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Harvard. Economics Ph.D. alumnus, Melvin Gardner de Chazeau. 1930

Melvin Gardner de Chazeau’s graduate school record at Harvard (Economics Ph.D. 1930) is documented fully in this post that also includes a fairly complete c.v. for him (visitors can hunt down his many book reviews at jstor.org). 

Research Tip: There are 2.3 cubic feet of personal papers of Melvin Gardner de Chazeau at the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

_______________________

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

Application for Candidacy for the Degree of Ph.D.

[Note: Boldface used to indicate printed text of the application; italics used to indicate the handwritten entries]

I. Full Name, with date and place of birth.

Melvin Gardner de Chazeau. Olympia, Wash.; March 20, 1900.

II. Academic Career: (Mention, with dates inclusive, colleges or other higher institutions of learning attended; and teaching positions held.)

University of Washington 1921-25.
Teaching Fellow (Econ.) 1924-25.
Harvard University 1925-6. Instructor & Tutor (Econ. A) 1926-27.

III. Degrees already attained. (Mention institutions and dates.)

A.B. U. of Washington. Dec. 1924.
M.A. U. of Washington. Aug. 1925.
A.M. Harvard. 1927.

IV. General Preparation. (Indicate briefly the range and character of your undergraduate studies in History, Economics, Government, and in such other fields as Ancient and Modern Languages, Philosophy, etc.)

Econ.: Courses in Standards of Living, History and Theory of Labor in U.S. and Europe, Marketing and Advertising, History of Econ. Thought, Econ. Theory. (Taught General Econ.)
Gov.: General course, American Gov’t., Readings in Political thought.
Phil.: Hist. of Phil., Social Ethics & Ethical Theory, Logic, Phil. of Religion, Modern Schools.
Languages: Spanish, French & Latin (High School).

V. Department of Study. (Do you propose to offer yourself for the Ph.D., “History,” in “Economics,” or in “Political Science”?)

Economics.

VI. Choice of Subjects for the General Examination. (State briefly the nature of your preparation in each subject, as by Harvard courses, courses taken elsewhere, private reading, teaching the subject, etc., etc.)

  1. Econ. Theory and its History. (Special emphasis since 1776).
    Econ. 11; Econ. 15 (audit); Econ. 33
    Grad. Seminars (U. of W.) in Price Determination, Theory, International Finance.
  2. Econ. History since 1750.
    Econ. 2.
  3. Statistics.
    Econ. 41; Econ. 1a.
  4. Money and Banking.
    Econ. 38. Also matter connected with Econ. 33.
  5. Ethics.
    Two undergraduate courses: Social Ethics and Ethical Theory (U. of W.) Extensive undergraduate and one year’s graduate work in Phil. Private reading.
  6. Regulation of Public Utilities.
    Grad. Seminar (U. of W.) in Rate Regulation.
    Econ. 36 (audit).

VII. Special Subject for the special examination.

Regulation of Public Utilities.

VIII. Thesis Subject. (State the subject and mention the instructor who knows most about your work upon it.)

Details of subject not yet determined upon. F. W. Taussig.
[Insert written in pencil:] Some Chapters in the Regulation of the Electric Industry in Massachusetts

IX. Examinations. (Indicate any preferences as to the time of the general and special examinations.)

Closing weeks of first, or first few wseeks of second, semester
[Insert written in pencil:] 1926-27. February 21, 1927.

X. Remarks

[Left blank]

Signature of a member of the Division certifying approval of the above outline of subjects.

[signed] F. W. Taussig

*   *   *   [Last page of application] *   *   *

[Not to be filled out by the applicant]

Name: Melvin Gardner de Chazeau

Approved: November 12, 1926

Ability to use French certified by Professor A. E. Monroe, October 21, 1926.

Ability to use German certified by Professor A. E. Monroe, October 21, 1926

Date of general examination February 21, 1927

Thesis received April 1, 1930

Read by [left blank]

Approved [left blank]

Date of special examination [left blank]

Recommended for the Doctorate [left blank]

Degree conferred  [left blank]

Remarks.  [left blank]

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

Certification of reading knowledge
of French and German for Ph.D.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics

Cambridge, Massachusetts
Oct. 21, 1926

Mr. M. G. De Chazeau has this day passed a satisfactory examination in the reading of French and German, as required of candidates for the doctor’s degree.

