Category: Harvard

Harvard. Haberler and Chamberlin fight over last-minute course changes, 1942-43

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2022-02-12

Exogenous shocks are really useful for finding out how the economy works. They also help dear colleagues reveal themselves when their private interests conflict with those of other colleagues in particular or with departmental needs in general. The U.S. entry into the Second World War forced several adjustments in the graduate and undergraduate instructional staffing at the Harvard economics department.

This post provides some light on the time Gottfried Haberler was asked to teach the first of the two term graduate economic theory sequence for the academic year 1942-43. The course was a direct descendent of Frank Taussig’s Economics 11 (the expansion of course offerings over the decades required moving into 3 digits for some course numbers and a zero was dropped into the middle of “Economics 11” to obtain “Economics 101”). At the last minute Chairman Edward Chamberlin decided that he wanted “his” course back for both semesters but Gottfried Haberler was clearly not one to go quietly. And so we witness the performance of an academic drama before colleagues, of Professor X and Professor Y claiming conflicting rights to a particular course.

The record presented here is incomplete. I have been unable to find Haberler’s written plea on his own behalf. Reading the material one might think that Chamberlin got his way and Haberler was left to find another course to satisfy his annual teaching obligation. However, a look into the annual report of the President of Harvard College for 1942-43 finds that as far as the staffing of Economics 101 in 1942-43 goes, ex ante equals ex post. The course was ultimately divided that year between Messrs. Haberler and Chamberlin.

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Economics 101: syllabi (with links to most readings) and examinations for fall and spring terms 1941-42 taught by Edward Chamberlin.

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Who ended up teaching what 1942-43

Edward Chamberlin

Economics 1a. First term, undergraduate course “Economic Theory”.

Economics 102b. Second term, graduate course “Monopolistic Competition and Allied Problems”.

Co-taught Economics 101 with Gottfried Haberler. Full-year graduate course “Economic Theory”. Presumably Haberler taught the first term and Chamberlin taught the second term.

Gottfried Haberler

Economics 18b. Second term, undergraduate course on the Economic Aspects of War,

Co-taught Economics 45a with Alvin Hansen. First term, undergraduate course “Business Cycles”.

Economics 144. Graduate School of Public Administration Seminar “International Economic Relations”.

Co-taught Economics 101 with Edward Chamberlin. Full-year graduate course “Economic Theory”. Presumably Haberler taught the first term and Chamberlin taught the second term.

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Ex Ante Course Announcement

Economics 101. Economic Theory

Mon., Wed., and (at the pleasure of the instructors) Fri., at 12. Professors Chamberlin and Haberler.

Source: Final Announcement of the Courses of Instruction offered by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences during 1942-43. Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. XXXIX, No. 53 (September 23, 1942), p. 55.

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Ex Post Course Enrollment and Staffing

[Economics] 101. Professors Chamberlin and Haberler. — Economic Theory.

Total 24: 16 Graduates, 4 School of Public Administration, 1 Graduate Business School, 3 Radcliffe.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1942-1943, p. 47.

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Presumably the statement prepared by Edward Chamberlin (referring to himself in the third person)

October 9, 1942

Course Economics 101 was announced in the catalogue for 1942-3 to be given jointly by Messrs. Chamberlin and Haberler. This arrangement was never considered as final but was subject to adjustment at the beginning of the college year in view of the general uncertainty as to the status of such of the graduate instruction until enrolments in various courses were known. (In particular, it seemed likely that either 102b or 163 or both might be bracketed, thus freeing either one half or one full course of Mr. Chamberlin’s time). It was, however, agreed between Mr. Haberler and Mr. Chamberlin that, in case the course were given jointly, Mr. Haberler would give the first half year and Mr. Chamberlin the second. Several times prior to the opening of college Mr. Haberler asked Mr. Chamberlin about the status of the course and was told that unfortunately nothing final could be decided until enrolments were known; it was agreed, however, that Mr. Haberler would take the first meeting, or meetings, of the course until a decision was reached. The matter was mentioned on Friday morning, October 2, at a casual meeting between classes at which time, since no final decision had been taken, Mr. Chamberlin said that it was still possible that the arrangement might stand. On Saturday, October 3, a final decision to take back the course was communicated to Mr. Haberler after considering a number of factors, among which were the following:

The enrolment in Economics 102b was only two, plus five auditors. This course had always been given in the second semester, thereby opening it to the first year students who had had the first semester of 101. The bracketing of 163 made it possible to revert to this disposition of 102b, (or to bracketing it later on if this seemed necessary). The chief obstacle to Mr. Chamberlin’s giving the first half and therefore all of 101 was thereby removed.
The class list of 101, received Friday afternoon, revealed that of 16 [or 18?] student then enrolled in the course all but two were foreigners. Many of these would have serious problems of adaptation to academic work in a new language and in a new country, and it seemed for the reason especially desirable to unify the introductory course in theory under one direction during the current year.
During the past, two years the course had, for better or worse, been split both vertically and horizontally, not by action of the department but on the initiative of Mr. Chamberlin. This was done in part to open greater possibilities for discussion through smaller sections, and in part to share the course with others who wanted very much to teach theory. At no time during that period had Mr. Chamberlin given less than a full year of the course, and its outline and organization had always been his. It was his sincere belief that now that the course was again of manageable size the department would wish it to be given as it had directed earlier, and that he was fully competent to make the decision. At that time the work of the year had not really begun.

However, Mr. Haberler objected so strongly to the change that in order to settle the matter amicably, Mr. Chamberlin proposed on Sunday afternoon, and Mr. Haberler agreed, that the matter be left to a committee composed of Professor Crum as Chairman and other members to be chosen by Professor Crum. As this Committee could not possibly be assembled and give a decision before the Monday meeting of the course it was agreed that Mr. Haberler would take that meeting and that the Committee shouId render a decision before the Wednesday meeting. The decision was in fact rendered Tuesday afternoon and was unanimous that Mr. ChamberIin should give the course, When apprized of this decision, Mr. Haberler said he would like time to consider whether or not he was willing to accept it. From this point on Mr. Chamberlin became a passive duopolist, leaving all initiative to Mr. Haberler, who proposed that he take the Wednesday meeting of the course, finishing matters which he had begun on Monday, give a cut on Friday (there was a holiday the following Monday), and decide sone time before the Department meeting whether or not he would like to bring the matter before the Department. Meanwhile, the Committee had decided that certain questions which it had discussed apart from the immediate issue should be brought before the Department at its meeting October 13th. Mr. Haberler’s final decision on Thursday was that if the Department is going into the whole theory question anyway, they should also decide on the present status of Economics 101.

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Chairman Chamberlin announces his attention to return statement with statement

October 10, 1942

Dear Leonard [Crum]:

It has occurred to me that, since Haberler has given you in writing a statement of the facts as he sees them, I might, even at this late date do the same. My own statement will add some details and perhaps present a different emphasis at one or two points It may be used at your discretion in whatever way you think best, (including, of course, the possibility of no use at all beyond your own reading). I am sending a copy to Haberler.

Sincerely,

E. H. Chamberlin

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Chairman Chamberlin makes his written statement available to the department

October 17, 1942

To Members of the Department of Economics:

In view of the fact that Professor Haberler’s statement with respect to Economics 101 had some circulation prior to last Tuesday’s meeting and was also read in the meeting, whereas my own statement has to this moment been seen only by Professor Crum and one other member of the Department, I should like now to make both equally available to any who may wish to consult them. Accordingly, they will both be found in the blue folder in Mrs. Arnold’s office. Also in the blue folder are: (1) The minutes of the last three meetings, and 2) The report of the Chairman to the Dean of the Faculty covering the work or the Department for the past year.

Chairman [Chamberlin]

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Special Committee sides with Chamberlin

CONFIDENTIAL

(for use of Department
of Economics officers
only)

Report of a Special Committee
on the assignment for teaching Economics 101.

13 October, 1942

On Monday, October 5, the Chairman of the Department brought to my notice a personal disagreement between himself and Mr. Haberler concerning the assignment for teaching Economics 101, and asked that I serve as Chairman of a Special Committee to “arbitrate” in the case, and report before the meeting of Economics 101 on Wednesday the 7th. I was instructed to associate with myself such members of the Department as I saw fit in making up the Committee. I asked Mr. Burbank, formerly Chairmen of the Department, to be a member, and also four other members of the Department who have at present no active part in the teaching of economic theory and whose views on the matter at issue were unknown to me. One of these individuals was unable to serve because of his inability to meet with the Committee at any time available for meeting within the interval during which action had to be taken. The Committee, therefore, was made up as follows: Crum, Chairman, Black, Burbank, Dunlop, and Usher.

The Committee met and considered to the best of its ability all aspects of the case, and herewith reports certain recommendations to the Department for such action as it wishes to take. The Chairman of the Committee reported on Tuesday afternoon the 6th to Messrs. Chamberlin and Haberler the findings of the Committee in outline form because the Chairman thought that the two individuals concerned might have agreed to abide by the finding of the “arbitration” and might be willing to put the findings into effect immediately. The Chairman of the Committee did, however, report to both participants in the controversy that he did not regard the Committee as being clothed with any conclusive authority and that unless the participants in the controversy both accepted the findings of the Committee those findings would have to go to the Department as recommendations and would be subject to such action as the Department saw fit to take.

Statement of the issues.

Course Economics 101 is announced in the spring issue of the current Courses of Instruction pamphlet as to be given jointly Messrs. Chamberlin and Haberler, and I am informed that they had during the summer agreed among themselves that, in case the course was given jointly, Mr. Haberler would give the course during the first half year and Mr. Chamberlin during the second. Late in the week in which instruction of the present half year began Mr. Chamberlin indicated to Mr. Haberler that he thought the entire course should be given by Mr. Chamberlin. Mr. Haberler objected to any such change and insisted that he continue to give the course during the first half year. The issue, accordingly, was whether the conduct of the course should go forward on the basis of joint responsibility of Mr. Haberler in the first half year and Mr. Chamberlin in the second half year, or should be restored to the basis prevailing for several years in which Chamberlin gave the full course.

History of the case.

After the retirement of Professor Taussig, Course 101 (formerly called Course 11) was given for several years by Mr. Schumpeter by an arrangement which was understood to be provisional and subject to later change. At the end of this interim, after extended consideration of the needs and purposes of the Department with respect to the teaching of the several courses in economic theory, the Department took specific action directing Mr. Chamberlin to teach Course 101. At the same time arrangements were agreed upon by which several other specialists in economic theory in the staff of the Department participated in the instruction in economic theory. Presently the enrolmont in Course 101 became so large that its conduct as a single course by the discussion method became difficult; and, without specific vote of the Department, the course was divided into two sections, with one conducted by Mr. Chamberlin and Mr. Taylor in 1940-41 and by Mr. Chamberlin and Mr. Leontief in 1941-42, the other by Mr. Haberler and Mr. Chamberlin in both years.

With the decline in enrolment which has occurred, no occasion for such splitting of the course persists, and it has long been forseen that Economics 101 would be conducted as a single section during the present year. In recognition of this, an arrangement was made, without specific action by Department vote, to announce Economics 101 for the present year as to be given jointly by Messrs. Chamberlin and Haberler. At the time this arrangement was made the expectation was that Mr. Chamberlin would be giving during the first half year Economics 1a and Economics 102b and that he should not be called upon to carry the additional instruction involved in teaching Economics 101 during the first term.

The initial enrolment in Economics 102b was so small that the course has been withdrawn from the first term offering, and although it is announced for the second term doubt remains whether the enrolment will be sufficient even then to warrant giving it. In recent months, various changes in personnel of the Department and the necessity of distributing the teaching and other load in all branches of the Department work as fairly and efficiently as possible have resulted in various changes in the assignments of particular officers to particular duties. In these circumstances it became possible for Mr. Chamberlin to resume during the first term instruction in Economics 101 without making his course load excessive.

In connection with the controversy, the Chairman of the Committee had a conversation with Mr. Chamberlin in which the latter presented his own views concerning the history of the case and the points at issue. Mr. Haberler submitted a written statement to the Chairman of the Committee setting forth his ideas on the matter. Those items were brought to the attention of the Committee by its Chairman. Following the meeting of the Committee, Mr. Chamberlin also submitted a written statement to the Chairman of the Committee. Either or both of the written statements will be laid before the Department on request.

Meeting of the Committee.

The Committee met on Tuesday, October 6. The Chairman gave the Committee a history of the case and a summary of the information available bearing upon the point at issue. The Chairman also informed the Committee that he did not understand that the Committee had any conclusive powers and would be obliged to report its findings in the form of recommendations to the Department.

The Chairmen specifically urged the Committee, therefore, in proceeding toward its findings to consider the wisdom of bringing in findings which, in its opinion, would probably be supported by the Department. The Chairman reminded the Committee that adequate treatment of the particular matter at issue might well involve (a) recommendations by the Committee concerning certain related matters affecting other courses; and (b) recommendations by the committee concerning certain longer run matters relating to the general question of our offering in economic theory. The Chairman discussed with the Committee certain basic principles bearing upon the case, and received the concurrence of all the members of the Committee in these principles. They are outlined below.

The Committee then proceeded to discuss the matter at issue and various related matters. Discussion by the members of the Committee was free and active and the Chairman made a special effort to call forth the views of each member of the Committee. After this discussion the Committee agreed upon a set of recommendations to be made to the Department, and to be reported to Messrs. Chamberlin and Haberler in the hope they would accept the findings. The agreement of the Committee was unanimous. Those recommendations are presented below.

Basic principles.

In approaching a set of findings with respect to the issues raised the Committee had in mind a series of basic principles in which members of the Committee concurred. Those are as follows:

(a) Because of its compressed personnel in wartime and because of the extraordinary wartime adjustments needed in its work: the Department has a peculiarly difficult task of assigning functions to its various officers with a view to getting the essential work of the Department done with such distribution of the burden as will be primarily efficient from the point of view of the Department and secondarily fair from the point of view of the individuals.

(b) Even in peacetime the needs of the Department and the objective of securing maximum efficiency in the performance of Department work transcend the interests and preferences of individual officers. Although in peacetime many concessions can be made with a view to accommodating the preferences and interests of individual officers and with a view to protecting the rights or supposed rights of individual officers, the Department would in general not recognize that such individual interests can overrule the general interest of the Department. In wartime this condition is even more emphatically true, and in such time the individual preferences and interests may be obliged to give way to the general interest of the Department more frequently and more extensively than in normal times. Throughout the duration of the war many if not all of the officers of this Department will be doing work which they prefer not to do and will be denied the opportunity to do work which they would like to do. Without such sacrifices the essential work of the University cannot be effectively handled in wartime.

(c) The Department and the University cannot afford to allow the general interest to be sacrificed because of informal commitments or quasi agreements made among individual officers when such agreements fail to take adequate account of the general interest of the Department, even though those who made the agreements acted in good faith. That agreements thus made may from time to time have to be set aside in the interest of the Department, and that such setting aside may involve some sacrifice by one or more individuals involved must be accepted as one of the costs of giving primary importance to the general interest of the Department. Ordinarily it is to be expected that individuals will refrain from making arrangements for which they have no power under the law of the Department; but ever if such arrangements are entered into under a grant of power, the individuals concerned must recognize that the Department itself has a clear right to final determination at one of its meetings.

(d) To the best knowledge of the Committee, the purpose of the Department with respect to the assignment of instruction in Course 101 remains as it was last officially determined by Department vote several years ago, namely, that Course 101 should be given by Mr. Chamberlin.

(e) Under the stress of war the Department may be obliged to sacrifice in part some branches of its work, and the Committee believes that graduate instruction will probably need to be sacrificed before instruction in undergraduate courses, tutorial instruction, and other Department work directed toward the teaching of undergraduates. A policy which exposes graduate instruction to the principal sacrifices is also likely to result in the most frequent disregard of personal preferences and even of supposed rights of individual officers; but presumably the Department would nevertheless feel that such a policy must be adopted and maintained.

Recommendations to the Department.

After considering the facts laid before it in connection with the matters at issue and in the light of its own agreement on basic principles, the Committee agreed unanimously to present the following recommendations to the Department at its meeting on Tuesday, October 13, and to report these recommendations at once to the parties in the controversy:

(a) That during the present year Mr. Chamberlin be assigned to conduct the entire Course 101.

(b) That, in view of chancing conditions which may mean that the Department’s present total offering in economic theory covering the entire range of courses in that field does not most satisfactorily meet the needs of instruction in that field, the Department promptly and earnestly reconsider the total offering with a view to making such changes as may be necessary in the next announcement of courses. The Committee makes no recommendation as to how the reconsideration should be conducted, whether by the appointment of a committee or by general Department discussion or by a combination. It also makes no specific recommendation as to any changes in the present offerings of courses, but merely notices that such a general reconsideration may well cover the possibility that Mr. Haberler might be asked to give work in economic theory.

(c) The Committee recommends that the Department consider asking Mr. Haberler to take charge of an additional half course during the present academic year, with a view to replacing the first half of Course 101 in rounding out his teaching assignment. The Committee specifically recommends that Course 18b be considered as one of the possibilities for additional instruction by Mr. Haberler; and makes this recommendation because on the one hand the Committee feels that the hurried arrangement by which that course was assigned jointly to four officers won Mr. Harris withdrew may have been ill-advised in that use of too numerous instructors in such a course may damage the continuity from the point of view of the student; and on the other hand the Committee believes that Mr. Haberler’s areas of specialization would enable him to handle this particular course very effectively.

(d) The Committee recommends that the Department consider carefully the question whether in determining that the enrolment in a course is so small that the course should be withdraw only those enrolled for credit should be counted, or whether in addition the auditors should be counted (this question was raised before the Committee in connection with Course 102b in which the first term enrolment was two members for credit plus five others. Course 102b has been withdrawn from the first term offering, but will be announced again for the second term, and the question posed above may at that time again be raised).

W. L. Crumm

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Thus spake the Dean

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

Paul Herman Buck, Dean
Henry Chauncey, Assistant to the Dean
Jeffries Wyman, Jr. Assistant Dean

5 University Hall

January 12, 1943

To the Senior Members of the Department of Economics:

After considerable contemplation of the issue which has arisen between Professors Chamberlin and Haberler and which I have undertaken to arbitrate, I find I am in complete accord with the Report of a Special Committee on the assignment for teaching Economics 101, dated October 13, 1942. I commend especially as sound, the basic principles outlined on page 3 of that report and I accept as my official decision the recommendations to the Department given on page 4 of that report.

Frankly, it seems to me most unfortunate that the issue should have descended into personalities. The department should be prepared to face the large problems of policy which I have outlined in a letter to your Chairman which, I trust, will be read at your meeting tonight. Obviously those problems will not be solved intelligently and equitably if they are not approached with a vision directed to the loyalties of one’s subject and university rather than to self. Is it asking too much to relegate the personal aspects of this issue to oblivion?

It seems to me very important so to do. I have taken a great deal of pride in the distinction of the Department of Economics at Harvard and I have spoken in many circles boastfully of having what seems to me one of the very few remaining great departments of economics in the world. Certainly the responsibility of keeping that department great and of enabling it to develop continuing leadership should be the major loyalty to which every other consideration is subordinate. The awareness of this responsibility and the opportunities it presents will preoccupy your time and energies. Let me conclude by saying that I have always had and retain confidence in the intelligence, initiative, devotion. and cooperative spirit of your membership. I write this with all the more assurance because I know so many of you intimately and appreciate from personal friendship the qualities I have mentioned.

Very truly yours,
[signed]
Paul H. Buck

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence & Papers 1902-1950. Box 25. Folder “Graduate Instruction in Theory. Economics 101. 1942-43.

