Imperial University. After the Communist takeover of Russia in 1917, he emigrated to France where he taught Japanese and Chinese at the Sorbonne, and then from 1934 to 1960, at Harvard. Reischauer had grown up in Japan, where his parents were missionaries. After his graduation from Oberlin College, he entered Harvard as a graduate student in the fall of 1935.

It was almost impossible to study Japanese in Widener Library during that fall of 1941 without interruption. Anyone passing the table reserved for Radcliffe graduate students in the reading room and seeing the unusual script had to stop and inquire what it was.

That fall I attended my first “House” dance at Eliot House on the river as the guest of John Lintner, an economist who was to become a junior fellow (a much sought-after distinction) at Harvard with a specialization in public finance. I had two astonishing experiences. One was learning that one had to think of the outside temperature before adding a corsage to one’s outfit; if one were nonchalant in the late fall, winter, or early spring, the cold might do it in. Second, coming from the West Coast, I was flabbergasted to see the whole inner wall of the dining room (converted to a ballroom) covered to a height of six to eight feet with cases of sherry, bourbon, scotch, and gin. On the West Coast at that time, one could not even sell liquor within a mile of a public educational institution. At Mills College in the 1930s it was a “sin”to have even beer on the campus. Imagine that many cases of liquor on campus! Unbelievable.

Inasmuch as so many Radcliffe graduate students were from other parts of the country as well as from abroad, the dean of the graduate school, Mrs. Cronkite (it was a Harvard affectation to drop the “Dr.”) arranged sight-seeing tours of nearby New England towns for us on Saturday afternoons. These had come to a halt soon after December 7, when gasoline conservation became necessary.

Everyone who was beyond infancy in 1941 remembers where he or she was on December 7. I was starting Sunday dinner (at that time served by maids) in the Radcliffe graduate dormitory at one o’clock. We had just begun to eat that Sunday when someone reported hearing a radio report of a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Perhaps more than others, I was incredulous that Japan would attack the United States. Japan, of course, had all sorts of differences with the United States, but for it to take us on in armed conflict seemed unbelievable. It was clearly foolhardy, but Japan’s military apparently reasoned that, owing to Japan’s alliance with Germany, their attack would draw the United States into the European war. And a two-front war they believed Japan could win.

My father used to say that one positive feature of war is that it brings persons and nations in touch with reality. Japan’s military discovered that reality was different from what they had imagined, and so did the United States. In those months following Pearl Harbor, when every news report brought word of Japanese victories and our defeats, respect for Japan’s military prowess increased a great deal.

Some of my Radcliffe friends went down to Washington, D.C., during the summer of 1942, on completing the 1941-1942 academic year. With the United States at war, everyone was anxious to contribute to the mammoth effort our country was facing, and to become involved without delay. I, however, held off, because I wanted to get through my Ph.D. “general” examinations first. The thought of taking exams on course work done years earlier was daunting to me.

Under the system then in effect in the Economics Department, one presented oneself in six fields, four of which were examined in the “general” examination. One of the six one was allowed to “write off” — that is, fulfill the requirement with course work. I did that in statistics. My four fields for the general exams were theory, money and banking, international trade, and economic history. The Ph.D. requirements also included qualifying in two languages — normally, French and German. Harvard granted my petition to use Japanese as my second language, my first being French. I don’t believe the Economics Department had ever had to consider such a request before. Having passed all of these exams in the summer of 1943, I then went down to Washington that fall.

The sixth field was the dissertation field, in which one took the separate, “special” exam. At this time, when I took the other general exams, I had in mind to make public finance my “special” dissertation field. But I later changed to industrial organization as a result of my State Department and MacArthur staff positions. It would be in industrial organization, therefore, that I eventually took the final exam after completing my dissertation, entitled “Concentrated Business in Japan,” in 1949.

One major legacy of my Radcliffe years is a lifelong friendship with a fellow economist from Peking, Shu-chuang Kuan. It was in Cambridge in that first fall of 1941 that I met Shu-chuang. Like me, she was beginning the program in economics, and we became close friends. Our friendship has lasted to the present day, although it was interrupted for a long time by events beyond the control of either of us; nowadays, we speak regularly by telephone although we live on opposite coasts of the United States.[1]

My second year at Radcliffe, I became a “head of house” of one of the smaller dormitories. Radcliffe used graduate students for that role rather than having older women as “house mothers,” as was done in a great many colleges. In 1942-1943 we were all graduate students with one exception, an older woman from Concord, Massachusetts. It happened that she invited me to join her on a particular Friday evening. Instead of simply saying that I had a previous engagement, I said I had an invitation to the waltzing party — an event considered of great significance among the “socially acceptable” persons of Boston. Her memorable reply was, “My dear, and only your second season!”

It was customary in that period for female students to wear skirts. That was the only attire considered appropriate for attending class. The Radcliffe dorms where we lived (there was no mixing at that time) were roughly a mile from the Harvard Yard. To walk that mile with legs clad only in stockings when the weather was well below freezing was so painful that I occasionally had to stop at the Commodore Hotel on the way to thaw out.

To me, a New England spring was an astonishing experience. February came and February went. March came and March went. It was not until April that the grass began to turn green and there were crocuses. In Seattle, as in Tokyo, spring begins early. In Seattle one can have pussywillows and crocuses in February, as well as the first blooms of the camellia. In New England, May is one grand riot as the season makes up for its slow start. Everything bursts into leaf and bloom at the same time.

A Year at the OSS

While still in Cambridge I had been recruited by Charles B. (Burton) Fahs [2] for a position in the Research and Analysis Branch, Far East, of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was one of what came to be five competing intelligence groups in Washington, D.C. (The other four were the Army, Navy, and Foreign Economic Administration [FEA] organizations, and subsequently the Air Force Intelligence group.) Roosevelt favored competition in his government.

I entered the OSS as a P-3, the equivalent of today’s government service classification of GS-9. I was put to work assessing the significance of Japan’s wooden-shipbuilding program, which Japan had begun in response to the shortage of steel.

Even though it was conventional in that period to dislike Washington, I loved the city from the moment I arrived. But where would I live? Washington was still suffering an acute shortage of housing. I located an apartment, but it was still under construction. A Radcliffe friend, Ruth Amande (Roosa), said that I might join friends with whom she was sharing a house, and that is what I did for six weeks or so.

That is also how I came to know Ralph Bunche, for his secretary was part of the same household. Bunche was at the OSS too, but in another part of the organization. In 1944 he was invited to become an assistant secretary of state, the first African American to be so invited, and transferred over from the OSS to the State Department. Subsequently, Bunche won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 and was undersecretary of the United Nations from 1955 to 1971. His B.A. was from UCLA in 1927; his Ph.D., from Harvard in 1934. We had a friendly relationship, although not a close one, during the period when we were both at the State Department.

Source: Eleanor M. Hadley. Chapter 2 “Radcliffe College and Washington, D.C.” from Memoir of a Trustbuster: A Lifelong Adventure with Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003. Pages 42-48.

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Radcliffe Ph.D. Awarded June 1949

Eleanor Martha Hadley, A.M. [Radcliffe College, 1943]

Subject, Economics. Special Field, Business Organization and Control.
Dissertation, “Concentrated Business Power in Japan”.

Source: Radcliffe College. Reports of Officers Issue 1948-49 Session. Official Register of Radcliffe College, Vo. XV, No. 6 (December, 1949, p. 21.

Note: B.A. Mills College (Oakland, CA), 1938

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Career

1943 – 1944. Research analyst , Office Strategic Services. Washington, D.C.

1944 – 1946. economist, Department State. Washington, D.C.

1946 – 1947. economist, GHQ-Supreme Command Allies Pacific. Tokyo, Japan.

1950 – 1951. staff member, President Truman’s Commission Migratory Labor. Washington, D.C.

1956 – 1965. associate professor, Smith College. Northampton, Massachusetts.

(ca 1963-64 Fulbright Fellowship to Japan)

1967 – 1974. economist , United States Tariff Commission. Washington, D.C.

1972 – 1984. professorial lecturer, George Washington University. Washington, D.C.

1974 – 1981. group director international division, General Accounting Office. Washington, D.C.

1986 – 1994. visiting scholar, University Washington, Seattle, Washington.

Source:

https://web.archive.org/web/20211124081228/https://prabook.com/web/eleanor_martha.hadley/695543

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Books

Hadley, Eleanor. Antitrust in Japan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970.

_____________. Japan’s Export Competitiveness in Third World Markets. Georgetown: The Center for Strategic and international Studies, 1981.

_____________. Memoir of a Trustbuster: A Lifelong Adventure with Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003.

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Testimony before the Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate. July 29, 1964 pp. 147-161.

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Obituary

Eleanor Hadley spent her life standing up to oppression, dies at 90

By Sara Jean Green The Seattle Times, June 6, 2007

Eleanor Hadley rarely talked of her experiences as a young American woman tasked with democratizing the economy of post-World War II Japan, preferring instead to discuss politics and policy with guests who would stop by her Normandy Park home for an intellectual chat and a cup of tea.

She’d fought a 16-year battle to clear her name after she was secretly added to a McCarthy-era blacklist, but Ms. Hadley was never bitter — though she was plenty indignant in the grand, gutsy way that family and friends say she reacted to any injustice or abuse of power.

Ms. Hadley, who dedicated her life to academia and government service, died from natural causes at Seattle’s Swedish Medical Center on Friday (June 1). She was 90.

A 1986 recipient of Japan’s Order of the Sacred Treasure for meritorious service, Ms. Hadley was finally persuaded by a group of admirers to pen her autobiography, co-authoring “Memoirs of a Trust Buster: A Lifelong Adventure with Japan” in 2003.

“She was one of the very few women in a leadership position during the occupation” of Japan, said professor Kenneth Pyle, of the University of Washington’s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. “It was rare because it was a man’s world. … She was a very independent and assertive woman in an environment that did not encourage that.”

Eleanor Martha Hadley was born July 17, 1916, in Seattle, graduating from Franklin High School in 1934. Her father, Homer Hadley, an engineer, first conceived the idea of a concrete floating bridge across Lake Washington; and her mother, Margaret Hadley, was a pioneer in preschool education and the education of children with disabilities. Her brother Richard Hadley, who died in 2002, was a prominent Northwest land developer.

Ms. Hadley attended Mills College in Oakland, Calif., and was selected for a student fellowship at Tokyo Imperial University, said her nephew, Robert Hadley, of Normandy Park. From 1938 to 1940, she traveled extensively in Japan and China, becoming one of the first Westerners to visit Nanjing after the Japanese military massacred 150,000 to 300,000 Chinese in that city.

“She went to Japan a pacifist but came back from the whole experience with an understanding that there are times you have to stand up to horrible regimes,” her nephew said.

She returned to the U.S. to pursue her doctorate in economics at Harvard-Radcliffe University but was recruited in 1943 by the U.S. State Department to work as a research economist focusing on Japan.

At the end of the war, Ms. Hadley — then 31 — was asked to join Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s staff in Tokyo, where she worked to help break the zaibatsu, the powerful industrial and financial combines that dominated Japan’s economy.

Ms. Hadley returned to Harvard in 1947 to complete her doctorate and planned to join the newly created Central Intelligence Agency, Robert Hadley said. But the CIA job offer — and her security clearance — were mysteriously withdrawn. She didn’t learn until years later that she’d been labeled a Communist and was blacklisted by Maj. Gen. Charles Willoughby, MacArthur’s conservative chief of intelligence.

She later became a professor at Smith College in Massachusetts and George Washington University in Washington, D.C. For 16 years, she worked to clear her name and finally prevailed after Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson from Washington intervened on her behalf. She went to work for the U.S. Tariff Commission (now the International Trade Commission) and General Accounting Office, returning to the Seattle area after her retirement in 1984.

In addition to her nephew Robert Hadley, Ms. Hadley is survived by her nephew Scott Talley of Colorado Springs, Colo.; and nieces Alisa Scharnickel, of Arlington, and Lisa Hadley, of Honolulu.

Source: Web-archive copy of the Hadley obituary.

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Backstory: “The Purge of Hadley”

Source: Thiry, Martin. Chapter 2 “Eleanor Hadley: Anti-Trust in Occupation Japan”, Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy, US. 1946-1954: Three at the Intersection and What it Wrought. M.A. (History) Thesis, University of Hawai’i (August, 2007),  pp. 56-58.

…Hadley left Japan in September of 1947 to finish her doctorate at Harvard. The years ahead were black ones. She was recruited by the nascent CIA for analyst work, but she was unable to get a security clearance. She was turned down by several government agencies. She worked on the fringes of the Washington bureaucracy until 1956 when she got a job teaching at Smith College. In 1965 Henry “Scoop” Jackson took up her case. He was able to track down the retired Whitney who joined in the effort to clear her name. There was nothing in the GHQ-SCAP files to suggest disloyalty. At the end of 1966, through some machinations on the part of Jackson, Hadley was finally given her clearance. The years of banishment had been long. The climate in Washington had been harsh to one “under a cloud.” She had been blacklisted from before the coming of McCarthy and remained so long past his demise. Dean Rusk, an old college teacher, even refused his help.[214] “I was afraid to get a book out of the library (in those days)… [I] was miserable going through it,” Hadley remembers.

The mystery of why she had been blacklisted was eventually resolved. Major-General Charles Willoughby had been the head of SCAP’s Military Intelligence Section. Later an advisor to General Franco, he maintained extensive surveillance on Japanese radicals as well as reporting critically on American reformers within SCAP itself.[215] Willoughby was an ultraconservative and controlled censorship for SCAP[216] He had a personal rivalry with Whitney, which may have accounted for some of Government Section’s pursuit of reform: Whitney knew Willoughby would hate it. Willoughby brought extreme right-wing views and a Prussian bearing to his job. MacArthur called him “my lovable fascist.”[217]

Willoughby’s papers were declassified in 1975,[218] including a report on “Leftist infiltration into SCAP.” Hadley was mentioned. The concern was that she was dating a journalist. “Her relative immaturity… suggest the possibility.… [of] being exploited by leftists.”[219] Hadley shared her thoughts on Willoughby:

Hadley: Politics shaped his job. He was security. After five years of Mr. Bush we know how far security can be pushed. I enjoyed having dinner with foreign correspondents, US and European. It’s possible I said something one night. I was never informed about that.

Author: What were the specific accusations against you?

Hadley: No specific accusations whatsoever. It was all done very quietly. The black ball consisted of telling people in D.C. that I was doubtful. I “might” have spilled the beans, I “might” have been indiscreet, I “might” have indicated SCAP direction to foreign correspondents. All “might have’s”- Willoughby’s wonderment.

Author: Would you have led a different life if you had not been black balled?

Hadley: 17 years out of [one’s] most productive makes a dent.[220]

Without access to Willoughby’s files there is no way to confirm Hadley’s story. Still, I find it plausible. The forces around her, the clash of competing ideologies within SCAP and the US political scene, worked greater effects. I do not render judgment on the issue of zaibatsu dissolution. I simply do not know enough about it. What I do feel comfortable arguing is that the clash of ideologies within SCAP and beyond about zaibatsu dissolution became increasingly Orientalized the more it entered into the discourse of US domestic politics. And the more entrenched it became in US domestic politics the more Orientalized it became. The power of this convergence was more than enough to wreck Hadley’s career in government…

[214] Hadley, Memoir of a Trustbuster, 121-145.