[signed]
A.E. Monroe

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

Passed General Examination

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics

Cambridge, Massachusetts
February 24, 1927

To the Division of History,
Government, and Economics,

As chairman of the committee appointed to conduct the general examination in economics of Melvin Gardner de Chazeau, I have to report that the examination was accepted by the committee [Taussig, Crum, Young, Cole, Demos (Ethics)] as satisfactory. It was not as high in quality as the previous record of the candidate had led the committee to expect, and a more than respectable showing at the time of the candidate’s special examination is desirable. The committee had no doubt, however, about accepting the present examination as satisfactory.

Very truly yours,
[signed]
F. W. Taussig

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

Passed Special Examination

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics

Cambridge, Massachusetts
May 20, 1930

Dear Professor Carver,

As chairman of the committee appointed to conduct the special examination in Economics of Mr. M. G. de Chazeau, I beg to report that Mr. De Chazeau passed the examination to the entire satisfaction of the committee.

Very sincerely yours,
[signed]
F. W. Taussig

Professor T. N. Carver
772 Widener Library
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Source: Harvard University Archives. Division of History, Government & Economics, Ph.D. Degrees Conferred 1929-30. (UA V 453.270), Box 10.

__________________________

THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
Record of
Melvin Gardner de Chazeau

Years: 1925-26, 1926-27, 1927-28, 1929-30.

[Previous] Degrees received.

A.B. Univ. of Washington, 1924,
A.M. Univ. of Washington, 1925.

First Registration: 24 September 1925

1925-26

Grades
First Year Course

Half-Course

Economics 1a1

A-

Economics 2

A

Economics 11

A

Economics 38

A

Economics 412

A+
Division: History, Government, & Economics
Scholarship, Fellowship: Ralph Sanger Scholar
Assistantship:
Austin Teaching Fellowship:
Instructorship:
Proctorship:
Degrees received: A.B. Univ. of Washington 1924, A.M. ibid. 1925

 

1926-27

Grades
Second Year Course

Half-Course

Economics 20 (F.W.T.) (2d. hf.)

A

Economics 331

A

Economics 392

A
Summer School 1927

Public Utilities S36 (GBA)

A

Division:
Scholarship, Fellowship:
Assistantship:
Austin Teaching Fellowship:
Instructorship: $700 in Economics. Tutor in Division of History, Government, and Economics, $900
Proctorship:
Degree attained at close of year: A.M.
Accepted for Ph.D., except for French (H.S. only) and German . Oct-16, 1925.

 

1927-28

Grades
Third Year Course

Half-Course

Economics 20

 A

Division:
Scholarship, Fellowship:
Assistantship:
Austin Teaching Fellowship:
Instructorship: in Economics. Tutor in the Div. of H. G. + E. $2500
Proctorship:
Degree attained at close of year: 

 

1929-30

Fourth Year

Economics 20 (F.W.T.) 1 co.

 A

Division:
Scholarship, Fellowship:
Assistantship:
Austin Teaching Fellowship:
Instructorship: in Economics. Tutor Hist, G. + Econ  $2700
Proctorship:
Degree attained at close of year:  Ph.D.
Home Address: Nov. 1930. 27 University Circle, University, Virginia.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Record Cards of Students, 1895-1930, Cooke—Dyson (UAV 161.2722.5). Box 4, Record Card of Melvin Gardner de Chazeau [formerly, De Shazo].

__________________________

Course Names and Instructors

1925-26

Economics 1a. Principles of Economics. Prof. Taussig and other members of the department for lectures.

Economics 2. Economic History from the Industrial Revolution. Professor Gay.

Economics 11. Economic Theory. Professor Taussig.

Economics 38. Principles of Money and Banking. Professor Young.

Economics 412. Statistical Theory and Analysis. Asst. Professor Crum.

1926-27

Economics 20. Research in Economics (with Professor Frank William Taussig) (2d. hf.)