Tags BlackJD, Burbank, Chamberlin, Crum, Dunlop, Haberler, Leontief, Taussig, TaylorOH, Usher

Harvard Suggested Reading Syllabus

Harvard. Junior Honors Reading Lists. Conrad and Henderson, 1958-1959

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2022-02-06

Before the 1958-59 academic year began, tragedy struck the Harvard economics department. Assistant professor of economics Stefan Valavanis (31 years old) was found shot in his tent near Mt. Olympus. He was to be the lead instructor for the Junior year honors course in economics during the up-coming year. With his loss the course was left to his assistant professor colleagues, Alfred Haskell Conrad and James Mitchell Henderson.

Alfred Haskell Conrad, Ph.D. 1954. The Redistribution of Incomes and the Matrix Multiplier: The Impact of Fiscal Policy on the Distribution of Income in 1950. Advisors: W.W. Leontief and John S. Chipman. (Mathematics Genealogy Project)

James Mitchell Henderson, Ph.D. 1955. The Efficiency of the Coal Industry: An Application of Linear Programming. Advisors: W.W. Leontief and Elizabeth Waterman Gilboy. (Mathematics Genealogy Project)

James M. Henderson was co-author with Richard Quandt of Microeconomic Theory: A Mathematical Approach, the leading graduate microeconomics text in its day and (fun fact) married Anne O. Krueger in July 1981 when they both were professors at the University of Minnesota. The two of them moved on to become professors at Duke University. Henderson died in 1992.

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Course Announcement

Economics 100. Junior Honors Course

Full course. M., 4-6. Assistant Professors [Stefan] Valavanis (in charge), [Alfred Haskell] Conrad and (spring term) [James Mitchell] Henderson.

Permission required of Assistant Professor Valavanis.

Required course for Economics concentrators who are candidates for honors. This course will deal with the theory of wages and prices; problems of public policy in the fields of Industrial Organization and Labor; the relation between descriptive material and theoretical analysis; methods of testing hypotheses. One two-hour group meeting each week organized as a seminar with papers by students. Additional papers and individual conferences with staff members.

Source: Courses of Instruction Offered by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences 1958-1959. Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. LV, No. 20 (September 3, 1958), p. 89.

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Course Enrollment

[Economics] 100. Junior Honors Course. Assistant Professors Conrad and (S) Henderson. Full course.

(F) Total 49: 3 Seniors, 40 Juniors, 3 Sophomores, 3 Radcliffe
(S) Total 46: 4 Seniors, 37 Juniors, 2 Sophomores, 3 Radcliffe

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1958-59, p. 70.

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Final Reading List and Course Outline
Economies 100
Fall, 1958

I. Introduction: Some background and material on the nature and setting of American industrial enterprise. The market mechanism.

W. Adams (ed.), The Structure of American Industry, Chs. 5, 6, 7, 11, 13.

A.B. Jack, “The Channels of Distribution for an Innovation,” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, IX, p. 113.

K.E. Boulding, Economic Analysis, Part I (any edition).

II. The Empirical Measurement of Economic Functions.

M.J. Moroney, Facts from Figures, Ch. 2, 4; (probability and central tendency).

R.E. Freund, Modern Elementary Statistics, Ch. 12, 13.

Jan Tinbergen, Econometrics, Chs. 1, 2, 5.

R. G. D. Allen, Mathematical Analysis for Economists, Ch. 2; Ch. 6 (recommended) (functions and derivatives).

III. Factors Determining Industry Structure.

A. Production Theory

E. A. G. Robinson, The Structure of Competitive Industry, Chs. 1-5.

T. Scitovsky, Welfare and Competition, Chs. 6,7.

V. E. Smith, “The Statistical Production Function,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1944-45, pp. 543-62.

R. G. Bressler, Jr. “Research Determination of Economies of Scale,” Journal of Farm Economics, 1945, p. 526.

B. Cost Curves

Committee on Price Determination for the Conference on Price Research, Cost Behavior and Price Policy, pp. 80-115, 291-301, 219-263, 321-329.

J. Viner, “Cost Curves and Supply Curves,” Readings in Price Theory. Ch. 10, p. 198.

M. Colberg, et al, Business Economics, Ch. 4, 5.

C. Barriers to entry other than economies of scale

J. Bain, Barriers to New Competition, Ch. 6.

IV. Markets and Pricing:

A. Indifference Curves and Consumer Theory

George J. Stigler, The Theory of Price (any edition) Ch. 5.

Scitovsky, Welfare and Competition, Chs. 2, 3, 4.

Boulding, Economic Analysis, Ch. 34 (revised edition).

B. Pure Competition and Pure Monopoly

E. H. Chamberlin, Theory of Monopolistic Competition, Chs. 1, 2.

T. Scitovsky, Welfare and Competition, Chs. 8, 16.

C. Oligopoly

Chamberlin, Monopolistic Competition, Chs. 3, 4, 5.

Readings in Price Theory, Chs. 20, 21.

T. Scitovsky, Welfare and Competition, Ch. 20.

R. M. Alt, “Statistical Measurement of Price Flexibility,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1949, p. 92.

J. Bain, Barriers, Ch. 7.

J. Vanek, “The Nature of Equilibrium in Monopolistic Competition,” Mimeographed.

V. Investment Theory

A. An outline of formal theory

Samuelson, Economics, Ch. 29.

Boulding, Chs. 35-37 (revised edition).

Joel Dean, Capital Budgeting, Chs. 1-3.

J. M. Clark, “Business Acceleration and the Law of Demand,” Readings in Business Cycle Theory.

J. Meyer and E. Kuh, The Investment Decision, Ch. 11 (2).

B. Uncertainty

R. Weckstein, “On the Use of the Theory of Probability in Economics,” Review of Economics and Statistics, 1953, pp. 191-198.

Ward Edwards, “The Theory of Decision Making,” Psychological Bulletin, 1954.

A. G. Hart, Anticipation, Uncertainty, and Dynamic Planning.

C. Financial Considerations

J. Meyer and E. Kuh, The Investment Decision, Chs. 9, 12.

R. Mack, The Flow of Business Funds and Consumer Purchasing Power, Ch. VIII.

W. Heller, “The Anatomy of Investment Decisions,” Harvard Business Review, March 1951.

Fortune, “The Fine Art of Raising Capital,” u, July 1956 and ”How Much Can Business Borrow?” June 1956.

D. The Influence of Market Structure on the Investment Decision and Innovation.

W. Fellner,” The Influence of Market Structure on Technological Progress,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 1951, pp. 556-577.

C. Kaysen, “A Dynamic Aspect of the Monopoly Problem,” Review of Economics and Statistics, May 1949, pp. 109-113.

Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Ch. VIIl, pp. 87-106.

_____________________

Economics 100
Reading List
Spring, 1959

I. General Equilibrium.

E. Phelps Brown, The Framework of the Pricing System, Chaps. II-IV.

F. Zeuthen, Economic Theory and Method, Chaps. 10-12 and pp. 194-197.

J. R. Hicks, Value and Capital, Part II.

W. W. Leontief, “Input-Output Economics,” Scientific American, October, 1951.

W. W. Leontief, “Input-Output Analysis and the General Equilibrium Theory,” in T. Barna, ed., The Structural Interdependence of the Economy, pp. 42-49.

Selected Applications

(The material listed under this heading may be used as the basis for tutorial papers and discussion. Specific assignments will be made by the instructor.)

W. W. Leontief, “Factor Proportions and the Structure of American Trade,” Review of Economics and Statistics, Nov., 1956.

R. S. Eckaus, “The Factor Proportions Problem in Underdeveloped Areas,” American Economic Review, September, 1955.

II. Welfare Economics.

T. Scitovsky, Welfare and Competition, Chaps. 4, 8, 16. (for review).

J. de V. Graaff, Theoretical Welfare Economics. Chaps. I-V, X, XI. (omit the appendices)

K. Boulding, “Welfare Economics,” in Survey of Contemporary Economics, Vol. II, B. F. Haley, ed.

A. P. Lerner, The Economics of Control, Chaps. 3, 4.

Selected Applications

M. Friedman, in R. Solo, ed., Economics and the Public Interest, Chap. 9.

W. S. Vickey, The Revision of the Rapid Transit Fare Structure of the City of New York, (hectographed; in Littauer Library).

J. V. Krutilla and O. Eckstein, Multi-Purpose River Development, 1958.

N. Kaldor, The Expenditure Tax.

III. Macro Models — Cycles, Growth, Money.

G. Haberler, Prosperity and Depression, Chaps. 2, 3, 5.

A. Hansen, Business Cycles and National Income, Part Il.

A. Hansen, Monetary Theory and Fiscal Policy, Chaps. 3-6.

J. S. Duesenberry, Business Cycles and Economic Growth, Chaps. 2-5, 9-12.

C. Christ, “Aggregate Econometric Models,” American Economic Review, June, 1956

H. Makower and J. Marschak, “Assets, Prices and Monetary Theory,” in G. Stigler and K. Boulding, eds., Readings in Price Theory. Chap. 14.

J. Gurley and E. Shaw, “Financial Aspects of Economic Development,” American Economic Review, September, 1955.

Selected applications from the fields of wage and price policy, inflation, international trade and development will be assigned by the instructors.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University: Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Box 7, Folder “Economics, 1958-59 (1 of 2).”

Image Sources:

Left. 1959 Alfred Haksell Conrad, John Simon Guggeheim Memorial Foundation.
Right: 1959, James M. Henderson, University of Minnesota Archives.

Tags ConradAH, HendersonJ, Valavanis

Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Examinations for empirical economics, Guy Orcutt, 1950, 1951

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2022-02-05

The exams transcribed and posted below add to the historical record of Guy Orcutt‘s early attempts at Harvard to introduce undergraduates and graduates to econometrics.

________________________________

Previously posted

The bibliography of books and articles on the scientific method for Economics 110 by Guy Orcutt.

The second batch of material from Guy Henderson Orcutt’s undergraduate course Economics 110 at Harvard from 1959-50.

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Empirical Economics (spring term) 1949-50

Economics 110. Announcement, 1949-50

Economics 110. Introduction to Econometrics

Half-course (spring term). Mon., Wed., Fri., at 9. Dr. ——-

The matter will be presented in order of increasing mathematical difficulty. Only simplified models will be used to familiarize the students with the econometric approach: and to complete their knowledge of mathematical tools needed in quantitative economic analysis.

Source. Final Announcement of the Courses of Instruction Offered by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences During 1949-50. Official Register of Harvard University, Vo. XLVI, No. 24 (September, 1949) , p. 79.

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Course Enrollment

Economics 110. Applied Economics. Enrollment 1950

[Economics] 110 Applied Economics. (Sp) Assistant Professor Orcutt.

Total: 6: 1 Graduate, 2 Seniors, 2 Juniors, 1 Sophomore.

Source: Harvard University, Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments for 1949-50, p. 72.

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1949-50
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
APPLIED ECONOMICS – ECONOMICS 110
[Final Examinations]

(Three Hours)

Do all of the following five questions:

Describe what you consider to be the essential characteristics of the experimental method. In what respects do you consider the problem of making inferences from non-experimental data different from that of drawing inferences from experimental data?
Describe one or two of the empirical studies dealing with the demand for imports or exports. Indicate in detail why the price elasticities arrived at in the empirical demand for import studies are subject to considerable error and may very well be substantial underestimates.
What do you consider to be the role of theory in economics? Be as specific as possible.
What are null hypotheses and what role do they play in testing hypotheses? Describe the nature of the null hypothesis generally used in testing the significance of correlations between series of data. Why is the usual test inappropriate when dealing with correlations between economic time series? What are some of the more appropriate methods for testing the significance of correlations between economic time series?
Comment on either An Introduction to Econometrics by Jacob Marschak, or on one of the books dealing with methodology in economics.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Box 27. Papers Printed for Final Examinations [in] History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science, June 1950.

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Empirical Economics (fall term) 1950-51

Course Announcement

Economics 110a. Empirical Economics: National Income and Business Fluctuations
Half-course (fall term). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 12. Assistant Professor Orcutt.

This course will deal with the empirical foundations of economic theory in the fields of national income and business fluctuations. The methods by which various types of prediction are attempted will be given considerable attention.

[Economics 110b. Empirical Economics: The Price Mechanism]
Half-course (fall term). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 12. Assistant Professor Orcutt.
Omitted in 1950-51; to be given in 1951-52. [NOTE. ALSO OMITTED IN 1951-52]

This course will deal with the empirical foundations of economic theory concerning the functioning of the price mechanism. The agricultural and foreign trade sections will receive particular attention. Properly qualified undergraduates will be admitted to Economics 210b.

Source: Harvard University, Courses of Instruction Offered by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, 1950-51. Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. XLVII, No. 23 (September, 1950), p. 80.

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1950-51
HARVARD UNIVERSITY ECONOMICS 110a
[Final Examination, Mid-Year]

Write for about 30 to 45 minutes on business cycle theory. In your discussion be sure to include a thorough treatment of both the acceleration principle (or principle of derived demand) and the multiplier analysis. Be as explicit as possible about their ranges of possible or suggested applications and about their limitations.
Write for about 30 to 45 minutes on the problem of testing the significance of correlation coefficients. In the course of your discussion bring out the meaning of the correlation coefficient, the nature of tests of significance, the basis of the standard test of significance, reasons why the standard test is frequently not appropriate for testing the significance of correlations between economic time series, and some of the ways of attempting to deal with the problem of testing the significance of correlations between economic time series.
Write for about 45 to 60 minutes on the problems involved in the statistical determination of the consumption function. Include in your discussion the difficulties arising from additional relationships, errors of observations, and auto-correlated error terms. Also discuss some of the difficulties involved in using cross-section data in testing for the effect of assets on consumption.
Spend about 30 minutes in making out a list of problems that you think should be worked on in business cycles research.
Indicate what you think is meant by the following terms or phrases:

(a) structural relations
(b) Exogenous variables
(c) endogenous variables
(d) X is a cause of Y

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Final Examinations, 1853-2001. Box 17, Bound volume: Final Exams—Social Sciences, Jan. 1951. Papers Printed for Final Examinations [in] History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … ,Military Science, Naval Science. January, 1951.

Image Source: Orcutt’s senior year picture from the University of Michigan yearbook, Michiganensian, 1939.

Tags Orcutt

Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Economics and Social Ethics Semester Examinations, 1895-96

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2022-02-02

Professor Charles Dunbar had a leave of absence for the 1895-96 academic year at Harvard. His courses on public finance were taught by Dr. John Cummings and Dr. J.A. Hill. Professor Frank Taussig returned from his year leave of absence for 1894-95 and taught (among other courses) the history of financial institutions, Dunbar’s second field of specialization.

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1895-96.
The Ethics of the Social Questions.

Course Enrollment for Philosophy 5

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Philosophy] 5 . Professor Peabody. — The Ethics of the Social Questions. — The problems of Poor-Relief, the Family, Temperance, and various phases of the Labor Question in the light of ethical theory. — Lectures, special researches, and required reading. 3 hours.

Total 88: 7 Graduates, 49 Seniors, 12 Juniors, 2 Sophomores, 18 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 60.

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Mid-Year Examination

1895-96.
PHILOSOPHY 5.
THE ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS.

[This paper should be considered as a whole. The time should not be exhausted in answering a few questions, but such limit should be given to each answer as will permit the answering of all the questions in the time assigned.]

What is meant by;

Exogamy;
Marriage by capture;
The Patriarchal theory;
“The family is the unit of civilization”?

The stability of the family as affected by:

(a) city life.
(b) the conflict of State laws.
(c) the philosophy of individualism.
(d) the philosophy of collectivism.

Spencer’s view of the regime of the family in relation to the regime of the State (Principles of Sociology I, 707 pp.), with criticisms.
The distribution of wealth in Great Britain or in the United States, statistically illustrated; and its lessons,
Illustrate the indirect economic value of judicious charity.
Charles Booth’s Class B in East London; its character, dimensions, relation to the general problem of poverty, and suggested treatment. Life and Labor of the People, I, 39-44; 162-169.)
The new inquiry undertaken by Mr. Charles Booth (Vol. V and VI, 1895); its relation to the preceding researches and its confirmation of earlier results.
“What is good in the poor-administration of Germany is due to good citizenship. … We have not citizenship enough to administer it.” (C. S. Loch, Parliamentary Report of 1888, p. 88.) Compare, in the light of this comment, the English and German theories of municipal relief.
The influx to the great cities in its effect on methods of poor-relief.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 3, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1895-96.

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Final Examination

1895-96.
PHILOSOPHY 5.
THE ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS.

Explain and illustrate, briefly, what is meant by:

“The social questions are ethical questions.”
“The correlation of the social questions.”

The doctrines of social progress in Carlyle and in Ruskin compared in their bearing on the modern industrial situation.
Consider the principle of social labour-time as the standard of value:

(a) Mr. Ruskin’s theory of value;
(b) The plan proposed by scientific socialism (Schäffle, p. 81);
(c) Schäffle’s criticism of this view (ch. VI., VII.);
(d) Your own judgment.

“Socialism has no necessary affinity with any forms of violence, or confiscation, or class selfishness, or financial arrangement. … The aim of socialism is the fulfilment of service; the aim of individualism is the attainment of some personal advantage, riches, or place, or fame.” — Bishop Westcott.
“Socialism, as I understand it, is any theory of social organization which sacrifices the legitimate liberties of individuals to the will or interest of the community.” — Professor Flint.
Which of these definitions appears to you more justified by the history and tendency of socialism? What do you understand to be the “quintessence” of socialism?
The economic and ethical criticisms commonly urged against the programme of collectivism, and your estimate of their importance.
The ethical place and lessons of:

Anarchism;
Communism;
Arbitration.

Compare the plans of industrial unity illustrated by the Anzin collieries, the Val-des-Bois Mill, and the Hebden Bridge Mill.
The coöperative movement in Great Britain, its principles, its expansion, and the conditions of success for the system in this country. In federalistic coöperation what should be, in your judgment, the principle of distributing the bonus?
The polities and the ethics of the Maine liquor law (Fanshawe, VII.)

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination papers 1873-1915. Box 4, Bound volume: Examination Papers 1896-97. Papers Set for Final Examinations in Philosophy, History, Government, Economics, Fine Arts, Architecture, and Music in Harvard College, June 1896.

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1895-96.
Outlines of Economics.

Course Enrollment for Economics 1

Primarily for Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 1. Professors Taussig and Ashley, Asst. Professor Edward Cummings, and Dr. John Cummings. — Outlines of Economics. — Mill’s Principles of Political Economy. — Lectures on Economic Development, Distribution, Social Questions, and Financial Legislation. 3 hours.

Total 338: 3 Graduates, 35 Seniors, 91 Juniors, 161 Sophomores, 8 Freshmen, 40 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 63.

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Mid-Year Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 1.

Is all wealth produced by labor?
Compare the distinction between fixed and circulating capital with the distinction between auxiliary and remuneratory capital; and state why one or the other distinction is the more satisfactory.
Are differences in profits from employment to employment similar in kind to differences in wages from occupation to occupation?
In what way are differences of wages affected by the absence of effective competition between laborers? by its presence?
What are the grounds for saying that rent is a return differing in kind from interest?
Trace the effects of an issue of inconvertible paper money, less in quantity than the specie previously in use, on (1) the circulation of specie, (2) the foreign exchanges, (3) the relations of debtor to creditor.
State Mill’s reasoning as to the mode in which, under a double standard, one metal is driven from circulation; and explain how the actual process differs from that analyzed by Mill.
What are the grounds for saying that the gain of international trade does not come from the sale of surplus produce beyond the domestic demand?
In what manner is the price of landed property affected by an increased quantity of money? by a rise in the rate of interest?
Wherein does monopoly value present a case different from that of the usual operation of the laws of value?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 3, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1895-96.

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Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 1.

[Answer ten questions. Arrange your answers strictly in the order of the questions.]

