Category: Gender

Categories
Bryn Mawr Economists Gender

Bryn Mawr. Economics Ph.D. Alumna, Marion Parris, 1908

 

Searching the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division for economist portraits, I came across the above picture of Bryn Mawr professor Marion Parris. Figuring there is always room at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror’s series “Get to know an economics Ph.D. alumna”, I did a quick day’s work surfing familiar and new internet beaches in search of any information about Marion Parris.

Her career path was fairly simple. She was a star economics student who graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1901 to go on to get her Ph.D. in economics there and later to join its faculty where her husband also taught–history professor William Roy Smith. Shortly following her husband’s death in 1938, she resigned her Bryn Mawr professorship.

She was awarded the Bryn Mawr European Fellowship that she used to attend the University of Vienna. “It is awarded annually to a member of the graduating class of Bryn Mawr College on the ground of excellence in scholarship. The fellowship is intended to defray the expenses of one year’s study and residence at some foreign university, English or Continental. The choice of a university may be determined by the holder’s own preference, subject to the approval of the Faculty.” [Bryn Mawr College Calendar. Undergraduate and Graduate Courses, 1909. Vol. II, Part 3, (May, 1909), p. 65.]

Vitals: Born Marion Nora Parris on 22 May 1879 in New York City. Died 20 December 1968 in Mount Vernon, New York. Married in New York, June 1912. No children.

The previous post lists the courses Marion Parris taught in 1909-10.

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Publications

Parris, Marion. Total Utility and the Economic Judgment Compared with Their Ethical Counterparts. Philadelphia: J. C. Winston Co., 1909. [Her Ph.D. dissertation]

__________. Review of “The Common Sense of Political Economy” by P. H. Wicksteed.  American Academy of Political and Social Science, Annals Vol. 37 (January/June 1911), pp. 574-75.

__________. Review of Individualism by Warner Fite. Four Lectures on the Significance of Consciousness for Social Relations. New York: Longmans, Green and Company, 1911. American Economic Review (June 1911) pp. 312-314.

__________. Review of Valuation: its Nature and Laws by Wilbur Marshall Urban. London: Swan Sonnenschein and Company; New York, Macmillan Company, 1909. Political Science Quarterly, Vol. XXVI, No. 1 (March 1911), pp. 169-171.

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Newspaper Report from Australia (1934)

Distinguished American Woman
Professor Marion Parris Smith, of Bryn Mawr

Professor of economics at Bryn Mawr, the famous American women’s college in Pennsylvania, Professor Marion Parris Smith is visiting Melbourne at present with her husband, Professor William Roy Smith, who is professor of history at Bryn Mawr. Possessed of an exceptionally attractive personality and with a ready and sympathetic interest in all outside affairs, Professor Marion Parris Smith’s interest in economics has extended from her college work to national affairs. As economic adviser for Montgomery county she is in close touch with the progress of the National Recovery Act—N.R.A.—which she believes to be based on sound fundamental principles. “Conditions vary so much that I cannot generalize about its success,” she said. “I am entirely in sympathy, and I believe that its success will mean more scope for individual initiative. It will only be a question of playing the same game with different rules. One of the greatest difficulties has been in obtaining agreements between States to obtain uniform conditions. Last year the Minister for Labour (Miss Frances Perkins) was working on this problem of ‘bootleg labour.’” The term “bootleg,” she explained, was used now to describe anything illicit.

“The results of the N.R.A. will probably turn out to be uneven in their effect,” she said. “So much depends on individual conditions, but already the industrial east and the south are showing amazing improvements.”

Professor Smith is keenly interested in studying the manner in which other countries are meeting the depression, and 45[?] huge volumes are the result of a collection of clippings from foreign papers relating to depression which she began in 1929 when she and her husband were in Egypt. The clippings have been indexed under broad headings, such as tariffs and international trade, agricultural depression, and the consumer, and next year Professor Smith’s advance students will begin the task of editing them. It is possible that her research work will be published later in book form.

“I am convinced that the ‘domestic allotment system’ which has been established by the Bureau of Agriculture to cut down over-production is a great thing,” Professor Smith said. “The farmers have had no relief since 1920. Although we have had co-operative systems in distribution the same system has never been applied to production before. I like it because it will be done by the people on the spot, elected by the farmers themselves.”

Professor Marion Smith is herself a graduate of Bryn Mawr. She did her post-graduate course at the University of Vienna—the first foreign woman to take the course in economics there—prefacing it by a six months course in languages at the University of Jena.

Until the depression Professor Smith found it easy to obtain positions for all her post-graduate students, most of whom take up research work along specialized lines. One of her students is economic adviser to the tariff committee in Washington; another is economic secretary to the president of one of the largest banks in New York. The graduates—the alumnae—take an important part in the life of Bryn Mawr. They have raised three large endowments, and some of the finest buildings at the college stand to their credit. Many of America’s distinguished women are among the college graduates—Margaret Barnes, whose novel, “Years of Grace,” was awarded a Pulitzer Prize; Miriam O’Brien, who holds a woman’s record for rock climbing; and Katharine Hepburn, the film actress, among them.

Source: The Argus, 31 July 1934, p. 10.

Image Source: Marion Parris Smith ca. 1916 from the Bain Collection in Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.

Categories
Bryn Mawr Economics Programs Gender

Bryn Mawr. Undergraduate and graduate economic courses, Williamson and Parris, 1909

 

This post resulted from my search for biographical/career information concerning the Bryn Mawr economics Ph.D. alumna, Marion Parris. Next post will be devoted to biographical detail. This post gives us a snap-shot of the Bryn Mawr undergraduate and graduate economics programs as of 1909/10 which is just after Marion Parris’ fellowship to study at the University of Vienna. 

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Economics and Politics Faculty

Charles Clarence Williamson, Ph.D., Associate in Economics and Politics.

A.B., Western Reserve University, 1904; Ph.D., Columbia University, 1907. Assistant in Economics and Graduate Student, Western Reserve University, First Semester, 1904-05; Scholar in Political Economy, University of Wisconsin, 1904-05; Graduate Student, University of Wisconsin, 1905-06; University Fellow in Political Economy, Columbia University, 1906-07; Research Assistant of the Carnegie Institution, 1905-07.

Marion Parris, A.B., Associate in Economics and Politics.

A.B., Bryn Mawr College, 1901. Graduate student, Bryn Mawr College, 1902-05. Fellow in Economics and Politics, 1905-06; Bryn Mawr College Research Fellow and Student in Economics and Politics, University of Vienna, 1906-07.

 

Undergraduate and Graduate Instruction in Economics and Politics.

The instruction in this department is under the direction of Dr. Charles Clarence Williamson, Associate in Economics and Politics, and Miss Marion Parris, Associate in Economics and Politics. The instruction offered by this department covers twenty-three hours of lectures and recitations a week; it includes ten hours a week of undergraduate minor and major work; two hours a week of free elective work; five hours a week of post-major work open only to graduates and to undergraduates who have completed the major course in economics and politics; and six hours a week of graduate work.

The object of the undergraduate courses in economics and politics is three-fold: first, to trace the history of economic and political thought; second, to describe the development of economic and political institutions; and third, to consider the practical economic and political questions of the day. Instruction is given by lectures. The lectures are supplemented by private reading, by oral and written quizzes, by written theses and reports, and by such special class-room exercises as the different subjects require.

 

First Year.
(Minor Course.)
(Given in each year.)

1st Semester.

Introduction to Economics, Miss Parris.

Five hours a week.