[215] Bailey, Paul. Postwar Japan: 1945 to the Present. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers (1995), 31.

[216] Dower, John. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: W.W. Norton and Compnay (1999), 406.

[217] Schaller, Michael. Douglas MacArthur: The Far Eastern General. Oxford: Oxford University Press (1989), 121.

[218] His papers are on file at the MacArthur Memorial in Norfolk, VA, but not on-line. http://www.macarthurmemorial.org/archives_record.asp (accessed 1/30/07).

[219] Hadley, Memoir of a Trustbuster, 146.

[220] Eleanor Hadley, “Telephone Interview With Eleanor Hadley 1/25/07” (Honolulu-Seattle).

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Image Source: From the website World War II Database. Archived copy at web.archive.org.

Categories
Barnard Columbia Economists Gender

Columbia. Eveline M. Burns parts ways with the economics department. 1941-1942

This post is the first of two-parts dealing with a married economics couple who taught at the Columbia economics department during the second quarter of the twentieth century, Eveline Mabel Burns and Arthur Robert Burns. [Warning: not Arthur F. Burns!] Both of the Burns felt themselves relatively undervalued by their Columbia colleagues, but the case for Eveline Burns is particularly clear. She was the weaker spouse but in hindsight the stronger economist of the two. This post presents the end-game correspondence for Eveline Burns with respect to the Columbia economics department. She was quite remarkable, someone who  can be credited as being the midwife for the birth of the U.S. Social Security System (to use a gendered metaphor for a gendered case). The post closes with a list of her publications and her c.v. that is conclusive (ex post) documentation of just how wrong the Columbia economics department got it in the early 1940s. Brava, Eveline Burns!

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Department to Eveline Burns
Meet your glass ceiling

Appears to be a carbon copy of a typed copy of the original (no signature, no printed letterhead):

December 9, 1940

Dr. Eveline M. Burns,
2121 Virginia Avenue N.W.,
Washington, D.C.

My dear Dr. Burns:

As you may have heard, Professor McCrea is retiring at the end of the current academic year and the chairmanship of our Department has been passed along to me. After extensive conferences to ascertain the sentiment of our colleagues, I have prepared my first budget letter. In fairness to you as well as to the Department, I feel that I should report to you in very definite terms the attitude of your colleagues toward your future as a member of the staff.

I understand that you are well aware that in previous years opposition has developed to the proposal to advance you from your present position as Lecturer to that of Assistant Professor, an advancement which would carry with it, of course, some intimation of an intention to promote you later to still higher rank and to a permanent career in the Department. I regret to say that in the course of the budget discussions this year it has become apparent that this opposition has not diminished. It is indeed now so substantial that clearly it will be necessary for you to plan your future on the assumption that there is no possibility of advancement to professorial rank or to permanent status in the Faculty of Political Science.

Since I share the admiration that your colleagues in the Department feel for your many admirable qualities and your many impressive achievements, it is not an easy thing to send this message, which, in spite of previous notice, will doubtless cause you pain and disappointment. The plain fact is, however, that even your most enthusiastic friends agree that viewing the situation in all its aspects, you should not be encouraged to believe that your connection can be made more permanent, or that your rank can be advanced. This conclusion has been reached after extended consideration and will not, I feel certain, be modified by further discussion or debate.

In the budget letter you are being recommended for an appointment for the academic year 1941-42 as Lecturer at a stipend of $3,000.

Faithfully yours,

ROBERT M. HAIG

Source: Columbia University Libraries Manuscript Collections. Department of Economics Collection, Box 3 “Budget, 1915-1946/1947”, Folder “Economics Budget, 1940-1941”.

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Eveline Burns was not amused

Appears to be a carbon copy of a typed copy of the original (no signature, no printed letterhead):

 

EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
National Resources Planning Board
Washington, D.C.

January 21, 1941

Professor Robert M. Haig
Faculty of Political Science
Columbia University
New York, N.Y.

My dear Professor Haig:

I have now had an opportunity of reading with more care your letter of December 9th which you handed to me yesterday and I find it is of a nature which obviously calls for a formal acknowledgment from me. Will you therefore please accept this letter as such? Since no reasons are given for the decision you have conveyed to me there is clearly no comment that I can make, ever were any comment appropriate.

I understood you to say that it would be unnecessary for me formally to give you in writing my reasons for being unwilling to accept a full time appointment as lecturer at a stipend of $3,000, and that you would explore the possibilities of a part time arrangement.

There is, however, one phrase in your letter to which I must take exception for the purposes of the record. In the last paragraph but one of your letter you use the words “in spite of previous notice.” I should like to state formally that to the best of my knowledge no such clear statement of the intentions of the faculty has ever been given to me. On the contrary, on each occasion when I have sought a clarification of the situation from the Dean or, at his suggestion, from other members of the faculty, I have always been given to understand that the individual approached was personally sympathetic to my cause and anxious to see my position regularized but that it would take time for this result to be achieved because of certain admitted difficulties which it was hoped would ultimately be removed.

At varying times I have been informed that there were difficulties because of: (a) my sex, (b) the fact that my husband was also on the staff, (c) the personal objections of an individual faculty member; or that it was undesirable to make a formal recommendation at the time because: (a) a recommendation was being made in favor of my husband and it would be unwise to make recommendations for both husband and wife simultaneously, or (b) that there were staff members, junior to myself, whose economic situations were more pressing than mine, or (c) that it would be advisable to wait until my book on British Unemployment Relief was published, or (d) that there was a general shortage of funds in the university.

In these circumstances I feel that it was not unreasonable for me to draw the conclusion, especially in view of the evident validity of the last consideration cited, that the problem was one of “when”, rather than “whether”, my position would be regularized.

The only occasion on which I was given any indication that this might not be the correct interpretation was in December 1938 when Professor McCrea informed me that while the Department was anxious to expand the work in Social Security, there was some disposition on the part of certain members with whom he had talked to feel that they would like to bring in some outside person to head up the work. I immediately offered my resignation to the Dean, on the ground that for me to continue at Columbia University under such circumstances would not be consistent with my standing in my field and the fact that I had for so long been teaching this subject. Moreover, I pointed out that such a decision implied the negation of any hopes of promotion that I might have formed.

At the request of the Dean, I withdrew my resignation until he could call a meeting of the faculty to discuss the question of my future in the University and at his request I furnished him with a list of my professional activities and publications and the names of outstanding experts in my field from whom he could obtain an opinion as to my standing. That meeting was held in January or February of 1939 and I subsequently received a letter from the Dean (which I do not have with me in Washington) informing me that the decision had been “favorable to my cause” or words to that effect. In those circumstances I felt, wrongly as it now appears, that I was justified in not proceeding with my resignation.

I wish to make it very clear that I am calling attention to these facts solely for the purposes of the record. Even had your letter not emphasized the finality of the judgment, I feel that if my colleagues were prepared to reach such a decision after my thirteen years of service without giving me any reasons therefor, it is unrealistic to expect that their attitude would be changed by any reminder of the facts that I have reported. Nor have I any desire to claim, on the grounds of obligation, expressed or implied, a recognition which the faculty is unwilling for other reasons to give me.

May I say how very sincerely I appreciate your frankness and friendliness yesterday in performing a task which I know could not have been a pleasant one for you. I cannot but feel that had my other colleagues displayed an equal candor and courage during the last seven or eight years, the problem of planning my professional and personal life would have been greatly simplified.

Yours very sincerely,

Eveline M. Burns

Source: Columbia University Libraries Manuscript Collections. Department of Economics Collection, Box 3 “Budget, 1915-1946/1947”, Folder “Economics Budget, 1940-1941”.

____________________________

Department to Eveline Burns
Terms of ex-dearment

Appears to be a carbon copy of a typed copy of the original (no signature, no printed letterhead):

February 15, 1941

Dr. Eveline M. Burns,
2121 Virginia Avenue N.W.,
Washington, D.C.

Dear Eve Burns:

This is to report to you that on behalf of the Department I have today sent to the Provost of the University a recommendation that you be appointed Lecturer for the academic year 1941-1942, on a part-time basis, at a stipend of $2,500. This, I understand, conforms to your wishes. This appointment contemplates that you will offer one course and will be available for dissertation, essay, and general Departmental work within the area of your special field. It is understood that the arrangement is for a single year, with no commitment by either of us for the period beyond June, 1942.

I have placed your letter of January 21st in the University file.

I had thought of the New York School of Social Work, but I am told that, for the present at least, there is no opening there that would be attractive to you. There is, however, an opening at Hunter College (which may involve the chairmanship of the Department at $6,000 or more) and I have suggested you name to them.

Faithfully yours,

[unsigned, presumably Robert M. Haig]

Source: Columbia University Libraries Manuscript Collections. Department of Economics Collection, Box 3 “Budget, 1915-1946/1947”, Folder “Economics Budget, 1940-1941”.

____________________________

Eveline Burns to Department
Roger that.

Appears to be a carbon copy of a typed copy of the original (no signature, no printed letterhead):

 

EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
National Resources Planning Board
Washington, D.C.

February 27, 1941

Dr. Robert M. Haig
Faculty of Political Science
Columbia University
New York, N.Y.

Dear Mr. Haig:

I wish to thank you for your letter of February 15th stating that you have sent forward a recommendation for my appointment as Lecturer for the academic year 1941-42 on a part-time basis at a stipend of $2,500. I have also noted your statement that the arrangement is for a single year with no commitment for the period beyond June 1942.

Sincerely yours,

Eveline M. Burns

Director of Research, Committee on
Long Range Work and Relief Policies

Source: Columbia University Libraries Manuscript Collections. Department of Economics Collection, Box 3 “Budget, 1915-1946/1947”, Folder “Economics Budget, 1940-1941”.

____________________________

Department to Eveline Burns

Appears to be a carbon copy of a typed copy of the original (appreares to have been dictated) no signature, no printed letterhead):

November 22, 1941

Dr. Eveline M. Burns,
3206 Que [sic] Street, N.W.,
Washington, D.C.

Dear Doctor Burns:

Last January, after you had expressed your unwillingness to accept reappointment as full-time lecturer at $3,000, the part-time arrangement presently in force was made with the understanding that it involved no commitment beyond June, 1942.

In accordance with a decision reached at a conference of members of the department last night, I have included in the budget letter a recommendation that no provision be made for the continuance of your connection with the department beyond the end of the current academic year.

As I send you this communication I am certain that I speak for all of the members of the department in expressing regret for the circumstances which have prevented the realization of some of our hopes and in expressing appreciation of the contribution you have made to our joint product during the period of your association with Columbia.

With renewed assurances of my personal esteem, I am

Faithfully yours,

ROBERT MURRAY HAIG

Source: Columbia University Libraries Manuscript Collections. Department of Economics Collection, Box 2  Folders “Faculty Appointments”.

____________________________

Department to Eveline Burns
Repeat: you quit, you were not fired

December 22, 1941

Dr. Eveline M. Burns,
3206 Q Street N.W.,
Washington D.C.

My dear Dr. Burns:

I beg to acknowledge your letter of December 10th.

My understanding of the course of events in your case, based on the written record and upon my recollection of our conversation on January 20th, 1941, is this:

            1) You demanded promotion and expressed an unwillingness to return to us as a full time lecturer at $3,000;

            2) You were then told, both orally and in writing, that there was no possibility of advancement to professorial rank or to permanent status in the Faculty of Political Science;

            3) Thereupon you suggested a special arrangement for 1941-2, stated, both orally and in writing, to be temporary in character, and to involve no commitment on either side beyond June 30, 1942.

            It would seem to be correct to describe what happened as a voluntary withdrawal by you from your position as lecturer because of your dissatisfaction with that status and your unwillingness to continue in it in the face of the University’s inability to promise advancement. It would seem to be incorrect to describe it as a “dismissal”. We decline to regard it as such in our discussions with you and certainly shall not describe it as such in any communications with outsiders who may have an interest in you.

Since, according to my understanding, you were not dismissed, but withdrew, I cannot supply you with the reason for your “dismissal”. You insisted upon promotion. Your colleagues regretfully decided that it was not possible to encourage you to expect promotion to professorial rank and a permanent career in the department.

With respect to the confidential character of the statements at the decisive meeting, I should like to make it clear that, while we agreed not to report each others’ remarks at the meeting, there was no agreement that would preclude any individual who felt so inclined from giving you his own opinion of your qualities in such detail as he might desire.

Yours truly,

ROBERT MURRAY HAIG

Source: Columbia University Libraries Manuscript Collections. Department of Economics Collection, Box 2  Folders “Faculty Appointments”.

____________________________

Department to Eveline Burns
We said: you weren’t fired, you quit

Appears to be a carbon copy of a typed copy of the original (no signature, no printed letterhead):

January 6, 1942

Dr. Eveline M. Burns,
3206 Q Street N.W.,
Washington, D.C.

Dear Dr. Burns:

I beg to acknowledge your letter of December 30th, 1941. [Not found in my files]

I am sorry that my recollection of what occurred at our oral interview on January 20th, 1941 does not substantiate in all particulars the statements you make in this letter. My recollection of what occurred is set forth in my letter of December 22d, 1941.

Yours truly,

ROBERT M. HAIG.

Source: Columbia University Libraries Manuscript Collections. Department of Economics Collection, Box 3 “Budget, 1915-1946/1947”, Folder “Economics Budget, 1940-1941”.

____________________________

Salary Structure of Economics Staff at Columbia and Barnard
1941-42

DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
The Budget as Adopted for 1941-42

Office or Item

 Incumbent

1941-1942
ActualAppropriations
McVickar Professor Political Economy Robert M. Haig $9,000.
Professor of Political Economy Leo Wolman $9,000.
Professor of Economic History V. G. Simkhovitch $9,000.
Professor Wesley C. Mitchell $9,000.
Professor John Maurice Clark $9,000.
Professor James Waterhouse Angell $7,500
Professor Carter Goodrich $7,500
Professor Harold Hotelling $7,500
Professor Horace Taylor $6,500
Assistant Professor Arthur R. Burns $4,500.
Assistant Professor Robert L. Carey $3,600.
Assistant Professor Boris M. Stanfield $3,600.
Assistant Professor Joseph Dorfman $3,600.
Honorary Associate Richard T. Ely ($1,000.)
Instructor Hubert F. Havlik $3,000.
Instructor C. Lowell Harriss $2,400.
($300.)
Instructor Walt W. Rostow $2,400.
Instructor Courtney C. Brown $2,700.
Instructor Harold Barger $3,000.
Instructor Donald W. O’Connell ($2,400.)
Lecturer Carl T. Schmidt $3,000.
Lecturer (Winter Session) Robert Valeur ($1,500.)
Lecturer Eveline M. Burns $2,500.
Lecturer Louis M. Hacker $3,000.
Lecturer Michael T. Florinsky $2,700.
Lecturer Abraham Wald $2,400.
($600.)
Visiting Lecturer Arthur F. Burns ($2,000.)**
Departmental appropriation $800.
Assistance $1,200.
$118,400.

** Chargeable to salary of Prof. Mitchell, absent on leave.

BARNARD COLLEGE:
Economics Budget for 1941-42

Associate Professor Elizabeth F. Baker $5,000.
Assistant Professor Raymond J. Saulnier $3,600.
Instructor Donald B. Marsh $2,400.
Instructor Mirra Komarovsky $2,700.
Lecturer Clara Eliot $2,700.
Assistant in Economics and Social Science Mary M. van Brunt $1,000
$17,400.