GROUP I.
[At least one.]

Explain the meaning of two of the following terms, — margin of cultivation; wages of superintendence; rapidity of circulation (as to money).
Do profits constitute a return different from interest?
Explain what is meant by the law, or equation, of demand and supply; and in what manner it applies to commodities susceptible of indefinite multiplication without increase of cost.
In what manner does a country gain from the division of labor in its domestic trade? In what manner from international trade?

GROUP II.
[At least one.]

Does it fall within the province of the economist to discuss the institution of private property?
Show the connection between the industrial development of the present century, and the discussion among economists as to the functions of the entrepreneur.
Consider in what manner prices, or rents, [choose one] are differently determined according as they are under the influence of custom or of competition.
“The idea that economic life has ever been a progress mainly dependent on individual action is mistaken with regard to all stages of civilization, and in some respects it is the more mistaken the farther we go back.” Explain and criticize.

GROUP III.
[At least one.]

If coöperation were universally adopted, what would be left of the wages system?
Is there anything in what you learned as to the laws governing wages, which the action of the English trade-unions in regard to wages has disregarded?
Has the course of events justified Mill’s expectations in regard to the development of profit-sharing and of cooperation? Explain why, or why not.
Describe the trade and benefit features of the English trade-unions.

GROUP IV.
[At least three.]

Is the present position of the Treasury of the United States in any respect essentially similar to that of the Issue Department of the Bank of England? In any respect essentially dissimilar?
What is the test of over-issue, as to inconvertible paper money? What light does the experience of the United States and of France throw on the probability of over-issue?
Arrange in their proper order the following items in a bank account:

Capital	100,000	Bonds and Stocks	75,000
Specie	150,000	Surplus	50,000
Notes	100,000	Other Assets	50,000
Loans	400,000	Other Liabilities	60,000
Expenses	25,000	Undivided Profits	40,000
Deposits	350,000

Could this bank be a national bank of the United States? If such a bank, how would the account stand?

Compare the policy of the Bank of England in times of financial crisis with the policy of the Associated Banks of New York; and give an opinion as to which is the more effective in allaying panic.

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1895-96.
Economic Theory from Adam Smith to the present time.

Course Enrollment for Economics 2.

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 2. Professors Ashley and Macvane. — Economic Theory from Adam Smith to the present time. — Selections from Adam Smith and Ricardo. — Modern Writers. —Lectures. 3 hours.

Total 37: 5 Graduates, 14 Seniors, 7 Juniors, 4 Sophomores, 7 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 63.

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Mid-Year Examination.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 2

N.B. — Not more than seven questions must be attempted.

Compare the Aristotelian conception of Wealth with that of modern economists.
Explain the growth, in the later Middle Ages, of the theory of “Interest.”
Consider briefly the claims to consideration, in the history of economic thought, of Nicholas Oresme and Antoine de Montchrétien.
“It was reserved for the eighteenth century to let in the grand idea of necessity, and to prove that the rate of wages established in a country was the inevitable consequence of the circumstances in which that country was placed, and had no connection with the wishes of any individual, or, indeed, with the wishes of any class.” (Buckle, History of Civilization.) Consider this.
Explain the “plan” of the Wealth of Nations, and consider how far it agrees with the contents of the work.
State and discuss Adam Smith’s doctrine of the Component Parts of Price.
“A man must always live in his work.” Discuss the accuracy of this proposition, and the use made of it by Adam Smith and later economists.
The effect upon English economists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of their observation of the United Netherlands.
“Every candid reader knows that Mr. Malthus laid no stress on his unlucky attempt to give numerical precision to things which do not admit of it, and every person capable of reasoning must see that it is wholly superfluous to his argument.” (Mill). Consider this.
With what justice can socialists claim the authority of Ricardo for their “iron law of wages”?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 3, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1895-96.

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Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 2.

Take any three of the five questions.

State your conclusions regarding the various definitions of Cost of Production. Are wages an element in Cost? Show whether economic cost and commercial (or employers’) cost may vary independently of each other.
State briefly the views of Henry George, Marshall, and Boehm-Bawerk (or any other three writers) regarding the law of Interest. Give also your own conclusions.
Set down carefully your conclusions as to the source and the law of Wages. Examine at least one opposing view.
Explain and examine the Marginal Utility theory of Value. How is it reconciled with the observed connection between value and cost?
Is a high level of wages in a country an obstacle to foreign trade?

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1895-96.
The Principles of Sociology.

Course Enrollment for Economics 3.

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 3. Asst. Professor Edward Cummings. — The Principles of Sociology. — Development of the Modern State, and of its Social Functions. 2 hours.

Total 37: 8 Graduates, 21 Seniors, 6 Juniors, 2 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 63.

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Mid-Year Examination.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 3.

(Arrange your answers in the order of your questions. Omit one.)

“Hence, in this case we may assert clearly that when the individual is removed the social ceases to be, and that there is absolutely nothing in society which does not exist in a state of subdivision and continual repetition in the living individuals, — or which has not existed in the dead ancestors from whom the living proceed.” Explain carefully. Compare this conception of society with the “social organism” conception, and state clearly your own views.
What do you conceive to have been the habits and characteristics of primitive man in “a state of nature”? Discuss the evidence presented by Westermarck, Spencer, and others.
“In a word, the physiological bond, which of old constituted the main foundation of the small domestic societies, then of the tribes, then of the ancient cities, is still the essential foundation of the great nations of today.” Explain carefully. What according to Spencer, have been the merits and defects of the various forms of family organization? What are the present tendencies?
“Entangled and confused with one another as Ceremonial and Fashion are, they have thus different origins and meanings.” Explain. Trace carefully the significance of these differences, and give examples.
“Class distinctions, then, date back to the beginnings of social life.”
In what order have political institutions evolved? What have been the chief determining factors?
“M. Alfred Fouillée has endeavored to express the truth of both ways of regarding society by saying that the highest form of it must be an ‘organism contractuel,’ — a formula that may perhaps gain more general acceptance than anything expressed in the phraseology of German idealism.” Explain carefully.
Discuss the views of Spencer and of Comte in regard to the scope of sociology and its relation to other sciences

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 3, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1895-96.

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Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 3.

Answer the questions in the order in which they stand. Give one hour to each division.

A critical estimate of Giddings’ Principles of Sociology, — contrasted (a) with Spencer, (b) with Tarde.

II.

A critical estimate of Evolution and Effort, — contrasting it with views set forth in Social Evolution.

III.

The bearing of sociological theory upon the practical problems of (a) poverty, (b) pauperism, (c) crime.
Which of the books read during this half-year (and not already discussed) has seemed to you of greatest worth? Why?

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1895-96.
The Theory of Statistics.

Course Enrollment for Economics 4².

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 4². Dr. John Cummings. — The Theory of Statistics. — Applications to Social and Economic Problems. — Studies in movements of Population. Hf. 3 hours. 2d half year.

Total 19: 2 Graduates, 11 Seniors, 4 Juniors, 2 Sophomores.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 64.

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Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 4.

(Divide your time equally between A and B.)

A
I and II may be treated as one question.

What do you understand by “movement of population”? What light do Statistics throw upon the law of population as stated by Malthus?
What are some of the “more striking facts and more pregnant results of the vast growth of population in Europe, America, and the British Colonies within the last half century”?

B.
Take five.

In constructing a life table what correction must be made for abnormal age and sex distribution of the population?
Define the following terms: “Mortality,” “Expectation of Life,” “Mean Duration of Life.” How should you calculate the mean duration of life from the census returns for any community?
How should you calculate the economic value of a population?
What are some of the inaccuracies to which censes enumerations are liable?
What is the nature of a statistical law? of what categories of social phenomena may statistical laws be formulated? in what sense are they laws? How do they bear upon freedom of the will in human conduct?
How do the conditions of observation in social sciences differ from conditions of observation in the natural sciences?
What do you understand by the law of criminal saturation?
By what considerations should the Statistician be guided in in making selection of social phenomena for investigation?

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1895-96.
Railway Transportation.

Course Enrollment for Economics 5¹.

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 5¹. Professor Taussig. — Railway Transportation. — Lectures and written work. Hf. 3 hours. 1st half year.

Total 43: 6 Graduates, 27 Seniors, 7 Juniors, 3 Law.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 64.

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Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 5.

The means of transportation in the United States in 1855.
Is there historical warrant for the assertion that in United States the construction and operation of railways have been left mainly to private enterprise?
The resemblances and differences between the legislation of Iowa on maximum rates, and that of England.
Are there good grounds for alarm at the tendency to consolidation and the growth of great systems among railways?
“There was never a more mistaken idea than the idea that rates would be reduced if they were based on cost of service. The principle keeps rates up. If it is strictly applied, it makes it necessary that each item of business should pay its share of fixed charges.” Why? or why not?
“It is not true that when the price falls below cost of production, people always find it for their interest to refuse to produce at a disadvantage. It very often involves worse loss to stop producing than to produce below cost.” Why and how, as to railways?
The provisions of the Interstate Commerce Act which bear on

an agreement to maintain certain rates;
an agreement to divide earnings;
a lower rate for one hundred carloads than for one carload;
a postage-stamp rate;
a higher rate for a shorter than for a longer distance.

Does the history of pooling arrangements in the United States justify the assertion that they tend to remove inequalities in the rates to shippers?
The lessons of public railway management in Italy and in France.
The evidence as to the financial and economic success of public railway management in Prussia.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 3, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1895-96.

Also found in: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination papers 1873-1915. Box 4, Bound volume: Examination Papers 1896-97. Papers Set for Final Examinations in Philosophy, History, Government, Economics, Fine Arts, Architecture, and Music in Harvard College, June 1896.

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1895-96.
History of Tariff Legislation in the United States.

Course Enrollment for Economics 6¹.

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 6¹. Professor Taussig. — History of Tariff Legislation in the United States. Hf. 2 hours. 1st half year.

Total 88: 11 Graduates, 40 Seniors, 20 Juniors, 5 Sophomores, 12 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 64.

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Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 6.

Arrange your answers strictly in the order of the questions. One question, and one only, may be omitted.]

What earlier legislation affected the provisions of the tariff act of 1789? What light does the earlier legislation throw on the character of this act?
Was the argument for protection to young industries more applicable to cotton goods in 1816 than to silk goods in 1870?
What changes were made, in 1833, in the duties on woollens, cottons, linens, and worsteds? Why the differences in policy?
What were the grounds on which it was maintained, in 1828-32, that a tax on imports was virtually a tax on exports? How far was the assertion true?
Mention points of similarity and points of difference between Webster’s speech of 1824 and Gallatin’s memorial of 1831.
Should you say that the position of the protective system in public opinion was the same in 1870-90 as in 1816-32?
Explain the legislation in regard to the duties on sugar in the acts of 1890 and 1894. Was the at of 1894 more advantageous than its predecessor to the planters? to the refiners? to the public?
What do you believe would now be the effect, on domestic industries, of the free admission of (1) pig iron, (2) woollen goods, (3) linens?
In what mode were the tea and coffee duties dealt with in the period 1840-60? in the period 1865-95? What explanation of the general course of policy can you give in either case?
In what cases, if in any, are duties on imports a charge on the foreign producer?
The significance of the events of 1860 for the tariff history of France and of England.
Is there ground for saying that the drift since 1870 toward protective duties, in the United States and on the Continent of Europe, rests on the same general causes?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 3, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1895-96.

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1895-96.
Financial Administration and Public Debts.

Course Enrollment for Economics 7¹.

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 7¹. Dr. John Cummings. — Financial Administration and Public Debts. Hf. 3 hours. 1st half year.

Total 27: 1 Graduate, 8 Seniors, 12 Juniors, 1 Sophomore, 5 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 64.

* * * * * * * * * *

Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 7.

Divide your time equally between A and B. I and II may be treated as one question.

Give an account of the sinking fund provisions enacted by Congress 1790-1820; and of the management and refunding of the debt during this period.
Examine and criticise the following account of the evolution of public credit, with a view to determining whether a government is ever justified in pledging the State to any definite policy of debt payment:—

“In this evolution, as in all others, there are transition stages: we have debts of long term, but secured by the pledging of public property or of income from taxes. Then we have a long period of redemption without such a pledge. The plan of discharging the debt simply on the ground of financial expediency, to which the debtor state has accustomed itself, presently takes the place of redemption simply at the instance of impatient creditors. Finally the question of redemption comes by mutual consent to be left entirely undetermined.”

(Take any five of the questions following.)

What effect upon the present worth of a security has lengthening the term for which it is to run?
Give an account of the payment of the war indemnity to Germany.
Discuss the “use and disuse of ‘relishes,’ gambling risks which are added in order to commend a public loan to the taste of creditors,” as a feature in the development of public credit.
Compare the development of public credit in Prussia with that of Great Britain, at the beginning of this century.
Examine and criticise the following selection:—

“As regards the relation of public control to the public credit, there is obviously a lone step taken in advance when the public control comes to he so employed as to not discriminate in its own favor.”

[sic] Define the following terms, and illustrate: “budget,” “conversion,” “rolling annuity.”

[sic] What influence has our Secretary of the Treasury over financial legislation, as compared with the influence of the English Chancellor of the Exchequer? Compare the manner of making up the estimates of public income and expenditure in England and in the United States; of appropriating funds out of the Treasury.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 3, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1895-96.

___________________________

1895-96.
History of Financial Legislation in the United States.

Course Enrollment for Economics 8².

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 8². Dr. J.A. Hill. — History of Financial Legislation in the United States. Hf. 2 hours. 2d half year.

Total 64: 5 Graduates, 22 Seniors, 18 Juniors, 6 Sophomores, 13 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 64.

* * * * * * * * * *

Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 8.

(N. B. — Omit one question under each of the five main divisions of the paper.)

Is the Independent Treasury System preferable to the use of banks as public depositories? Present the arguments on each side of the question, using any illustrations from the History of the United States that may occur to you.
What illustrations does our financial history afford of difficulties that may arise from an exclusive reliance upon import duties as a source of revenue?

II.

Describe the scheme which was adopted in 1790 for settling the accounts between the United States and the individual States. How did the assumption of the State debts affect the account?
In what respects did the financial policy which the country pursued during the War of 1812 deviate from that which Gallatin had advocated in anticipation of war?
What descriptions of treasury notes were issued during the War of 1812, and how did the successive issues indicate that the country was drifting towards a government paper currency?

III.

The following extract is from a speech which Webster delivered in Congress on Jan. 2, 1815. The bank bill to which it refers was substantially the same as Dallas’ plan for a bank:—
“What sort of an institution, sir, is this? It looks less like a bank than a department of the Government. It will be properly the paper money department. Its capital is Government debts; the amount of its issues will depend on Government necessities; Government, in effect, absolves itself from its own debts to the bank, and by way of compensation absolves the bank from its own contracts with others.”
What features of the proposed bank did Webster refer to in his criticisms? What sort of a bank did he favor? What was the outcome of the movement for a bank at this session of Congress?
What causes produced the surplus of 1836? When was there a somewhat similar situation in the later history of the country?
State briefly where the public moneys of the United States have been kept at different periods since 1789.

IV.

How did Secretary Chase execute the authority conferred upon him by the loan Acts of July 17 and Aug. 5, 1861, and in what respect was the course which he pursued open to criticism?
The Legal Tender Act of March 3, 1863, contains the following clauses:—

And so much of the Act to authorize the issue of United States notes, and for other purposes, approved Feb. 25, 1862, and of the act to authorize an additional issue of United States notes, and for other purposes, approved July 11, 1862, as restricts the negotiation of bonds to market value, is hereby repealed. And the holders of United States notes, issued under and by virtue of said acts, shall present the same for the purpose of exchanging the same for bonds, as therein provided, on or before the first day of July, 1863, and thereafter the right so to exchange the same shall cease and determine.
Explain the meaning, object and effect of these provisions.

How much assistance did the Government derive from the Direct Tax during the Civil War? Why is it probable that this form of taxation will never be resorted to again?

Give the main provisions of the Resumption Act of 1875? Why was it doubtful whether this Act would actually secure the resumption of special payments?
State in general terms the changes effected in the form of the national debt (1) while McCulloch was Secretary of the Treasury, (2) under the Refunding Act of 1870, (3) by Secretary Windom in 1881.
Give an account of the discussion which arose in 1867-68 on the question of paying the principal of the War debt in legal tender notes.

___________________________

1895-96.
The Social and Economic Condition of Workingmen in the United States and in other countries.

Course Enrollment for Economics 9.

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 9. Asst. Professor Edward Cummings. — The Social and Economic Condition of Workingmen in the United States and in other countries. 3 hours.

Total 67: 4 Graduates, 25 Seniors, 27 Juniors, 6 Sophomores, 5 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 64.

* * * * * * * * * *

Mid-Year Examination.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 9

(Arrange your answers in the order in which the questions stand. So far as possible illustrate your discussions by a comparison of different countries. Omit one question.)

Contrast the structure of industry before machinery with the structure of modern industry.
In what sense can there be said to be a law of invention? and how is this illustrated historically by the appearance and sequence of the great industrial inventions?
How does machinery affect the demand for labor? the quality of labor? the family of the laborer? his real wage?
Trade unionism vs. trades unionism; the old unionism vs. the new unionism. Explain the differences, and show how and when these phases have from time to time recurred during this century.
How is Chartism related to other phases of the labor movement in England?
The merits and the demerits of such trade-union organizations as you have thus far become acquainted with.
Arbitration and Conciliation: (a) In what industries and in what forms have they succeeded best? (b) The present status and the prospects of industrial arbitration in England and in the United States.
Taking the ordinary factory, how far is it possible or impossible to devise a system of remuneration which reconciles the interests of (a) workmen, (b) foremen, (c) employers, and (d) consumers? Explain carefully the merits and defects of the methods you propose to adopt or reject.
In what respects does labor differ from other commodities? What ethical and economic consequences flow from these differences?
How far, from time to time, has economic theory — Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, Mill, etc., — seemed to justify, and how far to suggest remedies for the industrial evils affecting wage-earners?
The relation of cooperation to trade-unions, to profit-sharing, to socialism.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 3, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1895-96.

* * * * * * * * * *

Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 9.

(Arrange your answers in the order in which the questions stand. So far as possible illustrate your discussions by a comparison of different countries. Take the first six questions and one other.)

Describe carefully the German system of compulsory insurance:

(a) To whom and to what proportion of the population it applies;
(b) The method of organization and of assessment in each case;
(c) The relation of the system to employer’s liability, to poor laws, friendly societies, etc.
(d) Arguments for and against the system.

How far and with what modifications have such schemes been adopted or seriously proposed elsewhere?

(a) Contrast the plan in each case with the German plan;
(b) What circumstances seem to you to favor and what to hinder such action by the government?

How far have voluntary organizations solved or failed to solve the problem of workingmen’s insurance, (a) in England? (b) in the United States?
What light does the experience of France and of England during this century throw upon the good or the bad effect of attempts on the part of the government either to repress or to foster, (a) labor organizations; (b) coöperation; (c) friendly societies?
In what other countries have you found instructive examples of such interference?
Compare the experience and the legislation of the United States in regard to immigration, with the experience and legislation of other countries in which immigration problems have arisen.
In what countries and in what ways have labor organization tended to drift into politics, and seek political remedies for industrial evils?

(a) Compare the experience of France, Belgium, Germany and English-speaking countries.
(b) What conclusion do you draw from such experience?

What evidence do statistics of family income and expenditure furnish (a) in regard to the social condition of labor in staple industries of the United States and of competing countries? (b) in regard to cost of labor?
What attempts have been made to perpetuate or reestablish certain aspects of the guild organization in European countries?
Discuss the schemes adopted by governments, municipalities, etc., for meeting the “out-of-work problem.”
What is the origin of that problem in the United States?