The objects of this course are to introduce the students to the economic problems in the modern state, to familiarise them with the main problems in economic science, and to train them to think clearly on economic subjects. The main work of the semester is the study of the nature and extent of supply, including a brief outline of economic geography, the nature and laws of demand, an introduction to the theory of wants, value and fixing of price, and the theory of economic institutions, methods of production, methods of exchange, international exchange, and transportation problems. The lectures are supplemented by a large amount of reading from standard economic authors. Numerous short papers are required and oral and written quizzes are frequently held.

 

2nd Semester.

Introduction to Politics, Dr. Williamson.

Five hours a week.

This is a study of the organisation and workings of American political institutions, as much use being made of historical and comparative materials as the limits of the course permit. The legislative, executive and judicial branches of the national and state governments are studied, with some attention to their origin and development, and with special reference to their efficiency and amenability to popular control. Lectures are given on the organisation and legislative methods of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, the election and powers of the president, the civil service and the federal courts. A brief time is allotted to a similar study of the state governments, after which problems of municipal government, political parties, suffrage and elections are treated. Lastly, the functions of the modern state are examined with special reference to the contentions of individualism and socialism.

 

Second Year.
(Given in each year)

1st Semester.

Social Politics, Dr. Williamson.

Five hours a week.

The work of the preceding year is continued by a thorough study of the economic position of the working classes under the industrial regime. The rise of the problem is traced; radical and conservative programmes of reform are examined; the arguments for and against state action are discussed in connection with a concrete study of legislation in various countries designed to ameliorate the conditions of employment and to promote the economic and social well-being of the weaker classes of society. The methods of securing legal enactment, constitutional hindrances, and the difficulties of enforcing factory laws are treated with special reference to the experience of American states. The chief topics taken up are the industrial revolution and the factory system, socialism and the labor movement, labor organisations and the methods of securing industrial peace, the labor of women and children, factory inspection, employers’ liability, workmen’s insurance, and industrial education.

 

2nd Semester.

History of Economic Thought, Miss Parris.

Five hours a week.

The object of this course is twofold. First, to trace the development of certain of the most fundamental concepts in modern economic theory, such as the theories of value, concepts of capital and interest, rent, wages, monopoly, etc., in order to appreciate critically modern economic theory. Secondly, by relating economic thinking to the political and economic history, and to the religious and philosophical thinking of the successive historical epochs studied, to give the student a proper historical background for further study.

The students will be required to read critically portions of Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics in translation, also selections from the mediaeval canonistic writers: Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Vol. I; Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy and Taxation; Malthus’s Principles of Population; and selections from Senior’s Political Economy, John Stuart Mills’s Principles of Political Economy, and Jevons’s Political Economy. Numerous short papers, written quizzes, and one report on some specially assigned subject will be required.

Group: Economics and Politics, with History, or with Law, or with Philosophy.

Free Elective Courses.

Methods of Social Research, Miss Parris.

Two hours a week throughout the year.

(Given in 1909-10 and again in 1911-12.)

The course begins with a brief account of modern institutions for social research and social reform. Various methods of social research will then be studied and reports required on special problems in social statistics, and the collection and graphical representation of material. Booth’s Life and Labour in London, Bailey’s Modern Social Conditions and Henderson’s Modern Methods of Charity will be used as text-books. The course is open only to those students who have attended the minor course in economics and politics.

 

Municipal Government, Dr. Williamson.

Two hours a week throughout the year.

(Given in 1910-11.)

The course consists of a general survey of the more important problems of American city government. The chief topics treated are, the origin of the city, the growth of urban population, with its economic and political results, the position of the city is the state government, political parties and municipal government, municipal elections, and the municipal functions, such as police and fire protection, sanitation, and education. The policy of municipal ownership of public utilities will be examined in its various aspects. This course is open only to those students who have attended the minor course in economics and politics.

 

Post-major Courses.

The post major courses are designed to bridge over the interval between the ordinary undergraduate studies and graduate work. As the amount of time given to undergraduate subjects differs in different colleges graduate students frequently find it advisable to elect some of these courses.

Public Economy, Dr. Williamson.

Two hours a week throughout the year.

(Given in 1908-09 and again in 1910-11.)

This course begins with a discussion of the nature of the public economy and its relation to private economics. After tracing the development of the public economy, theories of the economic activity of the modern state are examined. This is followed by a discussion of public expenditure, its growth in modern democratic societies, and its social and industrial effects. A rapid survey of the history and theories of taxation serves as an introduction to a special study of the problems of federal, state, and local taxation in the United States, comparisons being made with the leading foreign countries. Attention is also called to the nature and significance of other forms of public revenue. The course concludes with a discussion of the theory of public credit and the policy of national and local governments in regard to public debts. This course was given as a course of three hours a week in 1908-09.

 

Industrial Problems, Dr. Williamson.

Three hours a week throughout the year.

(Given in 1909-10 and again in 1911-12.)

The lectures of this course deal with certain economic problems which involve political action. Among the more important subjects taken up are the following: problems of money and banking; the commercial policy of the principal countries with special reference to the tariff situation in the United States; the rise of the transportation problem and a comparison of the methods of government control in use in various countries; industrial combinations, their development and their relation to the state. Typical combinations will be studied and the results of anti-trust legislation examined. The aim is to put before the student the significant facts of our commercial and industrial development, accompanied by an economic analysis of the problems created and a discussion of the political factors to be reckoned with in their solution.

 

Theoretical Sociology, Miss Parris.

Two hours a week throughout the year.

(Given in 1908-09 and again in 1909-10.)

This course is designed to introduce the students to the problems of modern sociology. The first semester’s work will be a history of sociological theory. The students will read selections from Auguste Comte, Herbert Spenser, Professor Giddings, and others. In the second semester the various social problems confronting the modern state will be considered, such as the congestion of population, housing and transportation problems in American and Continental cities, immigration and race problems in America, the standard of living among various economic groups, etc.

The lectures are supplemented by written reports on specially assigned reading and by written and oral quizzes.

 

The History of Political Theory, Miss Parris.

Three hours a week throughout the year.

(Given in 1910-11.)

The object of this course is to trace the history of certain political concepts, such as the ideas of liberty, sovereignty, state, government, etc. The first semester will be devoted to ancient and mediaeval political theory. In the second semester modern political theory will be studied. The following books will be read during the year: Plato’s Republic; Aristotle’s Politics; Machiavelli’s Prince; Hobbes’ Leviathan; Locke’s Essays on Government; Rousseau’s Social Contract; Burgess’s Political Science and Constitutional Law.

 

Graduate Courses.

Six hours a week of seminary work and graduate lectures are offered each year to graduate students of economics and politics accompanied by the direction of private reading and original research, and the courses are varied from year to year so that they may be pursued by students through three or more consecutive years. The books needed by the graduate students are collected in the seminary library of the department. No undergraduates are admitted to graduate courses or to the seminary library, but the post-major courses of the department amounting to five hours a week may be elected by graduate students.

 

Economic Seminary, Dr. Williamson.

Three hours a week throughout the year.

The methods of instruction in the seminary are designed to guide advanced students in special research work along the lines indicated by the titles of the courses. Some lectures are given but the main attention is devoted to the presentation and criticism of the results of studies made by the students themselves.

In 1908-09 the seminary is devoted to a study of selected topics in the financial and industrial history of the United States.

In 1909-10 the government of American cities will be the principal subject for the work of the seminary.

In 1910-11 labor problems will be the subject for seminary study. The lectures will trace the rise of the problem, the history and functions of labor organisations, and certain aspects of labor legislation. The seminary will meet two hours a week in this year.

