Category: Harvard

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Exam Questions Harvard Public Finance

Harvard. Course enrollment, description, final exam. Public finance. Bullock, 1904-05

Gore Hall, the Harvard University library, 1838-1913

The systematic transcription of economics exam questions and course materials through the years can be tedious even for the curator of the artifacts collected here at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror, so I’ll try to make such posts a bit livelier adding a dash or two of additional anecdotal material about the instructor or the course itself.

From the obituaries for Charles Jesse Bullock inserted immediately below we learn that in his pre-economics life Bullock taught Latin and Greek. This perhaps accounts for his interest in early, as in ancient Greek early, economic thought. Also interesting is to learn that after his retirement from Harvard that he served as the chief of the research division for the Republican National committee and provided advice to the 1936 Republican presidential nominee, Alf Landon.

Bullock’s pre-Harvard career is sketched in a note taken from the Williams College yearbook, The Gulielmensian (1900).

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A Pair of Obituaries

FORMER WILLIAMS TEACHER IS DEAD
Prof. Charles J. Bullock,Retired Harvard Economist,
on Faculty Here at Century’s Turn.

The North Adams Transcript (March 20, 1941)

Dr. Charles Jesse Bullock, professor emeritus of economics at Harvard university, a nationally known tax authority and a former member of the Williams college faculty, died Monday at his home in Hingham. He was 72 years old.

From 1899 until 1903 when he went to Harvard, Dr. Bullock taught at Williams, first as an assistant professor of economics and sociology and then as Orrin Sage professor of history and political science. He became a full professor at Harvard in 1908 and continued to teach there until 1935 when he took the title of professor emeritus.

Prof. Bullock was the author of many books and articles on economics. In the presidential campaign year of 1936, after his retirement, he served as chief of the research division of the Republican National committee and conferred with Alfred M. Landon, the Republican candidate, on many occasions.

A native of Boston, Dr. Bullock was graduated from Boston university in 1889. He taught Greek and Latin in New England schools and served as principal of the Middlebury, Vt. high school before entering the University of Wisconsin to study economics. He earned a doctorate there in 1895.

Prof. Bullock returned to Williamstown in 1921 to receive an honorary degree of doctor of laws from Williams.

Dr. Bullock married Helena M. Smith of Washington in 1895 and they had one daughter, Grace Helena Bullock.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Prof. Chas. J. Bullock

Middlebury Register and Addison County Journal (Mar 28, 1941)

Word has been received in Middlebury of the death at Hingham, Mass. on Mar. 17 of Prof. Charles Jesse Bullock of Harvard University, who was principal of Middlebury High School in 1891 and whose wife was the former Helena Smith of Middlebury. Funeral services were held Mar. 19. After he left Middlebury Prof. Bullock served on the faculties of the University of Wisconsin, Cornell, Williams, and Harvard. He became widely noted as an economist, specializing in taxation and monetary problems. In an editorial tribute to him the Boston Herald said: “He saw the necessity of elevating the standards of business and of giving some of the aspects and ideals of the professions. It was due largely to his quiet preliminary work over a considerable period that the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration was initiated and endowed liberally. . . It was not the least of his services that he made academic and nonacademic circles understand each other better, and work together in harmony and with mutual respect.”

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Course Enrollment
1904-05

Economics 7a 1hf. Asst. Professor Bullock. — Introduction to Public Finance.

Total 26: 5 Graduates, 8 Seniors, 7 Juniors, 5 Sophomores, 1 Other.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1904-1905, p. 74.

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Course Description
1904-05

[Economics] 7a 1hf. Introduction to Public Finance. Half-course (first half-year). Mon., Wed., Fri., at 10. Asst. Professor Bullock.

This course is designed to cover the general field of Public Finance exclusive of Taxation. After a brief survey of the scope and history of Public Finance, the following subjects are studied: Public Expenditures, Public Revenues other than Taxes, Public Debts, Financial Administration, and Budgetary Legislation. Attention is given both to theory and to the practice of various countries.

A systematic course of reading will be prescribed, and most of the exercises conducted by the method of informal discussion. Graduate Students and candidates for Honors will be given the opportunity of writing theses.

The course is open to students who have taken Economics 1.

Source: Harvard University. Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Division of History and Political Science Comprising the Departments of History and Government and Economics, 1904-05 (May 16, 1904), p. 41.

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ECONOMICS 7a1
Final Examination, 1904-05

PUBLIC FINANCE

  1. Discuss the history of federal expenditures in the United States since 1860.
  2. What can you say concerning the probable future of the following classes of public expenditures: outlay for external defence, out lay for police purposes, outlay for dependent and defective classes, outlay for the benefit of industry and commerce?
  3. What is your opinion of the arguments advanced in favor of municipalization of the lighting and street-transportation industries?
  4. Discuss the past and the present policy of the United States with respect to its public lands.
  5. Discuss in broad outline the history of the British national debt from 1630 to 1815 and that of the French national debt from 1815 to the present day.
  6. Should a national debt be repaid? State and criticise the theory of Pitt’s sinking fund of 1786.
  7. What is your opinion of the proposition to pay off a national debt by accumulating a fund which, invested and improved at interest, will be sufficient to meet the principal of the debt at maturity?
  8. Compare British and American methods of preparing and voting the national budget.
  9. What are the comparative merits of the British and the French methods of public accounting?
  10. Describe in outline the experience of the United States with the independent treasury from 1846 to the present day.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 7, Bound Volume: Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1904-05. Copy also available in Harvard University, Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 7, Bound volume: Examination Papers, 1904-05;  Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1905), pp. 26-27.

Image Source: Interior of Gore Hall, the library at Harvard University from 1838 to 1913. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.  For a colorized mugshot of Charles Jesse Bullock.

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Economic History Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Course enrollment, description and final exams. U.S. economic history. Sprague, 1904-1905

 

Judging from his faculty photos published in the Harvard Classbook Oliver Mitchell Wentworth Sprague (1873-1953) was an assistant professor of economics with boyish good looks. His main field was banking and finance but he carried on Charles Dunbar’s interest in monetary and financial history in both his teaching and his research. He was sort of a Charles Kindleberger in his day, see his History of crises under the national banking system (Washington, Gov’t Print. Off., 1910, 1911).

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Course Enrollment
1904-05

Economics 6. Asst. Professor Sprague. — Economic and Financial History of the United States.

Total 79: 9 Graduates, 13 Seniors, 42 Juniors, 12 Sophomores, 3 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1904-1905, p. 74.

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Course Description
1904-05

[Economics] 6. The Economic and Financial History of the United States. Tu., Th., Sat., at 9. Asst. Professor Sprague.

Course 6 gives a general survey of the economic history of the United States from the close of the eighteenth century to the present time, and aims to show on the one hand the mode in which economic principles are illustrated by American experience and, on the other, the extent to which economic conditions have influenced social and political development. The following are among the subjects considered: aspects of the Revolution and commercial relations during the Confederation and the European wars; the history of the protective tariff policy and the growth of manufacturing industries; the settlement of the West and the history of transportation, including the early canal and turnpike enterprises of the states, the various phases of railway building and the establishment of public regulation of railways; various aspects of agrarian history, such as the public land policy, the growth of foreign demand for American produce and the subsequent competition of other sources of supply; certain social topics, such as slavery and its economic basis, emancipation and the present condition of the Negro, and the effects of immigration. Comparisons will be made from time to time with the contemporary economic history of Europe. Finally the more important features of our currency and financial history are reviewed.