___________________________

1895-96.
The Mediaeval Economic History of Europe.

Course Enrollment for Economics 10.

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 10. Professor Ashley. — The Mediaeval Economic History of Europe. 2 hours.

Total 14: 7 Graduates, 5 Seniors, 2 Juniors.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 63.

* * * * * * * * * *

Mid-Year Examination.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 10.

To be first attempted by all.

Translate, and comment, on the following passages:

Totius terrae descriptio diligens facta est, tam in nemoribus quam in pascuis et pratis, nec non in agriculturis, et verbis communibus annotata in librum redacta est.
In Tineguella . . . sunt iiii hidae et dimidia ad geldum Regis. Et de istis tenent xx homines xx virgas terrae. Et xiii homines tenent vi virgas et dimidiam.
Sicut traditum habemus a patribus, in primitivo regni statu post conquisitionem, regibus de fundis suis non auri vel argenti pondera sed sola victualia solvebantur.
Plerique, cum aut aere alieno aut magnitudine tributorum aut injuria potentiorum premuntur, sese in servitutem dicunt nobilibus, quibus in hos eadem omnia sunt jura quae dominis in servos.
Ceteris servis non in nostrum morem, descriptis per familiam ministeriis, utuntur. Suam quisque sedem, suos penates regit.

II.

Write on four only of the following subjects.

The importance of the yardland in the rural economy of the Middle Ages.
A history of the mark theory, from its first promulgation to its general acceptance.
A comparison of the life of a medieval English village with that of a New England village of today.
The Roman colonate.
An account and criticism of Mr. Seebohm’s “Tribal System in Wales.”

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 3, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1895-96.

* * * * * * * * * *

Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 10.

To be first attempted by all.

Comment on the following passages, and translate those in Latin and French:—

If a man agree for a yard of land, or more, at a fixed rent, and plough it; if the lord desire to raise the land to him to service and to rent, he need not take it upon him, if the lord do not give him a dwelling.
Ego Eadward . . . rex . . . dedi X manentes in illo loco qui dicitur aet Stoce be Hysseburnam, cum omnibus hominibus qui in illa terra erant qando Ælfred rex viam universeæ carnis adiit.
Magnates regni et alii minores domini qui tenentes habebant perdonarunt redditum de redditu ne tenentes abirent prae defectu servorum et caristia rerum.
Whan Adam dalf and Eve span,
Wo was thanne a gentilman?
Nul ne deit rien achater a revendre en la vile meyme, fors yl sera Gildeyn.
Cives Londoniae debent LX marcas pro Gilda telaria delenda ita ut de cetero non suscitetur.
No one of the trade of Spurriers shall work longer than from the beginning of the day until curfew rings out at the church of St. Sepulchre.

II.

Write on four only of the following subjects:

The economic and constitutional questions involved in recent discussions as to the beginnings of town life in mediaeval Europe.
A comparison of a mediaeval merchant gild with a modern “trust,” and of a craft gild with a modern trade union.
The extent and character of the public regulation of prices and wages in the later middle ages.
The cause of the Peasant Revolt in 1381.
The relation of the English Reformation to the origin of the Poor Laws.
A criticism of Cunningham and McArthur’s Outlines of English Industrial History.

___________________________

1895-96.
Banking and the History of the leading Banking Systems.

Course Enrollment for Economics 12².

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 12². Professor Taussig. — Banking and the History of the leading Banking Systems. Hf. 3 hours. 2d half year.

Total 70: 10 Graduates, 30 Seniors, 19 Juniors, 4 Sophomores, 7 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 64.

* * * * * * * * * *

Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 12.

[Arrange your answers strictly in the order of the questions. Give some answer, however brief, to each question.]

What was Bagehot’s opinion as to the advantage of a “many reserve” system as compared with a “single reserve” system? What light does American experience give?
What important proposal made by Bagehot in Lombard Street has been adopted?
What was the theory of the act of 1844? How far was that theory followed in the legislation on the Reichsbank of Germany?
(a) Arrange in their proper order the following items, in which the figures stand for millions of marks.

Capital	150	Loans	800
Specie	800	Securities	50
Notes	1150	Other Assets	50
Deposits	350	Other Liabilities	50

(b) Consider what would be the significance of the statement if it were for the Reichsbank of Germany; assuming the limit of uncovered issue to be 300 millions of marks.

(c) Rearrange the items as they would appear if the statement were one of the condition of the Bank of England; assuming the limit of notes not required to be covered by specie to be 16 millions sterling = 400 million marks, and assuming that securities of any sort may be held against the uncovered issue. Consider then how the statement, thus rearranged, differs from a probable statement of the actual condition of the Bank of England in recent times.

Does the Bank of France supply an elastic currency? Do the National Banks of the United States?
“Redemption by the Treasury under the national bank legislation has been a convenient method of disposing of worn and soiled notes, and in case of accumulations of currency at special points has facilitated its rapid exchange for legal tender and specie. But nobody would say that this system has compelled any bank to face its notes in the same sense in which it has to face its liability for checks drawn against deposits.” Explain.
Consider the effects on bank-note circulation and redemption of (1) exchange of notes among banks; (2) legislative prohibition of payment by a bank of notes other than its own; and give historical examples of the use of one or the other method.
Does the United States Treasury now carry on a banking business? Did the Comptoir d’Escompte in 1848? The Prussian government in 1866?
Does a banker lend his own money? the money of others?
To what extent, and for what reasons, should the operations of savings-banks, private bankers, and trust companies, be excluded from consideration in this course?

___________________________

1895-96.
Scope and Method in Economic Theory and Investigation.

Course Enrollment for Economics 13².

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 13². Professor Taussig. — Scope and Method in Economic Theory and Investigation. Hf. 2 hours. 2d half-year.

Total 14: 11 Graduates, 3 Seniors.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 63.

* * * * * * * * * *

Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 13.

Compare Wagner’s enumeration of the problems within the scope of economic science with Keynes’s; and consider what doubts or objections there may be in regard to any of the problems mentioned by either writer.
Explain and examine critically one of the following passages in Wagner:
Section 63 (pp. 158-163).
Section 70 (pp. 180-182).
Illustrate the mode in which use is advantageously made of the deductive and the inductive method in regard to two of the following topics:

the causes which determine the general range of prices;
the prospects of socialism;
the prospects of coöperation.

What peculiarities and difficulties appear for economic science if the choice of terminology and in definition? Illustrate.
Is there ground for saying that the economic history of very recent times is of greater value for economic theory than the economic history of remote periods?
What do you conceive to be the position in regard to method in economies of Ricardo? J.S. Mill? Roscher? Schmoller?

___________________________

1895-96.
Communism and Socialism.

Course Enrollment for Economics 14¹.

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 14¹. Asst. Professor Edward Cummings. — Communism and Socialism. — Utopias, ancient and modern. Hf. 2 hours. 1st half-year.

Total 15: 1 Graduate, 10 Seniors, 2 Juniors, 2 Sophomores.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 63.

* * * * * * * * * *

Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 14.

(Arrange your answers in the order of the questions. Omit one.)

The different senses in which the word Socialism is used. Where do you intend to draw the line between Socialism proper, and familiar forms of government interference and control — such as factory legislation, municipal water works, and government postal, telegraph or railroad services?
“National communism has been confused with the common ownership of the family; tenure in common has been confused with ownership in common; agrarian communism with village commons.” Discuss the evidence.
“Just as Plato had his Republic, Campanella his City of the Sun, and Sir Thomas More his Utopia, so Baboeuf had his Charter of Equality, Cabet his Icaria, St. Simon his Industrial System, and Fourier his ideal Phalanstery. . . . But the common criticism of Socialism has not yet noted the change, and continues to deal with the obsolete Utopias of the pre-evolutionary age.” What do you conceive to be the character of the change referred to? How far did the earlier Utopias anticipate the ideals of the modern social democracy?
What indication of Socialistic tendency are to be found in the discipline of the Christian church? Explain the triple contract and its bearing on the doctrine of usury.
“The Communistic scheme, instead of being peculiarly open to the objection drawn from danger of over-population, has the recommendation of tending in an especial degree to the prevention of that evil.” Explain Mill’s argument. Do you agree?
To what extent are the theories of Karl Marx indebted to earlier writers in the 19th century?
How far are the economic theories of (a) Lasalle, (b) Marx related to the theories of the so-called orthodox Economists? Explain critically.
How far do you trace the influence of historical conditions in the social philosophies of Plato, More, Bacon, Rousseau, St. Simon, Karl Marx?
What connection do you see between the teachings of Rousseau and (a) modern Socialism. (b) modern Anarchism?
What, according to Hertzka, is the economic defect of the existing social and industrial system, and what is the remedy? Contrast “Freeland” with “Looking Backward.”

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 3, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1895-96.

Also reprinted in. Harvard University, Examination papers 1873-1915. Box 4, Bound volume: Examination Papers 1896-97. Papers Set for Final Examinations in Philosophy, History, Government, Economics, Fine Arts, Architecture, and Music in Harvard College, June 1896.

Tags Ashley, CummingsEdward, CummingsJohn, HillJA, Peabody, Taussig

Economic History Exam Questions Fields Harvard Statistics

Harvard. Division Exams for A.B., General and Economics, 1920

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2022-01-28

The Harvard Economics department was once one of three in its Division in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The Departments of History and Government shared a general division exam with the Department of Economics and also contributed their own specific exams for departmental fields. This post provides the questions for the common, i.e. general, divisional exam and all the specific exams at the end of the academic year 1919-20 for fields covered by the economics department.

_______________________

Previously Posted Division A.B. Exams from Harvard

Division Exams 1916

Division Exams, January 1917

Division Exams, April 1918

Division Exams May 1919

Division Exams 1931

Special Exam for Money and Government Finance, 1939

Special Exam Economic History Since 1750, 1939

Special Exam for Economic Theory, 1939

Special Exam for Labor and Social Reform, 1939

_________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT AND ECONOMICS

DIVISION EXAMINATIONS FOR THE DEGREEE OF A.B.
1919-20

DIVISION GENERAL EXAMINATION
[April 29, 1920.]

PART I

The treatment of one of the following questions will be regarded as equivalent to one-third the examination and should therefore occupy one hour. Write on one question only.

Compare pamphleteering and propaganda as methods of exerting political influence.
What effect has the establishment of standing armies and navies had upon (a) political and (b) economic organization of the state?
Show how, and why, the following were adapted to certain stages of society: (a) feudalism; (b) gilds; (c) nationality; (d) industrialism.
Trace the course and explain the significance of the development of maritime law.
Contrast the Greek and Italian city states.
What are the wastes of the present industrial system and how, if at all, are they to be eliminated?
Comment on the following: “History embraces ideas as well as events, and derives its best virtues from regions beyond the sphere of state.”
Discuss the problems involved in the economic rehabilitation of Central Europe.
What are the rights of minorities and how are they best secured?
Compare the foreign policies of France, Germany, and the United States during the nineteenth century.

PART II

The treatment of three of the following questions in Part II is required and will be regarded as equivalent to one-third of the examination, and should therefore occupy one hour. The three questions are to be taken from the Departments in which the student IS NOT CONCENTRATING; two questions from one of these Departments and one question from the other.

A. HISTORY

Why did Voltaire characterize the Holy Roman Empire as “neither holy, nor Roman nor an Empire”?
What do you regard as the six most important naval battles in the history of the world! When and where were they fought, and who were the victors and the vanquished in each?
Give a brief account of the relations of the United States and Canada.
What have been the principal issues involved in the struggle over Home Rule?

B. GOVERNMENT

What was the political condition of European states at the time of the Crusades!
In what sense are constitutions of states “made”?
If the principle of reparation of governmental powers is correct, why has the English cabinet system been approved?
Explain the reasons for immigration to the United States from 1870 to 1895.

C. ECONOMICS

What has been the contribution of the corporation to English and American political and economic institutions?
Trace the evolution of collective bargaining in industry.
What is “profiteering”? Explain its relation to the present high cost of living.
Describe the development, and indicate the importance, of national budgets.

PART III

The treatment of three of the following questions in Part III is required and will be regarded as equivalent to one-third of the examination, and should therefore occupy one hour. The three questions are to be taken from the Department in which the student IS CONCENTRATING.

A. HISTORY

Describe the changes in the attitude towards the Christians of the Roman Emperors down to Constantine.
Discuss the development of national assemblies during the Middle Ages.
What did the Tudors do for England?
What is now the territory within the jurisdiction of the United States has been derived, directly or indirectly, from seven European nations. What are the seven, and what territory was derived from each?
Enumerate, with dates, the principal changes in the form of government of France since 1789. How do you account for their frequency?

B. GOVERNMENT

Discuss the development of the relations of President and Cabinet in the United
Discuss and illustrate the following: “If tolerance can be allowed in a state, so much the better; that proves that the state is strong.”
What should be the disposition of Constantinople?
Give a brief sketch, explaining cause and naming period, of three of the following: (a) Dorr Rebellion; (b) Whiskey Insurrection; (c) Shay’s Rebellion; (d) Seminole War; (e) Ku-Klux Klan.
How has the change in distribution of population affected governmental organization and administration?

C. ECONOMICS

Discuss the probable future of the market for loanable funds in the United States and Europe.
State the purposes and proper limits of progressive taxation.
Describe the efforts of the Federal Government to enforce fair competition.
What considerations are involved in the maintenance of public agencies for the distribution and employment of labor? What light is thrown on the subject by American and European experience?
Sketch the history and present prospects of the American merchant marine.

_________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
ECONOMIC THEORY
[May 3, 1920.]

Answer six questions

Take from this group at least two and not more than four

“It is the business of economic theory to explain, not to justify or condemn.” Comment.
Discuss the rôle of mathematical analysis in the development of economic theory.
“The determining cause of the general rate of money incomes and wages in a country is to be found in the exporting industries.” Explain.
“The income from concrete instruments of production may be regarded as ‘rent’ or as ‘interest’ according to the point of view.” Explain and discuss.
Of what concretely do invested, of what do uninvested, savings consist? Can savings accumulate to an indefinitely large amount? Can saving be carried to excess?
“The standard of living affects wages, not directly, but through its influence on numbers. … A limitation of numbers is not a cause of high wages, but it is a condition of the maintenance of high wages.” Explain and criticize.
Discuss the theories of business profits.

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

Outline the history of mercantilism.
Give an account of an important political episode in which economic theory has had a decisive influence.
Trace the course of the rate of interest in modern times. What do you expect to be the course of the rate during the next fifteen years? Why?
Characterize the more important developments in the history of socialism.

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

What is the relation of (a) investment banking, (b) commercial banking, to capitalistic production?
What theoretical problems are involved in government regulation of security issues?
Does profit-sharing promise a solution of the problems of distribution? Why or why not?
Discuss the following statement: “If you are not advertising, then advertise, because it saves money for you and it reduces the price to the consumer.”

_________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
ECONOMIC HISTORY
[May 3, 1920]

Answer six questions

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

To what extent, if at all, and in what particulars, has the policy of high protection been of advantage to the American laborer?
How do price revolutions, such as that in progress since 1897, tend to affect the distribution of wealth?
Briefly explain the most satisfactory statistical methods for separating the different types of variation in time series.
What is a logarithmic curve? What are its merits and defects in the graphic presentation of historical series?
Trace the development of uniform accounting for railroads in this country. Indicate any connections between uniform accounting and government regulation of the railroads.

Take from this group at least two and not more than four

Discuss the economic results of the crusades.
Give a brief historical account of mercantilism.
Outline the history of the public debt of one of the following countries: (a) Great Britain; (b) France; (c) United States.
Trace the agrarian movement on the continent of Europe.
Discuss the positions of the various English political parties and social classes on the question of Corn Law Repeal.
Write a brief history of one of the following industries in the United States:

(a) Meat-packing;
(b) Tin-plate manufacture;
(c) Boot and shoe manufacture;
(d) Ship-building.

When and by what steps was silver demonetized in the United States?
Outline the development of the English textile industry.
Give a brief account of the “trust movement” in the United States since 1898.
Sketch the history of the export trade of the United States.

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

Analyze the effects of England’s early commercial policy.
What specific defects in the National Banking System was the Federal Reserve Act, 1913 intended to remedy?
Trace and explain the history of the American merchant marine since 1840. What is its probable future and why?
What industrial conditions are most conducive to the rapid growth of labor organizations? Why?

_________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
MONEY AND BANKING
[May 3, 1920]

Answer six questions.

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

Discuss the distinction between currency expansion and currency inflation.
What statistics of money and banking best serve as indices of financial, speculative, and general business conditions?
Outline a system of accounts for a small commercial bank.
What are the best sources of statistical data upon the following subjects:

(a) Bank clearings in the United States;
(b) Resources and liabilities of banks of New York City;
(c) Bank rates in the London and Paris money markets;
(d) The monetary stock of the United States;
(e) Changes in the value of gold in England?

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

Outline the currency history of one of the following:

(a) Canada;
(b) Germany;
(c) British India;
(d) the Philippines;
(e) the American colonies;
(f) Russia.

State and explain Gresham’s Law. Give four historical examples of the working of the law.
Sketch the history of the relations between the United States Treasury and the banking institutions of the country.
Compare American, British, and German banking methods and policy during the World War.
Describe in detail one of the following financial panics: 1837; 1873; 1893; 1907.

Take from this group at least two and not more than four

What have been the causes of the rehabilitation of silver?
What are the arguments for and against an embargo upon gold exports from the United States at this time?
Describe the business of an American bond house.
Discuss critically the following statement made early in 1916:
“The recent enactment of the Federal Reserve Act only made our sudden riches more embarrassing, for that Act had so changed our system of banking that every $18 of gold in the banks created $82 worth of loanable credit, whereas formerly, of every $100, $25 had to sit in the vaults while only $75 went out to work in the form of loans. In other words (as a result of the War and our banking reform), we not only had enormously more gold, but every dollar of it went a good deal further than ever before in financing new enterprises. This is the situation today.”
Give a critical analysis of the policies of the Federal Reserve Board.
Compare banking in France and England since the signing of the armistice.
Why has London been the financial center of the world? What are the prospects that New York will in time displace London?

_________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
CORPORATE ORGANIZATION, INCLUDING TRANSPORTATION
[May 3, 1920]

Answer six questions

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

In discussing the problems of capitalistic monopoly, it has been stated that “the matter at issue is a question, less of relative ‘economy’ of monopoly and competition than of the kind of economic organization best calculated to give us the kind of society we want.” Explain and discuss.
What are the methods of measuring depreciation? What different policies with respect to depreciation have been advocated in the regulation of public utility rates?
Discuss comparatively the public regulation of railway accounts in England, France, and the United States.
To what extent do the reports of the Bureau of the Census furnish data upon corporate enterprise in the United States?

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

Sketch the history of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law and its enforcement.
Give a brief account of the functions and work of the United States Bureau of Corporations.
Trace the evolution of the equipment of the modern railway.
Outline the history of railroads in Germany.

Take from this group at least two and not more than four

What are the purposes and customary scope of “blue sky” laws? What is the case for and against such legislation?
What connections exist between banks and industrial combinations in the United States? Contrast the situation here with that in France.
Compare American and German public policy toward industrial combinations.
Give a critical analysis of the present railway rate structure in the United States.
Discuss the Plumb Plan for the ownership and operation of the railways of the United States.
Discuss the effects of the great inter-oceanic canals upon inland and ocean transportation.
What are the problems of excess profits taxation?

_________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
PUBLIC FINANCE
[May 3, 1920]

Answer six questions.

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

To what extent, if at all, and in what manner, are taxes a contributing cause of the present “high cost of living”?
Discuss the proposal to tax individuals in proportion to their expenditure rather than their income, thus exempting savings.
Describe the statistical features of the Census Bureau’s annual reports on “Financial Statistics of Cities.”
What course has been taken by the reform of municipal accounting in the United States?