 

Source: Columbia University Libraries Manuscript Collections. Department of Economics Collection, Box 3 “Budget, 1915-1946/1947”, Folders “Economics Budget, 1940-1941” and “Budget Material from July 1941-June 1942”.

____________________________

But don’t cry for Eveline M. Burns
She did very well for herself.

A Festschrift was published in honour of Professor Burns in 1969 under the title: Social Security in International Perspective: Essays in Honor of Eveline M. Burns, Ed. Shirley Jenkins, New York and London, Columbia University Press.

____________________________

Eveline M. Burns’ Publications:

“The French Minimum Wage Act of 1915” in Economica, III, 1923;

“The Economics of Family Endowment” in Economica, V, 1925;

Wages and the State: A Comparative Study of the Problems of State Wage Regulations, London, P. S. King and Son, 1926;

The Economic World: A Survey (with A. R. Burns), London, Oxford University Press, 1927;

“Achievements of the British Pension System” in Old-Age Security: Proceedings of the Second National Conference, New York, American Association of Old-Age Security, 1929;

“Planning and Unemployment” in Socialist Planning and a Socialist Program, Ed. H. W. Laidler, New York, Falcon Press, 1932;

“Misconceptions of European Unemployment Insurance” in Social Security in the United States: 1933, New York, American Association for Social Security, 1933;

“Lessons from British and German Experience” in Social Security in the United States: 1934, New York, American Association for Social Security, 1934;

“Can Social Insurance Provide Social Security?” in Social Security in the United States: 1935, New York, American Association for Social Security, 1935;

“The Lessons of German Experience with Unemployment Relief” in Lectures on Current Economic Problems, Washington, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Graduate School, 1936;

“Basic Principles in Old-Age Security” in Social Security in the United States: 1936, New York, American Association for Social Security, 1936;

Memorandum on “Wall Street Journal” Articles, Washington, Bureau of Research and Statistics (Memorandum No. 3), 1936

Towards Social Security: An Explanation of the Social Security Act and a Survey of the Larger Issues, London, Whittlesey House, and New York, McGraw-Hill, 1936;

“Social Realities versus Technical Obfuscations” in Social Security in the United States: 1937, New York, American Association for Social Security, 1937;

The Arguments for and against the Old-Age Reserve, Washington, Social Security Board, 1938;

“Some Fundamental Consideration in Social Security” in Social Security in the United States: 1940, New York, American Association for Social Security, 1940;

British Unemployment Programs 1920-38 (Report prepared for the Committee on Social Security), Washington, Social Science Research Council, 1941;

Security, Work and Relief Policies (Report of the Committee on Long-Range Work and Relief Policies to the National Resources Planning Board: Eveline M. Burns, Director of Research), Washington, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1942;

“Building for Economic Security—Six Foundation Stones” in The Third Freedom: Freedom from Want, Ed. H. W. Laidler, New York, League for Industrial Democracy, 1943;

“Equal Access to Health” and “Equal Access to Economic Security” in National Resources Development Report for 1943 (Part I), Washington, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943;

Discussion and Study Outline on Social Security, Washington, National Planning Association (Planning Pamphlets No. 33), 1944;

“Social Security” in Economic Reconstruction, Ed. S. E. Harris, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1945;

“Economic Factors in Family Life” in The Family in the Democratic Society, New York, Columbia University Press, 1949;

“How Much Social Welfare Can America Afford?” in The Social Welfare Forum, 1949, Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Work, New York, Columbia University Press, 1950;

“Social Insurance in Evolution” in Readings in Labor Economics, Ed. F. S. Doody, Cambridge (Mass.), Addison Wesley Press, 1950;

The American Social Security System, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 2nd edition, 1951;

The Social Security Act Amendments of 1950: An Appendix to The American Social Security System, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1951;

“An Expanded Role for Social Work” in Social Work Education in the United States, Ed. E. V. Hollis and A. L. Taylor, New York, Columbia University Press, 1951;

“Fifteen Years under the Social Security Act: An Evaluation” in Current Issues in Social Security, Ed. L. MacDonald, New York University, Institute of Labor Relations and Social Security, 1951;

“The Doctoral Program: Progress and Problems” in Social Work Education in the Post-Master’s Program. No. 1: Guiding Principles, New York, Council on Social Work Education, 1953;

Comments on the Chamber of Commerce Social Security Proposals, Chicago, American Public Welfare Association, 1953;

Private and Social Insurance and the Problem of Social Security, Ottawa, Canadian Welfare Council, 1953;

“Significant Contemporary Issues in the Expansion and Consolidation of Government Social Security Programs” in Economic Security for Americans: An Appraisal of the Progress made from 1900 to 1953, New York, Columbia University Graduate School of Business, 1954;

“The Role of Government in Social Welfare” in The Social Welfare Forum, 1954, Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Work, New York, Columbia University Press, 1954;

“The Financing of Social Welfare” in New Directions in Social Work, New York, Harper, 1954;

America’s Role in International Social Welfare (Editor), New York, Columbia University Press, 1955;

Social Security and Public Policy, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1956;

“Welfare Assistance” in A Report to the Governor of the State of New York and the Mayor of the City of New York, by the New York City Fiscal Relations Committee, New York, The Committee, 1956;

Papers and Proceedings of the Conference on Social Policy and Social Work Education, Arden House, April 1957 (Editor), New York, New York School of Social Work, Columbia University, 1957;

“Social Policy and the Social Work Curriculum” in Objectives of the Social Work Curriculum of the Future, by W. W. Boehm, New York, Council on Social Work Education, 1959;

“The Government’s Role in Child and Family Welfare” in The Nation’s Children, Vol. III: Problems and Prospects, Ed. Eli Ginsberg, New York, Columbia University Press, 1960;

“A Salute to Twenty-Five Years of Social Security” in Social Security: Programs, Problems and Policies, Ed. W. Haber and W. J. Cohen, Homewood (Illinois), R. D. Irwin, 1960;

“Issues in Social Security Financing” in Social Security in the United States: Lectures Presented by the Chancellor’s Committee on the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Social Security Act, Berkeley, University of California, Institute of Industrial Relations, 1961;

A Research Program for the Social Security Administration, Washington, U.S. Government Printer, 1961;

“Introduction” in Federal Grants and Public Assistance: A Comparative Study of Policies and Programmes in U.S.A and India, by Saiyid Zafar Hasan, Allahabad, Kitab Mahal, 1963;

“The Functions of Private and of Social Insurance” in Studi sulle assicurazione raccolti in occasione del cinquanterario dell’Istituto Nazionale della Assicurazioni, Ed. A. Giuffre, Milan, 1963;

“The Determinants of Policy” in In Aid of the Unemployed, Ed. J. M. Becker, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1965;

“Social Security in America: The Two Systems—Public and Private” in Labor in a Changing America, Ed. W. Haber, New York, Basic Books, 1966;

“Income Maintenance Policies and Early Retirement” in Technology, Manpower, and Retirement Policy, Ed. J. M. Kreps, Cleveland, World Publishing Co., 1966;

“The Challenge and the Potential of the Future” in Comprehensive Health Services for New York City (Report of the Mayor’s Commission on the Delivery of Personal Health Services), New York, The Commission, 1967;

“Foreword” in Poor Law to Poverty Program, by Samuel Mencher, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1967;

“The Future Course of Public Welfare” in Position Papers and Major Related Data for the Governor’s Conference, Albany (New York), New York State Board of Social Welfare, 1967;

Social Policy and the Health Services: The Choices Ahead, New York, American Public Health Association, 1967;

“Productivity and the Theory of Wages” in London Essays in Economics, Ed. T. E. Gregory and H. Dalton, London, G. Routledge, 1927; republished, Freeport (New York), Books for Libraries Press, 1967;

Children’s Allowances and the Economic Welfare of Children (Editor and Contributor), New York, Citizen’s Committee for Children, 1968;

“Needed Changes in Welfare Programs” in Urban Planning and Social Policy, New York, Basic Books, 1968;

“Social Security in Evolution—Towards What?” in Unions, Management and the Public, New York, Harcourt, Brace and World, 3rdedition, 1968;

“A Commentary on Gunnar Myrdal’s Essay on the Social Sciences and their Impact on Society” in Social Theory and Social Invention, Ed. H. D. Stein, Cleveland, Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1968;

“Welfare Reform and Income Security Policies” in The Social Welfare Forum, 1970, Proceedings of the National Conference on Social Welfare, New York, Columbia University Press, 1970;

“Health Care System” in Encyclopedia of Social Work, New York, National Association of Social Workers, 1971

____________________________

Eveline Mabel Burns
C.V.

Vital information:

Born: Eveline Mabel Richardson on March 16, 1900 in Norwood, London.

Married: Arthur Robert Burns (b. December 2, 1895; d. January 20 1981) of London, 1922.

U.S. Citizenship: 1937.

Died: September 2, 1985 in Newton, Pennsylvania.

Education:

B.Sc. (Econ.), Ph.D. (London), Honorary D.H.L. (Western College; Adelphi; Columbia), Honorary LL.D. (Western Reserve University). Professor Emeritus, Columbia University, since 1967; and Consultant Economist, Community Service Society, New York, since 1971.

Streatham Secondary School, 1913-16; London School of Economics and Political Science, 1916-20; London County Council Tuition Scholarship; B.Sc. (Econ.), 1st Class Honors in Economics, 1920; Ph.D., 1926; Adam Smith Medal for outstanding thesis of the year, 1926.

Positions Held

(1)  Normal Full-time Positions

Title of Position. Name of Institution/Organization. Years of Tenure. Compensation

Junior Administrative Officer. Ministry of Labor, London, England. 1917-21. £ 250

Assistant Lecturer, London School of Economics, University of London. 1921-28 (On Leave 1926-8). £ 350

Lecturer, Graduate Department of Economics, Columbia University. 1928-42 (on leave 1940-2). $ 3000-3500

Chief, Economic Security and Health Section, National Resources Planning Board, Washington, D. C. 1940-3. $ 7500

Professor of Social Work and Chairman and Administrative Officer, Doctoral Committee, New York School of Social Work, Columbia University. 1946 to [retired 1967] $ 9500

(2)  Special Assignments

London School of Economics. Asst, Editor, Economica, 1922-6.

University of London Social Security Committee. Senior Staff Officer, 1937-9. $6500

Social Science Research Council

National Planning Association, Washington, D. C. Consultant on Social Security, 1943-4. $7000

(3)  Visiting Professorships

Anna Howard Shaw Lecturer, Bryn Mawr College, 1944
Visiting Professor, Bryn Mawr College, 1945-6
Visiting Professor, Princeton University, 1951

I have also given short courses or individual lectures at the following institutions:

Department of Economics, University of Chicago
Smith College School for Social Work
Littauer Graduate School of Public Administration, Harvard Univ.
School of Applied Social Sciences, University of Pittsburgh
School of Applied Sciences, Western Reserve University

For several years I have conducted the Advanced Seminar arranged by the Social Security Administration for its senior staff, and have given brief seminars for foreign social security experts brought to this country by the Mutual Security Agency

(4)  Consultantships

Consultant, Committee on Economic Security, Washington, 1934-5
Principal Consulting Economist, Social Security Board, 1936-40
Consultant, Social Security Administration, 1948 to date

I have also served as consultant on specific issues to the:

United States Treasury
The Federal Reserve Board
The Works Progress Administration
The New York State Department of Labor

OTHER DISTINCTIONS

Adam Smith Medal for outstanding thesis of the year, 1926
Laura Spelman Rockefeller Fellowship, 1926-8
Guggenheim Fellowship, 1954-5
Florina Lasker Award (“for outstanding contributions in the field of Social Security”), 1960
Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters, Western College, 1962
Honorary LLD, Western Reserve University, 1963
Honorary Fellow, London School of Economics, 1963
Bronfman Lecturer, American Public Health Assn., 1966
Ittelson Medal (“for contributions to Social planning”), 1968
Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters, Adelphi University, 1968
Woman of Achievement Award, American Assn. of University Women, 1968
Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters, Columbia University, 1969

POSITIONS OF CIVIC OR NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITY, MEMBERSHIP OF LEARNED SOCIETIES, ETC.

Member American Economic Association (Member of Executive Ctte, 1951-3  and Vice-President, 1953-4)
National Conference on Social Welfare (Secretary, 1955, First-Vice President, 1956 and President, 1957-58)
American Public Health Association (Vice-President, 1969-70)
Vice-President and President, Consumers’ League of New York, 1935-8
Member and Chairman of various committees, Federal Advisory Council on Employment Security, 1952-70
Member, Legislative Policy Committee, American Public Welfare Assn., 1956-68
Member, Steering Committee, White House Conference on Children, 1959-60
Member, Federal Advisory Committee on Area Redevelopment, Subsequently the National Committee on Regional Economic Development, 1961-69
Member, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Hobby’s Advisory Committee on Coverage Extension of the Social Security Act, 1953-4
American Delegate to International Conference on Social Welfare, 1958, and member of Steering Ctte and Vice-Chairman of Commission I
Chairman, Social Security Administration Advisory Committee on Long Range Research, 1961-5
Member, President Johnson’s Task Force on Income Security Policy, 1964
Member of Sub-Committee on Social Policy for Health Care and member of its Executive Committee, N. Y. Academy of Medicine 1964 to date
Member, Mayor Lindsay’s Commission on Delivery of Health Service in New York City, 1967-8
Member, National Council, American Assn. of University Professors 1961-4

Original Source: Eveline Burns Papers. Box 1. University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Social Welfare History Archives. Minneapolis, MN.

Transcribed and posted on line: Davidann, J. & Klassen, D. (2002). Eveline Mabel Richardson Burns (1900-1985) — Social economist, author, educator and contributor to the development of the Social Security Act of 1935. Social Welfare History Project.

Image: Eveline Mabel Burns.  Detail from a departmental photo dated “early 1930’s” in Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections, Columbiana. Department of Economics Collection, Box 9, Folder “Photos”.

Categories
Bibliography Gender Harvard Socialism Suggested Reading

Harvard. Short Bibliography on Socialism and Family/Christian Ethics for “Serious-minded Students”, McConnell, 1910

 

The Ethics of Socialism is the nominal title of the brief 1910 bibliography provided by Harvard social ethics instructor Ray Madding McConnell  and transcribed below along with links to digital copies of the items found at archive.org and hathitrust.org. A more accurate title would be “Socialism and Family/Christian Ethical Doctrine”. Dr. McConnell died the year after this bibliography was published, so I have added a dash of biographical material since it is rather unlikely that Economics in the Rear-View Mirror will encounter him again.

In 1910 Harvard published a total of 43 of short bibliographies in the collection “Social Ethics and Allied Subjects”, about half of which were dedicated to particular topics in economics and economic sociology. The project was coordinated by Plummer Professor of Christian Morals, Francis G. Peabody.