The course is taken advantageously with or after History 13. It is open to students who have taken Economics 1, and also to Seniors who are taking that course.

Source: Harvard University. Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Division of History and Political Science Comprising the Departments of History and Government and Economics, 1904-05 (May 16, 1904), pp. 40-41.

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ECONOMICS 6
Mid-year Examination, 1904-05

  1. Mention at least five of the means by which, according to Hamilton, manufactures may be encouraged. Comment upon the one which he considers at greatest length, and as probably the most effective.
  2. Compare the views of Hamilton and Gallatin upon the effect which the trade policy of other countries should have upon that of the United States.
  3. What section of the country suffered most severely from the separation from England?
  4. (Take seven.) Whitney, Slater, Dallas, Cheeves, Biddle, McDuffie, Guthrie, Taney, Walker, Morrill.
  5. United States monetary legislation, 1830-1860.
  6. What lessons may be drawn from the financial experience of the Government during (a) the War of 1812; (b) the years following the Crises of 1837 and 1857?
  7. Mention by date and character (more or less protective) the chief tariff acts between 1810 and 1860.
  8. The relation of tariffs to crises to 1860.
  9. The policy adopted with reference to their debts by Ohio, Michigan, and Mississippi.

Source: Harvard University Archives. . Harvard University. Mid-year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 7, Bound Volume: Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1904-05.

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ECONOMICS 6
Year-end Examination, 1904-05

  1. (a) The negro and the cultivation of tobacco.
    (b) The negro death rate.
    (c) The negro in the North.
  2. Protection and the iron industry before and after the Civil War.
  3. The taxation policy of Congress in successive wars.
  4. Government deficits and the currency, 1893-96. Would the situation have been essentially different if the act of 1900 had been in operation during those years?
  5. The act of 1894 as a free trade measure.
  6. Treasury arrangements for the resumption of specie payments.
  7. The policy and the results of refunding under the acts of 1870 and 1900.
  8. Wages and prices, 1890-1903.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 7, Bound volume: Examination Papers, 1904-05;  Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1905), p. 26.

Image Source:   Harvard University. Quinquennial Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates, 1636-1920. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1920. Front cover.

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Exam Questions Harvard Transportation

Harvard. Course enrollment, description, and final exam. Economics of Transportation. Ripley and Daggett, 1904-1905

 

Professor William Zebina Ripley together with his student Stuart Daggett (Ph.D. 1906) offered “Economics of Transportation” during the first semester of 1904-05 at Harvard. Reading the exam questions it is pretty clear that the emphasis was on railroads, a subject that posed interesting and important policy questions in industrial organization, government regulation, and finance. Ripley published much on transportation problems in general and railway problems in particular. 

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Monographs/Books on Transportation by W. Z. Ripley

Transportation. Chapter from the Final report of the U.S. Industrial Commission (Vol. XIX) and privately issued by the author for the use of his students and others. Washington, D.C., 1902.

Railway Problems, edited with an introduction by William Z. Ripley (Boston: Ginn & Company, 1907).

Railroads: Rates and Regulation (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912).

Railroads: Finance & Organization (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1915).

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Course Enrollment
1904-05

Economics 5 1hf. Professor [William Zebina] Ripley and Mr. [Stuart] Daggett. — Economics of Transportation.

Total 139: 5 Graduates, 54 Seniors, 47 Juniors, 25 Sophomores, 2 Freshmen, 6 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1904-1905, p. 74.

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Course Description
1904-05

[Economics] 5. 1hf. Economics of Transportation. Half-course (first half-year). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 10. Professor Ripley.

A brief outline of the historical development of rail and water transportation in the United States will be followed by a description of the condition of transportation systems at the present time; with a view to familiarizing the student with the principal sources of information. The four main subdivisions of Rates and Rate-Making, Finance, Traffic Operation, and Legislation will be considered in turn. The first subdivision deals with the relation of the railroad to the shipper. It will comprehend an analysis of the theory and practice of rate-making, including, for example, freight classification, the nature of railroad competition, the long and short haul principle, pooling, etc. Under the second heading, having reference to the interests of owners and investors, an outline will be given of the nature of railroad securities, such as stocks, bonds, etc., the principles of capitalization, the interpretation of railroad accounts and annual reports, receiverships and reorganizations, etc. Railroad Operation, the third subdivision, will deal with the practical problems of the traffic department, such as the collection and interpretation of statistics of operation, pro-rating, the apportionment of cost, depreciation and maintenance, etc. In the fourth subdivision, Legislation, the course of state regulation and control in the United States and Europe will be traced. Discussion will follow concerning the work of the Interstate Commerce Commission, judicial interpretation of the law, and the relation of the Commission to the Courts.

One special report from original sources on an assigned topic will be required of every student in the course. Two lectures will be given regularly per week, while the third hour will be devoted to recitation and written work. Course 5 is open to all students who have taken Economics 1.

Source: Harvard University. Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Division of History and Political Science Comprising the Departments of History and Government and Economics, 1904-05 (May 16, 1904), p. 40.

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ECONOMICS 51
Final Examination, 1904-05

  1. What is a “voting trust,” and for what purposes may one be created?
  2. What seems to be the plan of organization of the anthracite coal roads to secure concerted action in marketing their product? Outline clearly what their policy is.
  3. What does the Operating Ratio show and what is its main defect as an index of efficiency?
  4. Outline the Massachusetts policy of railway regulation: (a) in respect of general service; and (b) in financial matters.
  5. What are the present powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission in respect of rate making? Carefully distinguish the different phases of this matter.
  6. How far have the Elkins’ Amendments remedied the abuses against which it was directed?
  7. Illustrate at least two possible uses of the power of injunction to remedy evils in railway service. Give concrete illustrations.
  8. Define exactly what is meant by the following:—

(a) Charging expenses to capital account.
(b) Cancelling a commodity rate.
(c) A pro-rating division of the rate.

Source: Harvard University Archives. . Harvard University. Mid-year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 7, Bound Volume: Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1904-05. Copy also available in Harvard University, Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 7, Bound volume: Examination Papers, 1904-05;  Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1905), p. 25.

Image Source: Buster Keaton in “The General” (1926). If you want a mugshot of Professor William Z. Ripley go here.

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Exam Questions Harvard Statistics

Harvard. Enrollment, course description, final examinations. Statistics. Ripley, 1904-1905

William Zebina Ripley

 

The sole course devoted to number-crunching in the Harvard economics program in the early 20th century required no more than a command of the four arithmetic operations, sharp pencils and graph paper. William Z. Ripley was there to introduce his students to the myriad sources of economic and social statistics available for his time. Interpretation was what did with one’s data when one was not collecting, aggregating, averaging and/or tabulating raw counts and accounting sums.

In a collection of short bibliographies published in 1910, prepared with students of social ethics in mind,William Z. Ripley assembled the following Short Bibliography on Social Statistics for “Serious-minded Students”.

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Course Enrollment
1904-05

Economics 4. Professor Ripley. — Statistics. Theory, method, and practice.

Total 11: 7 Graduates, 1 Senior, 2 Sophomores, 1 Other.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1904-1905, p. 74.

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Course Description
1904-05

[Economics] 4. Statistics. — Theory, method, and practice. Tu., Th., at 10. Professor Ripley.