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

Outline the development of the science of public finance.
Give a critical account of the Independent Treasury of the United States.
Trace the history of budget plans in American state and municipal government.
Compare the financing of the American and French Revolutions.
Give a brief historical account of direct taxation in Germany.
Develop and defend a classification of public revenues.

Take from this group at least two and not more than four

Compare government monopolies and internal revenue taxes as means of raising national funds.
Analyze the financial results of the operations of the United States Post Office.
Upon what bases should public utilities be valued and paid for when taken over by municipal authorities?
“Taxation, while necessarily involving political and social considerations, is essentially a problem in national economies.” Do you agree? State your reasons.
The practice of exempting government bonds from taxation is a pernicious American custom.” Comment.
Discuss the effects of national prohibition upon public finance.
Give a critical analysis of excess profits taxation.

_________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
LABOR PROBLEMS
[May 3, 1920]

Answer six questions

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

Discuss the causes of the prevailing industrial unrest.
To what extent and for what purposes should the state limit the hours of labor?
Describe the technique of analyzing workingmen’s budgets.
What statistical problems are involved in measuring labor turnover? What methods of measurement are most satisfactory?

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

Compare trade unions and trade gilds, and the industrial conditions under each.
Give a brief historical account of the employment of children in industry.
Outline the development of the Railway Brotherhoods.
Trace the history of the German Social Democratic Party.

Take from this group at least two and not more than four

Analyze labor conditions in one of the following industries: (a) cotton manufacture; (b) coal mining; (c) steel manufacture.
Discuss the main points of economic policy in the “reconstruction program” of the British Labor Party.
What is the extent and importance of industrial unemployment?
Discuss the present status of women in industry.
Characterize the organization and results of the Washington industrial conferences of 1919-20.
Discuss the aims, scope, and methods of employee representation in business management.
What public policy should be adopted in regard to labor organizations among government employees?

_________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
ECONOMICS OF AGRICULTURE
[May 3, 1920]

Answer six questions

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

To what extent are wages of management an element of cost in American agriculture?
What are the interrelations of cold storage and prices of farm products?
What statistical records are desirable for efficient operation of a dairy farm?
To what extent and in what particulars is depreciation involved in farm accounting?

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

Describe the agrarian revolution in England.
Sketch the movement of the wheat belt in the United States since colonial times.
Give a brief historical account of farm tenancy in the United States.
Trace connections between the tariff policy of the United States and wool growing in this country.
Outline the development of the work of the United States Department of Agriculture.

Take from this group at least two and not more than four

Discuss the relations between climate and the productivity of land.
Indicate the origins of the more important breeds of live stock. What contributions, if any, has this country made to the improvement of the breeds?
Describe the effects of the World War upon the wool market.
What are the relations between the wages of agricultural and factory labor?
Compare the use and importance of artificial fertilizers in American and European agriculture.
Give a brief critical analysis of the Federal Farm Loan Act.
What are the causes of the increasing urbanization of population in the United States?

_________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
STATISTICS
[May 3, 1920]

Answer six questions

Take from this group at least two and not more than four

Draft a set of rules for the construction of statistical tables.
Explain “the necessity of the logical agreement of magnitudes from which an average is to be computed” and compare this with the requirement of “the greatest possible homogeneity of series.” Which of these requirements seems to you more difficult of fulfilment? Why?
Describe the short-cut method of calculating the arithmetic mean from a frequency table. What assumptions underlie this method?
Explain briefly: (a) discrete series; (b) mode; (c) Lorenz curve; (d) average of position; (e) Galton graph.
Explain the different methods of eliminating secular trend in historical series.
Describe the construction and characteristics of a logarithmic curve. What are the merits and defects of such a curve?
What are the comparative advantages and disadvantages of chain indices and fixed-base indices in the measurement of changes in the price level?

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

Give a brief account of the evolution of Statistics.
Outline the history of the Bureau of the Census.
Trace the development of price statistics in England.
What has been the history of wage statistics in the United States?

Take from this group at least one and not more than two

Discuss the different methods employed in estimating population.
What are the principal difficulties in the collection of mortality statistics?
Discuss critically current statistics of foreign trade in this country and abroad.
What units have been employed in the statistics of railways? Analyze and appraise the different units.
What are the best sources of statistical data upon the following subjects:

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Divisional and General Examinations, 1915-1975. Box 6, Bound volume Divisional Examinations 1916-1927 (From the Private Library of Arthur H. Cole).

Image Source: Widener Library from Harvard Class Album 1920.

Columbia Cornell Economics Programs Harvard Michigan Popular Economics Yale

“Political Economy and the Civil War” by Laughlin that provoked an Economist-Bashing editorial, 1885

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2022-01-25

Before becoming the founding father of the department of political economy at the University of Chicago, the 35 year old Harvard assistant professor J. Laurence Laughlin (Harvard Ph.D. 1876) published an essay, transcribed below, arguing that liberal college education needed to be expanded beyond Greek, Latin, mathematics, and philosophy to include courses dealing with economic theory and its policy applications. He provides us a table of the limited course offerings in political economy at five major colleges/universities at the time. I stumbled upon an unsigned editorial written in response to Laughlin that I have also transcribed and which is placed at the end of this post. The editorial provides us with historical evidence that ill-tempered economics-bashing is hardly a creation of the Twitternet Age. No siree Bob! The editor was not amused by Laughlin’s presumption, calling him and his college professor colleagues who taught political economy to boys…”vealy milksops”. I dare any or all visitors to sneak that expression into a footnote.

________________________________

POLITICAL ECONOMY AND THE CIVIL WAR.
By J. Laurence Laughlin.

Atlantic Monthly, v. 55 (April, 1885) no. 330, pp. 444-450.

In some parts of our country there is a current maxim among the old-fashioned gardeners to the effect that “a wind-shaken tree will bear much fruit.” There is some subtle force in it. In fact, it is an expression which may be regarded as ﬁnding its parallel in individual and social life. As individuals, we know that there is no real growth of character except by a conquest over opposing difficulties; the doing right when it is against our inclinations and prejudices. And in a social organism we seem to see a moral law of conservation of energy by which a sacriﬁce is the parent of some gain,— a thing which evidently underlies the movements attending many great convulsions in political life. We saw armies go out of our sight during the civil war, only to come back thinned, injured by disease, with half their number left dead on the ﬁeld. Death meant bitter, indescribable sorrow in all our homes. The experiences of the war were felt to be pitiless, inexplicable, and hard. And yet, perhaps, a subtle suggestion may have come into our minds that it was not simply by dying, or in living, that the best law of our being was enforced; that there was, in truth, some Power behind it all; that some purpose was being worked out through each one of us, just as each leaf on the tree, for example, is necessary to the completed organism of the whole tree, and ceases to be when it is separated from the stem. Now, perhaps, even at this short distance from the struggle, we can begin to see some of the effects of that social and political upheaval, the greatest since the foundation of our government. It is worth while to examine whether the wind shaken tree has borne much fruit.

The process by which citizens from the secluded districts and remote towns were sent through new cities to opposite parts of the Union, exchanging ideas with men of different habits of thought, was a marked feature of the war period, and leavened the mental life of the American people in a way hither to little suspected. It was something like sending a country boy to college, only the effect was multiplied a million times. The rural population came into a knowledge of our cities, while the urban classes were carried out into new climates and into unvisited parts of our vast domain. New sights, new methods of cultivation, different habits of living, stimulated the dull and ﬁred the active and enterprising men in the ranks. The life of the farm and the village was widened to an interest in the nation. About the same time, moreover, came a vast increase in easy means of communication by railways and a greater extension of the use of the newspaper and telegraph, by which provincial towns were brought into direct connection with the outside world. Even oddities of customs and dress began to disappear, in the process of comparison with the more attractive ways of the dwellers in the great cities and towns. In this fashion, the thinking horizon was extended. Dull intellects learned the presence of complicated problems, and brighter minds found new spurs to ambition in the questions of larger interest. On all sides men felt themselves coming daily into contact with new difficulties, under a dim consciousness of their bigness, but with a strong belief that the knowledge how to deal with them was inadequate. In short, the tremendous crisis through which we passed, apart from its effect on the preservation of the Union, has been subtly at work in moral and intellectual directions. The working of these new forces on a quick and susceptible race can easily be imagined. They have, in fact, under somewhat similar conditions, had a distinct inﬂuence on a more phlegmatic people than ours. Old students at Göttingen, who have returned to the university since the late wars in which Germany has been engaged, have been amazed to find the old-fashioned spot — where the customs, habits, and naive simplicity of one hundred years ago had prevailed until quite recently — now wholly changed. The commercial spirit has seized the formerly simple-minded peasants, and the quiet town now hears the heavy march of cosmopolitanism in its streets.

Like Germany, the United States had new problems to solve. While the conﬂict closed the long slavery struggle, it brought with it intricate questions, but of a character very different from those which had gone before. Without warning, and consequently without the ability to get due preparation or acquire proper training, our public men were confronted, as the war progressed, with matters of vital importance in international and constitutional law, in taxation, and in every form of administration and ﬁnance. The demand for men who had given themselves more particularly to the province of governmental science was an imperative one; but it was, generally speaking, met in a way which showed that there existed in the community a class from whom these necessary men could be recruited. That class was the legal profession of the country. The questions of reconstruction, the relation of the general government to the States, the civil rights of the negro, our relations with foreign powers during the blockade of Southern ports, were not abandoned to men who had never habituated themselves to discussions such as were involved in their settlement. There were differences of opinion, of course; but inasmuch as these differences of opinion were produced by different political theories, this proved that attention had been given to such subjects to the extent that a crystallized system of thought, formulated in dogmas, had been created by the various parties.

But, as has been suggested, new considerations arose. The magnitude of the military operations involved an enormous expenditure of money by the state, and made a demand upon our statesmen for ﬁnancial skill of an almost unparalleled kind. To meet these extended questions of taxation, ﬁnance, and currency, what body of men could be called upon? To this, answer must be made that the war overtook us without a supply — or even a few — of trained economists and financiers. The economic part in the equipment of a public official had been wholly neglected. In fact, political economy and ﬁnance had never been seriously studied in the schools; but, if studied, they were classed in the old-fashioned required curriculum with Butler’s Analogy and the Evidences of Christianity. Although Adam Smith wrote his Wealth of Nations in 1776, political economy was an unknown science to the American people before 1860. It is an interesting study to examine the manner in which our people went under the burdens and tasks of our great civil conﬂict. There was the quick adaptability of Americans to start with; there was plenty of patriotism and good will, and no lack of those high qualities of self-sacriﬁce and heroism which are still fragrant to us; but lawyers, such as Chase and Fessenden, were practically our only ﬁnanciers. Early in the war they were required to consider a scheme — for the right settlement of which a vast experience is necessary — of raising loans, and adjusting a plan of taxation corresponding to the extraordinary war expenses. Without considering alternatives, in a few years they created a debt as great as that incurred by old despotisms of Europe in centuries; without foresight, they drifted into a ruinous issue of irredeemable paper money; without intending it as the object of a deﬁnite policy, but through a desire simply to gain a war revenue, they established an extended system of “protection to home industries” by levying duties on imports, which has brought into existence business interests largely dependent on the continuance of these temporary war measures. When it is realized that principles of taxation are to-day probably less understood than any other branch of economics, it is not surprising to ﬁnd that in 1864 Congress was occupied only ﬁve days in passing the most gigantic taxation measure of the war. The National Bank Act, which has given us the best system of banking ever enjoyed by the country, was, however, in reality passed as an act to facilitate the sale of our bonds and aid our tottering credit. We blundered egregiously, but we were capable of learning by experience. Yet it was from these very blunders, from this revelation of inexperience made evident by the demands of a great emergency period, that the community received an impetus toward the study of economic questions which was certain to result in good fruit.

In fact, it is now clear that a new interest in economics and ﬁnance has already arisen. The civil war was, so to speak, the creation of economic study in the United States. The war did for this country — in a different way, of course — even more than the corn-law agitation did for England. It actually gave birth to new motives for study. There never was a time in our history when there was so evident a desire to get light on the economic problems of the day as now. There is a new stir among the ranks of the young men at college; and the printing-press sends forth an increasing stream of new books upon subjects which are constantly discussed in the daily newspapers. There is unquestionably a new-born, slowly growing attention by the younger men of our land to the necessity (as well as the duty) of ﬁtting themselves properly for the responsibilities of citizenship. If the war has given us this, — the absence of which used to be so often lamented a few years ago, — then may some of our sacriﬁces not have been in vain. The wind-shaking has resulted in abundant fruit.

In the present awakening in educational discussion, one phase of which has been called the “Greek Question,” it is worth while to notice the inﬂuence of the war period on the college curriculum. In most of our schools and universities, on the breaking out of the war (and even to the present day), the pecuniary resources and endowments had been tied down, under the force of old traditions, to supply instruction in the customary Greek, Latin, mathematics, and philosophy, which were then considered the only essentials of a liberal education. But when the rude shock of the war awakened us to our ignorance, and we looked around for the schools where the new studies could best be followed, it was discovered that the college curriculum made practically no provision for such instruction. In the old days when sailing vessels alone entered Boston harbor, only one channel was practicable, and all the fortiﬁcations were placed in a way to command it: but when steam took the place of sails, another channel was adopted, but it is now wholly undefended. The old ship channel must be defended, but so must the new one. So, in the collegiate studies, the old subjects are necessary, of course, but they are not the only necessary ones. The new demands, due to the progress of the age, must also be met. In fact, the response of the schools to these new demands is at once the evidence and result of the quickening and stimulating forces so brieﬂy sketched in these pages. A comparison of the amount of instruction in political economy given by the principal institutions of the land in the years 1860, 1870, and 1884 will furnish us new proof that the wind-shaken tree is yielding full fruit.

Nothing could show more distinctly than the accompanying table how young any real systematic study of political economy is in this country, and it accounts for the lack of any number of trained economists among us. But the younger generation are happily recruiting their ranks, now that these better opportunities are open to them.

At no time, however, have public affairs demanded unpartisan study in economics more than to-day. In past centuries governments were supposed to labor, in an unsettled state of society, for the protection of life and property. Now that the general progress of civilization and Christianity has made life and liberty more secure, legislation in later years has concerned itself rather with property than life. In the Middle Ages trade was considered plebeian; to ﬁght or to oppress was regarded as more noble. Now the chief solicitude of the modern state is the increase of wealth: the castles have become mills; retainers, productive laborers; and arms, the hammers and tools of the artisan.

	1860.	1870.	1884.
Yale College.	One third of Senior year	One third of Senior Year	1. Elementary Course. — Fawcett. — Discussions on currency, banking, and taxation. 3 hours a week for 13 weeks.
			2. Elementary Course. — Mill. — Currency, banking, and taxation. 2 hours a week for a year.
			3. Advanced Course. — Discussion of economic problems and fallacies, with selections from leading treatises. 2 hours a week for 20 weeks.
			4. Graduate Course. — Finance and the Art of Politics, as illustrated in the History of the United States. 2 hours a week for 2 years.
			5. Graduate Course (in alternate years.) — In 1883-4, Sociology. In 1884-5, Industrial History, History of Political Economy, Finance and Theory of Rights. 1 hour a week for each year.
			6. History, business methods, and social problems, of Railroads. 2 hours a week for a year.
			[A course about equal to Courses 1 and 2 is given in the Sheffield Scientific School.]
Cornell University.	[Institution not founded]	One third of Junior Year	1. Elementary Course. — Lectures and Recitations. 2 hours a week 2/3 of a year.
			2. Lectures on Political Economy.5 hours a week for 1/3 of a year.
			3. Lectures on Finance.
University of Michigan.	Not in the Course of Study.	One Term of Senior Year.	1. Elementary Course. — Lectures. 3 hours a week ½ of a year.
			2. Advanced Course. — Competition, Free Trade and Protection, Commercial Depressions, Transportation, etc. 3 hours a week ½ of a year.
			3. Principles and Methods of Finance. — Banking, National Debts, etc. 2 hours a week ½ of a year.
			4. History of Industrial Society [not given in 1883-4]. 2 hours a week ½ of a year.
			5. Financial Seminary.— History of American Finance. 2 hours a week ½ of a year. [Not given 1883-4.]
Columbia College.	Elective in one part of Senior Year.	One Term of Senior Year.	1. Principles of Political Economy.— Elementary Course. Rogers’ Manual. 2 hours a week ½ of a year.
			2. History of Politico-Economic Institutions. 2 hours a week ½ of a year.
			3. Finance and Taxation. 2 hours a week ½ of a year.
			4. Statistical Science, Methods and Results. 2 hours a week ½ a year.
			5. Communistic and Socialistic Theories. 2 hours a week ½ a year.
			6. [Topics like railways, banks etc., are placed under Administrative Law.]
Harvard University.	One half of Senior Year.	1. Rogers’ Manual One half of Junior Year	1. Elementary Course.— Mill’s Political Economy. Lectures on Banking and the Financial Legislation of the United States. 3 hours a week for a year.
		2. Elective Course for Seniors: Adam Smith, Mill, Bowen. 3 hours a week for a year.	2. Advanced Course.— History of Political Economy. Cairnes, Carey, George, and recent literature. 3 hours a week for a year.
			3. Investigation of Practical Questions of the Day.— Banking, Money, Bimetallism, American Shipping, Note Issues, etc. 3 hours a week for a year.
			4. Economic History since the Seven Years’ War.— 3 hours a week for a year.
			5. Land Tenures in England, Ireland, France, and Germany.— 1 hour a week for a year.
			6. History of Tariff Legislation in the United States.— 1 hour a week for a year.
			7. Comparison of the Financial Systems of France, England, Germany, and the United States.— 1 hour a week for a year. [Omitted 1884-5.]
			8. History of Financial Legislation in the United States. 1 hour a week for a year.

Consider the character of the questions at this time pressing upon Congress for immediate attention. If we omit the administrative and political legislation on the civil service, the succession to the presidency, and a national bankruptcy law, the remaining questions before Congress to-day are almost entirely economic. (1.) There is, in the first place, the false silver dollar, masquerading in sheep’s clothing, and waiting to catch the unwary business world napping, when it will suddenly assume its true depreciated character, and devour fifteen or eighteen per cent of all creditor’s dues estimated at present prices. What is Congress doing here? Just what it did in the last months of 1861, when it let the country drift on to the shoals of depreciated paper. Monometallists and bimetallists, business men and bankers, are assaulting the dangerous silver legislation, and yet Congress is a very Gibraltar in which the silver owners are intrenched. (2.) Next, there is the banking question. Nothing can be more delicate and sensitive than the machinery of credit and banking in a great commercial country such as this; and yet men, to satisfy the prejudices of constituents, handle this mechanism with about the same air of cheerful indifference as that of a child who drags a rag doll round by the heels. The present national bank notes give a stability to trade in separate parts of the Union, by means of a currency equally good in Maine and Texas, never reached in the days of the vicious and changing state banks; and yet the present system is gradually vanishing before our very eyes, as calls are made for government bonds. (3.) Again, Congress is struggling with the most difficult of all problems, – national taxation. It means a reëxamination of our whole scheme of taxation, the retention of internal taxes on distilled spirits and tobacco, the management of our surplus revenue, the whole sub-treasury system; while the situation inevitably requires a readjustment of our customs duties. Duties needed in order to procure a large revenue in time of war are no longer necessary when the war is ended, and the national debt is reduced one half. (4.) There are the barbarous and mediaeval navigation laws, to which we cling with a curious indifference to the influence of all progress and liberal ideas. The problem of our shipping and merchant marine needs the touchstone of some wider training than is furnished by selfish individual interests. (5.) Our public lands and the settlement of our vast Western domain are important matters of land tenures, and yet they are abandoned to accident, while the possibilities of good disappear under the cloud of accomplished facts, where nothing can be done. It will not be long before all the public lands will be gone, and yet no notice is taken of existing evils. (6.) Then, again, one has but to mention the word “railway,” and there arises to the mind a congeries of difficult questions dealing with Western “grangers,” the ability of the state to regulate freight and passenger charges, and in fact the whole vexed discussion of state interference. Here is a field by itself, to which a man may well give his whole life-work. (7.) It would be wearisome to more than mention the topics of Postal Telegraph, Chinese Labor, Strikes, Trades Unions, and Communism, which attract our instant attention. (8.) Then again the unfortunate legal-tender decision of Judge Gray has brought back to us all the troublesome and intricate discussions on the currency which we once thought had been forever settled. As matters now stand, power is given to Congress, if it chooses, to repeat all the errors of Continental currency policy, and we are put back a century in our paper money teaching. (9.) To pass from merely internal matters, so long as we were the only civilized people on the western continent, our relations with our neighbors gave us little thought. The growth of commerce, the expansion of populous areas north and south of us, the discovery of mineral wealth outside our own limits, which invites our capital, has forced on us the consideration of reciprocity with Canada and Mexico. We have refused reciprocity to Canada; but to-day we are considering the desirability of granting closer commercial relations with Mexico, while Cuba and Porto Rico have asked the same advantages by a new treaty.