 

Seminary in the Theory of Value, Miss Parris

Two hours a week throughout the year.

(Given in 1908-09.)

This course is a critical study of modern theories of value. A short historical introduction serves as a review of the principal economic theories of value in the English and German schools. The main work of the year is a study of the modern German and Austrian writers. The works of Ehrenfels, Meinong, Kraus, Kreibig, and Chuel are studied and criticised.

 

Seminary in Utilitarianism in Economics, Miss Parris.

Two hours a week throughout the year.

(Given in 1909-10 and again in 1911-12.)

The object of this course is to study the influence of utilitarian philosophy and ethics in shaping the economic theory of the English classical school. Paley, Bentham, Adam Smith, James Mill, Ricardo, Malthus, and John Stuart Mill are read critically.

 

Seminary in Capital and Interest, Miss Parris.

Three hours a week throughout the year.

(Given in 1910-11.)

The theories of capital of modern German, American, and Italian economists are studied and critically compared.

 

Economic Journal Club, Dr. Williamson and Miss Parris.

Two hours once a fortnight throughout the year.

At the meetings recent books and articles are reviewed and the results of special investigations are presented for discussion, comment, and criticism.

 

Source: Bryn Mawr College Calendar. Undergraduate and Graduate Courses, 1909. Vol. II, Part 3, (May, 1909), pp. 13, 130-134.

 

 

Categories
Chicago Economists Gender Iowa

Iowa State. Economics PhD alumna, Alison Comish Thorne, 1939

 

This post is the result of some rummaging in the Iowa State University economics department website, hoping to find material on Albert Gailord Hart for the previous post. While it appears that Hart came and went with hardly a footprint in the Iowa State (web-)sand, I did discover a very nice historical timeline for the Iowa State economics department. Moseying down that timeline, I made the acquaintance of the first economics Ph.D. at Iowa State College, Alison Comish Thorne. Obviously she has meet the membership requirement to be included in our series “Meet an economics Ph.D. alumna”, so I left the Iowa State economics website to search for more about Alison Comish Thorne’s life and career.

Of particular interest for Economics in the Rear-view Mirror is the account of her graduate student experience, especially pp. 24-42 of her autobiography (jstor access required) Leave the Dishes in the Sink (2002). A copy of Alison Comish Thorne’s c.v. is available at a special Utah State University library webpage memorializing her contributions.

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Selected Early and Late Publications

Thorne, Alison Comish. Capacity to Consume, American Economic Review vol. 26, no. 2 (June, 1936), pp. 292-5.

__________________. Evaluations of Consumption in Modern Thought. Economics Ph.D. thesis, Iowa State College, 1938.

__________________. Evaluations of Consumption in Scale-of-Living Studies, Social Forces vol. 19, no. 4 (May, 1941), 510-518.

__________________. Women mentoring women in economics in the 1930s, in Mary Ann Dimand, Robert W. Dimand, and Evelyn L. Forget, eds. Women of Value: Feminist Essays in the History of Women in Economics (Brookfield: Edward Elgar, 1995), pp. 60-70.

__________________. Leave the Dishes in the Sink—Adventures of an Activist in Conservative Utah. (University Press of Colorado and Utah State University Press, 2002).

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From the Economics Department Timeline, Iowa State University

Alison Comish Thorne received first PhD

The Doctor of Philosophy in general economics was first offered in 1937; the first PhD was granted to Alison Comish Thorne in 1939. She was the first woman student in the Iowa State economics department to attempt a PhD.

Thorne’s dissertation entitled “Evaluations of Consumption in Modern Thought” was written under Elizabeth Hoyt and Margaret Reid. In the process of working on her PhD, Thorne had an interim year at the University of Chicago, where she studied under Hazel Kyrk.

Thorne’s father, himself an economics PhD, authored a pioneer book in consumer economics and had been a doctoral candidate with Theodore Schultz at the University of Wisconsin.

Alison Comish had married Wynne Thorne in 1937. After earning her PhD at Iowa State, her academic career was delayed not only by the arrival of their five children, but also by anti-nepotism rules at Utah State University, where her husband had become head of agronomy and then director of the ag experiment station and vice president for university research. In addition to being a full-time wife and mother of five, she held state and local elected and appointed positions, served on the Governor’s Committee on the Status of Women, and wrote on employment of women and on poverty. These contributions have been recognized by distinguished service awards from several of these boards and councils and from Utah State University, the American Association of University Women, Business and Professional Women, and Soroptomists. She also received the Governor’s Award for Community Service.

Because administrators’ spouses were not allowed on the faculty, she did not join the USU faculty until 1965, aided in part by the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. She began teaching after an invitation from a professor in the College of Family Life.

After playing a key role in organizing the newly created federal war on poverty programs in Utah, Thorne was invited to teach classes in the USU Sociology Department, as well. Thus, she became a lecturer in sociology, home economics, and consumer education at Utah State University at age 51, 28 years after earning her PhD. She was ineligible for tenure because she insisted on keeping her teaching just under half time in order to give time to her family and to community work.

After joining the staff of USU, she helped initiate the Status of Women Committee and the introductory course in women’s studies, which she taught for more than ten years. She organized and became the first coordinator of Women in International Development (WID).

She continued teaching and doing community work and in 1985, after a university-wide blue-ribbon committee reviewed her credentials, she was promoted to full professor. Because of her age she became “professor emeritus.” With a twinkle in her eye she remarked that she is the only person in the history of Utah State University to leap from lecturer to full professor in one fell swoop.

Of her five children, none became economists, although three became professors. Two of these professors are mothers with husbands in academia, something that would have been impossible in the 1930s.

Source:  Iowa State University, Department of Economics. Compiled by D. Gruca from official university publications and departmental files as well as

I. W. Arthur, “Development of the Field of Economics at Iowa State.”
Nancy Wolff and Jim Hayward, “The Historical Development of the Department of Economics at Iowa State, 1929 to 1985.”
G. Shepherd,“History of Economics at ISU.”

[Also Note: Jim Hayward and Nancy Wolff. The Historical Development of the Department at Iowa State University, 1869-1928.]

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Women of Caliber, Women of Cache Valley: Alison Comish Thorne

A Woman of Quality

Alison Comish Thorne challenged established perceptions of “womanhood” in order to instigate social change, and admonished other women of her generation to do the same. In a speech she gave in 1949, Alison encouraged women to “let the dishes wait.” She did not want women to lose their sense of personal identity as they fulfilled their roles as wives and mothers. She argued that women should not judge themselves or other women based on the tidiness of their homes. Alison demonstrated for women of Cache Valley that achieving an education and pursuing a career while being a wife and mother could be a reality. She balanced her professional responsibilities with her family duties and received personal fulfilment from both.

Alison was a trailblazer in the world of female higher education. Her pursuit for higher education began at a young age. In 1930, at sixteen years old, Alison attended Brigham Young University. In 1934, she graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Education. Then, in 1935, she earned a Master’s degree in Consumption Economics from Iowa State University. In 1938, Alison became the first woman to receive a Ph. D. in Consumption Economics from Iowa State University.

Second Wave Feminism and the Equal Rights Amendment

Ahead of her time, Alison brought second wave feminism to Cache Valley. Along with many other women during the mid-twentieth century, Alison took upon herself the legacy of Alice Paul, an early-twentieth century suffragette and author of the original Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). When first introduced in 1923, the original ERA championed for both men’s and women’s rights, but took into consideration “women’s distinct needs.” The amendment’s objective was to establish men and women as equal under the law and focused on the right of women to compete equally with men in “all aspects of social and economic life.” Alice Paul opposed “protective legislation”—gender based laws written with the intention of “protecting” women from exploitation that, in reality, prevented women from pursuing work in particular professions, limited the number of hours they were allowed to work, and restricted pay rates. Despite Alice Paul’s valiant effort, the amendment did not pass.[1]

“Equality does not mean sameness.”