This course is intended to serve rather as an analysis of methods of research and sources of information than as a description of mere results. A brief history of statistics will be followed by an account of modes of collecting and tabulating census and other statistical material in the United States and abroad, the scientific use and interpretation of results by the mean, the average, seriation, the theory of probability, etc. The main divisions of vital statistics, relating to birth, marriage, morbidity, and mortality, life tables, etc.; the statistics of trade and commerce, such as price indexes, etc.; industrial statistics relating to labor, wages, and employment; statistics of agriculture, manufactures, and transportation, will be then considered in order. The principal methods of graphic representation will be comprehended, and laboratory work, amounting to not less than two hours per week, in the preparation of charts, maps, and diagrams from original material, will be required.

 

Course 4 is open to students who have taken Economics 1; and it is also open to Juniors and Seniors who are taking Economics 1. It is especially recommended, in connection with Economics 2, for all candidates for advanced degrees.

Source: Harvard University. Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Division of History and Political Science Comprising the Departments of History and Government and Economics, 1904-05 (May 16, 1904), pp. 39-40.

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Economics 4
Mid-year Exam, 1904-05

  1. What were the main causes in 1890 for the “apparent loss of over 1,000,000 children under five years of age as compared with the proportion in 1880”? Were the same conditions revealed in 1900, and why?
  2. State separately at least four changes in vital statistics revealed in 1900 due to changes in immigration, explaining fully in each case the differences from the situation in 1900.
  3. What is the “chip system” in use in the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, comparing it with the Federal apparatus for tabulation?
  4. How is the birth rate for the United States calculated in the Federal Census Office?
  5. What is meant by “standardizing” a mortality rate? Has any proposal to do this internationally been made? Outline it in general.
  6. What are some of the theories seeking to explain the slight preponderance of boys over girls at birth?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Mid-year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 7, Bound Volume: Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1904-05.

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Economics 4
Year-end Exam, 1904-05

  1. Which system of price index numbers seems to you most reliable and why?
  2. What was Engel’s “quet” and wherefor was it devised?
  3. What are the best authorities on wage statistics; (a) for the United States; (b) for Great Britain?
  4. What are the principal difficulties in measuring the intensity of criminal phenomena in two countries over a term of years?
  5. What items in statistics of manufactures may be used with confidence, as being really indicative of conditions?
  6. Outline the nature of our American agricultural statistics, describing (1) the method of collection; (2) reliability; and (3) the problem of coöperation in effort.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 7, Bound volume: Examination Papers, 1904-05;  Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1905), p. 25.

Image Source: Harvard University Archives.  William Zebina Ripley [photographic portrait, ca. 1910], J. E. Purdy & Co., J. E. P. & C. (1910). Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

 

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Cornell Dartmouth Economists Harvard Michigan Teaching Undergraduate

Harvard. Recitation section work described. Day, 1914

About 110 years ago the structure of a common lecture and smaller recitation sections for large college courses was novel enough to warrant a description with explanation. The assistant professor of economics and statistician, Edmund Ezra Day (Harvard Ph.D., 1909) penned a two page article for the Harvard Illustrated Magazine that is transcribed following a brief overview of Day’s career. 

Day went on to professorships at Harvard and the University of Michigan followed by a detour through the Rockefeller Foundation that took him to the Presidency of Cornell University. Economics in the Rear-view Mirror begins this post with a chronology of Edmund Ezra Day’s life.

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Biographical Timeline

1883. Born December 7 to Ezra Alonzo and Louise Moulton (Nelson) Day at Manchester, New Hampshire.

1905. B.S., Dartmouth College (Phi Beta Kappa).

1906. A.M., Dartmouth College.

1906-10. Instructor of economics, Dartmouth College.

1909. Ph.D., Harvard University. Thesis: “The History of the General Property Tax in Massachusetts.”

1910-20. Assistant professor of economics, Harvard University.

1912. Married June 5 to Emily Sophia Emerson (daughter of Dean Charles F. Emerson of Dartmouth College). Two sons and two daughters.

1915. Questions on the Principles of Economics (with Joseph Stancliffe Davis). New York: Macmillan.

1918. Seven months as statistician of the division of planning and statistics of the U. S. shipping board. Director, in 1919.

1918. September to December 1918 as statistician of the central bureau of planning and statistics of the war industries board.

1920-23. Professor of economics, Harvard University.

1920. “An Index of the Physical Volume of Production”. The Review of Economic Statistics (September 1920—January 1921).

1922. Revised edition of Questions on the Principles of Economics (with Joseph Stancliffe Davis). New York: Macmillan.

1920-23. Chairman of the department of economics.

1923-27. Professor of economics, University of Michigan. Beginning second semester of 1922-23 academic year)

1923-24. Chairman department of economics, University of Michigan.

1925. Statistical Analysis. New York: Macmillan.

1924-28. Founding dean of the school of business administration, University of Michigan. (leave of absence during 1927-28).

1927. Dean of Administration, University of Michigan.

1927. President of the American Statistical Association.

1927-28. Leave of absence to act as administrative head of Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial for the promotion of social sciences in New York City.

1928. The Growth of Manufactures, 1899 to 1923. A Study of Indexes of Increase in the Volume of Manufactured Products (with Woodlief Thomas). Census Monographs VIII. Washington, D.C.: USGPO.

1928-37. Director for the social sciences of the Rockefeller Foundation.

1930-37. Director for general education and for the social sciences with the General Education Board.

1932-33. U.S. representative on the preparatory commission of experts for the economic conference, held in London in 1933.

1937-49. President of Cornell University.

1941. The Defense of Freedom: Four Addresses on the Present Crisis in American Democracy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.

1941 or 1942. Oncoming Changes in the Organization of American Public Education.  By Edmund E. Day, Chairman of the Committee on Teacher Education of the Association of Colleges and Universities of the State of New York.

1949-50. Chancellor, Cornell University.

1951. March 23. Died from a heart attack.

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Other misc. facts: Edmund Ezra Day was president of the New York State Citizens Council, the Association of Land-Grant Colleges and Universities, the World Student Service Fund; he was chairman of the American Council on Education, director of the National Bureau of Economic Research, director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (appointed January 1937), Councillor of the National Industrial Conference Board, and a trustee of Tuskegee institute beginning 1939. He held fifteen honorary degrees.

Sources:

  • Memorial minute. Cornell, 1951.
  • Ithaca Journal, March 23, 1951. p. 1. “Dr. Day, President Emeritus of Cornell, Dies at 67 of heart Attack in his Car.”
  • The National Cyclopedia of American Biography, 1942.

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Section Work in Economics

EDMUND E. DAY, ’09, Assistant Professor in Economics.

Among the methods of undergraduate instruction, the section-meeting is of large importance. By the section-meeting is meant an exercise attended by only a fraction of the men enrolled in the course. Usually it stands combined in varying proportions with the lecture. Usually, too, it is not in charge of the instructor “giving the course” (sic), but rather of an assistant. But neither of these common features is essential to the section idea.

The most important single question raised by the section method is: What is its purpose? Undoubtedly the section may, and does, serve many ends. It clearly is valuable in the grading of undergraduate work. It is in this rôle that, in many courses, the section is really significant. Such are the cases in which one-half of the only section-hour each week is devoted to a written test, and the balance of the hour to remarks by the assistant. But the section may certainly be made more than an adjunct to the College Office. Obviously, the section-meeting fosters that familiarity between student and instructor which should invariably exert a wholesome influence; serving the same purpose in undergraduate instruction that publicity does in politics.