Such, in brief, are some of the subjects which must be made matter of instruction in our schools and universities. It will be observed how overwhelming a proportion of public measures at present are economic, and what a heavy responsibility lies upon our institutions of learning, if they are to meet the new demands in a fitting manner. But there is a still stronger reason for strengthening our educational forces on the economic side. This is to be found in what may be called the “economic portents.” To the present time we have been properly called a “young country,” which to the economist means an abundance of unoccupied land, a scanty population, large returns to capital, and high wages. A full knowledge of our resources has not practically been reached as yet, and will not be, probably, for a considerable time to come. These resources and the lusty health of our young country have made it possible heretofore for legislators to blunder with impunity. Constantly receiving large returns, labor and capital would not naturally be over-critical and hostile to each other. The young-country theory has also led to the encouragement of unlimited immigration, with which to settle our prairies and build up our towns. These new-comers do not, in fact, all go upon the land; but, arriving on our seaboard, instead of being drawn off entirely, they remain in the cities, like dirty pools of water in the streets. Indeed, the importation of uneducated, un-American, un-republican workmen from foreign lands is a problem in itself, and makes a strong demand upon all who can possibly do so to educate these masses, both economically and politically. Lawless communism, it is said advisedly, feeds on bad workmen. A saving mechanic is never a communist. To-day these men mean little to us; but when, by an increasing population and a denser settlement of the country, land becomes more scarce and valuable, proﬁts on capital lower, and wages less, then even honest men, ﬁnding themselves pinched by a barrier of their own creation, brought into operation by natural laws, unless economically trained, will not know what is happening, and may in entire ignorance ﬂy in the face of the law, and do in the United States somewhat of the things they are now doing in Europe. The day is more or less distant when this may happen, but it is coming nearer in proportion as the methods of men accustomed to conditions in old and crowded countries are brought here by a never ending stream of immigration.

The war has plunged us into the consideration of gigantic questions of an economic character, and the growth of our country in numbers and wealth is making a true understanding of them more necessary than ever to the prosperity of the nation, and a rising tide of interest in such studies is unmistakably evident. But these new and increasing demands are met by meagre and inadequate means in the great schools. It is a surprising fact that in some of the most important institutions there is no separate provision for such studies, and not even one settled instructor. Above all, we must educate in an intelligent manner, by stimulating investigation into home problems, and by encouraging the preparations of monographs on some out of the multitude of our economic questions. The best of the men in the university cannot now ﬁnd a career in economic teaching, because few positions exist in this country as an object for honorable and ambitious students. Men ﬁnd a profession in teaching Greek and Latin, but not Political Economy. When the community wakes up to a realization of this gap in the instruction of the land, and the importance of ﬁlling it, we may hope to see a more correct relation between means and needs than now exists.

________________________________

COLLEGE PROFESSORS AS ECONOMISTS.

Mr. J. Laurence Laughlin, in the Atlantic Monthly for April, appends his name to one of those egotistical screeds which serve to make those who teach political economy to boys contemptible in the sight of those who have occasion to practice legislative economies as practical statesman. Its fundamental assumption is that for want of the wisdom with such boys as Laughlin and Sumner possess nearly all that Hamilton, Gallatin, Chase, and Fessenden have done in America and quite all that Colbert, Napoleon, Pitt, Turgot, and Bismarck have done in Europe in an economic and financial way has been sad botchwork. Why do magazines like the Atlantic Monthly publish such ridiculous rant?

Instead of Chase and Fessenden having been in need of going to school to such vealy milksops as J. Laurence Laughlin, this college tutor shows on every page that he writes how greatly he needs the practical information which he could have got by attending for two or three years on the sessions of the Ways and Means Committee at Washington. Indeed, it is not legislators that need to be educated in economics by college professors, but college professors who need some means of picking up a few grains of sense by being brought into contact with actual legislation.

It is a singular fact that no man who has ever accepted a chair in a college as a teacher of political economy to boys has ever yet rendered any demonstrable service either to the cause of economic science or of legislation. Laughlin has the impertinence to say that, though Adam Smith wrote his “Wealth of Nations” in 1776, political economy was an unknown science to the American people before 1860. Does Mr. Laughlin mean to assert that Franklin, the intimate personal friend of Adam Smith and suggestor of some of his views, or that Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Clay, or Webster, Chase, Fessenden, Garfield, or “Pig Iron” Kelly are any less familiar with Adam Smith’s crudities, blunders, wisdom, and garrulous mud than Laughlin himself is? Adam Smith fell so far below Alexander Hamilton, and in many respects below Madison and Chase, in economic insight that while every commentator on Smith points out errors of fact and of theory, stupidities of ignorance and obliquities of vision on every page of the old scotch dullard and mugwump, we challenge Laughlin to point out with equal ease the ignorances and blunders in Hamilton’s economic papers or financial reports.

Adam Smith had the merit, however, of only styling his work as an “Inquiry.” It is the men who come after him who arrogate for his utterly unscientific, undefined meandering, inconsequential and self-contradictory fog-banks the quality of a science. Still Smith is helpful matter to a sensible legislator, because the latter can generally see on the face of Smith’s statements wherein the good Scotch plodder was wool-gathering, and could rectify Smith’s errors out of his own more modern and ample reading. The notion however, that Cairnes, Mill, Jevons, McLeod, Say, Lavelaye, or any other boy teachers have ever been helpful in matters of practical legislation is not warranted by facts. Ricardo was listened to with great respect by practical legislators, but he was a practical businessman like Franklin, the Careys, and Greeley, who had never undertaken the egotism of a pedagogue. The only economists America has yet produced are those who have either never or hardly ever sat in a professor’s chair. There seems to be something in the air of a school room which, if the professor remains in it until it conquers him, unfits him absolutely to mingle as a man among men in the affairs of men. It causes a cranky adoption of the most impracticable and erratic notions on the most inadequate basis of observation and fact, and at the same time inflates with a lofty and unapproachable egotism which precludes its possessor from meeting the views of an opponent with anything but epithets, however superior his opponent may be to himself in learning, experience, or sagacity. A precipitancy that has no nerves left for investigation and patience at criticism marks his every act and word. Laughlin shows this demoralizing precipitancy, so fatal to level-headed usefulness, by speaking of the silver coin, whose equal dignity with gold coin in all legal respects is irrevocably fixed in the letter of the Constitution of the United States, “as the false silver dollar,” thereby implying, of course that from 1853 to 1870, when silver happened to be worth more than gold, we must have been under a “false gold dollar.”

Laughlin also calls those navigation laws which have never existed either among barbarous or medieval nations, but which began in England under Cromwell, “barbarous and medieval.” He might as well call steam or the art of printing “barbarous and medieval.” Sensible man weary of these impudent epithets flung at them by young and graceless upstarts who have still their spurs to win in everything that distinguishes useful men from snobs.

Source: The Inter Ocean (Chicago, Illinois) April 15, 1885, p. 4.

Image Source: Portrait (1885-88) of James Lawrence Laughlin. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Transfer from the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts.

Tags Laughlin

Harvard Syllabus

Harvard. Reading lists for Aggregate Economic Theory, Dorfman. 1962

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2022-01-13

“Macro-economics” was explicitly named in the course description for the Harvard undergraduate economics tutorial in 1962-63. However, not a single course included “macroeconomics” in its title. Instead graduate students were treated to “aggregate economic theory”, an early and one might argue more felicitous name than “macroeconomics”. This post provides the reading list for Robert Dorfman’s aggregate economic theory course. During the second term of 1958-1959 the same course content was taught by Dorfman as “Economics 241. Money and Banking”.

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Course Announcement

Economics 241. Aggregate Economic Theory

Half course (fall term). M., W., (F.), at 12. Professor Dorfman.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Courses of Instruction for Harvard and Radcliffe, 1962-1963, p. 106.

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Fall, 1962

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics

Economics 241
READING LIST NO. 1

TEXTS

J. M. Keynes. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.

American Economic Association, Readings in Business Cycle Theory.

Also recommended:

Alvin H. Hansen, A Guide to Keynes

Introductory Material

A. P. Lerner, “The General Theory (1),” S.E. Harris, ed., The New Economics, Ch. 11.

L. Tarshis, “An Exposition of Keynesian Economics,” R.V. Clemence, ed., Readings in Economic Analysis, Vol. I, pp. 197-208.

Gardner Ackley, Macroeconomic Theory, Chs. II, III, IV.

U.S. Department of Commerce, National Income, 1954 Edition (Supplement to the Survey of Current Business), pp. 27-60 and skim the rest.

T.C. Schelling, “National Income, 1954 Edition,” Rev. of Econ. and Stat., XXXVII, 321-335 (November 1955).

Consumption

J.M. Keynes, General Theory. Book III.

Robert Ferber, “Research on Household Behavior,” Amer. Econ. Rev., LII, 19-63 (March 1962) .

Irwin Friend, Individuals’ Saving, Ch. 8

J.S Duesenberry, Income, Saving and the Theory of Consumer Behavior, Ch. 3.

M. Friedman, A Theory of the Consumption Function, Ch. 9, at least.

G. Haberler, “My. Keynes’ Theory of the Multiplier,” Readings in Business Cycle Theory, Ch. 9.

Fritz Machlup, “Period Analysis and Multiplier Theory,” Readings in Business Cycle Theory, ch. 10.

Investment

J.M. Keynes, General Theory, Chs. 11, 12, 16.

I. Fisher, Theory of Interest, Chs. 5-11.

A. A. Alchian, “The Rate of Interest, Fisher’s Rate of Return over Costs and Keynes’ Internal Rate of Return,” Amer. Econ. Rev., X, 938-943 (December 1955).

J.R. Meyer and E. Kuh, The Investment Decision. Chs. 2, 12.

J.S. Duesenberry, Business Cycles and Economic Growth, Chs. 3, 5.

F. Modigliani and M.H. Miller, “The Cost of Capital, Corporation Finance and the Theory of Investment,” Amer. Econ. Rev. XLVIII, 261-297 (June 1958).

J.M. Clark, “Business Acceleration and the Law of Demand,” Readings in Business Cycle Theory, Ch. 11.

Fall, 1962

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics

Economics 241
READING LIST NO. 2

Interest Theory

J. M. Keynes, General Theory. Chs. 13, 14, 15, 17.

G.L.S. Shackle, “Recent Theories Concerning the Nature and Role of Interest,” Economic Journal, 71 (June 1961), 209-254.

A.P. Lerner in S.E. Harris, ed, The New Economics, Chs. 45, 46.

B. Ohlin, “Some Notes on the Stockholm Theory of Saving and Investment,” Readings in Business Cycle Theory, Ch. 5

F. A. Lutz, “The Outcome of the Saving-Investment Discussion,” ibid., Ch. 6.

W. Fellner and H.M. Somers, “Alternative Monetary Approaches to Interest Theory,” Rev. of Ec. And Stat., Feb, 1941.

T. Wilson and P.S.W. Andrews, eds., Oxford Studies in the Price Mechanism, Ch. 1.

R. W. Clower, “Productivity, Thrift, and the Rate of Interest,” Economic Journal, March 1954.

Monetary Theory

Irving Fisher, The Purchasing Power of Money, Chs. 2, 3, 8.

Alfred Marshall, “Minutes of Evidence before the Royal Commission on the Values of Gold and Silver,” Questions 9629-9664 (pp. 34-46), Question 9686 (pp. 51-52).

J.M. Keynes, A Tract on Monetary Reform, pp. 74-87.

A.C. Pigou, “The Value of Money,” in F. A, Lutz and L.W. Mints, eds., Readings in Monetary Theory, Ch. 10

W.F. Crick, “The Genesis of Bank Deposits,” ibid., Ch. 4.

H.S. Ellis, “Some Fundamentals in the Theory of Velocity,” ibid., Ch. 7.

Milton Friedman, “The Quantity Theory of Money—A Restatement,” in M. Friedman, ed., Studies in the Quantity Theory of Money, pp. 3-21.

H. Johnson, “Monetary Theory and Policy,” Am. Ec. Rev., June 1962.

W.J. Baumol, “The Transactions Demand for Cash, Quarterly Journ. of Econ., November 1952.

Fall, 1962

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics

Economics 241
READING LIST NO. 3

Synthesis of Aggregative Economics

J.M. Keynes, General Theory: Chs. 18, 19, 21.

Franco Modigliani, “Liquidity Preference and the Theory of Interest and Money” in Readings in. Monetary Theory, Ch. 11.

J.R. Hicks, “Mr. Keynes and the ‘Classics’” in Readings in the Theory of Income Distribution, Ch. 24.

A.C. Pigou, “The Classical Stationary State,” Economic Journal, December 1943.

Don Patinkin, “Price Flexibility and Full Employment,” American Economic Review, September 1948.

P.A. Samuelson, “The Simple Mathematics of Income Determination,” in Income, Employment and Public Policy (New York: 1948), 133-155.

D.B. Suite, “Forecasting and Analysis with an Econometric Model.” American Economic Review, March 1962.

Marc Nerlove, “A Quarterly Econometric Model for the United Kingdom,” American Economic Review, March 1962.

Aggregative Models of Economic Growth

R.P. Harrod, Towards a Dynamic Economies, Lecture 3.

E.D. Domar, Essays in the Theory of Economic Growth, Chs. 3-5.

Robert Solow, “A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, February 1956.

W.J. Baumol, Economic Dynamics, Ch. 4.

READING PERIOD ASSIGNMENT.

J. M. Keyes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, entire.

J.G. Gurley and E.S. Shaw, Money in a Theory of Finance.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003, Box 8, Folder “Economics, 1962-1963 (1 of 2)”.

Tags DorfmanR

Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Mid-year and Year-End Final Exams in Economics and Social Ethics, 1894-1895

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2022-01-12

With this post Economics in the Rear-view Mirror adds yet another annual collection of final examination questions for the economics courses offered at Harvard together with the questions from Professor Peabody’s “Ethics of the Social Questions” that covered issues such as poverty, labor relations, and socialism (as opposed to doctrines of individualism). In 1894-95 Frank Taussig was on sabbatical leave in Italy which accounts for his whereabouts that academic year. Today I learned that “doctrine” was understood as a synonym for “theory” during the gay nineties, see Economics 2 (Economic Theory from Adam Smith to the present time) below.

Exams for one course taught were not included in the published collection of exams. It was Edward Cummings course Economics 14 (Philosophy and Political Economy.—Utopian Literature from Plato’s Republic to the present time). Exams for Economics 14 given in other years have been transcribed and posted.

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1894-95.
PHILOSOPHY 5.

Course Title, Staffing, and Enrollment

[PHILOSOPHY] 5. Professor [Francis G.] Peabody. — The Ethics of the Social Questions. — The questions of Charity, the Family, Temperance, and the various phases of the Labor Question, as problems of practical Ethics. — Lectures, essays, and practical observations. 2 hours.

Total 84: 1 Graduate, 40 Seniors, 15 Juniors, 3 Sophomores, 25 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1894-1895, p. 59.

PHILOSOPHY 5.
THE ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS
Mid-Year Examination. 1895.

[Omit one question.]

The Ethical Idealism of Plato, of Aristotle, and of Kant, compared with the modern doctrine of duty.
Professor Sumner’s doctrine of the Social Fulcrum vs. the philosophy of scientific charity.
Indicate, very briefly, the place in the History of Philanthropy of:

Frédéric Le Play,
Dorothea Dix,
Pastor von Bodelschwingh,
Charles L. Brace,
Samuel G. Howe.

The Elberfeld System — its organization, officials, relation tomunicipal government, and practical working.
The Liverpool System of Collection.
Mr. Charles Booth’s eight classes of East London,— their definition, dimensions, traits, and proportion. (Labor and Life of the People, I. pp. 37-62.) Mr. Booth’s view of the children of Class E (p. 160).
Compare Mr. Booth’s method and results in East London with his method and results in all London.
Compare the principle as to direct relief of the London Charity Organization Society with that of the Boston Associated Charities. (Loch, Charity Organization, pp. 59, 82.) Which is the sounder principle? Why?
The Belgian Labor Colonies,— their scope and method of classification. Compare their aims with those of the colonies of Holland and Germany.
The Christian doctrine of the Social Order — its principles and its peril.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 3. Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Year 1894-95.

PHILOSOPHY 5.
THE ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS.
Year-end Examination. 1895.

Explain the theory of ethics which makes the basis of this course of study; and the way in which this theory is practically illustrated by phases of the modern labor question.
In what respect do the social ideals of Carlyle and Ruskin seem identical, and in what respect do they appear to be inconsistent with each other?
The authorship and the significance of the following phrases:

“There is no wealth but Life…. A strange political economy; the only one, nevertheless, that ever was or can be.”

“I am for permanence in all things. Blessed is he that continueth where he is.”

“The gospel of dilettantism.”

“Roots of honour.”

“Ricardo is the parent of Socialism.”

“The value of a thing is independent of opinion and of quantity.”

“The reformation was the work of a monk; the revolution must be the work of a philosopher.”

“The people are the Rock on which the Church of the future must be built.”

The practical programme proposed by Scientific Socialism; the chief advantages claimed for it by its adherents; and the criticisms on it which appear to you most serious. Utilize here your reading of Naquet and The Social Horizon.
Socialism and Religion. The apparent grounds for sympathy and the practical reasons for antagonism. The teachings concerning socialism in the Encyclical of 1891.
The philosophy of history which encourages the Socialist, and the “Opportunist’s” view of this “Law” of social evolution.
The growth of Trades Unionism in Great Britain, and its contribution to moral education.
Federalism and Individualism in English Coöperation. The issue involved, and the advantages of each scheme of expansion.
Compare the characteristics of the forms of Liquor Legislation in force in Massachusetts and in Pennsylvania. (Fanshawe, XI, XII.) How are licenses granted under the Brooks Law? What is the function of probation-officers in Massachusetts?
How far do physiological considerations go to determine one’s duty as to drink?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers, 1873-1915. Box 4. Bound volume: Examination Papers, 1893-95. “Papers Set for Final Examinations in Philosophy, History, Government and Law, Economics Fine Arts, Architecture, and Music in Harvard College, June, 1895,” pp. 6-7.

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1894-95.
ECONOMICS 1.

Course Title, Staffing, and Enrollment

[ECONOMICS] 1. Professor [William] Ashley, Asst. Professor [Edward] Cummings, Dr. [John] Cummings, and Mr. [Frederick Redman] Clow. — Outlines of Economics. — Mill’s Principles of Political Economy. — Lectures on Economic Development, Distribution, Social Questions, and Financial Legislation. 3 hours.