The ERA Alison promoted offered an updated version of Paul’s original amendment. Alison’s version of the ERA raised the issues of access to higher education, participation in the draft, and sexual discrimination within the Social Security program. In a draft for a pamphlet designed to promote the ERA in Utah to ratify, Alison explained, “The Amendment supports the constitutional equality for women and the extension of legal rights, privileges, and responsibilities regardless of sex.”

Similar to the movement in the Progressive Era, the ERA movement of the 1970s faced fierce competition from conservative groups such as “Humanitarians Opposed to Degrading Our Girls” (HOTDOG), “International Women’s Year” (IWY), and “Women for Maintaining the Difference between the Sexes and Against the Equal Rights Amendment.” In a pamphlet for the 1977 IWY Convention, the association announced that it opposed the ERA because the amendment “would provide undefined limits of governmental power over the lives of its citizens.” The IWY supported the idea that a government should have limited power over its citizens. The LDS church also aggressively campaigned against the ERA, a stance that divided LDS women. By opposing the ERA, many LDS women “outwardly revealed to each other their internal acceptance of the church’s teaching about proper gender roles.” Those who supported the ERA seemingly questioned church doctrine and ignored the counsel of church leadership.[2] Alison tried diligently to reassure members of the church that their religious rights would not be impinged. Equality did not mean that men and women became “the same.” From Alison’s point of view, the ERA provided women equality under the law, protected “traditional” roles of women, and simultaneously offered women more way to navigate life as established definitions of “womanhood” were being challenged.

[1] Amy E. Butler, Two Paths to Equality: Alice Paul and Ethel M. Smith in the ERA Debate, 1921-1929 (New York: University of New York Press, 2002), 1-2.

[2] Neil J. Young, “’The ERA Is a Moral Issue’: The Mormon Church, LDS Women, and the Defeat of the Equal Rights Movement,” American Quarterly 59, 3 (September 2007): 625; O. Kendall White, Jr., “Mormonism and the Equal Rights Amendment,” Journal of Church and State 31.2 J (1989): 249-268.

Source: Utah State University, University Libraries. Digital Exhibit, Women of Caliber, Women of Cache Valley: Alison Comish Thorne.

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Biographical Note from Archives

Alison Comish Thorne was born May 9, 1914 in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Newel H. and Louise Larson Comish. Her scholarly pursuits began at the age of sixteen when she entered Brigham Young University where she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Education in 1934. Thorne received a Master’s degree in Consumption Economics at Iowa State University in 1935. She then pursued doctoral studies at the University of Chicago during 1935-36, before receiving her Ph.D. in 1938 from Iowa State University in the field of Consumption Economics. Her mentors, Elizabeth Ellis Hoyt and Margaret G. Reid, worked with Thorne to help her become the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in this field from ISU. Thorne married D. Wynne Thorne on August 3, 1937 in Salt Lake City.

After the completion of her graduate work, Thorne filled various instructor positions at Colorado State University, Iowa State University, and finally Utah State University. At USU she was given the title of lecturer from 1964 through the 1980s by both USU’s Department of Sociology and the Department of Home Economics and Consumer Education. Due to anti-nepotism laws, Thorne was not allowed to secure a faculty position since her husband was already a faculty member. (Wynne Thorne served as USU’s Head of Agronomy, Director of the Agricultural Experiment Station, and the Vice President of University Research.) This setback did not keep Thorne from establishing a solid reputation as a scholar. Thorne played a key role in the founding of the Women’s Studies Program at USU and served as a chair in the Women’s Studies Committee from 1977-1989. In addition, Thorne’s devotion to increasing the opportunity for women can be seen in her involvement in the Women’s Center, the Committee on the Status of Women, as well as the Women and International Development committee.

Moreover, Thorne gave many early feminist speeches, including “Let the Dishes Wait” (1949) and “Leave the Dishes in the Sink” (1973). These speeches encouraged women to focus more on personal hobbies, interests, education, and family rather than maintaining a “perfect” home. As result of her influential work, Thorne has been the recipient of many awards, such as Utah State University’s Distinguished Service Award (1982), Woman of the Year for the Utah Chapter of the American Association of University Women (1967), and Utah Governor’s Award for Volunteer Service (1980). She was also the author of numerous articles and books, including Women in the History of Utah’s Land-grant College (1985), Visible and Invisible Women in Land-grant Colleges (1986), Vision and Rhetoric in Shakespeare: Looking Through Language (2000), Leave the Dishes in the Sink: Adventures of an Activist in Conservative Utah (2002), and Shakespeare’s Romances (2003).

Thorne was active in many organizations during her retirement, such as the Utah State Historical Society, the Utah State Women’s History Association, and the National Women’s Studies Association. Thorne died in 2005 in Logan, Utah.

Source: See Archives West: Utah State University, Papers of Alison Comish Thorne, 1925-2003.

Image Source: Detail from the cover of Alison Comish Thorne’s Leave the Dishes in the Sink (2002).

Categories
Chicago Columbia Economists Gender Wellesley

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

 

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

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

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

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Anna Prichitt Youngman.

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

________________________

Publications of Anna Prichitt Youngman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

________________________

High School Class Rank

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

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

_______________________

Appointed at Wellesley to succeed Edith Abott in 1908

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

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

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

_______________________

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

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

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

_______________________

Wellesley College
1912-13
ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY

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

 

  1. Elements of Economics. I

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

Miss Youngman

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

[…]

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

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

Miss Youngman

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

[…]

  1. The Trust Problem. III.

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

Miss Youngman

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

[…]

  1. Money and Banking. III.

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

Miss Youngman

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

[…]

  1. Conservation of our Natural Resources. III.

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

Miss Youngman

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

 

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

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

Miss Youngman

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

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

_______________________

Salaries of the Federal Reserve Board Employees, 1919

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

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

_______________________

Salaries of the Federal Reserve Board Employees, 1920

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

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

Approved.

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

_______________________

Anna Youngman’s (final) annual salary, 1922

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

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

________________________

From Passport Application.
Sworn May 3, 1922

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

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

_______________________

Internal Memorandum

February 18, 1954
Washington, D.C.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

Categories
Chicago Columbia Economists Gender Minnesota Social Work

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

 

 

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

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

________________________

Announcement of death of Max Ira West

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

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

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

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

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

Respectfully yours,

EDWIN R. A. SELIGMAN, Columbia University.

JACOB H. HOLLANDER, Johns Hopkins University.

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

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

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

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

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

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

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

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

________________________

Mary Mills West, ca. 1926

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

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

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

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

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Production of Mary Mills West’s pamphlets

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

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

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Children’s Bureau Publications of Mary Mills West

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

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

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

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Mary Mills West’s obituary

Mrs. Mary West, Writer, Dies at 88

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

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

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

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

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

________________________

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

 

 

Categories
Economists Gender Radcliffe Wellesley Yale

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

 

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

_____________________

Life and Career of Sarah Scovill Whittelsey

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

_____________________

1892, College women’s tennis champion

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

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

_____________________

1898, Yale Ph.D.

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

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

_____________________

President Hadley’s Introduction
to the published dissertation

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

Arthur T. Hadley.
Yale University.

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

_____________________

CALLED TO WELLESLEY.

Miss Sarah Scovill Whittelsey Will Probably Accept.