Furthermore, in many courses the section-meeting offers the only opportunity for open discussion, for a free give and take between instructor and instructed. Such discussion is the sine qua non of effective teaching in many, if not in most, subjects. It develops clear thinking, power in logical analysis, and effective speech. It stimulates that interest which encourages faithful work from day to day, instead of hasty cramming at examinations. In general, it makes for permanent intellectual power as against temporary mental acquisition.

Such being the opportunities of the section-meeting, by what organization and methods may they best be seized? The immediate interest of the student might seem to demand that the instructor in charge of the course should conduct its sections. But this would violate every rule of good economy. Professors of scholarly and scientific experience and reputation, while they would probably give section instruction better than most assistants, have a vastly greater advantage in the work they are at present doing. In the long run they best advance undergraduate instruction by delegating section work to the younger men. Nor is this so generally to the disadvantage of the section as is commonly supposed. As a rule, the young instructor of promise brings to his task a zest, a sympathetic knowledge of college ways and ideals, an appreciation of the difficulties of the beginner which the older man has long since lost. And after all, teaching ability is in large measure a gift which needs little polishing by experience, good teachers are just as rare among older men as among the younger.

Section instructors and students should be, as we have noted, on terms of familiarity. Therefore assistants should be selected with great care. Appointments in the past have perhaps too little emphasized the need of certain human qualities not weighted in the Ph.D. examination. The leaven of a little sympathy, of more good humor, and of still more downright fairness and good sense works wonders in raising the level of section instruction.

Grading seems an essential element in section work, but it should be reduced to a minimum. This does not mean that it should be confined to a written test. Some grading had best accompany work in discussion. This seems necessary to compel intelligent discussion. Too often discussion degenerates into what the undergraduate expressively calls “drool.” Upon the other hand, so-called discussion sometimes is narrowed into mere drill upon the text. The assistant must steer the difficult course between the two extremes. In this endeavor a reasonable amount of inconspicuous “policing” is desirable.

Spirited and stimulated discussion is, after all, the most significant aim of the section-meeting. This imposes responsibilities upon instructor and student alike. The instructor must be able to direct and control discussion, the student must contribute his share of thought and interest; together they coöperate to make section work a success. The test of the section work in any course lies in the quality of the discussion provoked.

The weaknesses of the section are such as to call for improvement, rather than abolition, of the method. Improvement is in large measure a question of money cost. Adequate outlay would probably guarantee section instructors satisfactory alike to students and department staffs. Sufficient outlay to secure assistants with a firm grasp of their subjects is absolutely essential. But some improvements probably are within reach without much additional cost. Thus, by careful provision for standardizing grading, we may reduce the risks involved in the assignment of different students to assistants in the same course but of different experience and temperament. The value of section work may be more generally recognized and upheld. Greater emphasis may be laid on teaching ability in selecting assistants. And finally, possibly in coöperation with the Education Department, assistants may be helped to acquire the gentle art of section work.

Other improvements of the section method will undoubtedly be suggested. But to give it up entirely seems unwise; the section has probably come to stay. It seems, for the present, an advisable concession to large-scale education.

Source: The Harvard Illustrated Magazine, Vol. 15, No. 6 (March 1914), 295-296.

Image Source: Edmund Ezra Day in Harvard Class Album 1915.

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Germany Harvard

Germany. Harvard Man’s Impressions of Berlin University. Gannett, 1914

Profesor Harnack

 

Lewis Stiles Gannett (Harvard A.B., 1913) was awarded a 1913-14 Robert Treat Paine Traveling Fellowship to pursue studies in social ethics in Berlin. He returned to Harvard as a graduate student in social science where his fellowship was continued and he went on to receive an A.M. degree in 1915.

Gannett was born in Rochester N.Y. in 1891. He was a journalist and editor at the New York World. Later he worked as an editor at Survey and The Nation. Beginning in 1930 he wrote a thrice-weekly, then daily review column “Books and Things” in the New York Herald Tribune. He retired from that paper in 1956. Lewis S. Gannett died in 1966.

For readers who find the following comparisons of interest, similar observations can be found in the earlier post “University Life in Germany“.

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A Harvard Man’s Impressions
of Berlin University

LEWIS S. GANNETT, ’13, Robert Treat Paine Travelling Fellow.

The first thing Professor Paszkowski (pronounce it if you can) says in his course in German for foreigners at the University of Berlin is, “Um Gottes willen, don’t go home and write about Germany. If you don’t know why, go over to the library and read what Germans have written about America.”

We Harvard men in particular ought to have learned the dangers of superficial observation. Yet it is the superficial differences that first impress one at another university. For instance, one has long known that women were admitted to the German universities, and perhaps one has wondered how the Germans solved the problem of co-education. There is no problem. The women do not sit in an isolated group in one corner. They sit here, there, one or two in every row. No one “fusses” with them, no one protests against their enervating influence. They are there to hear the lectures: they hear them, go away, and that is all there is to it. There is no complicating factor of student life. Altogether it is a rather pleasing contrast to the schoolboy self-consciousness of some of our American youth.

Indeed, they could not all sit together if they would — they could not get seats together. The first week of lectures each student goes about leaving his calling-card wherever he has secured a favorable seat. He writes upon it — if Schmoller be the lecturer — “Schmoller Di Fr 6-7,” and thereafter Tuesdays and Fridays, from six until seven, that place is his seat. Let an unwary American think a seat unclaimed because empty, and he soon learns the contrary. “Dieser Platz ist schon belegt,” he hears, and any thought of argument is soon drowned in a torrent of impossible German expostulation. The card may have been lost or be otherwise missing — but the German gets the seat.

[Cf.: a video clip of the German team winning the pool lounge chair Olympics when a vacation pool opened in the morning.]

“Akademische Freiheit” is the Veritas of the German university. It means many things — the right of the student to attend only when it fits his convenience (no record of attendance is kept), the right of the professor to begin lecturing when he sees fit. Lectures begin as a rule two weeks after the semester officially opens — sometimes not for a month. No professor would think of entering a class-room until fifteen or twenty minutes after the hour. Imagine Harvard’s students eagerly awaiting the professor — often until almost the half hour!

[Note: The so-called “Academic quarter” with classes beginning 15 minutes after the hour has its roots in historical past when students would hear church bells designating the hour, giving them 15 minutes to get to their class posted for the hour.]

The German is perpetually hungry. One does not appreciate meal hours of eight, two and eight, until one learns the secrets of second breakfasts, afternoon coffee and the other opportunities that are not listed. Yet even after two months in Germany, it is somewhat of a surprise, on entering for the first time the main building of the University of Berlin, to find staring one in the face a large sign “Erfrischungs-Raum,” which, upon investigation, is found to offer beer, milk, sundry poor substitutes for ginger ale, excellent “kerchen” [sic, presumably a misprint of “kuchen”=”cake”] and execrable sandwiches. From a thoroughly Teutonic viewpoint, even eight minutes to Boston and a dozen new lunch-rooms cannot compensate for such a Bierhalle within the academic walls.

Almost equally astonishing are pocket-lunches. Between classes one is quite expected to promenade the hall munching a dingy brown sandwich of rye bread and ham, or a “brotchen mit leberwurst belegt” (which means a perfectly good roll spoiled by sausage) or if one prefers to sit in the lecture room, he will be in good company in satisfying his hunger there.