Previously posted bibliographies from Peabody’s “Social Ethics and Allied Subjects”:

Economic Theory by Professor Frank Taussig

Taxation by Professor Charles J. Bullock

Trade Unionism by Professor William Z. Ripley

Social Insurance by Dr. Robert Franz Foerster

Economics of Socialism by Professor Thomas Nixon Carver

Strikes and Boycotts by Professor William Z. Ripley

_____________________________

From the Prefatory Note:

The present list represents an attempt to make this connection between the teaching of the University and a need of the modern world. Each compiler has had in mind, not a superficial reader, nor yet a learned scholar, but an intelligent and serious-minded student, who is willing to read substantial literature if it be commended to him as worth his while and is neither too voluminous nor too inaccessible. To such an inquirer each editor makes suggestions concerning the contents, spirit or doctrine of a book, not attempting a complete description or a final judgment, but as though answering the preliminary question of a student, “What kind of book is this?” The plan thus depends for its usefulness on the competency of the editors concerned, and each editor assumes responsibility for the section to which his name is prefixed.

Source: Prefatory Note by Francis G. Peabody. A Guide to Reading in Social Ethics and Allied Subjects, Lists of Books and Articles Selected and Described for the Use of General Readers. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1910, p. vi.

_____________________________

The Short Life of Dr. Ray Madding McConnell (1875-1911)

Born: September 14, 1875. Union City, Tennessee.

Died: June 23, 1911. Cause of Death, Pneumonia—Septic, Tonsillitis. Contributory: Acute Rheumatic Fever. Somerville, Massachusetts. He was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

 

Ph.D. in Philosophy, 1908

Ray Madding McConnell, A.B. (Southern Univ.) 1899, S.T.B. (Vanderbilt Univ.) 1901, A.M. (Harvard Univ.) 1902.

Subject, Philosophy. Special Field, Ethics. Thesis, “The Ground of Moral Obligation.” Assistant in Social Ethics.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard University 1907-1908, p. 140.

 

Books

Ray Madding McConnell. The Duty of Altruism. New York: Macmillan, 1910.

________________. Criminal Responsibility and Social Constraint. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912.

 

Obituary

Dr. RAY MADDING McCONNELL
Harvard Instructor in Social Ethics Had Made Long Study of Important Problems

Dr. Ray Madding McConnell long active in educational work, died early this morning at a private hospital in Cambridge [sic, the hospital was in Somerville]. Dr. McConnell who was a graduate of Harvard, class of 1802, was born in Tennessee in 1875, and had been since his college days a great student of sociological problems and recently instructor in social ethics at Harvard.

Dr. McConnell received numerous honorary degrees, including his A.B. from Southern University In Alabama, in 1899, his S.T.B. from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee in 1901, his A.M. from Harvard in 1901, and from that university his Ph. D. in 1908. He was a writer on the subject to which he had given so many years of earnest study and research, and last year his book on “The Duty of Altruism” was brought out and he had at this time another book in preparation, “Philosophy of Crime.” He had contributed frequently to the International Journal of Ethics, and at Harvard he had given courses of lectures on “Moral Obligations of the Modern State.”

Dr. McConnell was married, in 1807, to Miss Phoebe Estes Bedlow of Ithaca, N. Y. by whom he is survived, as well as by a young son, Frank McConnell.

Source: Boston Evening Transcript, 24 June 1911, page 14.

_______________________

IV.6. THE ETHICS OF SOCIALISM
RAY M. McCONNELL

I. SOCIALISM AND THE FAMILY

A. The Socialist Attitude

Upon questions of marriage and the family, individual socialists, like other people, have diverse opinions. It would of course be folly to try to saddle all socialism with the utterances of one or even of many socialists. The following references must be understood, therefore, not as indicative of the necessary attitude of socialists, but only as indicative of the proposals of those writers who do advocate socialization of the family.

Bebel, August. Woman in the past, present and future. Translated from the German by H. B. Adams Walther. London: William Reeves, 1894, pp. 264.

Perhaps the most important book on this subject. It is an exceedingly good exposition of socialism, both in the economic order and in the family. “The gratification of the sexual impulse is as strictly the personal affair of the individual as the gratification of every other natural instinct. No one has to give an account of him or her self, and no third person has the slightest right of intervention. Intelligence, culture and independence will direct and facilitate a right choice. Should in compatibility, disappointment and dislike ensue, morality demands the dissolution of a tie that has become unnatural and therefore immoral…. The state of society will have removed the many drawbacks and disturbing elements which influence the married life of to-day and so often prevent it from reaching its full development.”

Heinzen, Karl. The rights of women and the sexual relations. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1898, pp. xi, 385.

A most radical and thoroughgoing advocacy of liberty in the sexual relations and of the independence of woman. “The free common-sense conception of marriage, and with it also of divorce, is everywhere still suppressed by the theological conception of the relationship between man and woman. According to the theological conception, marriage is in itself a hallowed relationship, and this abstract relation in itself, not the real happiness and interest of those who constitute it, is the chief object. Marriage is to be upheld even if the married persons perish in it. Adherents of the official and theological morality will feel in duty bound to grow indignant over the claim that in reality there is no such thing as adultery.”

Carpenter, Edward. Love’s coming of age. A series of papers on the relations of the sexes. London: Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., 1903, pp. vi, 168.

A plea, beautiful in tone, for freedom in sex-relations. “The narrow physical passion of jealousy, the petty sense of private property in another person, social opinion, and legal enactments, have all converged to choke and suffocate wedded love in egoism, lust and meanness. The perfect union must have perfect freedom for its condition. Marriage must not be hampered by legal, conventional or economic considerations. Odious is the present law which binds people together for life, without scruple, and in the most artificial and ill-assorted unions. When mankind has solved the industrial problem so far that the products of our huge mechanical forces have become a common heritage, and no man or woman is the property slave of another, human unions will take place according to their own inner and true laws. The family will expand into the fraternity and communism of all society, losing its definition of outline, and merging with the larger social groups in which it is embedded.”

Wells, H. G. New worlds for old. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1908, pp. vii, 333.

Contains a good chapter on “Would socialism destroy the home ?” Shows the thorough failure of the present order to maintain home and social purity and to rear children. Advises strict state regulation of marriage. “Children must not be casually born; their parents must be known and worthy, that is to say, there must be deliberation in begetting children, marriage under conditions.”

Wells, H. G. A modern utopia. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1907, pp. xi, 392.

Contains a good chapter on “Women in a modern utopia.” “For the marriage contract the socialist state will define in the completest fashion what things a man or woman may be bound to do, and what they cannot be bound to do. Marriage is the union of a man and woman in a manner so intimate as to in volve the probability of offspring, and it is of primary importance to the state, first in order to secure good births, and secondly good home conditions, that these unions should not be free, nor promiscuous, nor practically universal throughout the adult population.”

Pearson, Karl. The ethic of freethought. A selection of essays and lectures. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1888, pp. 446. [Second edition, revised 1901]

The subject is well discussed in the two chapters, “The woman’s question” and “Socialism and sex.” “Such, then, seems to me the socialistic solution of the sex-problem: complete freedom in the sex-relationship left to the judgment and taste of an economically equal, physically trained and intellectually developed race of men and women; state interference if necessary in the matter of child-bearing, in order to preserve intersexual independence on the one hand, and the limit of efficient population on the other.”

Stetson, Charlotte Perkins. Women and economics. A study of the economic relation between men and women as a factor in social evolution. Boston: Small, Maynard & Co., 1898, pp. vii, 340.

Finds in the economic dependence of woman the cause of most of the evils of society. Sexuo-economic specialization has made of woman a slave, and this has reacted on man for ill. With the attainment of full economic independence by woman will come her freedom from domestic servility in its various forms.

Bax, Ernest Belfort. Outlooks from the new standpoint. London: Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., 1891, pp. x, 203. [Third edition, 1903]

“Many people take refuge in deliciously vague declamation on the nobility, on the loftiness, of the ideal which handcuffs one man and one woman together for life. We cannot see exactly where the nobility and the loftiness come in. The mere commonplace man, if left to himself, would probably think that it rested entirely upon circumstances, upon character, temperament, etc., whether the perpetual union of two persons was desirable. Socialism will strike at the root at once of compulsory monogamy and of prostitution by inaugurating an era of marriage based on free choice and intention, and characterized by the absence of external coercion. Monogamic marriage and prostitution are both based essentially on commercial considerations. The one is purchase, the other hire. The only really moral form of the marriage relation is based neither on sale nor hire.”

Bax, Ernest Belfort. Essays in socialism, new and old. London: E. Grant Richards, 1906, pp. x, 336.

Contains several able chapters on the woman question, very interesting on account of their strong denunciation of the common socialist espousal of the “Woman’s Rights” cause. Maintains that in nearly all matters there is a strong sex-prejudice against the man because he is man and in favor of the woman because she is woman. Woman is steeped in sex prerogative. Socialism demands relative economic and social equality between the sexes, but not female privilege and female domination, — the real demands of the clamorers for “Woman’s Rights.” After the class-struggle has passed away, the sex question will probably become more burning, and will be the first question that the socialist state will have to solve. “If social democrats allow themselves to be caught by the feminist fallacy, they are only injuring their own cause.”

B. Adverse Criticisms of the Socialist Attitude

The following books contain good chapters setting forth and criticising adversely socialists’ teachings concerning the family.

Barker, J. Ellis. British socialism. An examination of its doctrines, policy, aims and practical proposals. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908, pp. vi, 522.
London Municipal Society. The case against socialism. A handbook for speakers and candidates. Second edition. London: George Allen & Sons, 1910, pp. vii, 537.
Goldstein, David. Socialism: the nation of fatherless children. Edited by Martha Moore Avery. Boston: The Union News League, 1903, pp. x, 374.

 

II. SOCIALISM AND RELIGION

A. Books maintaining that Socialism and Religion are essentially Hostile to Each Other

Hartman, Edward Randolph. Socialism versus Christianity. New York: Cochrane Publishing Company, 1909, pp. vi, 263.

A careful comparison of the principles and promises of socialism with the teachings of Scripture and the principles of Christianity. The author always sticks closely to his subject and accomplishes the thorough contrast which he set out to make. He maintains that in many essential matters socialism is diametrically opposed to the principles of Christianity.

Barker, J. Ellis. British socialism. An examination of its doctrines, policy, aims and practical proposals. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908, pp. vi, 522.

Contains a chapter showing the hostility of socialism towards Christianity.

London Municipal Society. The case against socialism. A handbook for speakers and candidates. Second edition. London: George Allen & Sons, 1910, pp. vii, 537.

Contains a chapter giving quotations from many socialists to show their opposition to, and contempt for, religion and the church.

Flint, Robert. Socialism. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1895, pp. vii, 512.

Devotes a long and very able chapter to a consideration of socialism and religion. Gives a thorough exposition of the attitude of the socialist leaders towards religion, and maintains that socialism and Christianity are natural opponents.

Stang, William. Socialism and Christianity. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1905, pp. 207.

An able attack on socialism by a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church. Discusses the character and aims of socialism, advocates social reform but not socialism, and portrays the Catholic movement in behalf of social reform.

Ashton, John. Socialism and religion. (Tract No. 9 in Vol. LXVIII of the “Publications of the Catholic Truth Society”). London: Catholic Truth Society, 1908, pp. 32.

“The Catholic Church sees that socialism strikes at the roots of man’s moral freedom; that it dechristianizes the working man; that it would confiscate her churches and secularize her schools; that it would destroy the Christian family and substitute a materialistic philosophy for her doctrine of the supernatural.”

Goldstein, David. Socialism: the nation of fatherless children. Edited by Martha Moore Avery. Boston: The Union News League, 1903, pp. x, 374.

Maintains that atheism is not a mere personal opinion of some socialists, but the bed rock of socialist philosophy. The author has made a thorough canvass of socialist literature, and has brought together the socialist utterances that bear on religion. He maintains that atheistic forces take political form in socialism, and necessitate a closer association of those organizations which stand for the propagation and enforcement of religious law.

Hall, Thomas C. Socialism as a rival of organized Christianity. In The North American Review, Vol. CLXXVIII, June, 1904, pp. 915-926.

“Modern Protestantism is woefully ignorant of its most formidable rival. The Catholic Church has been painfully awakened in France, Belgium and Italy. Protestantism awaits its awakening.”

B. Christian Socialism

Kaufmann, Moritz. Christian socialism. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1888, pp. xviii, 232.

A splendid discussion of Christian socialism in France, England and Germany. It desires to show that an intimate connection exists between socialism in the best sense of the word and Christian philanthropy. While maintaining that there is genuine kinship between Christianity and socialism, the author acknowledges certain lines of demarcation and devotes an interesting chapter to a consideration of “Unchristian Socialism.”

Stubbs, Charles William. Charles Kingsley and the Christian social movement. London: Blackie & Son, 1904, pp. viii, 199.

Gives a very interesting sketch of the early Christian socialist movement, in especial connection with the life of Kingsley, and shows the great influence of that theologian upon later developments of church life and thought.

Woodworth, Arthur V. Christian socialism in England. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1903, pp. viii, 208.

Traces the historical development of Christian socialism from its origin under Maurice and Kingsley to its present form in the Christian Social Union and shows the connection between the two. Contains a good bibliography of Christian socialism from earliest times to 1900.

Nitti, Francesco S. Catholic socialism. Translated from the second Italian edition by Mary Mackintosh. With an introduction by David G. Ritchie. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1908, pp. xx, 432.

A very learned statement of the theories of the Catholic socialists of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium, England, Spain, Italy and America. It shows how “Catholic socialism, while unlike the other systems of socialism it seeks to reform society in the name of God, does not on that account seek to modify it any the less profoundly.” The discussion is sympathetic yet impartial.

Campbell, R. J. Christianity and the social order. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1907, pp. xiii, 284.

The author believes that the socialist movement represents a return to the primitive Christian evangel, freed from its limitations and illusions, and is destined to rescue the true Christianity from ecclesiasticism in its various forms. The main purpose of the book is to show that the practical aims which primitive Christianity set out to realize are nearly identical with those of modern socialism.

Gladden, Washington. Christianity and socialism. New York: Eaton & Mains, 1905, pp. 244.

Aims to bring Christianity and socialism “into more intelligible and more friendly relations.”

Ward, William. Religion and labour. London: Edwin Dalton, 1907, pp. 188.

An able and interesting argument, based on Christianity, for nearly all the ends desired by the socialist.

Sprague, Philo W. Christian socialism. What and why. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1891, pp. vi, 204.

Sets out to answer (1) what is socialism, (2) what are the causes of socialism, (3) what is the relation of Christianity to socialism, and (4) how can the great social and economic changes involved in socialism be gradually brought about by just and orderly methods.

Davidson, J. Morrison. The gospel of the poor. London: William Reeves, 1894, pp. viii, 162.

A powerful combination of scriptural quotations and economic statistics.

Publications of the Christian Social Union (formerly the Church Social Union). Boston: Office of the Secretary, The Diocesan House, 1 Joy Street.

Upwards of sixty pamphlets have been published. A good many of these are very valuable from the standpoint of Christian socialism. As among the best may be mentioned the following: [No. 26] “Christian Socialism,” by Frederick Denison Maurice; “The Church and Scientific Socialism,” by James T. Van Rensselaer; “The Christian Law,” by Brooke Foss Westcott; and [No. 30] “Christian Socialism and the Social Union,” by George Hodges.

 

Source: Teachers in Harvard University, A Guide to Reading in Social Ethics and Allied Subjects, Lists of Books and Articles Selected and Described for the Use of General Readers. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1910, pp. 174-182.