Economics 331. International Trade. Professor Taussig.

Economics 392. International Finance. Associate Professor Williams.

1927 (Summer)

S36 (GBA). Public Utilities. Professor Philip Cabot.

1927-28

Economics 20. Research in Economics.

1929-30

Economics 20. Research in Economics (with Frank William Taussig) 1 co.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College for 1925-26, 1926-27, 1927-28, 1929-30.

__________________________

Melvin Gardner
de Chazeau
Timeline of his life and career

1900. Born March 20 in Olympia, Washington.

1924. B.A. University of Washington. Summa cum laude. Phi Beta Kappa. [Chicago Tribune, 25 Aug 1946]

1925. M.A. University of Washington.

1927. M.A. in economics, Harvard University.

1930. Ph.D. in economics, Harvard.

1929. Married Eunice Storey (daughter Marian, born 1937).

1930-46. University of Virginia. Assistant professor 1930, associate professor 1931, professor, 1946.

1932-33. Study in England, Scotland, and South Wales of the rationalization of electricity supply in Great Britain as research fellow, Social Science Research Council.

1940-41. National Defense Advisory Commission and Office of Production Management. Steel expert.

1941-42. Office of Price Administration and Civilian Supply. Consultant to Director.

1942. Production Board, Bureau of Planning and Statistics, Materials Division. Director.

1943-45. War Production Board, Program Bureau, Non-military Division. Director.

1945-47. Committee for Economic Development. Research staff.

1946-48. University of Chicago. School of Business. Professor of business economics and marketing.

1949-50. Brookings Institution. economic research.

1948-1967. Cornell University. School of Business and Public Administration. Founding member and Professor of economics and business policy. Retired 1967.

1954-55. Fulbright lecturer at the Copenhagen Graduate School of Business, Denmark.

Represented Cornell at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) for more than a decade (1950s)

1967-70. Taught at Dartmouth College and Cornell.

1985. Died November 28 in Arlington, Virginia.

Consultant (various dates): Treasury Department, Department of Justice, War Production Board, Housing Administration, Council of Economic Advisers (1953), Department of Commerce, Economic Cooperation Administration.

Selected Publications:

1934. “The Rationalization of Electricity Supply in Great Britain,”  J. Land & Pub. Util. Econ. (Part I. August; Part II, November).

1937. (with C. R. Daugherty and S. S. Stratton) Economics of the Iron and Steel Industry.

1937. “The Nature of the Rate Base in the Regulation of Public Utilities,” Quarterly J. Econ.

1938. “Public Policy and Discriminatory Prices of Steel : A Reply to Prof. Fetter,”  J. Polit. Econ.

1938. “Revision of Railroad Rate Structures,” Southern Econ. J.

1939. (with S. S. Stratton) Price Research in the Steel and Petroleum Industries.

1941. “Electric Power as a Regional Problem,” Southern Econ. J.

1945. “Employment Policy and Organization of Industry after the War,” Am. Econ. Rev.

1946. (with others) Jobs and Markets.

1954. (editor). Regularization of Business Investment.

1956. “Some Gains from Unit Size in Industry,” Social Science.

1973. (with Alfred E. Kahn). Integration and Competition in the Petroleum Industry.

Source: Fellows of the Social Science Research Council, 1925-1951. pp. 87-88. Also see the Cornell University Faculty Memorial Statement.

Image Source: Cornell University Library. Portrait credited to Otis A. Arnst appeared in The Ithaca Journal (29 January 1952; 8 December 1953).

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard Sociology

Harvard. Exam questions for principles of sociology. Carver, 1907-1908

Thomas Nixon Carver was back at the lectern in 1907-08 following his European sabbatical year. His teaching portfolio was pretty broad and it included the field of sociology which had not yet escaped the gravitational pull of the economics department.  

One presumes the course text was Thomas Nixon Carver’s book of course readings (over 800 pages!): Sociology and Social Progress: A Handbook for Students of Sociology. Boston: Ginn & Company, 1905.

__________________________

Sociology exams from earlier years.