Total 277: 2 Graduates, 39 Seniors, 18 Juniors, 159 Sophomores, 9 Freshmen, 50 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1894-1895, p. 62.

ECONOMICS 1.
Mid-Year Examination. 1895.

[Arrange your answers strictly in the order of the question. One question may be omitted.]

“All members of the community are not laborers, but all are consumers, and consume either unproductively or productively.” Explain and illustrate by examples. Suppose everybody resolved to consume “productively” only, what would be the result?
“The distinction, then, between capital and not-capital, does not lie in the kind of commodities, but in the mind of the capitalist — in his will to employ them for one purpose rather than another.” Discuss this statement, using the following illustrations:—

Bread.
A knitting machine.
A steam engine.
A carriage.

Where does true economic rent appear in the following cases:—

(a) The cultivation of a farm by its owner.
(b) The rental of a farm under a long lease by a tenant who has made permanent improvements on the land.

What is the effect on values of a general fall of profits? Of a general fall of wages?
What is the effect on rents of (1) an improvement in the methods of agriculture, (2) an improvement in transportation?
“The price of land, mines, and all other fixed sources of income, depends on the rate of interest.” Explain.
According to Mill, “Every addition to capital gives to labor either additional employment, or additional remuneration.” Why? What is the effect of an increase of labor-saving machinery on employment and on remuneration? Illustrate carefully.
“Money cannot in itself perform any part of the office of capital, since it can afford no assistance to production.” Do you agree or disagree? Why? Is money capital? Is credit money? Is credit capital?
What does Mill mean by “stationary state”? And what changes would bring about a progressive state?
What would be the effect on prices of (1) adding to a gold and silver currency a small issue of inconvertible paper money, (2) the discovery of very rich gold fields?
What do you understand by the Domestic system? By Competition? By Labor?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 3. Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Year 1894-95.

ECONOMICS 1.
Year-end Examination. 1895.

(Arrange your answers strictly in the order of the question. Omit three of the even numbers: answer all others.)

“We must suppose the entire savings of the community to be annually invested in really productive employment within the country itself; and no new channels opened by industrial inventions, or by more extensive substitution of the best known processes for inferior ones.” How would profits be affected supposing population (a) to remain stationary; (b) to increase in proportion to the increase in capital?
The operations, therefore, of speculative dealers, are useful to the public whenever profitable to themselves; and although they are sometimes injurious to the public, by heightening the fluctuations which their more usual office is to alleviate, yet, whenever this happens the speculators are the greatest losers. Explain Mill’s reasoning.
Mill says of the stationary state, “I am inclined to believe that it would be, on the whole, a very considerable improvement on our present condition.” Why? Explain carefully.
Is there a necessary hostility of interests between consumers organized in co-operative associations and producers organized in trade unions?
Describe the different results obtained in co-operation by distributing profits in the form of dividend (a) on capital, (b) on labor (in proportion to wages), (c) on purchases. Illustrate by the experience of co-operation in France and England.
How do you distinguish between what Mill calls the necessary and the optional functions of government?
“We have had an example of a tax on exports, that is, on foreigners, falling in part on ourselves. We shall therefore not be surprised if we find a tax on imports, that is, on ourselves, partly falling on foreigners.” Explain carefully each case, tracing the possible effects upon prices and international trade of taxes (a) upon exports; (b) upon imports.
“Equality of taxation, therefore, as a maxim of polities, means equality of sacrifice.” Apply this maxim to a tax on incomes.
Suppose a tax of a fixed sum per bushel to be laid upon corn; what would be the effect (a) upon prices; (b) upon population; (c) upon profits; (d) upon rents?
How would the results differ if instead of a fixed sum per bushel the tax were…

(i) …a fixed proportion of the produce;
(ii) …proportioned to the rent of the land;
(iii) …a fixed sum of so much per cultivated acre? Explain carefully each case.

Describe the kinds of currency used in the United States, indicating briefly the conditions of issue in each case.
Explain the causes and effects of (a) combined reserves, (b) a suspension of the Bank Charter Act in England.
What are the provisions of the law in regard to the issue of bank notes at the present day in England? In Germany?

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1894-95.
ECONOMICS 2.

Course Title, Staffing, and Enrollment

[ECONOMICS] 2. Professors Ashley and [Silus Marcus] Macvane. — Economic Theory from Adam Smith to the present time. — Selections from Adam Smith and Ricardo. — Modern Writers. — Lectures. 3 hours.

Total 34: 9 Graduates, 14 Seniors, 6 Juniors, 1 Sophomores, 4 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1894-1895, p. 62.

ECONOMICS 2.
Mid-Year Examination. 1895.

N.B.—Not more than seven questions must be attempted.

“The study which lately in England has been called Political Economy is, in reality, nothing more than the investigation of some accidental phenomena of modern commercial operations, nor has it been true in its investigation even of these. It has no connection whatever with political economy, as understood and treated of by the great thinkers of past ages; and as long as its unscholarly and undefined statements are allowed to pass under the same name, every word written on the subject by those thinkers—and chiefly the words of Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, and Bacon—must be nearly useless to mankind” (Ruskin, Munera Pulveris). Consider some or all of these assertions.
Give a brief account of the Physiocrat doctrine, and state to what extent it was “corrected” by Adam Smith.
Explain the origin and content of Adam Smith’s conception of “Nature.”
“A diamond has scarcely any value in use.” Consider this statement in its relation to the discussion since Adam Smith’s time of the doctrine of Value.
How does the doctrine of Rent expounded by Adam Smith agree with, and differ from, that of Ricardo?
Compare Adam Smith’s “natural rate of wages” with Ricardo’s “natural price of labour.”
“Population tends to outstrip the means of subsistence.” Distinguish the various meanings assignable to this phrase, and indicate which was meant by Malthus.
What does Adam Smith understand by “Capital”? Compare his conception with that of John Stuart Mill.
Present a critical estimate—based upon your own study—of one of the following:

1. Ingram, History of Political Economy.
2. Price, Political Economy in England.
3. Cossa, Introduction to the Study of Political Economy.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 3. Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Year 1894-95.

ECONOMICS 2.
Year-end Examination, 1895

Answer at least four, but not more than six, of the following questions:

What is the economic source of Interest? Examine the proposition that “interest is the price paid for the use of capital.”
State briefly your conclusions as to the law of general wages.
Apply the Austrian theory of wages to the following case:
Number of laborers 1,000,000; total subsistence fund $600,000,000; scale of increase of productiveness of labor as the “productive period” is lengthened from one year to seven years: $350, $450, $530, $580, $620, $650, and $670.
How, in your opinion, are the profits of employers determined? What is your conclusion as to the function, in distribution, of the so-called “no profits employers.”
Discuss the following passages:
“This National Dividend is at once the aggregate Net product of, and the sole source of payment for, all the agents of production within the country: it is divided up into Earnings of labour, Interest of capital, and lastly the Producer’s Surplus, or Rent, of land and of other differential advantages for production. It constitutes the whole of them and the whole of it is distributed among them.”
“The proposal to put rent aside while we are considering how earnings and interest are determined, has been found to suggest that rent is determined first and then takes part in determining earnings and interest; and this is, of course, the opposite of what really occurs.”
It has been said that Mill expresses his meaning badly when he said that demand for commodities is not a demand for labor. Does the proposition seem to you to need revision!
Does increase of saving tend to make the supply of goods outrun the demand for goods?
Examine the doctrine that the exchange value of commodities is determined by marginal utility.
Past and present relations between gold and silver.

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1894-95.
ECONOMICS 3.

Course Title, Staffing, and Enrollment

[ECONOMICS] 3. Asst. Professor Cummings. — The Principles of Sociology. — Development of the Modern State, and of its Social Functions. 2 hours.

Total 52: 10 Graduates, 30 Seniors, 4 Juniors, 3 Sophomores, 5 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1894-1895, p. 62.

ECONOMICS 3.
Mid-Year Examination. 1895.

Answer the questions in the order in which they stand. Omit three questions.

State accurately the reading you have done in this course to date.
“But now let us drop the alleged parallelism between individual organizations and social organizations. I have used the analogies elaborated but as a scaffolding to help in building up a coherent body of sociological inductions. Let us take away the scaffolding: the inductions will stand by themselves.” What are these inductions?
“The family relinquishes one provisional and temporary function after another; its only purpose being to fill gaps in social offices, it made way for independent institutions … as soon as these institutions arose.” Explain and illustrate. How far would Spencer assent to this doctrine?
“Most anthropologists who have written on prehistoric customs believe, indeed, that man lived originally in a state of promiscuity or ‘communal marriage’; but we have found this hypothesis is essentially unscientific.” Discuss the evidence.
“The status of children, in common with that of women, rises in proportion as the compulsory coöperation characterizing militant societies, becomes qualified by the voluntary coöperation characterising industrial societies.” Why? Trace the rise, and illustrate.
“These three distinct states of mind, all of which, in point of fact, are admitted to exist together at the present time, and perhaps to have always done so to a greater or less extent, Comte declares to have undergone a regular progressive movement in the history of society. There have been three successive epochs, during which these philosophic principles, each in its turn, preponderated over both the others and controlled the current of human events.” Explain.
“So that as law differentiates from personal commands, and as morality differentiates from religious injunctions, so politeness differentiates from ceremonial observance. To which I may add, so does rational usage differentiate from fashion.” Explain and illustrate.
How does Spencer account for the diverse types of political organization; and what influences determine the order in which they arise? Illustrate.
“From the Evolution-standpoint we are thus enabled to discern the relative beneficence of institutions which, considered absolutely, are not beneficent; and are taught to approve as temporary that which, as permanent, we abhor.” Explain and illustrate. Does our idea of progress then include all social changes?
“In all ways, then, we are shown that with this relative decrease of militancy and relative increase of industrialism, there has been a change from a social order in which individuals exist for the State, to a social order in which the State exists for individuals?” Explain and illustrate.
According to Spencer, what are likely to be the future forms of political organization and action in societies that are favorably circumstanced for carrying social evolution to its highest stage?
“At bottom this is a physical explanation, and Spencerian sociology in general, whether formulated by Mr. Spencer or by other writers under the influence of his thought, is essentially a physical philosophy of society, notwithstanding its liberal use of biological and psychological data.” Do you agree or disagree? Why?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 3. Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Year 1894-95.

ECONOMICS 3.
Year-end Examination

[Answer the questions in the order in which they stand. Omit one question.]

State accurately the reading you have done in this course to date.
What has been the function of religion in social evolution? (Compare Spencer and Kidd.) Do you find reasons for thinking society will become more religious?
“The only conclusion to which we are brought by this prolonged examination of authorities is that community of land has not yet been historically proved.” Discuss the evidence.
“And as of old, Society and State tend to coincide, political questions to become identical with social questions.” Discuss the historical changes and tendencies in question. Distinguish carefully between Society, the State, the Government, the Nation.
“It is becoming clear that, when people speak of natural rights of liberty, property, etc., they really mean, not rights which once existed and have been lost, but rights which they believe ought to exist, and which would be produced by a condition of society and an ordering of the State such as they think desirable.” Explain. How far do changes in the theory and practice of penal legislation substantiate this view?
“The gulf between the state of society towards which it is the tendency of the process of evolution now in progress to carry us, and socialism, is wide and deep.”
“The Individualism of the past is buried, and the immediate future is unmistakably with a progressive Socialism, the full extent of which no man can get see.” Discuss carefully the facts and theories upon which these opposing views are based.
“The philanthropic and experimental forms of socialism, which played a conspicuous rôle before 1848, perished then in the wreck of the Revolution, and have never risen to life again.” What were the characteristics of these earlier forms; and what was their relation to the movements which preceded them and followed them?

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1894-95.
ECONOMICS 5.

Course Title, Staffing, and Enrollment

[ECONOMICS] 5². Mr. George Ole Virtue. — Railway Transportation. — Lectures and written work. 3 hours. 2d half-year.

Total 21: 2 Graduates, 10 Seniors, 6 Juniors, 1 Sophomores, 2 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1894-1895, p. 62.

ECONOMICS 5.
Year-end Examination. 1895.

Sketch the railroad history of France.
“The [Reilly] bill now before Congress proposes to extend the debt for another fifty years and a grand opportunity will thus be let slip for trying, under the most favorable circumstances, an experiment whose possibilities no man can measure.”
What legislation can you suggest for improving the relations between the different classes of owners of railway capital? For the protection of the interests of investors in railway capital generally?
State briefly the significance in railway history of the following cases: Munn v. Illinois; Wabash, etc. Ry. Co. v. Illinois; Ames v. U. P. Ry. Co.; Budd v. New York; In re Louisville & Nashville; The Denaby Main Colliery Case.
Choose one:

(a) The bearing upon the making of rates, of the “cost of service”; “value of service”; “charging what the traffic will bear”; “joint cost.”
(b) “Group rates,” “equal mileage rates,” “the blanket rate,” “the postage rate,” “Wagen-raum tarif,” “differentials.”
(c) A “reasonable rates.”

Recount the experience which has led the Interstate Commerce Commission to recomment an amendment to the Act to Regulate Commerce: (a) Construing the meaning of “the word ‘line’ when used in the act to be a physical line and not a business arrangement”; (b) relieving “shippers and individuals not connected with railway employment from liability to fine and imprisonment under Section 10,” with certain exceptions.
What would be the probable effect of giving the Commission power to prescribe minimum as well as maximum rates? Would it obviate the necessity now claimed for pooling?
“When the first bill to regulate commerce was passed the great and powerful wedge of State socialism, so far as government control of railroads is concerned, was driven one-quarter of its length into the timber of conservative government. … The pending bill, [the pooling which passed the House at the last session is referred to] the moment it becomes a law, will drive the wedge three-quarters of its length into the timber.”
Give your reasons for agreeing or disagreeing with each of the above statements.
What conclusions on the question of public management can you draw from the experience of the states in the internal improvement movement?
Why is it peculiarly true in railway business that “competition must end in combination”?
The success of the State Railroad Commissions and suggestions for increasing their efficiency.

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1894-95.
ECONOMICS 7¹.

Course Title, Staffing, and Enrollment

[ECONOMICS] 7¹. Professor [Charles F.] Dunbar. — The Theory and Methods of Taxation, with special reference to local taxation in the United States. 3 hours. 1^st half-year.

Total 28: 6 Graduates, 11 Seniors, 9 Juniors, 2 Sophomores.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1894-1895, p. 62.

ECONOMICS 7¹.
Mid-year Examination. 1895.

What is the “Benefit Theory” of taxation? What is the “Faculty Theory”? Define “Faculty” as used in this expression.
What are the leading points of difference between the English, Prussian and American income tax systems?
What reasons are there for having income tax levied by national authority rather than local? To what extent, if at all, do these reasons apply also to a general property tax?
In levying a general property tax, should the debts of the taxpayer be deducted from the property held by him?
By what reasoning is it maintained that,—
“When the local real estate tax is levied according to rental value and assessed in the first instance on the occupier, as is the case in England, the main burden of the tax will rest ultimately on the occupier, not the owner of the premises.”
Will the same reasoning apply to the income tax on rent, assessed under Schedule A., and collected from the occupier?
What are the leading points of difference between the German method of taxing distilled liquors and the method practised in England and the United States?
The theories of Canard, Thiers and Stein are,—
“That every tax is shifted on everybody — that every consumer will again shift the tax on a third party, and that this third party who is again a consumer will shift it to someone else — and so ad infinitum. And since everyone is a consumer, everyone will bear a portion of the taxes that everybody else pays.”
Professor Seligman’s comment is that “the error of this doctrine lies in the failure to distinguish between productive and unproductive consumption.” Is this answer complete? If not, wherein does it fail?
In a statement of the circumstances under which a tax may or may not be capitalized, it is said,—
“The principle would not apply to special taxes on property or profits if the capital value of this class of commodities should for any other reason fluctuate in price. For example, if a special tax were levied on government securities it might nevertheless happen that if some reason confidence in government bonds, as over against general securities, might decrease to such an extent as to counterbalance the decreased returns from the investment. In such a case there would be no capitalization of the tax.”
What criticism have you to make on this reasoning?
Can the theory of progressive taxation be satisfied by a gradually decreasing rate of progression [“degressively progressive taxation”]. or does it require a rate which shall cut off all income or accumulation above a certain level?
What practical difficulties does the taxation of real estate offer in shaping a system of progressive taxation?

__________________

1894-95.
ECONOMICS 7².

Course Title, Staffing, and Enrollment

[ECONOMICS] 7². Professor Dunbar. — Financial Administration and Public Debts. 3 hours. 2d half-year.

Total 28: 7 Graduates, 11 Seniors, 9 Juniors, 1 Sophomores.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1894-1895, p. 62.

ECONOMICS 7².
Year-end Examination

[Spend an hour on A, and the remainder of the time on B.]

A.

Give an account of the management of the English debt in the decade 1880-90.
Do “sound rules of finance” demand that the principal of the debt or the rate of interest shall be determined by the government? that securities shall never be issued below par? that a government shall not buy in its securities at a premium?

B.

How far, if at all, is the government justified in pledging itself to any fixed policy of debt payment?
How may the policy of conversation conflict with the policy of debt payment?
Give an account of the United States refunding operations in the decade 1865-75.
Discuss the respective powers of the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Great Britain, the minister of finance in France.
In each case where does the responsibility for the financial policy of the government rest?
Give an account of the creation of Pit’s sinking fund and of the successive modifications made in the sinking fund provisions down to 1803.
Discuss the various methods of placing government securities in the market, and the conditions of contract which make one form of security more attractive to buyers than another.
The United States 4 per cent. 30-year bonds are quoted at about 123¼; how is the present worth of these securities determined?
What determines the present worth of a terminable annuity? of a perpetual annuity? of a life annuity?
Discuss the manner of making up the estimates of public income and expenditure in Great Britain and in France; the manner of providing for any deficits which may occur in any department during the year; the manner of providing for carrying on the government where the enactment of the budget is delayed until after the beginning of the year; and the disposal of balances unexpended at the end of the year.

__________________

1894-95.
ECONOMICS 8.

Course Title, Staffing, and Enrollment

[ECONOMICS] 8¹. Professor Dunbar. — History of Financial Legislation in the United States. 2 hours.

Total 52: 5 Graduates, 22 Seniors, 22 Juniors, 3 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1894-1895, p. 62.

ECONOMICS 8.
Mid-Year Examination. 1895.

Hamilton is sometimes said to have favored the policy of perpetual debt, and Gallatin, on the other hand, to have established the policy of debt-payment. How far are these statements confirmed by the measures of Hamilton and Gallatin respectively?
How far should you say that Hamilton was justified in his expectation (stated in the Report on Public Credit), (1) That the public debt, if properly funded, would answer most of the purposes of money, and (2) that it would increase the amount of capital for use in trade and lower the interest of money?
When were the several classes of obligations in which the revolutionary debt was funded finally paid off?
Was it fortunate or unfortunate that Congress did not adopt Madison’s policy as to a United States Bank in January, 1815? Why?
Give a list, with dates, of the cases in which bills for establishing a United States Bank have been vetoed.
Give as complete a chronology as you can of the events connected with the Bank, from President Jackson’s first attack upon it down to its final failure.
The removal of the deposits is sometimes spoken of as a fatal blow to the United States Bank. What do you gather from your reading as to its importance as regards the business position or credit of the Bank?
What was the Specie Circular of 1836, and what serious financial results did it produce?
What led to the adoption of the National Bank system in 1863?
How would it have eased the financial difficulty in 1861, if the Secretary of the Treasury had made more free use of his authority, under the act of August 5, for suspending some of the provisions of the Independent Treasury act?
The earlier legal-tender acts provided for funding the notes, at the pleasure of the holder, in United States bonds. When and why was this privilege of funding withdrawn? What would probably have been the effect if it had been retained until the close of the war?
What were the steps by which the legal tender issues came to be treated as the practically permanent element in our paper currency and to be fixed in amount?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 3. Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Year 1894-95.