These all are superficial differences. So, too, are the eccentricities of costume, evidences of that German individualism so startling to one who has heard glib talk of German socialism. It is verboten to walk three abreast or to whistle too loudly on Unter den Linden, but to trot about with weirdly-cut hair undefiled by hat or cap, clad in Shelleyesque blouses and poetically short trousers — these are but evidences of genius. At home we are accustomed to sartorial individuality in musicians, but our students are often only too conspicuous for their unity of “taste.” The brightly-colored corps caps — often of absurd and always of conspicuous design — are almost the only evidences of student-life at Berlin. Between classes it is a common sight to see a group of purple, or red, or green-capped students, each with a cane upon his arm, one or two even daring a monocle, gathered together in as conspicuous a position as possible, to gaze upon the passing herd.

Berlin is a city university. The buildings are in the heart of the biggest city in Germany, on the Linden, flanked by the Guard-House and the Royal Library, opposite the Opera-House and Crown Prince’s Palace. There is no room for expansion. The pitiful little “Chestnut-wood” that used to cover the tiny space behind it, is now as desolate a mass of building material as was ever our library-site in the days when the grandeur that was Gore’s was gone, and Widener was not yet. The classrooms in the old building are fragrantly reminiscent of some of Sever’s time-honored halls, but the ventilation is even worse. The old library, now become a university building, is somewhat better, but the department seminars and many of the overflow class-rooms are to be found in various off-corners in the neighboring streets. It is as if we availed ourselves of rooms in College House and Little’s Block and the Abbott Building as class-rooms. If one wants to hear Professor Roethe, now the only German university professor who refuses to admit women into his class-room, one does well to start early, to allow time to hunt.

There are no dormitories in any of the German universities. The fifteen thousand Berlin students are scattered all over the big city and far out into the suburbs. Hence, partly, the absence of student life. The students meet in the class-rooms, greet each other, and go their separate ways. It is individualism carried to such an extreme that the university seems rather a great knowledge factory than a college organism.

There are more fundamental differences. The academic freedom is not a matter of lecture attendance alone — there is a significant difference of attitude toward the student. He is regarded as a grown man — somewhat as he was under President Eliot’s administration at Harvard — whereas in America today he is almost always treated as a boy. In Germany (where he is a year or two older), the opportunities are laid before him. If, as too often proves true, he is still a boy, he squanders his first semesters recklessly, and begins to work only when the day of reckoning approaches. It is not until the end of the eighth semester (there are two semesters in the year) that the German student is examined at all. Then comes such an examination as the American undergraduate never knows. He is then, indeed, two years beyond our A.B. stage, for as is well known, the first two years of our college work correspond roughly to the last two of the German “gymnasium.” The surprising thing-to an American — is the amount of work that is done. A great number of German students loaf as no American student would be allowed to, but it is doubtful if in America so many would work without any incentive of test or examination. The system of treating the student as a man perhaps sends more students to the bottom, but I think it sends the top men higher.

That was the old theory at Harvard — that it was a college for the exceptional man, that the average man, or the a-little-under-the-average man, if he lacked the spunk to make his own way, had no business to be there. That, it would seem, must be the justification of the endowed universities in the future to train leaders, not masses. The state universities are bound by the very nature of their position, to concentrate their attention upon the average man. It would seem that we would only enter a useless competition unless we set ourself a higher, or at least different task. Whether our present tendency away from the German system will succeed in lifting the bottom men to a higher average without degrading the top men toward that same average, remains to be seen. The attempt is at least worth the venture.

The title “professor” is perhaps a higher honor in Germany than in any other nation of the world. The students pick their courses somewhat at haphazard, but they select their professors with a deal of care. The theological students are few, but [Adolph von] Harnack’s course in Church History is one of the biggest in the university. Students who would otherwise never think again of Greek, flock to hear [Ulrich von] Wilamowitz[-Moellendorff]. One elects to hear [Georg] Simmel or [Adolf] Lasson or [Alois] Riehl lecture, instead of choosing Philosophy X or 47. Four or five men give parallel courses in general Economics — the student hears him whom he most respects. And as the best professors are concentrated in no one university, no German student thinks of remaining eight semesters at any one. He travels about, and when he is done, he has heard all the best men in his special subject. (Hence again the comparative lack of student life, and the utter lack of university loyalty.)

Berlin is one hundred and seventy three years younger than Harvard, but from the very beginning, hers has been an illustrious faculty. Fichte, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Humboldt, Helmholtz, Virchow, Mommsen, Treitschke, Eric Schmidt — it is hard to select.

No examination-schedule compels the lecturers to cover any given field — they may wander as they choose. Hence, often, such veritable culture-courses as that of [Ulrich von] Wilamowitz[-Moellendorff] of which a friend writes: “His words were hard to catch, but I found him a most wonderful old man, with the sweetest enthusiastic smile. I began to appreciate more than ever the fire of scholarship. This morning he was discussing lost manuscripts, what we would know if we only had certain now lost — e. g., Plutarch’s ‘Lives of the Emperors.’ I never before so felt the enthusiasm of the philologist or the archæologist. His smile was the delicate child-like smile of an old man. I felt as if he were telling us a fairy-tale, or rather letting us into some pretty secret — as indeed he was, the secrets of a life-time of scholarship.”

The large American colony, the small but enthusiastic Harvard Club, the Exchange Professor — especially if he be Professor [Archibald Cary] Coolidge all combine to make a Harvard man at home in Berlin. So, too, the appreciation of Harvard by the Berlin press. Let me close this pot-pourri of random impressions with a quotation from the Berliner Tageblatt, which, perhaps the most influential of the Berlin dailies, recently headed a contributed article upon its front page, as follows: “Professor B. [Hiram Bingham III, publicized the existence of the Machu Picchu Incan citadel in Peru] is professor of South American history at Yale University, which, next to Harvard, is the most distinguished in America.”

Source: The Harvard Illustrated Magazine. Vol. 15. No. 6 (March 1914), pp. 297-301.

Image Source: Professor Aloph von Harnack, ditto, p. 300.

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Exam Questions Harvard Sociology Suggested Reading Syllabus

Harvard. Course readings, final exams, and enrollment for Principles of Sociology. Carver and Field, 1904-1905

 

The post begins with excerpts from Thomas Nixon Carver’s autobiography dealing with his own training and teaching of sociology. He was an economist back when most sociology courses were taught within economics departments as was the case at Harvard up through the early 1930’s. Carver’s recollections are followed by the enrollment figures, the reading list, and the semester examinations for his Principles of Sociology course from the 1904-05 academic year.

Likely readings for this course can be found in Sociology and Social Progress, compiled by Thomas Nixon Carver (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1905).

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Carver’s background and institutional legacy in sociology
(From his autobiography)

Graduate Coursework at Cornell

[p. 105] The economics faculty consisted of Jeremiah W. Jenks, chairman, Walter F. Willcox, Charles H. Hull, and young  [Lucius S.] Merriam. The history department was very strong but I did not take any history courses, to my later regret. My fellowship was officially a teaching fellowship, but I was told that the holders had never been called upon to teach. It paid $550 which proved sufficient for my needs. I took courses under all three of the older men in the department of economics, but none under Merriam. Jenks conducted the seminar and gave a course on economic legislation, both of which I took. Hull gave a course on the history of economic thought, which I took, and another on industrial history. Willcox gave a course in statistics and another on sociology, both of which I took….