1901-02 (taught by T. N. Carver)

1902-03 (taught by T. N. Carver and W. Z. Ripley)

1903-04 (taught by T. N. Carver)

1904-05 (taught by T. N. Carver and J. A. Field)

1905-06 (taught by T. N. Carver)

1906-07 (taught by J. A. Field)

__________________________

Course Enrollment
1907-08

Economics 3. Professor Carver. — Principles of Sociology. Theories of Social Progress.

Total 49: 8 Graduates, 12 Seniors, 17 Juniors, 10 Sophomores, 2 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1907-1908, p. 66.

__________________________

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 3
Mid-year Examination, 1907-08

  1. Discuss the relation of sociology to economics.
  2. Describe the development of ancestor worship according to Spencer, and show the influence of a system of ancestor worship upon political organization.
  3. What does Spencer mean by “industrialism”?
  4. Can education effect any progressive improvement in the innate physical and mental capacities of a race?
  5. Explain the term “eugenics,” and discuss the obstacles to the practical application of eugenic principles.
  6. How does Kidd define religion? What is the function of religion thus defined?
  7. Explain and criticise Stuckenberg’s theory of “Sociation.”
  8. In what sense can interests be said to be harmonious, and in what sense are they antagonistic?
  9. What is meant by “consciousness of kind,” and how is it related to sympathy?
  10. Discuss the question, Is work a blessing?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Mid-year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 8, Bound Volume: Examination Papers, Mid-Year 1907-08.

__________________________

ECONOMICS 3
Year-end Examination, 1907-08

  1. Comment upon the following passage: “Every great historical epoch and every variety of social organization must be explained on the basis of factors and forces now at work, and which the student may study at first hand.”
  2. Can you, consistently with modern evolutionary philosophy, define social progress in terms of well-being? Explain.
  3. Comment upon the following passage:—
    “So that as law differentiates from personal commands, and as morality differentiates from religious in junctions, so politeness differentiates from ceremonial observance. To which I may add, so does rational usage differentiate from fashion.”
  4. Comment upon the following passage: “The fundamental fact in history is the law of decreasing returns.”
  5. Compare Gidding’s conception of the “ultimate social fact” with that of Adam Smith.
  6. Describe some of the agencies for the storing of social energy.
  7. What is meant by “animated moderation” and how is it developed.
  8. Compare the mediaeval prince and the modern political boss.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers, 1873-1915. Box 8, Bound vol. Examination Papers 1908-09; Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1908), p. 29.

Image Source: Thomas Nixon Carver. The World’s Work. Vol. XXVI (May-October 1913) p. 127. Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard Principles

Harvard. Enrollment and semester examinations for principles of economics. Taussig, Bullock and Andrew. 1907-1908

Frank W. Taussig, Charles J. Bullock, A. Piatt Andrew

In addition to the 1907-08 exam questions for Principles of Economics taught at Harvard by Frank W. Taussig, Charles J. Bullock, and A. Piatt Andrew, this post provides links to the previously transcribed 36 years worth of exams.

________________________

Exams for principles (a.k.a. outlines)
of economics at Harvard
1870/71-1906/07

1871-75.
1876-77.
1877-78.
1878-79.
1879-80.
1880-81.
1881-82.
1882-83.
1883-84.
1884-85.
1885-86.
1886-87.
1887-88.
1888-89.
1889-90.
1890-91.
1891-92.
1892-93.
1893-94.
1894-95.
1895-96.
1896-97.
1897-98.
1898-99.
1899-00.
1900-01.
1901-02.
1902-03.
1903-04.
1904-05.
1905-06.
1906-07.

________________________

Course Enrollment
1907-08

Economics 1. Professor [Frank William] Taussig and Asst. Professors [Charles Jesse] Bullock and [Abram Piatt] Andrew, assisted by Dr. [Charles Phillips] Huse, and Messrs. [?] Hall, [Probably: Walter Max Shohl, A.B. 1906] Shohl and [Abbott Payson] Usher [A.B. 1904]. — Principles of Economics.

Total 482: 1 Graduate, 8 Seniors, 76 Juniors, 290 Sophomores, 66 Freshmen, 41 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1907-1908, p. 66.