Categories
Economists Gender Michigan Radcliffe Wellesley

Radcliffe. Economics Ph.D. alumna. Margaret Elliott, 1924

 

To the irregular series “Meet an Economics Ph.D. alumna” I am pleased to add the 1924 Ph.D. graduate of Radcliffe, Margaret Elliott. I was hard-pressed to uncover much a a publication record for her, but what could be found indicates a career-long interest in the occupational experience of women. 

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Margaret Elliott’s 1924 Radcliffe Ph.D.

Margaret Elliott, A.M.

Subject, Economics.
Special Field, Labor Problems.
Dissertation, “Statistics of Occupation: A Study in Classification.”

Source: Annual Report of Radcliffe College, 1923-24, (March, 1925), p. 31.

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Biographical Note from the University of Michigan Archives

Margaret Elliott was born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1891 [28 October]. She received her A.B. degree from Wellesley in 1914, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Radcliffe in 1921 and 1924, respectively. Her dissertation was titled Earnings of Women in Business and the Professions.

Margaret Elliott was an instructor at Abbott Academy, Andover, Massachusetts from 1915 to 1917, and was appointed as an assistant professor of Personnel Management in the newly organized School of Business Administration at the University of Michigan in 1924, after she received her doctoral degree. In 1929, she was promoted to associate professor in both the business school and the Department of Economics in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. She was promoted to full professor in 1931 in both departments. Margaret Elliott was the first woman to be a full professor at the School of Business Administration.

Margaret Elliott was an active member of several organizations, including the National Federation of Business and Professional Women, and the American Association of University Women (AAUW). After she retired from her work with the AAUW, a national fellowship was established in her name.

Margaret Elliott married Professor John Evarts Tracy of the Michigan Law School in 1933. The couple had no children of their own, but they did raise his sister’s children after her death. John Tracy died in 1959. Margaret Elliott Tracy died in 1978 [12 May] at the age of 87.

Source: University of Michigan, Bentley Historical Library. Papers of Margaret Elliott: 1920-1954.

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Biographical Note (5 July 1941)

Personnel Expert Holds Chairs On Two Faculties: Margaret Elliot Tracy

The housewife who has been convinced by bouts with the family budget that men are welcome to the lion’s share of participation in economic matters would look with awe upon the achievements of Dr. MARGARET ELLIOTT TRACY, Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics and Professor of Personnel Management in the School of Business Administration.

Mrs. Tracy is the wife of Professor John E. Tracy, of the Law School. A native of Lowell, Massachusetts, where she was born on October 28, 1891, she went to Wellesley College after completing her early schooling in the Lowell public schools, and in 1914 received her Bachelor’s degree. She was Instructor at Abbot Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, from 1915 to 1917, when she determined to fit herself to teach economics.

At Radcliffe College in 1917-1918, she pursued graduate study in this field, but with American entry into World War I left college to assume personnel duties at the U. S. Ordnance Department’s Watertown Arsenal in charge of women’s work. Finding this type of occupation to her liking, she sought and obtained the position of Personnel Director for Waitt and Bond, Inc., of Newark, New Jersey, after the close of the war, staying for a year, 1919-1920, before returning to Radcliffe to complete her graduate studies. From Radcliffe in 1921, she received the M.A. degree, and in 1924, the Ph.D. degree. It was in this latter year that she took the first of the trips abroad which became her chief extra-curricular interest, although the jaunt over England and the Continent as a Whitney Traveling Fellow from Radcliffe combined much business with pleasure, since she was engaged throughout in study of European labor conditions.

In 1925, she came to Michigan as Assistant Professor of Economics, in 1929 was made Associate Professor, and assumed her present duties in the two branches of the University in 1932. While on sabbatical leave in 1931-1932, she took her longest trip, a complete globe-circling journey in which she centered her interest in the Far East and some of the remote islands of that region. Had the present war not intervened, she and Professor Tracy planned to continue sight-seeing in Egypt and the Near East on their sabbatical leave this year.

Mrs. Tracy is the author of Earnings of Women in Business and the Professions, published by the University of Michigan Press in 1930, and of a number of articles, including “Some Factors Affecting Earnings of Women in Business and the Professions,” appearing in Annals of the American Academy, May, 1929. She has been a member of the Board of Trustees of Wellesley College since 1936, and is affiliated with the American Economic Association, American Statistical Association, American Association for Labor Legislation, and the Personnel Research Federation.

Source: University of Michigan, The Michigan Alumnus (5 July 1941) posted at the University of Michigan  Faculty History Project page for Margaret Elliot Tracy.

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Biographical Note (1 September 1955)

Memoir: Margaret Elliot Tracy

The Regents of the University express to Margaret Elliott Tracy, Professor of Personnel Management, upon the occasion of her retirement from active membership on the University faculty, their kind appreciation of the contributions she has made as a brilliant scholar, a stimulating teacher, and a wise counselor of students.

Dr. Elliott received the A.B. degree from Wellesley College in 1914. From 1915 to 1917 she was Instructor at Abbot Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. In 1918, working for the United States Ordnance Department, she was in charge of Women’s Work at Watertown Arsenal. From 1919 to 1920, she was Personnel Director of Waitt & Bond, Inc. She earned the A.M. degree in 1921 and the Ph.D. in 1924 from Radcliffe College.

After studying at London University in 1924 as a Whitney Traveling Fellow of Radcliffe College, Dr. Elliott joined the faculty of the School of Business Administration of the University of Michigan as Assistant Professor of Personnel Management. Dr. Elliott held the dual appointment first as Associate Professor and later as Professor of Economics in the College of Literature, Science. and the Arts and as Professor of Personnel Management in the School of Business Administration, from 1931 to 1950.

On December 22, 1933, Dr. Elliott married John Evarts Tracy, Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. She was a member of the American Statistical Association, of the American Association for Labor Legislation, and of the American Economic Association. From 1926 to 1938 she belonged to the National Federation of Business and Professional Women, acting as Research Chairman of the Association from 1926 to 1930. Professor Tracy, in addition to her teaching and research, gave much time and ability to the consideration of student problems. As a member of the first Board of Governors of Residence Halls and of the first Executive Committee of the Institute for Human Adjustment, she helped establish fundamental policies of these organizations. Her work in the American Association of University Women, particularly while she was Chairman of the National Fellowship Awards Committee from 1949 to 1951, reflected her executive capacity. She did much good work in the University community and in her city to bring them into closer harmony.

The Regents in granting Professor Tracy’s request that she retire before her seventieth birthday extend to her their sincere congratulations upon her distinguished career and confer upon her the title Professor Emeritus of Personnel Management and hope that she may enjoy the courtesies usually offered emeritus members of the faculty.

Source: University of Michigan, Regents’ Proceedings (1 September 1955) posted at the University of Michigan Faculty History Project page for Margaret Elliot Tracy.

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Publications

Elliott, Margaret, and Grace E. Manson. “Some Factors Affecting Earnings of Business and Professional Women.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 143 (1929): 137–45.

____________. Earnings of Women in Business and the Professions. Michigan Business Studies, vol. III, No. 1 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1930).

Reviewed: American Economic Review, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Jun., 1931), pp. 321-323.

____________. “Review of The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization, by E. Mayo.” American Economic Review 24, no. 2 (1934): 322–23.

____________. “Review of Women and Wealth, by M. S. Branch.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 175 (1934): 271–271.

____________. “Review of College Women and the Social Sciences, by R. E. Mills.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 175 (1934): 272–272.

____________. “Review of The Women’s Trade Union Leagues in Great Britain and the United States of America, by G. Boone.” American Economic Review 32, no. 4 (1942): 919–20.

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Image Source:  Margaret Elliott Tracy giving a lecture [1958-59?]. University of Michigan, Bentley Historical Library, Ross School of Business Records.

 

 

 

Categories
Economists Gender Harvard

Radcliffe. Economics Ph.D. alumna, Elizabeth Boody, 1934

 

Joseph Schumpeter’s third wife, Romaine Elizabeth Firuski née Boody (1898-1953), was the first Radcliffe woman to be awarded the distinction of receiving a summa cum laude A.B. in economics. This post provides a few items from her undergraduate years as well as a brief biography that the Find-A-Grave website clearly copied from somewhere else, but which for our purpose here is still a useful summary. The wedding announcement “Mrs. E.B. Firuski Wed to Educator” from the New York Times (August 17, 1937) provides a wonderful detail regarding the location of the wedding luncheon–the Viennese Roof Garden of the St. Regis in Manhattan.

For much more detail about Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter’s life, career, and her personal and professional partnership with Joseph Schumpeter, see:

Robert Loring Allen, Opening Doors: The Life and Work of Joseph Schumpeter. Volume 2: America. London and New York: Routledge, 1991.

Richard A. Lobdell, “Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter (1898-1953)” in A Biographical Dictionary of Women Economists, Edited by Robert W. Dimand, Mary Ann Dimand, and Evelyn L. Forget. London: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2000, pp. 382-385.

Richard Swedberg, Joseph A. Schumpeter: His Life and Work. Polity Press, 1991.

Elizabeth Boody received her Ph.D. in economics from Radcliffe in 1934. Her doctoral dissertation had the title “Trade Statistics and Cycles in England, 1697-1825”.

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Radcliffe College Yearbook, 1920

Source: Elizabeth Boody’s senior picture from the Radcliffe Yearbook 1920, p. 36

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Brief biography from the Find-a-Grave Website

Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter was an economist and expert on East Asia.

Born Romaine Elizabeth Boody on 16 August 1898 in Lawrence, Massachusetts, she was the daughter of Maurice and Hulda (Hokansen) Boody. She lived there with her family until she enrolled at Radcliffe College in the Fall of 1916.

At Radcliffe, Boody majored in economics, pursuing a special interest in labour problems. In the spring of 1920, she was awarded the college’s first summa cum laude AB degree in economics. After graduation, Boody worked as an assistant labour manager for a clothing firm in Rochester, New York. She returned to Radcliffe for graduate studies in economics, including coursework in statistics as well as economics, reflecting the field’s increasing interest in quantitative data and statistical techniques. Boody published her first scholarly article in 1924 in the Review of Economic Statistics, eventually becoming the first woman to serve as a contributing editor of that journal. She earned an M.A. in 1925 and joined the Harvard University Committee on Economic Research, where she was particularly interested in the statistical analysis of time series data and their use in forecasting business cycles. Resuming doctoral studies at Radcliffe, Boody spent 1926 and 1927 collecting English trade statistics for her thesis in London, where she was strongly influenced by Harold Laski and others at the London School of Economics.

Boody was appointed an Assistant Professor of Economics at Radcliffe. She also taught at Vassar (1927-1928) and at Wheaton College (1938-1939, 1948-1949). As a lecturer and author of articles on East Asian economics and politics, she advocated a “moderate isolationist” policy in the Pacific during the years preceding World War II. She was an assistant editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Boody completed her Ph.D. in 1934. From 1935 to 1940 she worked for the Bureau of International Research at Harvard University. There she directed two studies: one of English trade during the 18th century, and one on the industrialization of Japan and Manchukuo. These resulted in the publication of two books, one of them posthumous: The Industrialization of Japan and Manchukuo (1940) and English Overseas Trade Statistics, 1697-1808 (1960).

In 1937 she married fellow Harvard economist Joseph Alois Schumpeter. He died 08 January 1950 at their residence in the hamlet of Taconic, Town of Salisbury, Litchfield County, CT, where she ran a small nursery. She edited their posthumously published magnum opus, History of Economic Analysis (1954), based on his research.

Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter died of cancer 17 July 1953.

Her personal and professional papers, dating from 1938-1953, are archived at the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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THE THIRD DIVISION

Sarah Wambaugh, A.B. 1902, A.M. 1917
Romaine Elizabeth Boody, A.B. 1920

Sarah Wambaugh, author of “A Monograph on Plebiscites” and temporary member of the Administration Commission and Minority Section of the Secretariat of the League of Nations, is now an instructor in Political Science at Wellesley College. Romaine Elizabeth Boody graduated summa cum laude in Economics, and became Assistant Employment Manager for the Hickey-Freeman Company of Rochester, New York.

[High likely that Elizabeth Boody is one of the Radcliffe women in the picture below.]

A VISITOR in Cambridge having supper at the Cock Horse, once the home of Longfellow’s “Village Blacksmith,” may occasionally encounter a group of girls in deep discussion. They may be eagerly arguing some point with a man, whom one instantly labels a Harvard professor. The visitor is probably privileged to gaze upon an evening meeting of the Third Division Club of Radcliffe College. The issue may be the League of Nations, the tariff, a decision of the disarmament conference, or any other topic of the day.

The Third Division from which the Club takes its name includes the Departments of History, Government, and Economics. Students concentrating in these departments formed the club some three years ago with a double purpose — to increase the pleasant social intercourse of students and professors interested in the division and to prepare members to pass their final General Examination. When this examination was uppermost in mind, the Club was often unofficially known as the “Third Degree Club.”

Both to Harvard and to Radcliffe large numbers of students have always been drawn from far and wide by the authority and record for public service of the men who give instruction in these departments. But at Radcliffe, interest in these courses has increased greatly during the last few years, until in 1920 approximately one fourth of the Senior class chose this field of concentration. This impetus is traceable in part to the war and to the larger place women are occupying in industrial and social life, but especially to the stimulus of the chance to work under the guidance of men whose names are always in the public print, whose opinions have been anxiously sought at every juncture of the Great War and of the readjustment period.

Regardless of the actual quality of the instruction, is it not human nature to listen the more eagerly to the well-known expert who may come to class occasionally directly from the train from Washington where he has been acting as adviser to a congressional committee? The privilege of hearing and questioning a Thomas Nixon Carver robs the name “sociology” of any impractical flavor it may have had in pre-college days. The labor situation seems to require immediate attention when a Ripley stands ready to interpret it. The newspaper-reading undergraduate who finds Radcliffe her natural habitat is pulled with equal urgency to International Law with George Grafton Wilson, and Municipal Government with William Bennett Munro.

When making up the courses of study for the year it is evident that the fare provided by the Third Division is tantalizing to say the least. How hard it is to choose. How can failure to study under Albert Bushnell Hart, Professor Holcombe, or Professor Day be explained to parents, old teachers, or the neighbors at home? Will one regret the rest of one’s days the omission of Professor Taussig’s course? Most likely. Certain alluring pages in the catalogue must be hurried over. The world seems nothing but one renunciation after another.

In addition to Harvard instruction, Radcliffe students of History, Government, and Economics have the use of the great Harvard Library. They have access to the Boston Public Library and its splendid Americana, to the Boston Athenaeum, famous for its Washingtonia, the Massachusetts State Library, strong on foreign law, and the Library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, rich in local history and manuscript material.

These departments were the first to adopt the tutorial system and the general final examination. Useful as the new plan has proved in other departments, it is especially suited to the study of these subjects. In a literal sense these are living subjects, changing their aspect with each day’s news — news which cannot be correctly interpreted by isolated study but only by discussion. The wide reading necessary must be judiciously assimilated in order to develop the student’s appreciation and critical faculties. This can be done only with the help of some one who had already mastered the subject.

Under the new plan tutors guide and assist the students in preparing for the final examination, meeting those in their charge individually every week. The tutor is in no sense a coach, rather a friendly counselor whose aid is an enormous encouragement to the student in learning how to learn.