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

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

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

________________________

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_____________________

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

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

_____________________

Obituary

Mrs. Sarah Walden.

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

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

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

 

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

Categories
Economists Gender Radcliffe

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

 

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

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

______________________

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

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

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

______________________

Carleton College Emerita Professor Ada M. Harrison Dies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Brookings Chicago Economists Gender Social Work

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

 

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

_______________________

Helen Russell Wright.

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

 

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

Categories
Exam Questions Gender Harvard Radcliffe

Harvard. Examination for Women. Political Economy (Optional Advanced Exam), 1874

 

During a recent visit to the Harvard archives I was frustrated when I found that in a volume with the title “Examinations for Women” that pages for advanced examinations, of which political economy would have been one according to an overview of the examinations, had been ripped out. Perhaps an advantage of our age of easy photocopying is that such acquisatory vandalism in libraries has been significantly reduced. Today I thought I would trawl the net and see if I could find any Harvard political economy exams for women in the days before there was even a Radcliffe.  Following an excerpt from a U.S. Bureau of Education report and a New York Times account (the examination questions are “far too hard”), Economics in the Rear-view Mirror is happy to provide a transcription of the questions for the advanced examination in political economy for 1874.

Political Economy exams for the Harvard men of this period have been posted earlier.

_________________________

HARVARD’S EXAMINATION FOR WOMEN

This was originally intended as a careful test of proficiency in a course of elementary study of a liberal order, arranged for persons who might, or might not, afterwards pursue an advanced curriculum of studies. It differed, therefore, both in its purpose and in its selection of subjects from any college examination, whether for admission or for subsequent standing. But it applied the highest standard of judgment in determining the excellence of the work offered. It furnished a test of special culture in one or more of five departments. It was not intended to be taken as a whole, and did not, therefore, represent the studies of a college course, but was adapted to persons of limited leisure for study, such as girls who had left school and were occupied with home cares, or teachers engaged in their professional labors.

In Scribner’s Monthly for September, 1876, the purposes of the new movement are set forth, and an idea given of the reception which has been accorded it. The writer says:

Harvard has undertaken to do for this country what Oxford and Cambridge are doing for England;

and he might have added, “and Edinburgh for Scotland.” Its faculty held examinations for women at Cambridge first in June, 1874, 1875, and 1876. In 1874 Harvard gave only four certificates; in 1875 only ten candidates entered, and in 1870 only six. In the latter year it was decided that examinations should be held also in New York. A local committee was formed there, with Miss E. T. Minturn as secretary. This committee went to work at once to procure candidates for examination after the manner pursued in England, on the establishment of a new center, and met with much encouragement.

The examination took place in June of 1877. The examinations (held in a private house, or in some room hired by the committee) were almost entirely in writing. No one was permitted to be present but ladies of the local committee, and a representative officer from the university, who brought the question papers, took the answers as soon as the time allowed for each paper had expired, and carried the answers at the close of the examinations back to the university, when they were inspected by the examiners and reported upon to the candidates through the local committee. This is the English mode of proceeding.

The examination, as in the preceding years, was of two grades. The first was a preliminary examination for young women who were not less than 17 years old; the second an advanced examination for those who had passed the preliminary examination and who were not less than 18 years old. The preliminary examination embraced English literature, French, physical geography, with elementary botany, or elementary physics, arithmetic, algebra through quadratic- equations, plane geometry, history, and any one of three languages — German, Latin, or Greek. The advanced examination was divided into five sections, in one or more of which the candidate could present herself:

(1) Languages. In any of the following: English, French, German. Italian, Latin, or Greek.

(2) Natural science. In any of the following: Chemistry, physics, botany, mineralogy, and geology.

(3) Mathematics. Solid geometry, algebra, logarithms and plane trigonometry, and any one of the three following : Analytic geometry, mechanics, spherical trigonometry, and astronomy.

(4) History. For the first year, 1876, candidates could offer either of the two following: The history of Continental Europe during the period of the Reformation, 1517-1648; or English and American history from 1688 to the end of the eighteenth century.

(5) Philosophy. Candidates might offer any three of the following: Mental philosophy, moral philosophy, logic, rhetoric, political economy.

Notice of intention to be candidates must be sent to the secretaries on or before April 1 preceding the examination. The fee for the preliminary examination was $15, for the advanced examination $10.

At the New York examination, referred to above, 18 candidates presented themselves, and the examination lasted a week, and was under the conduct of Professor Child. With the exception of a short oral exercise to test pronunciation of the modern languages, the examination was wholly in writing.

The committee were careful to lay stress upon the fact that they did not consider the preparation for these examinations equivalent to a course in Harvard, or other first-class colleges, and that they did not place the same value on a Harvard diploma and a Harvard certificate.

These examinations have now become a part of the regular work of the university, and are held every year simultaneously in New York and Cambridge (or Boston), in Philadelphia, and in Cincinnati, beginning on the last Wednesday in May. Since 1879 instruction as well as examination has been provided for by a new organization incorporated under the name of the “Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women by Professors and other Instructors of Harvard College.”

The first intimation of this movement for the private instruction of women by professors of Harvard University was made in a circular signed by the seven ladies who became the first managers of the annex, and was dated Washington’s Birthday, 1879.

The terms of the circular were somewhat vague, but they were taken as evidence that privileges which had before been the right of men only were to be offered to women. The intention of the promoters of the scheme was, in fact, to provide for women, outside of the college, instruction of the same grade that men receive in it, united to tests of progress as rigid as those which are applied in the college.

The next step was the publication of a circular, giving the terms of admission to the courses of instruction to be offered the first year. This was done in April. The Harvard examinations for women being in successful operation, they were made the basis upon which fitness for ad mission was to be determined.

Upon the eighth examination held in Cambridge, New York, and Cincinnati, June 30, 1881, in accordance with the wishes of the Woman’s Educational Association, the candidates who presented themselves for examination were examined upon the subjects required for admission to Harvard College, with the exception, that the candidate could, if she chose, substitute French and German in place of Greek. The time and method of examinations and the papers used were the same as for the examination for admission to Harvard College, and the same privilege of passing a preliminary examination on a part of the subjects and of completing the course in a subsequent year was allowed.

Certificates were given, bearing the signature of the president, and specifying the subjects in which the candidate had passed.

The old order of examinations was then abolished except for such candidates as had passed on a part of the work required. The Woman’s Educational Association took charge of the examination in Cambridge, and local committees had charge of the examinations in New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati. The certificate given to a candidate who passes upon all the subjects required for admission to the college entitles her to admission to the courses of instruction given in Cambridge by instructors in Harvard University, under the direction of the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women. It is also accepted, if presented within a year of its date, by Vassar, Wellesley, and Bryn Mawr Colleges as the equivalent for examinations in such subjects, whether preparatory or collegiate, as are covered by it.

Source: United States Bureau of Education. Circular of Information No. 6, 1891. George Gary Bush, History of Higher Education in Massachusetts, pp. 176-178. [No. 13 in Contributions to American Educational History, edited by Herbert B. Adams]

 

HARVARD EXAMINATIONS FOR WOMEN
from a New York Times report in 1877

…The objects specially held in view by the ladies who have promoted this movement were to afford persons desirous of becoming teachers in schools such a diploma of competency for their task as would be received on all hands with respect, and, further, to promote a higher standard of attainments in the private schools attended by the wealthier classes, by thus securing them thoroughly qualified teachers. The radical defect in women’s education generally, more especially in the case of women educated at a fashionable school, is, that while they have a smattering of many subjects, they do not know one thoroughly….