[p.111] … Johns Hopkins at that time was known principally because of its graduate school. Cornell had a growing graduate school but it was an appendage rather than the main part of the university. At Johns Hopkins, graduate students were segregated and had relatively few contacts with undergraduates. At Cornell, on the other hand, they were pretty well mixed.

Cornell had a larger faculty than Johns Hopkins and probably as many distinguished scholars, but the average was perhaps not so high, most of them being concerned with undergraduate teaching.

In the Department of Economics, Jenks was the oldest member and chairman of the department. He was more interested in the practical than in the theoretical side of economics. Merriam was a brilliant theorist and, had he lived, would have strengthened that side of their work. Jenks was a wide awake and interesting teacher, a man of the world who could meet on equal terms men prominent in government and business and might have done well in the diplomatic service.

Hull had an encyclopedic knowledge of American industrial history and should have written books on the subject, but he was so afraid that he might overlook something that he never got quite ready to write.

Probably the most brilliant of the three was Walter F. Willcox. Before the rise of the mathematical school of statisticians he was the leading statistician of the country. He also took us through Spencer’s Principles of Sociology and added a good many original ideas of his own. He was one of the few teachers of sociology whom I have known who were capable of taking a realistic and rational view of things.

Teaching at Oberlin

[pp. 122-123] Professor Hull had returned from his sojourn at Johns Hopkins. This relieved me of the classes in English and American history which I had carried the year before [1894-1895]. I added a course [in 1895-1896] in anthropology and one in sociology to my offering.

Teaching at Harvard
(Carver joined the faculty 1900-01)

[p. 132] There was no Department of Sociology at Harvard, but Edward Cummings had given a course on principles of sociology in the Department of Economics. Since I had been giving a course in that subject at Oberlin it was suggested that I continue it at Harvard. [1901-02; 1902-03 (taught by Ripley  and Carver); 1903-04] In addition I gave a course on economic theory and a half course on methods of economic investigation.

[p. 172] The course on the principles of sociology developed into a study of the Darwinian theory as applied to social groups. Variation among the forms of social organization and of moral systems, and the selection or survival of those systems and forms that make for group strength, were considered to constitute the method of social evolution.

The Harvard Illustrated, a student publication, at that time conducted a poll of the senior class, asking the students to name the best courses they had taken. For a number of

years Professor Palmer’s course in ethics ranked highest. My course on principles of sociology began to climb until it finally achieved first place. Then the poll was discontinued.

[pp. 210-212] I have mentioned several times the courses which I had developed at Harvard: principles of agricultural economics, principles of sociology, methods of social reform, and the distribution of wealth. I was, all those years, covering more ground than any other member of the department…
…Up to this time there had been no department of sociology at Harvard. There was a Department of Anthropology and a Department of Social Ethics, but the only course in sociological principles was the one which I gave in the Department of Economics. At one of the meetings of the American Sociological Society I heard Sorokin of the University of Minnesota read a paper. I was impressed by his prodigious learning and general sanity. I began to cultivate his acquaintance and finally was instrumental in bringing him to Harvard….The Department of Economics, on my motion, invited him to give a course of three lectures at Harvard. While he was in Cambridge, I introduced him to President Lowell. Later, on my motion, the department voted to recommend to the Corporation that Sorokin be offered a professorship in the Department of Economics to give courses in sociology at Harvard. The offer was made, he accepted, and a beginning was made toward starting a department of sociology.

Source: Thomas Nixon Carver. Recollections of an Unplanned Life. Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie Press, 1949.

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Course Enrollment

Economics 3. Professor Carver and Mr. J. A. Field. — Principles of Sociology. Theories of Social Progress.

Total 47: 10 Graduates, 7 Seniors, 18 Juniors, 7 Sophomores, 5 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1904-1905, p. 74.

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ECONOMICS 3
Prescribed Reading and Collateral References. 1904-05

TO BE READ IN FULL
  1. Herbert Spencer. Principles of Sociology.
  2. Walter Bagehot. Physics and Politics.
  3. Benjamin Kidd. Social Evolution.
  4. F. H. Giddings. Principles of Sociology.
COLLATERAL READING. STARRED REFERENCES ARE ESPECIALLY RECOMMENDED

I. SCOPE AND METHOD OF SOCIOLOGY

  1. Auguste Comte. Positive Philosophy. Book VI. Chs.2-4.
  2. Herbert Spencer. Classification of the Sciences, in Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative. Vol. II.
  3. *Herbert Spencer. The Study of Sociology. Chs. 1-3.
  4. J. S. Mill. System of Logic. Book VI.
  5. W. S. Jevons. Principles of Science. Ch. 31. Sec. 11.
  6. Lester F. Ward. Outlines of Sociology. I.
  7. W. H. Stuckenberg. Introduction to the Study of Sociology. Chs. 2 and 3.
  8. Émile Durkheim. Les Regles de la Méthode Sociologique.
  9. Guillaume de Greef. Les Lois Sociologiques.
  10. Arthur Fairbanks. Introduction to Sociology. Introduction.

Il. THE FACTORS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS

A. Physical and Biological Factors

  1. Herbert Spencer. The Factors of Organic Evolution, in Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative. Vol. I.
  2. Herbert Spencer. Progress, its Law and Cause, in Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative. Vol. I.
  3. Auguste Comte. Positive Philosophy. Book VI. Ch. 6.
  4. Lester F. Ward. Dynamical Sociology. Ch. 7.
  5. Simon N. Patten. The Theory of Social Forces. Ch. 1.
  6. Geddes and Thompson. The Evolution of Sex. Chs. 1, 2, 19, 21.
  7. Robert Mackintosh. From Comte to Benjamin Kidd.
  8. *G. de LaPouge. Les Sélections Sociales. Chs. 1-6.
  9. August Weismann. The Germ Plasm: a Theory of Heredity.
  10. George Job Romanes. An Examination of Weismannism.
  11. Alfred Russell Wallace. Studies: Scientific and Social.
  12. *R. L. Dugdale. The Jukes.
  13. Oscar C. McCulloh. The Tribe of Ishmael.
  14. *Francis Galton. Hereditary Genius.
  15. Arthur Fairbanks. Introduction to Sociology. Pt. III.
  16. H. W. Conn. The Method of Evolution.

B. Psychic

  1. Auguste Comte. Positive Philosophy. Book VI. Ch. 5.
  2. *Jeremy Bentham. Principles of Morals and Legislation. Chs. 1 and 2.
  3. Lester F. Ward. The Psychic Factors of Civilization.
  4. Tarde. Social Laws.
  5. [G. Tarde]. The Laws of Imitation.
  6. [G. Tarde]. La Logique Sociale.
  7. Gustar Le Bon. The Crowd.
  8. The Psychology of Peoples.
  9. Mark Baldwin. Social and Ethical Interpretations.
  10. [J. Mark Baldwin]. Mental Development in the Child and the Race.
  11. John Fisk. The Destiny of Man.
  12. Henry Drummond. The Ascent of Man.
  13. Simon N. Patten. The Theory of Social Forces. Chs. 2-5.
  14. *E. A. Ross. Social Control.