__________________

1894-95.
ECONOMICS 9.

Course Title, Staffing, and Enrollment

[ECONOMICS] 9. Asst. Professor Cummings. — The Social and Economic Condition of Workingmen in the United States and in other countries. 3 hours.

Total 79: 3 Graduates, 34 Seniors, 31 Juniors, 5 Sophomores, 6 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1894-1895, p. 62.

ECONOMICS 9.
Mid-Year Examination, 1895.

(Arrange your answers, in the order in which the questions stand. So far as possible illustrate your discussions by a comparison of the experience of different countries.)

State accurately the reading you have done in this course to date.
“The interests of the working classes are identical in all lands governed by capitalist methods of production. The extension of the world’s commerce and production for the world’s markets, make the position of the workman in any one country daily more dependent upon that of the workmen in other countries.” Why? Explain how in the history of trade unions this community of interest among workmen, not only of the same trade and the same country but of different trades and different countries, has actually manifested itself. Illustrate.
Precisely what answer to the “lump of labor” theory is to be drawn from that version of the wage-fund doctrine adopted by Mill, by Walker, by yourself?
How far has the theory and the practice of coöperation offered a complete remedy for the evils of the existing industrial organization? and at precisely what points has the theory and the practice broken down? Illustrate carefully.
“The struggle of the working classes against capitalist exploitation must of necessity be a political struggle.” How far does the history of trade unions and of coöperation show a tendency in this direction? Illustrate carefully.
“But above all things, observe that all types of piece wage, whether single or progressive, and whether individual or collective, possess this most marked superiority over Profit-sharing.” … “At the same time, it is right to remark that there are many cases, in which the method of Profit-sharing surpasses in important respects any form of the ordinary wage-system.” Explain carefully the grounds of the alleged inferiority and superiority in each case.
“Before, therefore, the trade union can realize its policy of ‘collective bargaining,’ it must solve the two-fold problem – how to bind its own constituents, and how to obtain the recognition of employers.” By what methods have trade unions endeavored to solve this problem? Illustrate.
Trace the successive stages of the so-called “industrial revolution” during the last hundred and fifty years.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 3. Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Year 1894-95.

ECONOMICS 9.
Year-end Examination. 1895.

[Arrange your answers in the order in which the questions stand. So far as possible illustrate your discussions by statistical and descriptive matter showing the relative condition of working people in the United States and in other countries.]

I.

State accurately the reading you have done in this course since the mid-year examinations.

II.

Devote three hours to a careful discussion of the merits and defects of the German system of compulsory insurance, under the following general heads:

An accurate account of the origin, scope, organization, administration of the system in Germany, — stating approximately the numbers insured, the cost of insurance to all parties concerned, the benefits provided, the methods of collection, distribution, etc.;
Difficulties, opposition, and criticisms thus far encountered;
Progress of similar movements towards compulsory insurance in other countries;
Facts bearing upon the adequacy of existing provisions for sickness, accident, old age in England and the United States;
A biographical sketch showing at what age and in what respects the State already interferes to prescribe conditions of employment, education, etc., for operatives reared from childhood to old age in the factory system of Massachusetts: showing also the additional interference which would be involved in the adoption of the German system of compulsory insurance;
Conclusion.

__________________

1894-95.
ECONOMICS 10.

Course Title, Staffing, and Enrollment

[ECONOMICS] 10. Professor Ashley. — The Elements of Economic History from the Middle Ages to Modern Times. 2 hours.

Total 61: 9 Graduates, 20 Seniors, 21 Juniors, 10 Sophomores, 1 Other.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1894-1895, p. 62.

ECONOMICS 10.
Mid-Year Examination. 1895.

I. To be first attempted by all.

Translate, and comment on, the following passages:

Quomodo vocatur mansio; quis tenuit eam T. R. E.; quis mod tenet; quot hidae; quot carrucae in dominio; quot hominum; quot villani; quot cotarii; quot servi; quot liberi homines; quot sochemanni.
De virgis operantur ii diebus in ebdomada.
Rex. . . destinavit per regnum quos ad id prudentiores.. . . cognoverat, qui circumeuntes et oculata fide fundos singulos perlustrantes, habita aestimatione victualium quae de hiis solvebantur, redegerunt in summam denariorum.
Interiors plerique frumenta non serunt, sed lacte et carne vivunt, pellibusque sunt vestiti.
Ideo rogamus, sacratissime imperator, subvenias. . . . ademptum sit jus etiam procuratoribus, nedum conductori, adversus colonos ampliandi partes agrarias.
Arva per annos mutant et superest ager.
Ego Eddi episcopus terram quae dicitur Lantocal tres cassatos Heglisco abbati libenter largior.
Rex misit in singulos comitatus quod messores et alii operarii non plus caperent quam capere solebant.
Noveritis nos concessisse omnibus tenentibus nostris . . . . quod omnia praedicta terrae et tenementa de cetero sint libera, et liberae conditionis.

II. Write on two only of the following subjects.

The reasons for believing in the survival in Britain of the Roman agrarian organisation.
A comparison, from the economic point of view, of the open-field system with modern methods of farming.
The condition of the tillers of the soil in England in A.D. 1381 as compared with A.D. 1066.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 3. Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Year 1894-95.

ECONOMICS 10.
Year-end Examination. 1895.

I.
[To be first attempted by all.]

TRANSLATE, and comment on, the following passages:—

In Kateringes sunt x. hidae ad geldum Regis. Et de istis
hidis tenent xl. villani xl. virgas terrae. … Et omnes isti homines operantur iii^bus diebus in ebdomada.
Agriculturae non student; majorque pars eorum victus in lacte caseo carne consistit; neque quisquam agri modum certum aut fines habet proprios; sed magistratus ac principes in annos singulos gentibus cognationibusque hominum qui una coierunt, quantum et quo loco visum est agri attribuunt atque anno post alio transire cogunt.
Nul ne deit rien acheter a revendre en la vile meyme, fors yl serra Gildeyn.
Cives Londoniae debent xl marcas pro Gilda Telaria delenda; ita ut de cetero non suscitetur.
Johannes Hore mortuus est, qui tenuit de domino dimidiam acram terrae cujus heriettum unus vitulus precii iiii d. Et Johanna soror dicti Johannis est proximus heres, quae venit et gersummavit dictam terram tenendam sibi et suis in villenagio ad voluntatem per servicia et consuetudines.

II.
[Write on four only of the following subjects.]

“I contend that from 1563 to 1824, a conspiracy, concocted by the law and carried out by parties interested in its success, was entered into, to cheat the English workman of his wages, to tie him to the soil, to deprive him of hope, and to degrade him into irremediable poverty.” Consider this.
Discuss the question whether the statute of 5 Eliz. c. 4, displays any distinct economic policy.
Explain the causes, nature and consequences of the change in commercial routes in the sixteenth century.
What is meant by a national economy, as contrasted with a town economy? Illustrate from European conditions in the 15th and 16th centuries.
What has been the economic gain to England from immigration?
Mention briefly those respects in which the economic development of England has resembled that of Western Europe, and those respects in which it has been peculiar.

Tags Ashley, Clow, CummingsEdward, CummingsJohn, Dunbar, Macvane, Peabody, Virtue

Economists Gender Harvard Radcliffe

Radcliffe. Economics Ph.D. alumna, Rosemary Coward Griffith, 1961

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2022-01-09

Economics in the Rear-view Mirror is interested not merely in the lives of prominent economists, but also in sampling the lives and careers of the vast majority of trained professional economists. Sometimes the careers have been cut short, as was the case of Radcliffe graduate Rosemary Coward Griffith who died three years after receiving her Radcliffe Ph.D. Many of the details for this post come from documents easily accessible through the genealogical website ancestry.com but also from the website newspapers.com.

_________________________

Born in Texas

Rosemary Coward was born 16 August 1927 in Dallas, TX to parents Allen C. Coward (dentist) and Georgia Coward née Hurt.

_________________________

First Marriage

Married to Jack D. Summerfield June 1, 1947. They were divorced in Marion County, Alabama in April 1957. He later worked as a producer for WGBH (Radio/television) in Boston, MA.

_________________________

Undergraduate degree

Rosemary Summerfield was admitted to Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Texas, Austin. Class of June 1948.

_________________________

Correspondence with John Kenneth Galbraith

In John Kenneth Galbraith’s papers at the John F. Kennedy Library, Box 34, General correspondence “Griffith, Rosemary Coward Summerfield. 19 May 1954 to 26 March 1955.”

_________________________

Marriage to Charles Ray Griffith

From The Santa Fe New Mexican, October 23, 1959:

Reported that the two new residents of Santa Fe were married September 12, 1959 at Appleton Chapel, Harvard University. Charles Griffith was appointed to the staff of the state Health Department, Division of Mental Health. He received his Ph.D. in cultural anthropology at Harvard.

Note: This was his second marriage. His first marriage (September 15, 1948) to Katherine Perry apparently ended in divorce, she married Raymond A. Bowman in 1957.
After Rosemary’s death Charles Ray Griffith Married associate professor of nursing at the University of New Mexico (The Santa Fe New Mexican May 29, 1966). It is worth noting that she is not mentioned in his obituary (Albuquerque Journal, May 2, 1999) whereas his first two wives were.

The Santa Fe New Mexican reported July 2, 1964 that Charles R. Griffith would resign effective August 31 to accept an appointment at the University of New Mexico College of Education as associate professor in education and research anthropologist.

_________________________

Ph.D. CONFERRED IN 1960-61

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Rosemary Coward Griffith, B.A.

Subject: Economics.
Dissertation: “Factors Affecting Continental United States Manufacturing Investment in Puerto Rico.”

Source: Radcliffe College. Report of the President, 1960-61, p. 80.

_________________________

Probably Last Job

From The Albquerque Tribune of May 29, 1953 (page 11). In an article about recent developments at the University of New Mexico.

Contracts have also been approved for Rosemary Griffith as temporary assistant professor of economics.

_________________________

Hospitalized about six weeks before her death

From The Santa Fe New Mexican, March 23, 1964:

Mrs. Rosemary Griffith, 1934 Kiva Rd. admitted to hospital

From The Santa Fe New Mexican, March 23, 1964:

Dismissed from Hospital. Mrs. Rosemary Griffith.

_________________________

Funeral Notice

From The Santa Fe New Mexican, May 14, 1964:

Funeral Service to be held Friday [May 15, 1964]. Cremated remains to Memorial Gardens.

Tags Galbraith, GriffithR

Chicago Economists Harvard

Harvard. Course Transcript of economics Ph.D. alumnus (1922), Jacob Viner

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2022-01-07

Besides the collection and careful transcription of historical course syllabi and examination questions from leading centers of economics education in the United States, Economics in the Rear-view Mirror also shares information on the structure of undergraduate and graduate economics programs as well as the granular detail found in the transcripts of individual students.

Recently I posted the Harvard graduate transcript of Edward Chamberlin. Today’s post provides us the Harvard course record of that economist’s economist, Jacob Viner, later of Chicago and Princeton fame.

__________________________

THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
Record of Jacob Viner

Years: 1914-15, 1915-16

[Previous] Degrees received.

A.B. McGill 1914

First Registration: 28 Sept. 1914

1914-15	Grades
First Year	Course	Half-Course
Economics 11	A
Economics 12		A-
Economics 17	A
Economics 33 (full)	A
Economics 34	B+

German A	B+

Division: History, Government, & Economics
Scholarship, Fellowship: University
Assistantship:
Austin Teaching Fellowship:
Instructorship:
Proctorship:
Degree attained at close of year: A.M.

1915-16	Grades
Second Year	Course	Half-Course
Economics 2a¹		A-
Economics 2b²		abs.
Economics 8¹		A
Economics 14	“excused”
Economics 18a²		cr. for[…]
Economics 31	“exc.”

Philosophy 18²		abs.
Philosophy 25a¹		A-

Division:
Scholarship, Fellowship: Henry Lee Memorial
Assistantship:
Austin Teaching Fellowship:
Instructorship:
Proctorship:
Degree attained at close of year: Ph.D. 1922 (Feb.)

Source: Harvard University Archives. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Record Cards of Students, 1895-1930, Sun—Walls (UAV 161.2722.5). File I, Box 14, Record Card of Jacob Viner.

__________________________

Courses Names and Professors

1914-15

Economics 11. Economic Theory. Professor Taussig.

Economics 12¹. (half course) Scope and Methods of Economic Investigation. Professor Carver.

Economics 17. Economic Theory: Value and Related Problems. Assistant Professor B.M. Anderson, Jr.

Economics 33. International Trade and Tariff Problems in the United States. Professor Taussig

Economics 34. Problems of Labor. Professor Ripley.

German A. Elementary Course (prescribed for students who cannot show that they have a satisfactory knowledge of Elementary German)

1915-16

Economics 2a¹. European Industry and Commerce in the Nineteenth Century. Professor Gay, assisted by Mr. A.H. Cole and Mr. Ryder.

Economics 2b². Economic and Financial History of the United States. Professor Gay, assisted by Mr. A.H. Cole and Mr. Ryder.

Economics 8¹. Principles of Sociology. Professor Carver, assisted by Mr. Bovingdon.

Economics 14. History and Literature of Economics to the year 1848. Professor Bullock.

Economics 18a². Analytical Sociology. Asst. Professor Anderson.

Economics 31. Public Finance. Professor Bullock.

Philosophy 18². Present Philosophical Tendencies. A brief survey of contemporary Materialism, Pragmatism, Idealism, and Realism.

Philosophy 25a¹. Theory of Value. Professor R.B. Perry.

Sources: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Course of instruction. 1879-2009; Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1826-1995.

__________________________

Ph.D. in Economics Awarded 1922

Jacob Viner, A.B. (McGill Univ.) 1914, A.M. (Harvard Univ.) 1915.

Subject, Economics. Special Field, International Trade. Thesis, “The Canadian Balance of International Indebtedness, 1900-1913.”
Assistant Professor of Political Economy, University of Chicago.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1921-1922, p. 65.

Image Source: Jacob Viner (pipe smoker in the center) playing cards with Messrs. Grabo, Prescott, and Ralph Sanger (mathematician). University of Chicago Photographic Archive apf1-08487, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Tags Anderson, Bovingdon, Bullock, Carver, ColeAH, Gay, Ripley, Ryder, Taussig, Viner

Who ended up teaching what 1942-43

Edward Chamberlin

Gottfried Haberler

Ex Ante Course Announcement

Ex Post Course Enrollment and Staffing

Presumably the statement prepared by Edward Chamberlin (referring to himself in the third person)

Chairman Chamberlin announces his attention to return statement with statement

Chairman Chamberlin makes his written statement available to the department

Special Committee sides with Chamberlin

Report of a Special Committee on the assignment for teaching Economics 101.

Statement of the issues.

History of the case.

Meeting of the Committee.

Basic principles.

Recommendations to the Department.

Thus spake the Dean

HARVARD UNIVERSITY CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

Course Announcement

Economics 100. Junior Honors Course

Course Enrollment

Final Reading List and Course Outline Economies 100 Fall, 1958

I. Introduction: Some background and material on the nature and setting of American industrial enterprise. The market mechanism.

II. The Empirical Measurement of Economic Functions.

III. Factors Determining Industry Structure.

A. Production Theory

B. Cost Curves

C. Barriers to entry other than economies of scale

IV. Markets and Pricing:

A. Indifference Curves and Consumer Theory

B. Pure Competition and Pure Monopoly

C. Oligopoly

V. Investment Theory

A. An outline of formal theory

B. Uncertainty

C. Financial Considerations

D. The Influence of Market Structure on the Investment Decision and Innovation.

Economics 100 Reading List Spring, 1959

I. General Equilibrium.

Selected Applications

II. Welfare Economics.

Selected Applications

III. Macro Models — Cycles, Growth, Money.

Previously posted

Empirical Economics (spring term) 1949-50

Economics 110. Announcement, 1949-50

Course Enrollment

1949-50 HARVARD UNIVERSITY APPLIED ECONOMICS – ECONOMICS 110 [Final Examinations]

Empirical Economics (fall term) 1950-51

Course Announcement

1950-51 HARVARD UNIVERSITY ECONOMICS 110a [Final Examination, Mid-Year]

1895-96. The Ethics of the Social Questions.

Course Enrollment for Philosophy 5

Mid-Year Examination

1895-96. PHILOSOPHY 5. THE ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS.

Final Examination

1895-96. PHILOSOPHY 5. THE ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS.

1895-96. Outlines of Economics.

Course Enrollment for Economics 1

Mid-Year Examination

1895-96. ECONOMICS 1.

Final Examination

1895-96. ECONOMICS 1.

1895-96. Economic Theory from Adam Smith to the present time.

Course Enrollment for Economics 2.

Mid-Year Examination.

1895-96. ECONOMICS 2

Final Examination

1895-96. ECONOMICS 2.

1895-96. The Principles of Sociology.

Course Enrollment for Economics 3.

Mid-Year Examination.

1895-96. ECONOMICS 3.

Final Examination

1895-96. ECONOMICS 3.

1895-96. The Theory of Statistics.

Course Enrollment for Economics 42.

Final Examination

1895-96. ECONOMICS 4.

1895-96. Railway Transportation.

Report of a Special Committee
on the assignment for teaching Economics 101.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

Final Reading List and Course Outline
Economies 100
Fall, 1958

Economics 100
Reading List
Spring, 1959

1949-50
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
APPLIED ECONOMICS – ECONOMICS 110
[Final Examinations]

1950-51
HARVARD UNIVERSITY ECONOMICS 110a
[Final Examination, Mid-Year]

1895-96.
The Ethics of the Social Questions.

1895-96.
PHILOSOPHY 5.
THE ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS.

1895-96.
PHILOSOPHY 5.
THE ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS.

1895-96.
Outlines of Economics.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 1.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 1.

1895-96.
Economic Theory from Adam Smith to the present time.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 2

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 2.

1895-96.
The Principles of Sociology.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 3.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 3.

1895-96.
The Theory of Statistics.

Course Enrollment for Economics 4².

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 4.

1895-96.
Railway Transportation.

Course Enrollment for Economics 5¹.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 5.

1895-96.
History of Tariff Legislation in the United States.

Course Enrollment for Economics 6¹.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 6.

1895-96.
Financial Administration and Public Debts.

Course Enrollment for Economics 7¹.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 7.

1895-96.
History of Financial Legislation in the United States.

Course Enrollment for Economics 8².

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 8.

1895-96.
The Social and Economic Condition of Workingmen in the United States and in other countries.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 9

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 9.

1895-96.
The Mediaeval Economic History of Europe.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 10.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 10.

1895-96.
Banking and the History of the leading Banking Systems.

Course Enrollment for Economics 12².

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 12.

1895-96.
Scope and Method in Economic Theory and Investigation.

Course Enrollment for Economics 13².

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 13.

1895-96.
Communism and Socialism.

Course Enrollment for Economics 14¹.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 14.

DIVISION EXAMINATIONS FOR THE DEGREEE OF A.B.
1919-20

DIVISION GENERAL EXAMINATION
[April 29, 1920.]

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
ECONOMIC THEORY
[May 3, 1920.]

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
ECONOMIC HISTORY
[May 3, 1920]

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
MONEY AND BANKING
[May 3, 1920]

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
CORPORATE ORGANIZATION, INCLUDING TRANSPORTATION
[May 3, 1920]

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
PUBLIC FINANCE
[May 3, 1920]

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
LABOR PROBLEMS
[May 3, 1920]