________________________

ECONOMICS 1
Mid-year Examination, 1907-08

Arrange your answers strictly in the order of the questions.

  1. Does saving lead to investment? Does investment lead to the increase of capital? Does the increase of capital lead to the decline of interest? If so, explain in each case why and how; if not, why not?
  2. Suppose that by the use of more prolific seeds the yield of agriculture were very greatly increased; what immediate consequences would you expect as to
    1. The price of agricultural produce;
    2. Economic rent on agricultural land;
    3. The earnings of farmers?

Wherein might the ultimate consequence be different?

  1. Is there any inconsistency between the propositions that
    1. Value is governed by demand and supply;
    2. Value is governed by marginal utility;
    3. The price of a monopolized commodity may be different for different purchasers?
  2. How far does the price of a copyrighted book depend on its cost? How far does its cost depend on its price?
  3. Explain what is meant by “non-competing groups,” and how the situation indicated by that phrase is connected with questions concerning trade-unions and the closed shop.
  4. What effect has the unattractiveness of an employment on the wages of those engaged in it? How do you explain the current scale of wages for unskilled labor? For “sweated” laborers? For domestic servants?
  5. Is it beneficial to laborers as a class that there should be (1) great mobility and free competition between business men and investors; (2) great mobility and free competition between the laborers themselves?

One of the following questions may be omitted.

  1. Suppose coöperative production were universally adopted, how would business profits be affected? Suppose profit-sharing were universally adopted, how would they be affected? Suppose all laborers organized in trade-unions, how would they be affected?
  2. What is the significance for labor questions of
    1. “Making work”;
    2. Luxurious expenditure by the rich;
    3. Jurisdiction disputes?
  3. Explain precisely what social movement you associate with the following:—
    1. Rochdale Pioneers;
    2. Leclaire;
    3. Knights of Labor;
    4. American Federation of Labor.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Mid-year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 8, Bound Volume: Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1907-08.

________________________

ECONOMICS 1
Year-end Examination, 1907-08

  1. Wherein is there resemblance, wherein difference, between the causes that determine the value of

a ton of coal;
an ounce of gold;
a dollar of inconvertible paper?

  1. Wherein, if at all, are the following subject to the law of monopoly value:—

urban sites;
the output of a protective industry;
railway transportation?

  1. It is said that “charging what the traffic will bear” may rest on two different causes. Do you find either or both of the causes in (a) railway rates; (b) the prices of illuminating oil; (c) the prices of cotton-seed oil?
  2. Explain the following terms:—

index number;
bimetallism;
limping standard;
Independent Treasury system;
Gresham’s Law.

  1. In the year 1906 the exports of merchandise from the United States exceeded the imports by about 500 million dollars. In the same year the imports of gold were about 50 million dollars.

(a) Can such a disparity continue for a long period of years? If so, why? If not, why not?

(b) So long as it continues, do you regard the situation as favorable for the people of the United States?

  1. Explain the measures taken in periods of great financial stress in (a) England, (b) Germany, (c) the United States; and mention in each case to what extent these measures were contemplated by existing legislation.
  2. What determines the selling-price of (a) an urban site advantageous for business; (b) the shares of a street railway corporation; (c) the shares of a “trust” whose capitalization much exceeds its tangible property? In which of these cases, if in any, can it be said that there is “over-capitalization”?
  3. Suppose the public-service industries (“monopolies of organization”) to be placed under government management. Do you think wages would be lower or higher in these industries? Would the general level of wages in the community be higher or lower?
    On the same supposition, do you think prices of the commodities or services supplied by those industries would be higher or lower? Would the general level of prices be higher or lower?
  4. Does the encouragement of domestic industries through tariff duties cause a saving by doing away with the expense of transporting goods from foreign countries? Are such duties likely to bring a charge on the foreign producer or on the domestic consumer?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers, 1873-1915. Box 8, Bound vol. Examination Papers 1908-09; Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1908), pp. 26-27.