C. Social and Economic

  1. Lester F. Ward. Outlines of Sociology. Pt. II.
  2. *[Lester F. Ward]. Dynamical Sociology. Ch. 10.
  3. Brooks Adams. The Law of Civilization and Decay.
  4. D. G. Ritchie. Darwinism and Politics.
  5. *A. G. Warner. American Charities. Pt. I. Ch. 5.
  6. *G. de LaPouge. Les Sélections Sociales. Chs. 7-15.
  7. T. R. Malthus. Principle of Population.
  8. H. Bosanquet. The Standard of Life.
  9. W. H. Mallock. Aristocracy and Evolution.
  10. T. V. Veblen. The Theory of the Leisure Class.
  11. W. S. Jevons. Methods of Social Reform.
  12. Jane Addams and Others. Philanthropy and Social Progress.
  13. Demolins. Anglo-Saxon Superiority.
  14. *Thomas H. Huxley. Evolution and Ethics.
  15. Georg Simmel. Ueber Sociale Differencierung.
  16. Émile Durkheim. De la Division du Travail social.
  17. J. H. W. Stuckenberg. Introduction to the Study of Sociology. Ch. 6.
  18. Achille Loria. The Economic Foundations of Society.
  19. [Achille Loria]. Problems Sociaux Contemporains. Ch. 6.
  20. William Z. Ripley. The Races of Europe.

D. Political and Legal

  1. Jeremy Bentham. Principles of Morals and Legislation. Chs. 12-17.
  2. F. M. Taylor. The Right of the State to Be.
  3. *W. W. Willoughby. Social Justice. Chs. 5-9.
  4. *D. G. Ritchie. Principles of State Interference.
  5. W. S. Jevons. The State in Relation to Labor.
  6. Henry C. Adams. The Relation of the State to Industrial Action, in Publications Am. Econ. Assoc. Vol. I. No. 6.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and readings in economics, 1895-2003. Box 1. Folder “Economics, 1904-1905.”

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ECONOMICS 3
Mid-year Examination, 1904-05

  1. What is meant by a rational sanction for conduct? How is it distinguished from the rationalization of religion and law?
  2. Has resentment, or the desire for vengeance, any place as a factor in producing social order? Explain your answer.
  3. Describe Spencer’s conception of the Industrial Type of Society and give your opinion of its validity.
    (a) as representing an actual stage in social progress;
    (b) as an ideal social type.
  4. What accounts for the force of the religious sanction for conduct among primitive peoples? What does Spencer believe will be the place of ethics in the religion of the future, and what are his reasons? Are the two explanations in harmony?
  5. Describe the principal forms of the family relation, and the type of society in which each form prevails.
  6. Comment briefly but specifically upon any five of the following topics:—
    (a) Exogamy.
    (b) The domestic relations of the Veddahs.
    (c) The domestic relations of the Thibetans.
    (d) The Ynca political system.
    (e) Political organization among the Eskimos.
    (f) The political system of the Dahomans.
    (g) The industrial attainments of the Fuegians.
  7. What is Spencer’s explanation of the origin of ceremonial in general; and how does he account for particular forms? According to this theory what does the formality of our social relations indicate concerning the original social or anti-social traits of mankind?
  8. By what stages has the medical profession been evolved, and how does it perform the general social function which according to Spencer characterizes the professions?
  9. “The salvation of every society, as of every species, depends on the maintenance of an absolute opposition between the regime of the family and the regime of the State.” Spencer, Vol. I, p. 719.
    What opposition is referred to? Does it appear more conspicuously in the militant or in the industrial type of society?
  10. “From war has been gained all that it has to give.” Spencer, Vol. II, p. 664.
    What has war done to develop society? Why is its work done? Why, if war is now intolerable, is it improper to check the conflicts of classes and individuals within the state?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Mid-year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 7, Bound Volume: Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1904-05.

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ECONOMICS 3
Year-end Examination, 1904-05

Omit one question.

  1. “Can we then allege special connexions between the different types of family and the different social types classed as militant and industrial?” (Spencer, Principles of Sociology, I, p. 675.) Explain.
  2. In what particulars is society fundamentally unlike a biological organism?
  3. Can you define social progress in terms of human well-being and at the same time make it consistent with a general theory of evolution? Explain.
  4. What is meant by the storing of social energy and what are the agencies by which it is accomplished?
  5. What is meant by the power of idealization and how does it affect social progress?
  6. Under what conditions and on what grounds would you justify the interference of the state with the liberty of the individual?
  7. Give the titles and authors of such books as you have read of sociological topics, including those prescribed in the course, and write your impression of one which is not prescribed.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 7, Bound volume: Examination Papers, 1904-05;  Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1905), p. 24.

Image Source: “Thomas Nixon Carver, 1865-1961” link at the History of Economic Thought Website. “Portrait of Carver (as a young man)“.
Detail in the Oberlin College Yearbook 1901 Hi-o-hi (no. 16)

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard Principles

Harvard. Enrollment and exams for Outlines of Economics. Taussig et al., 1904-1905

Frank W. Taussig & A. Piatt Andrew

From the final exams for the two semester introductory economics course run by Frank Taussig and A. Piatt Andrew in 1904-05 we see (among other things) that John Stuart Mill provided the backbone of theory and that there was room for a compare and contrast question regarding a liberal market economy vs a socialist economy.

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Course Enrollment

Economics 1. Professor [Frank W.] Taussig, Asst. Professor [Abram Piatt] Andrew, and Messrs. [Vanderveer] Custis, [James Alfred] Field, [Silas Wilder] Howland, [Selden Osgood] Martin, and [Chester Whitney] Wright. — Outlines of Economics.

Total 438: 10 Seniors, 84 Juniors, 232 Sophomores, 54 Freshmen, 58 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1904-1905, p. 74.

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ECONOMICS 1
Mid-year Examination, 1904-05

One question in each group may be omitted.
Arrange your answers strictly in the order of the questions
Give your reasons in all cases.

I

  1. Which among the following would you consider (1) “productive laborers,” (2) otherwise useful to society: actors, manufacturers of gambling implements, stock-brokers, landlords receiving and spending the rents of land.
  2. It has been laid down that,—
    Capital is distinguished from non-capital by its nature, — it consists of machinery, materials, and other apparatus for production;
    Capital is distinguished from non-capital by the intention of the owner in dealing with his wealth;
    Capital, though the result of saving, is yet continually consumed.
    Can you reconcile these propositions? If not, which do you consider sound?
  3. “The laws and conditions of the production of wealth partake of the character of physical truths.” Is this true of the law stating the conditions under which the accumulation of capital takes place? of that stating the conditions under which production upon land takes place?
  4. Define briefly: value in use, value in exchange, utility, marginal utility, margin of cultivation, consumer’s rent.
  5. Can a person having a monopoly of a given commodity control its price at will? If so, how? If not, why not?
  6. “An individual speculator cannot gain by a rise in price of his own creating . . . when there is neither at the time nor afterwards any cause for a rise of prices except his own proceedings.”
    On what reasoning does this statement of Mill’s rest? Does the practice of dealings for future delivery (“futures”) affect the reasoning.

II

  1. What is the difference between a wages-fund and a wages-flow? Which seems to you the better mode of describing the influences that act on the general rate of wages?
  2. “The expectations of profit, therefore, in different employments, cannot long continue very different: they tend to a common average.”
    “It is true that, to persons with the same amount of original means, there is more chance of making a large fortune in some employments than in others.”
    “Gross profit varies greatly from individual to individual, and can scarcely be in any two cases the same.”
    Can these statements of Mill’s be reconciled?
  3. Is the return from capital sunk in the soil to be regarded as rent or interest? Is the return from urban real estate to be regarded as rent or interest? Is the return on corporate securities (stocks and bonds) to be regarded as rent or interest?
  4. How will a rise in the rate of interest affect the selling value of land? that of securities yielding a fixed income?
  5. “But it is impossible for anyone to study political economy, even as at present taught, or to think at all upon the production and distribution of wealth, without seeing that property in land differs essentially from property in things of human production, and that it has no warrant in abstract justice.” Henry George.
    Do you think this statement true in view of what you have learned in this course? Consider both your reading and the lectures.
  6. What would become of interest, rent, business profits, in a socialist state? what if there were an all-embracing régime of coöperative production?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Mid-year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 7, Bound Volume: Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1904-05.