…At present it appears to us that the questions are far too hard…

…[the illustrative questions cited from physical geography and history] are merely in the “preliminary” examination, and surely are well calculated to convey a lively apprehension as to the stiffness of the queries to follow; and we are not, therefore, surprised to read in the report that only three of the eighteen New-York candidates took up the whole number of subjects required for a certificate, and that of these, but two were successful.”

Source: The New York Times, December 30, 1877, p. 6.

_________________________

HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
EXAMINATIONS FOR WOMEN, 1874.

ADVANCED EXAMINATION. POLITICAL ECONOMY.

The examination will be based on Fawcett’s “Manual of Political Economy” [1874] and Blanqui’s “Histoire de l’Économie Politique en Europe.” [4e èd. Rev. et annot. (1860). Tome Premier; Tome Second]

SPECIMEN EXAMINATION-PAPER.

I. Fawcett’s Manual.

  1. Define, with illustrations, Wealth, Capital, and Money; and state the distinctions between them.
  2. How is the rapid recovery of a country from a devastating war explained?
  3. Define and distinguish Value and Price.
  4. What causes regulate the price of articles of vertu, of agricultural produce, and of manufactured articles respectively?
  5. Explain Ricardo’s theory of rent, the law of production from land on which it rests, and how the conclusion is drawn that agricultural rent is not a component of price.
  6. What causes the tendency of profits to fall as a nation advances?
  7. What principles determine the rate of wages, and what remedies are suggested for low wages?
  8. State the distinction between industrial partnership, complete coöperation, and the coöperative store; and explain the system of the Rochdale Pioneers and its advantages.
  9. What arguments can you give for or against peasant proprietorship?
  10. What effect have the discoveries of gold in California and Australia had on the value of gold, and what has tended to counteract that effect in England and the United States?
  11. What will determine the amount of money which a country will keep in circulation?
  12. “What will happen if the circulating medium is increased beyond its natural amount, by the introduction (1) of more gold or silver? or, (2) of bank notes which are redeemed in gold on presentation? or, (3) of inconvertible notes?
  13. Do the United States gain or lose by the constant exportation of the gold mined in California; and why?
  14. Can two countries trade with each other profitably, when every commodity exchanged might be produced by one cheaper than by the other?
  15. In the example given of an exchange of iron and wheat by England and France, what will be the effects of an improvement which cheapens the production of iron in England?

II. Blanqui’s Histoire de l’Économie Politique en Europe.

  1. Give the names and geographical positions of some of the chief of the Hanseatic cities, and briefly explain their rise and the organization of their trade.
  2. What important changes took place in the economical condition of Europe in the reign of Charles the Fifth? Give the leading dates of his reign, and name some of his contemporaries.
  3. What social changes, good or bad, were produced in Europe in the fifteenth century, by the discovery of gold and silver in the New World?
  4. When was the Bank of Amsterdam established, and on what plan was it conducted?
  5. When did the school of the French economists flourish, who were some of its leading writers, and what were its characteristic doctrines?
  6. Who was Adam Smith, when did he live and publish his chief work, and what service did he render in the development of political economy?
  7. What economical effects had the establishment of American independence?
  8. When and for how long a time did the Bank of England suspend specie payments?
  9. What were the characteristic views of Sismondi, and by what circumstances of his time was he led to them?
  10. Give some account of Robert Owen and of his system of social reform.
  11. How have the peculiar situation and industrial conditions of England probably influenced the views of her writers on political economy?

Source: Harvard University. Examinations for Women, 1874, p. 70-71.  Also, a copy at the Radcliffe Archives.

 

 

 

 

Categories
Chicago Gender

Chicago. Economics, ABD alumna, later member of U.S. Congress. Chase G. Woodhouse, 1923

 

Failure to clear the final dissertation and defence hurdle is a fate well-known under the unofficial academic acronym ABD (“all but dissertation”). Shuffling through University of Chicago economics department records this afternoon, I came across an inquiry regarding Ph.D. completion requirements from a professor of economics at Smith College. I have transcribed her letter and the encouraging response from the head of the department. Curious as to how her situation was resolved, I needed little time to discover that she had not completed her Ph.D. but nevertheless persisted professionally. She served two terms as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut and was a prominent advocate for women’s rights, serving as director of the Auerbach Women’s Service Bureau (1945-1981).

Her non-graduate student story is so interesting that I have inserted her c.v. along with the official biography from the U.S. House of Representatives.

_________________________________

Chase G. Woodhouse
b. Mar 3, 1890; d. Dec 12, 1984

CHRONOLOGY
1890 Born in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Daughter of Seymour and Harriet Jackson Going.
1907-1908 Student at Science Hill School, Shelbyville, Kentucky.
1912 B.A. McGill University, Canada.
1913 M.A. Economics, McGill University, Canada.
1913-1914 Doctoral student at University of Berlin, Germany.
1915-1916 Doctoral student at University of Chicago.
1917 Fellow in Political Economy at the University of Chicago. Married Edward James Woodhouse, Professor of Government.
1917-1918 Assistant Professor of Economics at Smith College.
1918 Associate Professor of Economics at Smith College.
1920-1925 Professor of Economics at Smith College.
1921 Son, Noel Robert Seymour Woodhouse, born.
1925 Daughter, Margaret Wark Woodhouse, born.
1925-1928 U.S. Department of Agriculture.
1928-1934 Director of Personnel, Woman’s College, University of North Carolina.
1928-1944 Established and directed the Institute of Women’s Professional Relations.
1934-1944 Professor of Economics at Connecticut College.
1941-1943 Secretary of the State of Connecticut (Democrat)
1943 The Big Store.
1945-1947 Representative of the Second District (eastern) of Connecticut to the U.S. House of Representatives.
1945-1981 Director, Auerbach Women’s Service Bureau.
1946-1947 Director, Women’s Division, National Democratic Committee.
1949-1951 Second term as representative of the Second District of Connecticut to the U.S. House of Representatives.
1959-1963 Executive Committee, Connecticut Mental Health Association.
1960 Delegate to the U.S. Conference on Children and Youth.
1960-1971 Sprague (CT) Planning and Zoning Commission.
1961-1966 Executive Committee, National Council for Community Service to International Visitors; President (1965).
1962 Governor’s Committee on Libraries Governor’s Committee on a Branch of the University in Southeastern CT.
1962-1965 State Advisory Committee on Unemployment Compensation.
1962-1969 New England Governor’s Research Committee.
1963-1965 Steering Committee,
1963-1973 Board of Directors, Southeastern Connecticut Regional Planning Agency.
1964-1974 Executive Committee,
1965 Delegate, State Constitutional Convention.
1965-1966 Governor’s Clean Water Task Force.
1965-1971 Chair, Sprague Planning and Zoning Commission.
1966-1967 Chair, Governor’s Commission on the Status of Women.
1968-1971 Eastern Connecticut Resource, Conservation and Development Commission.
1969-1970 Department of Human Services.
1970-1971 Steering Committee, Governor’s Committee on Environmental Policy.
1972 Expectation Study Group, Comprehensive Health Planning, HEW.
1973 Winslow Award, Connecticut Public Health Association.
1973-1980 Permanent Commission on the Status of Women.
1974 U.S. State Department
1975 Chair, Task Force on Housing.
Chair, Commission on Connecticut’s Future.
Connecticut Humanities Council.
1981 Connecticut Magazine.
1982 Ella T. Grasso
1984 New Canaan, CT
Alfred University
Allegheny College
Honorary Degrees:
Albertus Magnus College
Publications:
University of Hartford
St. Joseph’s College
Connecticut College
Legal Rights of Children
The Big Store

Source: University of Connecticut. Archives and Special Collections. A Guide to the Chase Going Woodhouse Papers. 