Image Source: Faculty portraits of Frank W. Taussig, Charles J. Bullock, A. Piatt Andrew. The Harvard Class Album, 1906. Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard Undergraduate

Harvard. Exams for Introductory and Advanced Political Economy. Dunbar and Laughlin, 1878-1879

 

Like the previous post, this one plugs a gap (1878-79) in the time series of Harvard political economy exams from the 19th century. Charles Dunbar was still at the top of his game and the young Dr. James Laurence Laughlin enters the picture. 

__________________________

Political Economy [first course].

Course Enrollment

[Philosophy] 6. Political Economy. — J. S. Mill’s Political Economy. — Financial Legislation of the United States. Three times a week. Prof. [Charles Franklin] Dunbar and Dr. [James Laurence] Laughlin.

Total 121: 1 Graduate, 45 Seniors, 71 Juniors, 1 Sophomore, 3 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1878-79, p. 60.

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PHILOSOPHY 6.
Mid-year Examination, 1878-79

(Do not change the order of the questions.)

  1. State the argument for raising the whole of the supplies of state by taxation within the year. Illustrate by the experience d England from 1793 to 1817, and of the United States in the recent war.
  2. Examine the assertion that, if the rich increase their unproductive expenditure, the now unemployed working classes will be benefited.
  3. If all land were of equal fertility, and all required for cultivation, would it pay Rent? Give the reasons for your answer.
  4. By what reasoning, irrespective of value or price, does Mr. Mill arrive at the law of Rent?
  5. State the general laws of value, and show what modifications are necessary for articles produced in foreign countries. Complete the whole theory by any peculiar cases of value.
  6. (1) Show that capitalists cannot secure themselves against a general increased cost of labor by raising the prices of their goods. (2) On what does Cost of Labor depend?
  7. Illustrate Gresham’s Law by the causes which led to the Suffolk Bank System, and the Coinage Act of the United States in 1834.
  8. Point out the fallacy in the theory that an increase of the currency is desirable because it quickens industry.
  9. When our imports regularly exceed our exports, what will be the rate charged in New York for sight bills on London? What is the par of exchange between Paris and London?
  10. What is to be said as to the doctrine that the advantage to a country from foreign trade is found in the surplus of exports over imports?
  11. Explain the system of the Bank of Amsterdam, and the reasons for establishing it.
  12. Arrange the following resources and liabilities of the Bank of England in the proper form, separating the Issue and the Banking Departments:
Notes Issued £41.5 Government Securities £14.2
Other Deposits 27.9 Reserve 9.4
Other Securities (Loans) 27.9 Public Deposits 5.6
Coin and Bullion 26.5 Rest 3.2
Government Debt., &c. 15.0 Seven-day Bills 0.3
Capital 14.5
  1. Having arranged the account, show what changes would be made in it, if the Bank increased its loans by 3 millions and sold 1 million of government securities, and depositors at the same time withdrew 2 millions to be sent abroad.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination papers, 1873-1915. Box 2, Bound Volume 1878-79, Papers Set for Mid-Year Examinations in Rhetoric, Logic, Philosophy, Political Economy, History, Music, Fine Arts in Harvard College, February 1879, pp. 8-9.

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PHILOSOPHY 6.
Year-End Examination, 1878-79