It would be interesting to know what these women concentrating in Division Three do after leaving college. After discussing the problems of our present political and industrial structure in the Liberal Club, the Debating Club, and the Third Division Club, do they ever apply their conclusions in practical work? After studying under men of ripe scholarship and wisdom, are they better qualified to take upon themselves the duties of citizenship? These questions are best answered by telling of the work of a few Radcliffe women.

The courses in International Law at Radcliffe have attracted a considerable number of those holding fellowships in the subject from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Two of these graduate students, Bernice V. Brown and Eleanor W. Allen, have subsequently held the Commission for Relief in Belgium Fellowship which means a year’s study in Brussels. A third, Alice Holden, is this year a member of the Department of Government at Smith College, and is giving the course in International Law at that institution.

Many students of economics are engaged in various forms of educational and service work in factories and other industrial establishments, and in administering philanthropies. Elizabeth Brandeis, 1918, is secretary of the Minimum Wage Board of the District of Columbia. Nathalie Matthews, 1907, is the Director of the Industrial Division of the Children’s Bureau at Washington.

The strength of the Third Division lies not alone in the unrivaled quality of the instruction and the stimulus of being in touch with the tide of current history, but also in the type of student it brings to Radcliffe.

Source:  What We Found at Radcliffe. Boston, McGrath-Sherrill Press, ca. 1921, pp. 7-10.

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Wedding Announcement

Mrs. E.B. Firuski Wed to Educator

Radcliffe College Research Fellow Married here to Joseph A. Schumpeter

Mrs. Elizabeth Boody Firuski of Windy Hill, Taconic, Conn., was married yesterday at noon to Dr. Joseph A. Schumpeter of Cambridge, Mass., Professor of Economics at Harvard University, in the Community Church of New York by the associate minister, the Rev. Leon Rosser Land.

The ceremony was followed by a luncheon in the Viennese Roof Garden of the St. Regis.

The bride, formerly Assistant Professor of Economics at Vassar College is a research fellow at Radcliffe College, working under the auspices of the Bureau of international Research of Harvard University. Her marriage [1929] to Maurice Firuski was terminated by divorce in Reno in 1933.

Dr. Schumpeter, a widower, was born in Austria, where he was Finance Minister in 1919. He formerly was a professor at the University of Bonn.

Dr. and Mrs. Schumpeter will make their home at Windy Hill until the reopening of the Fall session at Harvard.

Source: The New York Times, August 17, 1937, p. 22.

 

Image Sources: Elizabeth Boody’s senior picture from the Radcliffe Yearbook 1920, p. 36; Portrait of Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter, November 18, 1941. Harvard University Archives.

 

 

Categories
Columbia Economists Gender Social Work Socialism

Columbia. Economics Ph.D. Alumna, Vera Shlakman, 1938

 

Vera Shlakman (1909-2017) was born in Montreal to an anarchist mother and social-democratic father, Jewish immigrants born in Vilna and Pinsk, respectively, who named their children after Eleanor Marx, Victor Hugo and the Russian revolutionary Vera Zasulich. “Whenever Emma Goldman and Rudolf Rocker came to Montreal to lecture they stayed with us.”

Vera and her siblings all studied at McGill University but then moved to New York to find jobs. Vera did her Ph.D. thesis work with the economic historian Carter Goodrich at Columbia University. Later at Smith College she worked together with, among other people, Dorothy Douglas (divorced from the economist and later U.S. Senator, Paul Douglas).

Vera Shlakman’s career as an economist was cut short in 1952 as a consequence of the Second Red Scare. She was later rehabilitated and actually received financial compensation for lost pension rights. Of no small interest are the recollections  of the eminent historian of economics, Mark Blaug, included below.

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Biographical information for Vera Shlakman

Heins, Marjorie. Priests of Our Democracy–The Supreme Court, Academic Freedom, and the Anti-Communist Purge. New York: New York University Press, 2013.

Kessler-Harris, Alice. “Vera Shlakman, Economic History of a Factory Town, A Study of Chicopee, Massachusetts (1935).” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 69 (2006): 195-200.

Avrich, Paul. Interview with Lena Shlakman, January 23 and 24, 1974, in Anarchist Voices. A Oral History of Anarchism in America. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995. Pages 325-328.

Vera Shlakman’s New York Times obituary, “Vera Shlakman, Fired in Red Scare, Dies at 108” was published November 29, 2017.

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Timeline of Vera Shlakman

1909. Born July 15 in Montreal to Louis Shlakman (tailor and shirtwaist factory foreman) and Lena Hendler (glove stitching, shirtwaist factory worker).

1930. B.A. in economics from McGill University in Montreal.

1931. M.A. in economics from McGill University.

1931/32-1932/33. In residence graduate work at Columbia University. Some months employed as research assistant to Professor Arthur R. Burns.

1933/34-1934-35.  Research Fellow to the Council of Industrial Studies, Smith College.

1935. Publishes Economic History of a Factory Town: A Study of Chicopee, Massachusetts as volume 20, Nos. 1-4 (October, 1934-July, 1935)  of the Smith College Studies in History.

Pasted on the title page: “Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, in the Faculty of Political Science, Columbia University.”

1935-37. Instructor in the Department of Economics, Smith College.

1937-38. Instructor in the Department of Economics and Sociology at Sweet Briar College, Virginia.

1938. Ph.D. in economics awarded by Columbia University.

1938. Hired by Queens College as instructor.

1944-46. Reported to have been a member of the Communist Party. One of the reasons why the F.B.I. had placed her on a watch list. [Not aware of any record in which Shlakman had ever confirmed or denied such activity.]

1952. Assistant professor, but summoned as vice-president of the Teachers Union local for a public hearing of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. After taking the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination in response to questions regarding  Communist Party activity, she (along with several others) was dismissed from Queens College.

1953. Unemployed.

1954-58.  Employed as a secretary and bookkeeper with some intermittent teaching.

1959. Hired for an administrative position at Adelphi University.

1960. Teaching position in Social Work at Adelphi University, achieved rank of associate professor..

1966. Hired at the School of Social Work at Columbia University, Associate professor.

1967-68. Supreme Court of the United States declares the New York state laws under which Shlakman and others were dismissed as unconstitutional.

1978. Retired from Columbia University as professor emerita.

1980. Official apology received from City University of New York.

1982. Trustees of the City University announced a financial settlement for its dismissed faculty. Vera Shlakman received $114,599.

2017. Vera Shlakman died November 5 in Manhattan.

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AEA Listing 1938

Shlakman, Vera, Queen’s Col., Flushing, N.Y. (1938) a Queen’s Col., instr. b B:A:, 1930, M.A., 1931, McGill (Canada); Ph.D., 1938, Columbia. c Economic history of factory town: study of Chicopee, Mass. d American economic history; labor.

Source: American Economic Review, Vol. 28, No. 3, Supplement, Handbook, Who’s Who in the American Economic Association: 1938 (Sep., 1938). List of Members, p. 83.

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Testimony by the Historian of Economics, Mark Blaug

I doubt whether it would have taken me so many years to throw off the weight of Marxism if it had not been for an encounter in 1952 with the spectre of McCarthyism. McCarthy was riding high in 1952, the product of the anti-Communist hysteria that held America in its grip at the height of the Cold War. And it was a hysteria as the following story will show. I had graduated from Queens College of the City University of New York in 1950 and was in the midst of my preliminary year for the PhD at Columbia University when Arthur D. Gayer, the chairman of the economics department at Queens College, was killed in an automobile accident. The department looked around for someone to take over his courses in the middle of the semester and since I had worked for him as a research assistant, I was asked whether I would have a go. And so I suddenly found myself teaching a full load of courses in microeconomics, consumer economics and marketing, a subject I had never studied. I can remember being so nervous about my first lectures that I literally memorized them in their entirety the night before giving them.

I was just getting on top of all this teaching when the Un-American Activities Committee, chaired by Senator Joseph McCarthy, arrived in New York city to investigate communism in the New York City college system. They called on three well-known professors to appear before them in order, no doubt, to ask them the familiar questions: “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?”. All three refused to cooperate with the committee, pleading the First and Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits witnesses from incriminating themselves. Despite the fact that all three were tenured professors, they were promptly and summarily dismissed by their employer, the City University of New York.
One of these three professors was Vera Shlakman, Professor of Labour Economics at Queens College, a former teacher of mine and, at that point in time, a colleague. She was the president of the Teachers’ Union, a left-wing professional union of college teachers in the New York City area, and was herself left-wing and, for all I knew, a fellow-traveler. But having been taught by her, I knew that she was scrupulously impartial and leaned over back wards not to indoctrinate her students. A number of students organized a petition to the President of Queens College demanding Vera Shlakman’s reinstatement but, by the by-laws of the college, student petitions could not be submitted to a higher authority without an endorsing signature of at least one faculty member. The students went right through the economics department, which then numbered 40 professors, associate professors, assistant professors, and lowly tutors like myself, without encountering one person willing to endorse the petition. At the end of the line, they came to me and because of my personal regard for Professor Shlakman, and because I could not bear the thought of being pusillanimous, I signed the petition. Within 24 hours, I received a curt note from President Thatcher of Queens College (odd that I should remember his name after 40 years!) informing me that, unless I resigned forthwith, I would be dismissed, and black-listed for future employment.
For a day or two, I contemplated a magnifi cent protest, a statement that would ring down the ages as a clarion call to individual freedom, that would be read and recited for years to come by American high school students?and then I quietly sent in my letter of resignation.

I was now at my wit’s end. I had planned to apply for a scholarship to begin working on my doctoral dissertation and had been relying on my teaching salary from Queens College to carry me through the application period. I was broke and depressed by the entire experience when suddenly the telephone rang to inform me that I had been offered a grant by the Social Science Research Council to enable me to go abroad to write my PhD thesis: clearly, there were people here and there behind the scenes lending assistance to victims of McCarthyism.

Source: Mark Blaug, Not Only an Economist—Autobiographical Reflections of a Historian of Economic Thought, The American Economist, Fall, 1994, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Fall, 1994), pp. 14-15.

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Oscar Shaftel Papers

The Oscar Shaftel Collection documents Professor Shaftel’s tenure as a professor at Queens College, including his dismissal and his efforts to reinstate his pension. The bulk of the collection is from 1948 to 1982 and includes correspondence, flyers, printed materials, and hearing transcripts. The collection provides evidence of Oscar Shaftel’s personal experience at Queens College, as well as student activism on campus in the late 1940s and early 1950s. More broadly, the collection provides documentation of the McCarthyism and its effect on the New York City education system.

This series includes correspondence from Queens College President John T. Theobald (1953); a copy of the transcript from Oscar Shaftel’s testimony before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee; correspondence regarding Shaftel’s appeal of his termination by Queens College; testimony of former Queens College professor Vera Shlankman; court documents of former professors Dudley Straus and Francis Thompson (undated); and a letter written in support of Vera Shlankman and Oscar Shaftel from Queens College alumni.

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Image Source:  Faculty portrait of Vera Shlakman, Social Work. Alephi University (Garden City, New York), The Oracle 1965.

 

 

Categories
Columbia Economists Gender Social Work Third Party Funding Vassar

Columbia. Economics Ph.D. alumna, Sydnor Harbison Walker, 1926

 

Sydnor Harbison Walker was a budding labor economist who became an important grants administrator/manager with the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial and later the Rockefeller Foundation. Her 1926 Columbia University dissertation was on the economics of social work, which like home economics, provided an academic harbor within economics for not a few women economists of the time.

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Life of Sydnor Harbison Walker

Born: 26 September 1891 in Louisville, Kentucky.

Parents: Walter and Mary Sydnor Perkins Walker.

1913. A.B. from Vassar with honors

Taught English and Latin at private schools in Louisville, Dallas, and Los Angeles.

1917. M.A. University of Southern California.

Thesis: “The General Strike with Particular Reference to Its Practicability as Applied to American Labor Conditions”

1917. Poughkeepsie City director listing as “assistant Vassar College”.

1918-19. Poughkeepsie City director listing as “instructor Vassar College”.

1919-21 [ca.]. Philadelphia.

Personnel work at Scott Company in Philadelphia [where she met Beardsley Ruml, see below].
Personnel work at Strawbridge & Clothier in Philadelphia.

1921-23. American Friends Service Committee.

One year of relief work in Vienna
Followed by one year in Russia with the American Friends Service Committee.

1924-1929. Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund.

Recruited by Beardsley Ruml as “research associate” in June 1924.

1926. Economics Ph.D. from Columbia University. Henry Seager, principal adviser.

Dissertation published: Social Work and the Training of Social Workers. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1928.

1929-1943. Rockefeller Foundation (absorbed the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund in 1929).

1933. Promoted to associate director

1934. Sydnor H. Walker, “Privately Supported Social Work,” in Recent Social Trends in the United States, ed. President’s Research Committee on Social Trends (New York: Whittlesey House, 1934), pp. 1168-1223.

1937. Appointment to acting director of the Social Science Division.

1939. Voted to the board of trustees of Vassar. Resigned October 1942 due to illness.

1941. October. Contracted a spinal infection, involving a paralytic illness that “permanently confined her to a wheel chair”. She had been elected to be president “of a prominent woman’s college” but the illness forced her to decline the honor.

1943. Resigned from the Rockefeller Foundation.

1945. Edited a volume for the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, New York City. “The first one hundred days of the atomic age, August 6-November 15, 1945”.

1948. Appointed assistant to Sarah Blanding, president of Vassar.

1958. Retired from Vassar.

Died: 12 December 1966 in Millbrook, New York, leaving a bequest of $10,000 to Vassar College.

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Walker’s principal biographer

Amy E. Wells. Considering Her Influence: Sydnor H. Walker and Rockefeller Support for Social Work, Social Scientists, and Universities in the South.  pp. 127-147. Chapter 5 in Andrea Walton (ed.). Women and Philanthropy in Education.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.

_________. Sydnor Harbison Walker. American National Biography Online. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

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Vassar Memorial Minute
Walker, Sydnor Harbison, 1891-1966

Miss Sydnor Harbison Walker, Vassar alumna, faculty member, trustee and Assistant to the President, died December 12, 1966, at her home in Millbrook, New York, at the age of 75. She was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the daughter of Walter and Mary Sydnor Perkins Walker.

After attending Louisville schools, Miss Walker came to Vassar and was graduated in 1913 with honors. Economics was her major interest and she returned to Vassar to teach it in 1917, with an M.A. from the University of Southern California. Professor Emeritus Mabel Newcomer, a young colleague at the time, writes that “her quick wit and gaiety made her well liked among students in the residential hall where she lived ….. as a teacher she exhibited these same qualities, combined with clarity of thought and expression …. although she could be sharply critical of the careless and the dilatory.”

In 1919 Miss Walker decided that she needed some practical experience and went to work for a pioneering firm of industrial relations consultants where she wrote their weekly news letter. Three members of this young firm became college presidents and some years later Miss Walker herself was on the way to the presidency of a prominent college for women. A fourth member of the firm was Beardsley Ruml.

In 1921 Miss Walker engaged in the relief work of the American Friends Service Committee, first in Vienna and later in Russia. In a letter to President Emeritus MacCracken, she vividly describes her experience.