_________________________________

Representative Chase Going Woodhouse,
79thCongress (1945–1947) and 81stCongress (1949–1951)

Chase Going Woodhouse, an economics professor–turned–politician, served for two nonconsecutive terms, representing a competitive district spanning eastern Connecticut. In recognition of her longtime advocacy for women in the workplace, the Democratic leadership awarded Woodhouse a prominent post on the Banking and Commerce Committee. Linking American domestic prosperity to postwar international economic cooperation, she put forward a powerful argument on behalf of U.S. participation in such organizations as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. “Only the fighting is over,” Woodhouse said in November 1945. “We still have got to win the war. And winning the war means working out a system of economic cooperation between nations.”1

Chase Going was born on March 3, 1890, in Victoria, British Columbia, the only child of American parents Seymour Going, a railroad developer and an Alaska mining pioneer, and Harriet Jackson Going, a teacher. Chase’s maternal grandmother particularly influenced her political development, taking her young granddaughter to polling places each election day to protest her inability to vote.2 In 1908, Chase Going graduated from Science Hill High School in Shelbyville, Kentucky. She studied economics at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and graduated in 1912. A year later she earned her M.A. in economics from McGill. Chase Going pursued advanced studies in political economy at the University of Berlin and, after the outbreak of the First World War, at the University of Chicago. In 1917 she married Yale political scientist Edward James Woodhouse. The couple raised two children, Noel and Margaret, and pursued their academic careers simultaneously, obtaining faculty positions at Smith College and then at the University of North Carolina. At Chapel Hill, Woodhouse founded the Institute of Women’s Professional Relations (IWPR) to study the status of working women and trends in employment. For several years, she was employed as an economist for the Bureau of Home Economics at the U.S. Agriculture Department. In 1934, she became a professor of economics at Connecticut College and initiated a series of IWPR conferences in Washington, D.C.3

Woodhouse vented her frustration with the ongoing Depression by running for political office. In 1940, the Connecticut Democratic Party convinced an initially reluctant Woodhouse to join the ticket.4 By a larger margin than any other elected official in the state, she won a two–year term as secretary of state.5 From 1943 to 1948, Woodhouse presided over the Connecticut Federation of Democratic Women’s Clubs. She served on key wartime labor boards in Connecticut, the Minimum Wage Board and the War Labor Board, chairing the latter.6 From 1942 to 1943, she also chaired the New London Democratic Town Committee.

Woodhouse later recalled that her desire for social change and economic justice for women convinced her to run for a seat in the U.S. Congress in 1944. Though she first was interested in a U.S. Senate seat, the Connecticut Democratic Party instead nominated her as a Representative.7 At the state convention, Woodhouse defeated William L. Citron, a former Congressman At–Large, by a vote of 127 to 113 among party officials.8 She earned a reputation as an indefatigable campaigner and talented public speaker, supported by an active network of labor and women’s organizations. In the general election Woodhouse faced one–term GOP incumbent John D. McWilliams, a Norwich builder and town selectman. She described the central campaign issue as the development of a postwar United Nations and international redevelopment system “that will make permanent peace possible.” Woodhouse also advocated tax reform, a plan for full peacetime employment, and more federal money for education and rural electrification programs.9 In the 1944 elections, voter turnout was high and President Franklin D. Roosevelt carried the state by a slim margin of 52 percent. Woodhouse ran even with the President, edging out McWilliams with a plurality of about 3,000 votes.

Her male House counterparts, Woodhouse recalled years later, made her feel more a colleague than part of a distinct minority. Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas steered Woodhouse onto the Committee on Banking and Currency, an influential assignment for a freshman Member and one he thought would best put her talents to use. Woodhouse’s daughter, Margaret, then in her early 20s, worked in the Washington office as executive secretary.10 Woodhouse also was innovative in that her chief political adviser, John Dempsey, was based in the district rather than in Washington, D.C. He eventually became a powerful Connecticut governor and one of the state’s longest serving chief executives.

In her first term, Woodhouse fought for the maintenance of wartime price controls as a protection against inflation for consumers and for more affordable housing for returning veterans. “I have no illusions of what a new Member of Congress can do the first year,” she told reporters. “I’m going to evaluate every piece of legislation in terms of how many jobs there will be after the war. Feed them first and reform them later!” The Harry S. Truman administration failed to heed her warnings on the issue and rolled back price controls.

The bulk of Woodhouse’s work in the 79th Congress (1945–1947) centered on issues before the Banking and Currency Committee. The committee played a large role in House approval of the $3.75 billion loan to the British government in 1946, the Bretton Woods Conference agreements, and the creation of the World Bank and the IMF. Woodhouse supported the controversial British loan, as she would the Marshall Plan later in her career, by dismissing the opposition as largely “emotional” and “psychological.” Woodhouse told colleagues in a floor speech that, “We do not, as yet, always think of ourselves in terms of the responsibilities of the greatest and richest country in the world, the country which alone has the power to determine whether or not the democratic, free enterprise system will expand or decline.”11 She was an ardent supporter of the implementation of the accords for the IMF and the World Bank, arguing that these were indispensable tools for postwar redevelopment. Even while fighting still raged in the Pacific theater, Woodhouse argued for acceptance of Bretton Woods as an important “first step” toward economic integration. “This war is being won not only by military and political cooperation, but also by economic cooperation,” Woodhouse said.12

Standing for re–election to the 80th Congress (1947–1949) in 1946, Woodhouse and other Democrats faced serious challenges at the polls. Unemployment problems created by rapid demobilization, as well as soaring prices for groceries and other staples, roiled voters. Her opponent in the general election was Horace Seely–Brown, a World War II Navy veteran who married into a family that operated a lucrative apple orchard in eastern Connecticut.13 Disaffected Democratic voters did not turn against so much as they simply stayed at home in large droves. Seely–Brown captured about 60,000 votes, roughly the same number as McWilliams had in 1944. But Woodhouse polled nearly 15,000 fewer votes than in the prior election, as her opponent won with a comfortable 55 to 45 percent margin. Backlash against Democrats was further aided by the presence of voting machines, which allowed for voting a straight party ticket with the push of a single button. Republicans swept all five Connecticut House seats, turning three Democratic incumbents out of office.

During her hiatus from Congress, Woodhouse served as executive director of the Women’s Division of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and lectured widely on the topic of women in politics.14 Eager to escape the patronage and politicking required at the DNC, Woodhouse sought a position as a staff expert for the Allied Military Governor of Germany, General Lucius Clay.15 As Clay’s economic adviser, she toured the Allied zones of occupied western Germany and kept closely informed about reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts. The DNC post provided Woodhouse public visibility, while the economic advisory role in Germany offered her input into policymaking.16 That combination made her a formidable comeback candidate in 1948 when she challenged Seely–Brown. She benefited from a larger voter turnout for the presidential election, in which she ran ahead of incumbent President Truman. Woodhouse collected nearly 70,000 votes, outpolling Seely–Brown 52 to 48 percent. Statewide, Democrats regained a majority of Connecticut’s House seats.17

During her second term in the House, Woodhouse regained her seat on the Banking and Currency Committee and received an additional assignment on the House Administration Committee. In the spring of 1949, the U.S. Navy invited “Congressman” Chase Woodhouse to make an overnight visit aboard the U.S.S. Midway. Navy rules, in fact, prohibited women from spending the night aboard ship, but the invitations were accidentally sent to Woodhouse and Reva Bosone of Utah. Bosone was unsure whether to accept. Finally, Woodhouse declared, “Of course, we ought to. After all, aren’t you a Congressman?” Bosone replied, “You bet your life I am, and I work twice as hard as most of the men.”18