  1. What is the cause of the existence of profit? And what, according to Mr. Mill, are the circumstances which determine the respective shares of the laborer and the capitalist?
  2. Explain the statement that “high general profits cannot, any more than high general wages, be a cause of high values. . .. In so far as profits enter into the cost of production of all things, they cannot affect the value of any.”
  3. On what does the minimum rate of profit depend? What counterforces act against the downward tendency of profits?
  4. State the theory of the value of money (i.e. “metallic money”), and clear up any apparent inconsistencies between the following statements: (1) The value of money depends on the cost of production at the worst mines; (2) The value of money varies inversely as its quantity multiplied by its rapidity of circulation; (3) The countries whose products are most in demand abroad and contain the greatest value in the smallest bulk, which are nearest the mines and have the least demand for foreign productions, are those in which money will be of lowest value.
  5. What is the error in the common notion “that a paper currency cannot be issued in excess so long as every note represents property, or has a foundation of actual property to rest on?”
  6. What are the conditions under which one country can permanently undersell another in a foreign market?
  7. On whom does a tax on imports, if not prohibitory, fall?
  8. Discuss the following:—
    “A man with $100,000 in United States bonds comes to Boston, hires a house …; thus he lives in luxury… I am in favor of taxing idle investments such as this, and allowing manufacturing investments to go untaxed.”
  9. If depositors in the Bank of England withdraw £3,000,000 in specie and send it abroad, how does this withdrawal of gold from the vaults of the Bank affect the currency in actual circulation?
  10. Describe the plan on which a national bank of the United States is organized, the security for its notes, the provision for their redemption and the extent to which the law makes them receivable.
  11. When were the legal-tender, compound interest notes issued, and what was their peculiar characteristic as a currency? How did their action as currency differ from that of the other issue of interest-bearing legal-tender notes?
  12. Describe the Resumption Act of 1875. What circumstances have promoted its success?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination papers, 1873-1915. Box 2, Bound Volume 1878-79, Papers Set for Annual Examinations in Rhetoric, Logic, Philosophy, Political Economy, History, Music, Fine Arts in Harvard College, May 28 to June 4, 1879, pp. 13-14.

__________________________

Advanced Political Economy.

Course Enrollment

[Philosophy] 7. Advanced Political Economy. Cairnes’s Leading Principles of Political Economy. — McKean’s Condensation of Carey’s Social Science. — Lectures. Three times a week. Prof. Dunbar.

Total 36: 2 Graduates, 31 Seniors, 3 Juniors.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1878-79, p. 60.

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PHILOSOPHY 7.
Mid-year Examination, 1878-79

(Write your answers in the same order as the questions.)

  1. Give a careful and logical summary of the laws determining the values of all commodities, monopolized or free, domestic or foreign, using the corrected definition of Cost of Production. [Forty minutes]
  2. As a new country fills up, what changes may be expected in the normal prices of meat, timber, grain and wool?
  3. Why is it unlikely that any formula will be devised, embracing in one statement the law of the value of commodities and the law of the value of labor, i.e. the law of wages?
  4. Give a summary of Mr. Cairnes’s restatement of the wages-fund theory.
  5. Analyze this statement:
    “An article which a farm laborer has produced in a day does not exchange for one which a watchmaker has spent an equal time in producing, because the latter is a more skilful operative.”
  6. Explain the statement that “the high scale of industrial remuneration in America, instead of being evidence of a high cost of production in that country, is distinctly evidence of a low cost of production.”
  7. What effects upon foreign trade have general changes in the rates of wages, and what have partial changes? Give the reasons.
  8. What effect has the existence of a large debt payable to foreigners, upon the ability of a country to keep up a metallic circulation?
  9. The Governor of M. is informed,
    “That the longer continuance of the provisions of the treaty with Great Britain, permitting the free importation of fish from the Provinces, will be most disastrous to the fishing interest; and that the permanent maintenance of this policy will insure its complete destruction. This would involve the decay of our fishing ports and the loss of millions of capital, and drive from their occupation thousands of deserving citizens. … This class has been the nursery of the navy of the Union. It has manned our mercantile marine.”
    Discuss the suggestion that for these reasons the provisions of the treaty referred to should be abrogated.
  10. Give some account of the Economistes and of their doctrines.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination papers, 1873-1915. Box 2, Bound Volume 1878-79, Papers Set for Mid-Year Examinations in Rhetoric, Logic, Philosophy, Political Economy, History, Music, Fine Arts in Harvard College, February 1879, p. 10.