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ECONOMICS 1
Year-end Examination, 1904-05

Omit one question from each group.

I

  1. What is meant by the equilibrium of demand and supply? How is it secured?
  2. Suppose there were a general rise in wages: could capitalists, by charging higher prices for their goods, prevent profits from falling?
    Suppose a rise of wages in a particular trade: could the capitalists in that trade, by charging higher prices, keep their profits from falling?
  3. Under what head — wages, rent, interest, profits — would you class the remuneration of (1) an apothecary; (2) a city merchant who owns the building in which he carries on his business; (3) an author who receives copyright payments on books which he has written; (4) a stockholder in a company which owns a lucrative patent?
  4. Is land capital? Are buildings capital? Are the skill and capacity of a workman — such as a trained engineer or a great inventor — to be regarded as capital?

II

  1. What would be the effect on the price of beef if a high protective tariff were levied on the import of hides?
  2. Which of the economic advantages and disadvantages of combination, in the broad sense, result from (a) pooling, (b) merger in a single corporation, (c) monopoly?
  3. President Roosevelt in a recent message said that our tariff “duties must never be reduced below the point that will cover the difference between the labor cost here and abroad.” Discuss this statement.
  4. Suppose that a country which manufactures only enough to supply half the home market, and which has a large export trade in wheat, imposes a uniform import duty of 50% on all commodities. What will be the effect on the nominal and the real wages of agricultural laborers, absolutely, and as compared with wages in manufacturing industries?

III

  1. How do you explain the fact that there is less than 1/10 as much silver in a dime as in a silver dollar? Is there any reason why this should be so?
  2. Explain briefly:—

(a) Deposit.
(b) Suffolk Bank system.
(c) Clearing House certificate.
(d) Post-note.
(e) Discount.
(f) Reserve city.
(g) Central reserve city.
(h) Asset currency.

  1. Secretary Shaw has said “Without claiming that the national banking act is perfect or that our currency system is free from objection I think that the world joins us in the verdict that it is the best system known to man.”
    Discuss this statement, comparing the American system as regards security and elasticity with those of England and Germany.
  2. If a national bank examiner should discover the following to be the account of a bank in Boston to what would he object:
Capital 200,000 Loans 733,000
Surplus 24,000 U.S. Bonds 75,000
Undivided profits 43,000 Other assets 42,000
Notes 78,000 Deposits in U.S. Treas. 3,500
Deposits 745,000 Deposits in other banks 150,000
Clearing House certificate 14,000
Coin & legal tender notes 72,500
1,090,000 1,090,000

Would his objections differ at all if the bank were located in Cambridge?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 7, Bound volume: Examination Papers, 1904-05;  Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1905), pp. 21-23.

Image Sources:  Frank W. Taussig (Original black and white image from of Frank William Taussig from a cabinet card photograph, 1895, at the Harvard University Archives HUP); Abram Piatt Andrews (Picture from ca. 1909 used in a magazine article about Andrew’s appointment to the directorship of the U. S. Mint. Hoover Institution Archives. A. Piatt Andrew Papers, Box 51). Images colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

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Economic History Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Enrollment and exam questions for agrarian history. Gay, 1903-04

Edwin Francis Gay

Edwin F. Gay only taught the graduate economics course “General Outlines of Agrarian History” once. As we see from the course enrollment for this course offered at Harvard during the first term of 1903-04, only four students attended. Who among us has not been personally confronted with the reality that our supply does not necessarily generate its own demand? 

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Course Enrollment

Economics 24 1hf. Asst. Professor Gay. — General Outlines of Agrarian History.

Total 4: 3 Seniors, 1 Junior.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1903-1904, p. 67.

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ECONOMICS 24
Mid-Year Examination. 1903-04

  1. Explain briefly:

(1) emphyteusis.
(2) massa and fundus.
(3) mainmorte.
(4) gavelkind and Borough English.
(5) common recovery.
(6) copyhold.
(7) majorat and seniorat.
(8) Norfolk husbandry.

  1. Describe briefly:

(1) the provisions of the Capitulare de villis; its date and significance.
(2) the system of estate settlement by “Familienfideikommisse.”
(3) the place in agrarian history of Colbert, Orlando Bridgman, Arthur Young and Albrecht Thaer.

  1. “It seems to be almost certain that the ‘hams’ and ‘tuns’ [of England] were, generally speaking, and for the most part from the first, practically manors with communities in serfdom upon them.” Whose view is this? State succinctly the chief arguments for and against.
  2. What were the chief factors in the emancipation of the medieval serf and how far had the movement of emancipation progressed by 1500 in England, France and Northern Italy?
  3. What were the causes of the Peasant War of 1525? How did the condition of the peasant of South Germany differ from that of the peasant in the North-east and North-west?
  4. Summarize (with dates of the more important statutes) the changes of policy in the English Corn-laws.

Source:  Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year examinations 1852-1943. Box 7, Bound volume: Examination Papers, Mid-Years, 1903-04.

Image Source: Harvard Class Album, 1914.

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Agricultural Economics Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Enrollment and final exam for economics of agriculture. Carver, 1903-1904

 

In the second term of the 1903-04 academic year at Harvard, Professor Thomas Nixon Carver added a course in agricultural economics to his teaching portfolio. He was raised on a farm so this applied field must have been close to his heart. Details of his rural upbringing can be found in his autobiography, Recollections of an Unplanned Life (Los Angeles: The Ward Ritchie Press, 1949).

A problem set for this course has been transcribed and posted previously.

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Course Enrollment

Economics 23 2hf. Professor Carver. — The Economics of Agriculture, with special reference to American conditions.

Total 99: 5 Graduates, 32 Seniors, 28 Juniors, 17 Sophomores, 2 Freshmen, 15 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1903-1904, p. 67.

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ECONOMICS 23
Year-End Examination. 1903-04

  1. How does the agricultural group of industries in the United States compare in importance with the manufacturing group?
  2. Describe the principal classes of soils found in the United States, and state, in a general way, in what regions each class pre-dominates.
  3. What are the chief advantages of the rotation and diversification of crops?
  4. What, according to the evidence collected by the United States Industrial Commission, are the chief obstacles to successful agriculture?
  5. What are the chief factors which tend to build up the cities more rapidly than the rural districts?
  6. Why does wheat growing tend to move more rapidly than corn growing toward newer countries?
  7. What are the chief factors affecting international competition in corn, wheat, and cotton?
  8. How do the price of land and the cost of labor affect the intensity of cultivation in any community? Explain fully.

Source:  Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 7, Bound volume: Examination Papers, 1904-05; Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics, … in Harvard College, p. 41.

Image Source: Figure 15, “A pioneer mode of breaking the land.” from T.N. Carver’s “Historical Sketch of American Agriculture,” in the Cyclopedia of American Agriculture, Vol. IV, edited by Liberty Hyde Bailey. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1909, pp. 39-70.