Woodhouse remained a confirmed supporter of Truman administration foreign policies. In 1949, she endorsed the ratification of the North Atlantic Pact that created America’s first permanent overseas military alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). “The Marshall Plan has proven its value as an effective tool of economic recovery in Europe and as a bulwark against the threatened onrush of communism,” Woodhouse told reporters, adding that the Atlantic Pact was the “next logical step.”19 Based on her extensive travels in Germany, she declared that the 1948 Berlin Airlift—which supplied blockaded Soviet–occupied East Berlin with food and supplies—was “worth every cent of the cost,” because it proved to Moscow that the Western Allies “mean business” in protecting open access to the German capital.20

In 1950, Woodhouse again faced Horace Seely–Brown in her fourth congressional campaign. Much of the midterm election focused on the Truman administration’s foreign policy, particularly the decision to intervene with military force on the Korean peninsula to halt North Korea’s invasion of South Korea. Following a trend in which the GOP regained control of Connecticut, Woodhouse lost by fewer than 2,300 votes out of 135,000 cast.21

After Congress, Woodhouse served as head of congressional relations for the Office of Price Stabilization, where she worked from 1951 until 1953. She was an early and harsh critic of McCarthyite anti–communism, especially when used for political gain.22 From 1953 until she retired in 1980 at age 90, Woodhouse served as head of the Connecticut Service Bureau for Women’s Organizations in Hartford. Woodhouse also was the first chair of the Connecticut Committee on the Status of Women and was a delegate to the Connecticut constitutional convention in 1965. She retired to a circa–1726 home on a 390–acre farm near Baltic, Connecticut. On December 12, 1984, Chase Woodhouse died in New Canaan, Connecticut.

Footnotes

1Current Biography, 1945 (New York: H.W. Wilson and Company, 1945): 690–692.

2Andree Brooks, “A Pioneer Feminist Savors Grandmother Role,” 10 May 1981, New York Times: CT 1.

3Current Biography, 1945: 691; see, for example, Marjorie Shuler, “University Women to Review Rights and Duty in New Fields,” 30 March 1927, Christian Science Monitor: 3.; Jessie Ash Arndt, “Mrs. Woodhouse Tells of Studies in Trends,” 21 May 1940, Washington Post: 13.

4Chase Going Woodhouse, Oral History Interview, U.S. Association of Former Members of Congress (hereinafter cited as USAFMOC), Manuscript Room, Library of Congress, Washington, DC: 161–165.

5“Connecticut Woman Seeks U.S. Senate Seat,” 22 July 1944, Christian Science Monitor: 5.

6Susan Tolchin, Women in Congress (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1976): 83.

7“Connecticut Women Back Mrs. Woodhouse for Democratic Nominee Against Danaher,” 12 June 1944, New York Times: 11; “Connecticut Woman Seeks U.S. Senate Seat,” 22 July 1944, Christian Science Monitor: 5.

8“Mrs. Woodhouse in Race,” 13 August 1944, New York Times: 34.

9Current Biography, 1945: 691.

10“Daughter Serves Mother,” 27 July 1950, Christian Science Monitor: 5; a stand–alone photo and caption. See Woodhouse’s extensive recollections about Margaret in her Oral History Interview, USAFMOC.

11Congressional Record, House, 79th Cong., 2nd sess. (12 July 1946): 8861–8864; quote on 8861.

12Congressional Record, House, 79th Cong., 1st sess. (5 June 1945): 5584.

13Woodhouse, Oral History Interview, USAFMOC: 203–205.

14“Democrats Give Post to Mrs. Woodhouse,” 15 February 1947, New York Times: 3; “Political Apathy Decried by Women,” 17 April 1948, Washington Post: B4; see also, “Mrs. Woodhouse Off on Democratic Tour of 17 States With a Gibe at Mrs. Taft,” 3 October 1947, New York Times: 4.

15Woodhouse, Oral History Interview, USAFMOC: 261–262.

16Ibid.

17“Election Statistics, 1920 to Present,”  http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/electionInfo/index.aspx.

18Woodhouse, Oral History Interview, USAFMOC: 41

19Alexander R. George, “Hoover Reorganization Plans No. 1 on Lady Legislators’ Lists,” 3 July 1949, Washington Post: S4.

20“Rep. Woodhouse Finds Berlin Lift a Bargain,” 4 March 1949, Washington Post: C5.

21“Election Statistics, 1920 to Present,” http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/electionInfo/index.aspx.

22“Smear Campaigns Laid to ‘Traitors,'” 19 November 1950, New York Times: 38.

Source:  U. S. House of Representatives, Website: History, Art & Archives; article “Woodhouse, Chase Going”.

_________________________________

Smith College
Department of Economics and Sociology
Northampton, Massachusetts

88 Crescent Street
May 7, 1923.

Dean L.C. Marshall,
University of Chicago,
Chicago, Ill.

My dear Mr. Marshall:

It seems rather daring for a person who teaches sociology eleven months in the year to think of a Ph.D. in economics but I hope to complete the requirements for that degree in the not too distant future. With that in view may I ask you a few questions?

Would your department be willing to accept as a thesis a study of the relation between the state and labor in Massachusetts—the statute law and common law governing that relation and the economic and political theories underlying that law? I have a large part of such a study completed and would like to substitute it for the Financial History of Montreal which it was agree I was to offer. It has not been possible for me to be in Montreal at any time during the last four years and of course there is no material on that subject here.

Also I am not certain of my interpretation of the statement in the catalog in regard to the written examinations. Does it include the work done for the minor or is that still treated in a separate oral examination? If two writtens are taken on what basis does the department prefer to have the work divided? If two examinations are taken is it very difficult to obtain permission to have them separated by more than three months if something should happen to make that seem necessary? And further, would it be possible under any circumstances to take the written examinations here under the supervision of the Librarian or of the President’s office? I teach at the Smith College School for Social Work in the Summer so that it is quite a problem to get away for several days.

Very sincerely yours,
[signed]
Chase Going Woodhouse

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

[Carbon copy, response]
May 14, 1923

Mrs. Chase Going Woodhouse
88 Crescent Street
Northampton, Massachusetts

My dear Mrs. Woodhouse:

Upon a good many occasions we have been wondering whether you would not go on and finish your work with us and the suggestions sketched in your recent letter seem entirely feasible ones. In particular, the thesis subject which you cite is perfectly satisfactory as the title of a thesis in Economics.

As for the written examinations the situation is as follows:

  1. These written examinations cover only the field of the major department.
  2. If the examinations are divided into two parts the division may be made on any basis desired by the candidate.
  3. We have already abolished the regulation that not more than three months may intervene.
  4. We can readily make arrangements for the examination to be supervised at Smith.

And not it is to be noticed that there is no necessity of your taking these written examinations unless you prefer to do so. When your curriculum was blocked out the arrangement was that there was to be a final oral examination in which the major and the minor departments would participate. This still holds. However, anyone who wishes to shift to the new basis may do so. If you do make the shift then your final oral examination, so far as the major department is concerned, will lie primarily in the field of your thesis.

Of course, I shall be very glad indeed to answer any questions which may arise.

Yours very sincerely,
[unsigned, L.C. Marshall]

LCM: EL

Source: University of Chicago Archives. Department of Economics Records. Box 38,  Folder 3.

Image Source:  Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3b02033