“We are now feeding about 15,000 a week through our depots, and we are supplying clothing to nearly 3,000. Our work is done on an individual case basis, which we think to be the soundest, not only from a social point of view, but because we believe that method essential for the creation of a spirit of international good-will — at no time a secondary object in our program… In addition to the feeding and clothing…. we are teaching mothers to care for their babies through the welfare centers; we are supporting a score of hospitals and other institutions for children; we have restocked farms with poultry and cattle and are helping farmers to build up permanent food resources for the city; and we are assisting materially in such constructive Austrian enterprises as the building of suburban land settlements and the creation of a market abroad for the art work of many gifted persons…we feel that we are a real part of the life of the city and not a superimposed group of relief workers.”

It is not hard for those who knew Miss Walker to visualize her presiding over relief work in the Imperial Palace of the Hofburg, whose stately corridors were cheerless and deserted save for these activities.

Returning to America in 1924, Miss Walker combined her interests in industrial relations with social welfare and education by becoming a research assistant at the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund in New York. In the meantime she received her doctorate in economics from Columbia University in 1928 with a dissertation on “Social Work and the Training of Social Workers.”

When the Rockefeller Foundation absorbed the Spelman Fund in 1929, Miss Walker began her association of twenty years with the Foundation. She moved from the research department to the position of Associate Director of the Social Sciences Division and finally became its Acting Director. While there she developed a program of international relations involving considerable travel in Europe and South America in very responsible positions. In 1933 she collaborated in the preparation of the report of President Hoover’s Committee on Social Trends, contributing a chapter entitled, “Privately Supported Social Work.”

In 1939 Miss Walker was proposed for trustee of Vassar College by the Faculty Club and she was elected by the board. Again quoting Miss Newcomer, “her contribution as a Vassar trustee was very real….Her experience on the faculty and as a student, and her current work in the Rockefeller Foundation, had given her a real understanding of the problems of the college and enabled her to offer constructive criticism and suggestion for change.”

Her resignation as trustee occurred in October 1942, and came because of a crippling illness which led eventually to her permanent confinement to a wheel chair. A friend and fellow alumna described her long battle against mistaken diagnoses, official predictions of helplessness and the end of her career.

“Sydnor simply rejected the idea of permanent immobility…. for a person who never knew what fatigue meant, who never could understand inactivity, either mental or physical, nothing could have been more tragic than paralysis.”

When Miss Walker realized that complete recovery was impossible, on her own initiative she went to one of the first rehabilitation clinics in New York and learned to help herself to a remarkable degree. Also she wrote, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation published in 1945, a report entitled “The First Hundred Days of the Atomic Age.”

In 1948 another opportunity to serve Vassar came to Miss Walker when Miss Blanding named her Assistant to the President. She returned to live in Metcalf House and became an active participant in Vassar’s development. Miss Blanding knew her as “a brilliant woman who never lost her zest for life nor her interest in things of the mind. She was a voracious reader and stimulating companion.”

After Miss Walker’s retirement in 1957, she bought a large colonial house in Millbrook, reminiscent of her native Kentucky. There she continued her vital interest in Vassar and in the many friendships she had made throughout her rich and colorful life.

Respectfully submitted,

Josephine Gleason
Clarice Pennock
Verna Spicer
Winifred Asprey, Chairman

Source: Online collection published by Vassar College Libraries. Faculty meeting minutes: XVIII-334-336.

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From The Rockefeller Foundation: A Digital History.

Sydnor H. Walker worked with the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial (LSRM) and the Rockefeller Foundation’s (RF) Division of the Social Sciences, helping to shape research in the social sciences over the course of two decades.

Walker was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1891. She received an A.B. in economics from Vassar College in 1913 and an M.A. from the University of Southern California in 1917.

She returned to Vassar in 1917, where she served as an instructor in economics. A colleague commented that Walker was appreciated by the students for “her quick wit and gaiety…although she could be sharply critical of the careless and the dilatory.”[1] In 1919 Walker left her teaching position to join an industrial relations consulting firm headed by Beardsley Ruml. She subsequently went abroad to Vienna and Russia to aid in European relief with the American Friends Service Committee.

Upon her return to the U.S. in 1924, Walker was recruited by Ruml to work for the LSRM as a research associate. She was a staunch advocate of using scientific and standardized methods to conduct research in the social sciences. While working for the LSRM, Walker continued her studies at Columbia University, receiving her Ph.D. in economics in 1928. Her dissertation, “Social Work and the Training of Social Workers,” was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1928.

When many of LSRM’s programs were consolidated with the RF in 1929 and a new Division of the Social Sciences created, Walker became Assistant Director of the division. She was promoted to Associate Director in 1933 and Acting Director in 1937. Among her interests at the RF, she was a proponent of improving the teaching of social work and the administration of social welfare programs. Her grant-making extended to many southern universities. She also contributed to the development of the social sciences outside the U.S., working with grantees in Europe and Latin America.

Resigning from the RF in 1943 for health reasons, she worked on a report for the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, “The First Hundred Days of the Atomic Age,” which was published in 1945.

She served as a trustee for Vassar College from 1939-1943 and was appointed assistant to the president of Vassar College in 1948, a position she held until 1957.

Sydnor H. Walker passed away in 1966. Former Vassar College President, Sarah Blanding, called her “a brilliant woman who never lost her zest for life nor her interest in things of the mind.”[2] Her officer diaries are available to researchers at the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC) and additional papers are in the Biographical Collection at the Vassar College Libraries.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

[1] Josephine Gleason et al. “Sydnor Harrison Walker: A Memorial Minute,” Vassar Faculty Meeting, December 1966, Biographical Files Collection, Vassar College Archives, Vassar Libraries.

[2] Gleason et al.

Source: Webpage, The Rockefeller Foundation: A Digital History. People/Sydnor H. Walker. Also the source for the portrait of Sydnor H. Walker used above.

 

Categories
Brookings Bryn Mawr Economists Gender Radcliffe Wisconsin

Brookings. Economics PhD Alumna, Helen Everett, 1924

 

Today we rejoin our series, “Get to Know an Economics PhD Alumna.”

Helen Meiklejohn née Everett (1891-1982) was the daughter of a Brown University philosophy professor, Walter Goodnow Everett. Helen received her A.B. from Bryn Mawr (1915), A.M. from Radcliffe (1918), and was among the first (!) PhDs awarded at Brookings (1924).

Helen Everett’s personal academic ambitions appear to have immediately taken a back seat to those of her husband, Alexander Meikeljohn, who had been a professor of philosophy and former colleague of Helen’s father at Brown. He actually knew her as a child. Before Helen and Alexander married in 1926, he had already served as Dean of Brown University (1901-1912) and as President of Amherst College (1912-1924). He was professor of philosophy at Wisconsin (1926-1938). He established the Experimental College of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1927-32). The Experimental College is considered “the forebearer of the Integrated Liberal Studies program at Wisconsin“. Alexander Meikeljohn had made a name for himself as a dynamic and passionate educational reformer and his picture was even on the cover of Time magazine (October 1, 1928). After Wisconsin’s Experimental College was closed in 1932 in no small part because of the fiscal austerity induced by the great depression, in 1938 Helen and Alexander switched full-time to his next big project for adult education, the San Francisco School of Social Studies that ended with WWII. Besides his legacy as an educational reformer, an even greater fame was achieved through his unconditional advocacy of free speech during the McCarthy era. He was selected for the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy–the award was presented by President Lyndon B. Johnson after Kennedy’s assassination.

Joseph Tussman (center) with Alec and Helen Meiklejohn, Berkeley 1961. Photo by David Tussman.

Since this is a post about Helen Everett, we move on to some details of her life and career. A casual newspaper search turned up numerous instances of Helen Meiklejohn speaking at a wide variety of progressive social and economic policy events after her marriage but the only post-marriage publication to have received any note was her chapter on pricing policy in the dress industry (see below).

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Born in Providence, R.I. on December 8, 1891 to Walter G. Everett and Harriet Mansfield Cleveland.

Died in Berkeley, CA on August 3, 1982.

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Education

1915. A.B., Bryn Mawr

1918. A. M. Radcliffe

1924. Ph.D. Robert Brookings Graduate School  of Poitics and Economics

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Employment

  • Vassar College. [1918/19(?)-1920] Instructor of Economics.
  • American Association for Labor Legislation in New York.
  • “Helen Everett left Vassar last June, worked a month as a factory worker in Cleveland in order to make reports to the Consumers’ League, and sailed in September for England, where she is studying at the London School of Economics.”
    Source: Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin, 1921, p. 27.
  • Institute of Economics (Washington, D.C.) [ca. 1924-26]
  • “Helen Everett Meiklejohn, wife of Alexander Meiklejohn of the University of Wisconsin, has been added to the staff of associate editors responsible for books on economics and political science, published by W. W. Norton & Co. “
    Source: July 1, 1928. Wisconsin State Journal p. 1.
  • San Francisco School of Social Studies

“Tussman: … Now, Meiklejohn had started before the war, he had started the San Francisco school of social studies. He was a great believer in adult education. It was a free-wheeling enterprise which had classes for working people, mostly, not devoted to career stuff, just general social theory and philosophy. We read things like Veblen, a good deal. And at one point, although I was still a graduate student, he asked me to teach a couple of classes. So I would drive out with Helen, his wife, who was a PhD in economics, and very bright, and another two guys, to Santa Rosa, where once a week we taught a class in Santa Rosa, and then drove back here to Berkeley, and once a week I met a class in San Francisco. I was doing that until the war. During the war the enterprise came to an end, but it was a rather interesting quixotic venture.”
Source: Lisa Rubens, Interviews from 2004 conducted with Joseph Tussman: Philosopher, Professor, Educator. University of California. The Bancroft Library, Regional Oral History Office. Berkeley, 2012.

  • Research Economist, Consumer Needs Unit, Office of Price Administration.
    Source: The Boston Globe, 26 February 1945, p. 11.

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Foreign Travel

I.

Arrived from Plymouth on S.S. Nieuw Amsterdam in Port of New York City on November 17, 1920.

[Her passport application was dated August 24, 1920 to leave New York on the S.S. Olympic on September 18, 1920 for the purpose of study in Great Britain, France, and Italy.]

II.

[From passport application filed June 1, 1922 in Berlin, Germany]

England. July 1921 to December 1921.
France. December 1921 to May 1922.
Germany (Berlin). May 1922 to September 1922.

Return September 23, 1922 Port of N.Y.C. [travelling with her parents]

“The Class Editor [1913] had news of Helen Everett indirectly the other day. She (the c.e.) sat next to two Vassar Seniors at luncheon, who, on finding that their neighbor was a Bryn Mawr alumna, immediately asked if she knew “Miss Everett.” On replying in the affirmative a most enthusiastic account of Helen’s career as an instructor at Vassar followed, ending with an expression of deep regret that she was no longer there. Helen is studying economics in London this winter, according to these same Vassar Seniors.”
Source: Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin, 1922, p. 27.

III.

Return from England (via Southampton to port of N.Y.C.) on October 23, 1925 S.S. Berengaria. [Alexander Meiklejohn travelled with her according to the ship manifest. They were married Wednesday, June 9, 1926 in Boston. (pre-honeymoon?)]

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Publications identified (to date)

Everett, Helen. 1924. The Reorganization of the British Coal Industry. Ph.D. thesis, Robert Brookings.

——. 1925. Book Review of “The Women’s Garment Workers: A History of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union.” American Economic Review 15(3) (September): 524–5.

——, with Isador Lubin [Lubin had been a student of Veblen’s at Missouri, had worked with Veblen at the wartime Food Administration, and with Mitchell in the Prices Section of the WIB.”]. The British Coal Dilemma. (New York, Macmillan, 1927).

——. Book Review of “A Theory of the Labor Movement” by Selig Perlman. New York: Macmillan, 1928. Social Service Review Vol. 3, No. 3 (Sept. 1929), pp. 523-525.

——. Book Review of “British Industry Today” by Ben M. Selekman and Sylvia Kopald Selekman. New York: Harper & Bros., 1929.

—— (Chapter on the dress industry), in Walton Hamilton (principal author, Gasoline industry.), Mark Adams (automobile industry), Albert Abrahamson (automobile tires), Irene Till, George Marshall (cottonseed industry) and Helen Meiklejohn. Price and Price Policies. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1938.  Vol. 7 of Reports prepared for the President’s Cabinet Committee on Price Policy.   [industries covered by other authors: whiskey and milk].

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Survived the Derailment of the Streamliner “City of San Francisco”
August 12, 1939 in Carlin, Nevada

…Mrs. Helen C. Meiklejohn, of 1525 LaLoma Avenue, Berkeley, told the same story as she smiled through bandages on her nose. Mrs. Meiklejohn, whose husband, Alexander, is connected with the University of Wisconsin, was in her berth but not asleep when the crash came.
She was thrown into the aisles, banging her nose and eyes, and then remained pinned for hours while volunteer workers tried to release her.
“I never was so glad to see anyone as I was the cowboy who finally climbed in and freed me. I had been bleeding all the while, though it wasn’t serious and I never was unconscious. The cowboys helped me climb out of the train and up to a girder to land.”

Source: Oakland Tribune, August 14, 1939, p. 3

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Helen Meiklejohn, Obituary

BERKELEY — A private family memorial service is pending for Helen Everett Meiklejohn, prominent professional economist and educator who had been a Berkeley resident since 1934.

A native of Providence R.I., Mrs. Meiklejohn died Aug. 3 [1982] in a Berkeley hospital. She was 89.

Mrs. Meiklejohn was the widow of Alexander Meiklejohn, noted educator and civil libertarian, and the youngest daughter of Walter Goodrow Everett, professor of philosophy at Brown University.

She graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1915 and held advanced degrees in Economics from Radcliffe and Washington University of St Louis [Note: the Brookings PhD program was originally part of the Washington University Program]. She taught at Vassar College and worked on the staff of the Brooking Institution in Washington D.C.

She was co-author, with Isador Lubin, of “The British Coal Dilemma” and published articles in a number of professional journals.

She married Mr. Meiklejohn in 1926 and lived in Madison, Wis., for a number of years before moving to Berkeley, where she and her husband founded and taught in the San Francisco School of Social Studies. She was a member of the Council on the National Institution of Mental Health and was for many years an active participant in Planned Parenthood.

She is survived by four stepchildren, Ann Stout, of Richmond, Kenneth Meiklejohn, of Alexandria, Va., Donald Meiklejohn, of Syracuse, N.Y., and Gordon Meiklejohn, of Denver Colo., a niece, Mrs. John Nason, of Keene, N.Y., and two nephews, George and Douglas Mercer.

Source: Obituary. Helen Meiklejohn. The Berkeley Gazette (August 11, 1982), p. 2.

Categories
Economist Market Economists Gender Harvard

Harvard. Galbraith suggests Barbara Bergmann for Women’s Studies Professorship, 1983

 

The departments of anthropology, english and psychology at Harvard appear to have been relatively quick to respond to the 1983 opportunity of hiring a professor in women’s studies. The Harvard Dean then wrote a memo to encourage other departments to come up with candidates as well. John Kenneth Galbraith put forward the name of Barbara Bergmann for the serious consideration of the department. Perhaps someone knows whether his suggestion was able to obtain any search traction?

___________________

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics

A. Michael Spence
Chairman

Littauer Center 200
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
(617) 495-2144

October 31, 1983

 

TO: Members of the Faculty, Economics Department

FROM: A. Michael Spence [Signed initials: AMS]

The attached is self-explanatory. Does anyone have ideas? Please let me know.

___________________

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Office of the Dean

5 University Hall
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
(617) 495-1566

October 4, 1983

TO: Chairmen of the Departments of Classics, Comparative Literature, Economics, Government, History, Philosophy, and Sociology

FROM: Henry Rosovsky

RE: Tenured Position in Women’s Studies

Last spring, the Committee on Women’s Studies informally notified several departments of the opportunity to nominate a distinguished scholar in the area of women’s studies. The appointment would be made entirely within a department with the understanding that the individual would devote at least half of his or her teaching time to Women’s Studies and play an active role in the future development of teaching and scholarly activities in that area.

Several departments (Anthropology, English, and Psychology) have already reported active searches; some have advanced to the short list stage. If your department is interested in pursuing this opportunity, please let my office know as soon as possible. If you wish to nominate a candidate, you should write to me describing the candidate (and the search procedure), and indicating what advantages will accrue to the department and to the Women’s Studies program if the position is assigned to your department. I expect that an assignment will be made by the end of the calendar year unless there is some compelling reason to delay.

dmg

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John Kenneth Galbraith
Harvard University
Cambridge

207 Littauer Center
November 10, 1983

Professor A. Michael Spence
Littauer 200

Dear Michael:

Would you think of Barbara Bergmann, now at University of Maryland? She is one of our Ph.D.s, a brilliant economist, articulate in written and oral expression and both deeply and intelligently concerned with women’s issues. When President of the AEA I established as you know the Committee on the State of Women I the profession. Barbara took an alert and effective part in its work. I have no thought as to her availability; I do urge that she be considered. It would be very good, indeed, to have her back.

Yours faithfully,
[signed]
John Kenneth Galbraith

JG/all

Source: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. John Kenneth Galbraith Personal Papers. Series 5. Harvard University File, 1949-1990. Box 526. Folder: “Harvard Department of Economics: General, 1975-1988”

Image Sources:  Barbara Bergmann in a Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University spotlight web post. John Kenneth Galbraith (22 Feb. 1982) at “Top Management Forum” in Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam. Wikimedia Commons, from the Dutch National Archives.

 

 

 

Categories
Bryn Mawr Columbia Economists Gender Policy Social Work Yale

Yale. Economics Ph.D. Alumna, Kate Holladay Claghorn, 1896

 

Today’s post adds another woman to the series “Get to Know an Economics Ph.D. alumna”. Kate Holladay Claghorn studied political economy under Franklin H. Giddings at Bryn Mawr followed by coursework with William G. Sumner and Arthur T. Hadley at Yale in industrial history, advanced economics, political science, and anthropology. I have not been able to find a digital link to her 1896 Yale Ph.D. thesis “Law, Nature, and Convention: A Study in Political Theory”, but much of her published work is easily accessible now on line.

Fun Fact: Kate Holladay Claghorn was a boarder in the John R. Commons home while she worked for him on the immigration sections of the Final Report of the Industrial Commission, Vol. XIX (1902). (Source: John R. Commons, Myself, pp. 68, 76.)

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Kate Holladay Claghorn
Life and Career

1863. Born Dec. 12 in Aurora, Illinois

Brooklyn Heights Seminary

1892. A.B., Bryn Mawr

1892-93. Graduate work at Bryn Mawr with Professor Franklin H. Giddings, professor of political economy

1896. Ph.D. Yale University. Professors Sumner and Hadley. Studied industrial history, advanced economics, political science, and anthropology

1898 to 1900 she acted as Secretary-Treasurer of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae.

1900-01. Assisted John Rogers Commons in his study of immigration for the United States Census Bureau 1902. Expert in the United States Industrial Commission.

1901-1902 was research worker for the Economic Year Book.

1902. Division of Methods and Results, United States Census.

1902-1905. Assistant registrar. New York City Tenement House Department.

1905. Acting Registrar. New York City Tenement House Department.

1906-1912. Registrar. New York City Tenement House Department.

1909. Claghorn was one of 60 signers, 19 of whom were women, of the “Call for the Lincoln Emancipation Conference to Discuss Means for Securing Political and Civil Equality for the Negro” written by Oswald Garrison Villard, which became the founding document of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

1912-1932. Instructor and head of the Department of Social Research, New York School of Social Work.

1918. First woman to be elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association.

1932. Retired.

1938. Died of a cerebral hemorrhage May 22 in Greenwich where she was living.
Buried with her parents in Maple Grove Cemetery, Kew Gardens, N.Y.

Source for most items above: Yale University Obituary Record, p. 231.

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Obituary

New York, March 24.—Miss Kate Holladay Claghorn, author and sociologist, who was a member of the faculty of the New York School of Social Work from 1912 to 1932, died Tuesday night at her home in Greenwich, Conn.

Source: The Times-Tribune (Scranton, Pennsylvania), Thursday, May 24, 1938, p. 2.

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Graduate School Alumnae Directory,
Yale University
[1920]

Kate Holladay Claghorn, B.A. Bryn Mawr College 1892.

Miss Claghorn received her Doctor’s degree in 1896. From 1898 to 1900 she acted as Secretary-Treasurer of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae. From 1900 to 1901 she was Expert in the United States Industrial Commission, and in 1901-1902 was research worker for the Economic Year Book. In 1902 she worked in the Division of Methods and Results, United States Census; in 1902-1906 she was Assistant Registrar, and in 1906-1912, Registrar, of the Tenement House Department of New York City. Since 1912 she has been head of the Research Department of the New York School of Social Work.

Her dissertation is entitled “Law, Nature, and Convention: A Study in Political Theory.” She has also written “Juvenile Delinquency in Rural New York,” issued as Children’s Bureau Publication, No. 32.

Source: Alumnae Graduate School, Yale University, 1894-1920. New Haven: Yale University, 1920, p. 46.

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Writers of the Day
[1897]

Kate Holladay Claghorn, whose scholarly paper, “Burke: a Centenary Perspective,” in the July Atlantic [Volume 80, No. 477 (July, 1897), pp. 84-95], shows both breadth of knowledge and maturity of thought, has only recently begun to write for publication, having but lately completed a college course. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1892, spent a year in graduate study at that institution, and then went to Yale, where she entered the graduate school, taking the degree of Ph.D. in 1896. There is an interesting fact connected with this graduation at Yale. Although Yale had granted degrees to women in 1894 and 1895, in 1896 women took part for the first time in the public commencement exercises, walking in the procession about the campus, sitting in Battell Chapel with the other candidates, and going upon the platform to receive diplomas. As Miss Claghorn happened by chance to head the line of women as they passed up to the platform, she was, it turned out, the first woman to receive as a reward for regular academic work done in the university an academic degree publicly from the hand of the president. Miss Claghorn’s particular interests are in the general field of the social sciences. At Bryn Mawr she was under the especial direction of Professor Franklin H. Giddings, then professor of political economy there, now professor of sociology at Columbia University. At Yale she studied under Professors Sumner and Hadley, following courses that they gave in industrial history, advanced economics, political science, and anthropology. Her thesis for the doctorate was a study in political theory, entitled “Law, Nature, and Convention.” While at Yale Miss Claghorn contributed to the Outlook a short article on Bryn Mawr. In the Yale Review for February, 1896 [Vol. IV. No. 4, pp. 426-440], she had an article entitled “The Ethics of Copyright.” Last winter she contributed to the Outlook five articles on “College Training for Women,” and in May she published, through Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., a book under the same title, “College Training for Women,” in which the matter printed in the Outlook is incorporated, in revised form, but which contains so much additional matter as to be practically quite a new production.

Source: The Writer, Vol. 10, No. 7 (July, 1897), pp. 102-103.

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A Card Index That Santa Claus Might Follow
[1912]

Miss Kate Claghorn is holding down a man’s job in the tenement house department because there was no man smart enough to fill it. Twice she stood the test of an examination framed in Columbia University, which was designed, if anything, to eliminate women from the competition, but which in the end eliminated the men. The position of registrar of records is one of the “fat” jobs. It has the handsome little salary of $3,000 attached to it, and it takes the statistical mind of a thinking machine to do the work that goes along with it.

An inkling of the intricacy of Miss Claghorn’s work can be got from the fact that recently she finished, in six months, a complete survey of all the five boroughs of New York City, recording on cards for instant reference the condition of every dwelling and tenement house in the city. Not a roof was passed by. Santa Claus himself might follow Miss Claghorn’s card index and no one would be overlooked at Christmas time.

Source: From Frank Parker Stockbridge. “A Woman Who Spends Over Forty Million Dollars Each Year and Some Others Who Hold Positions of Financial Power and Moral Responsibility in the Government of New York City.” The American City, vol. 6. No. 6 (June, 1912), p.816.

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Woman’s Who’s Who of America
[1914]

Claghorn, Kate Holladay, 81 Columbia Heights, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Lecturer, teacher: b. Aurora, Ill. (came to N.Y. City in infancy); dau. Charles and Martha Holladay; ed. Bryn Mawr, A.B. ’92; Yale, Ph.D. ’96. Engaged in research work for U.S. Industrial Comm’n, 1890-1901; in U.S. Census Office, 1902; ass’t registrar of records, 1902-06; registrar Tenement House Dep’t, City of N.Y., 1906-12; lecturer on permanent staff N.Y. School of Philanthropy, 1912—. Author: College Training for Women, 1897; also contributor to magazines. Mem. Women’s Political Union, N.Y. Mem. Am. Economic Ass’n, Am. Statistical Ass’n, Soc. For Italian Immigrants, Little Italy Ass’n, Women’s Univ. Club. Recreation: Music.

Source: Woman’s Who’s Who of America, 1914-1915, John William Leonard, ed. New York: American Commonwealth Company (1914), p. 178.

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DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL RESEARCH
[1923-1924]

Miss Claghorn

The task of social research is to collect and arrange the facts needed as a basis for dealing with social problems either of the individual or the group.

Opportunities for Employment

  1. Field investigators and research workers in the Federal Service, as for example in the Bureau of Labor Statistics or in the Children’s Bureau of the Department of Labor, in State or Municipal Service, in organizations interested in housing or Americanization, or in some one of the various investigations or surveys undertaken under the direction of private individuals or committees, or foundations.
  2. Statisticians, in the Federal, State or Municipal Service, or in private organizations engaged in social work.
  3. Teachers of social statistics.

The demand for trained workers in this field is not yet so strong or so steady as in some others, but there are indications that the demand is growing and that students with special qualifications for this kind of work and special interest in it may be encouraged to prepare for it.

Requirements for the Diploma in this Field

Methods of Social Research (Soc. Res. 1, 2 and 3), The Method of Social Case Work (S.C.W. 1), field work in the Department of Social Case Work (S.C.W. 301) 2 days a week for one Quarter. Social Work and Social Progress (S.C.W. 3), Vocational Course in Social Research for 3 Quarters (S.C.W. 201), and additional course to total 84 points.

Soc. Res. 1. Methods of Social Research, 2 points, Fall Quarter. Miss Claghorn.

The planning of an investigation, the framing of schedules or questionnaires, the construction of statistical tables and simple diagrams.

Soc. Res. 2. Methods of Social Research, 2 points, Winter and Spring Quarters. Miss Claghorn.

Simple forms of analysis of statistical material, graphs, ratios, averages, measures of dispersion.

Soc. Res. 3. Methods of Social Research, 2 points, Spring Quarter. Miss Claghorn.

Elementary theory of probability, fitting of data to the normal curve, fitting to trend lines, correlation, linear and non-linear, reliability of measures.

Soc. Res. 4. The Immigrant, 2 points, Fall Quarter. Miss Claghorn.

Soc. Res. 5. The Immigrant, 2 points, Winter Quarter. Miss Claghorn.

To deal with people successfully, it is necessary to know something of what they are and what they think and feel. A large proportion of the persons with whom social agencies come in contact are foreigners of many different varieties, each with peculiar habits and characteristics which largely determine their reactions to the new environment. As a help toward understanding our foreign peoples, this course undertakes the study of the racial heritages, economic background, and the social institutions of the more important immigrant groups from Europe and the Near East.

Soc. Res. 201. Vocational Course, Social Investigation, Fall Winter and Spring Quarters. Miss Claghorn.

Study and practice of methods of social investigation in some special field selected according to the needs of the student or group of students electing this course. In the past, studies have been made in this Department in immigrant life, housing, and juvenile delinquency.

Soc. Res. 301. Field Work, 4 points.

Two days a week for one Quarter in some agency carrying on social research may be arranged in accordance with the special needs of the student.

Source: Charity Organization Society of the City of New York, the New York School of Social Work, General Announcement 1923-1924 (April Bulletin), pp. 30-31.

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Students that have received the Degree of Bachelor of Arts from Bryn Mawr College

Kate Holladay Claghorn. Group, Greek and Latin.

Leonia, N.J. Prepared by Mr. Caskie Harrison, Brooklyn, New York City: passed examination covering the Freshman year in Columbia College, 1888-89. A.B., 1892; Ph.D., Yale University, 1896. Graduate Student in Sociology, Bryn Mawr College, 1892-93; Graduate Student in Political Science, Yale University, 1893-95, and University Scholar, 1894-95; Secretary-Treasurer of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, 1898-1900.

Source: Program Bryn Mawr College 1900-01, p. 89.

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Partial List of publications (with links)

Kate Holladay Claghorn. College Training for Women. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1897.

___________. “Occupation for the [woman] college graduate,” (Association of Collegiate Alumnae. Publications, series 3, no. 3 (February, 1900), pp. 62-66. 1900).

___________. “The problem of occupation for college women,” Educational Review, Vol. XV (March, 1898), pp. 217-230.
Appears to be same publication as (Association of Collegiate Alumnae, Publications Series 2, no. 66).

Final Report of the Industrial Commission, Vol. XIX (1902).

___________. “Slavs, Magyars and Some Others in the New Immigration”. Charities Vol. Xiii, No. 10 (Dec. 3, 1904), pp. 199-205.

___________. “The Limitations of Statistics,” Review of William H. Allen Efficient Democracy. In Quarterly Publications of the American Statistical Association, New Series, No. 81 (Vol. XI) March, 1908. Pages 97-104.

___________. “The Use and Misuse of Statistics in Social Work.” In Quarterly Publications of the American Statistical Association, New Series, No. 82 (Vol. XI) June, 1908. Pages 150-167.

___________. “Record Keeping as an Aid to Enforcement” in Housing and Town Planning, Carol Aronovici, ed. Philadelphia: American Academy of Political and Social Science (1914), pp.117-124.

___________. Juvenile Delinquency in Rural New York. U. S. Department of Labor. Children’s Bureau, no. 32, 1918.

___________. The Immigrant’s Day in Court. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1923.

___________.  Statistical Department of the Municipal Court of Philadelphia.  A Report by the Bureau of Municipal Research of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: Thomas Skelton Harrison Foundation, 1931.

Further publications can be found in the longer bibliography provided in the Bibliography of Female Economic Thought, Kirsten K. Madden, Janet A. Seiz and Michèle Pujol, editors. London: Routledge, 2004, pp. 107-108.

Image Source: Frank Parker Stockbridge. “A Woman Who Spends Over Forty Million Dollars Each Year and Some Others Who Hold Positions of Financial Power and Moral Responsibility in the Government of New York City.” The American City, vol. 6. No. 6 (June, 1912), pp 814-. [photo of Kate Holladay Claghorn on page 816].