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PHILOSOPHY 7.
Year-end Examination, 1878-79

  1. What are Mr. Cairnes’s reasons for doubting whether any great improvement can be made in the condition of the laboring class, so long as they remain mere receivers of wages?
  2. How is the statement that “a rise or fall of wages in a country, so far forth as it is general, has no tendency to affect the course of foreign trade” to be reconciled with the fact, that in the last two or three years the United States have been able to export certain manufactured goods in increased quantities, in spite of competition?
  3. What is the explanation of the statement that “what a nation is interested in is, not in having its prices high or low, but in having its gold cheap”?
  4. How does Mr. Shadwell’s definition of value differ from that adopted by the school of Ricardo?
  5. Discuss the following extract:—
    “As a cause must precede its effect, increase of population cannot be the cause of an increase of food, nor of its increased dearness, which is consequent on the resorting to poorer soils in order to raise a larger quantity. If, then, the cost of food has any tendency to increase as society advances, it must be because farmers are prompted by some motive or other to resort to poorer soils, while richer ones are to be had. But such a supposition is contrary to the principle that every one desires to obtain wealth by the least possible labor, and is therefore inadmissible. Poor land is taken into cultivation not because the population has increased, but because some discovery has been made which renders it possible to obtain as much profit as from the worst previously cultivated, and this discovery enables the quantity of food to be increased, and an increase of population is the effect and not the cause.”
  6. Also the following :-
    “Agricultural profits cannot fall unless recourse is had to poorer land, but such land will never be cultivate, since capitalists can never be willing to submit to a fall of profit; and the very meaning of the expression that some land is not worth cultivating, is, that it will not yield the ordinary profit to the farmer who should attempt to reclaim it. It appears, then, that the rate of profit is stationary in agriculture, and, consequently, in all other trades; and that whatever rate be established in an early stage of society, it must remain the same throughout its subsequent development.”
  7. “Why then should we suppose that the supply of paper substitutes for coin (like the supply of corn) would not be best maintained by allowing bankers and their customers to bring them into circulation in whatever quantities, and at whatever times, they find to be mutually convenient?”
  8. In what forms was the French indemnity finally received by Germany (bills of exchange being a mere instrument of transfer)? How did the payment probably affect Austria and the United States?
  9. A considerable party in England now propose “Reciprocity,” — that is, the admission without duty of the goods of such countries only as in turn admit English goods without duty. What practical objections and what theoretical ones can be urged against this proposition?
  10. “No act of Parliament,” it is said, “or convention of nations can prevent (between gold and silver) changes in value resulting from variations in the conditions of production, or of the action of demand and supply.”
    To this M. Cerunschi replies, — “You confound money with merchandise. To speak of merchandise is to speak of competition, supply and demand, purchase and sale, price. To speak of money is nothing of the kind.
    “Whether he produces little or much at a profit or at a loss, no miner can ever sell his metal money either dearer or cheaper than other miners, for the simple reason that the metal money is not sold or bought; it is itself its price…
    “When the monetary law is bi-metallic, therefore, no competition [is] possible between the producer of gold and the producer of silver, no purchase and sale, no discount, no price between one metal and the other. Without their being offered, without their being demanded, the circulation absorbs them both at the legal par, and cannot refuse them. When the monetary law is everywhere bi-metallic, neither gold nor silver, coined or uncoined, is merchandise. That is the secret.”

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination papers, 1873-1915. Box 2, Bound Volume 1878-79, Papers Set for Annual Examinations in Rhetoric, Logic, Philosophy, Political Economy, History, Music, Fine Arts in Harvard College, May 28 to June 4, 1879, pp. 14-15.

Image Source: Harvard Library, Hollis Images. Charles F. Dunbar (left) and James Laurence Laughlin (right). Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Exams for Introductory and Advanced Political Economy. Dunbar, 1877-1878

 

This post plugs a gap in the time-series of Harvard economics exams back in the day when economics was still called political economy and political economy was just another moral science among the philosophy department’s course offerings. Two courses, that was all in 1877-1878.

Texts from John Stuart Mill, Walter Bagehot, John Elliott Cairnes, Henry Charles Carey were assigned readings.

_______________________

Political Economy [first course].

Course Enrollment

[Philosophy] 6. Political Economy. — J. S. Mill’s Political Economy. — Bagehot’s Lombard Street. — Financial Legislation of the United States. Three times a week. Prof. [Charles Franklin] Dunbar and Mr. [Silas Marcus] Macvane.

Total 108: 25 Seniors, 72 Juniors, 9 Sophomores, 1 Freshman, 1 Other.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1877-78, p. 59.

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PHILOSOPHY 6.
Mid-year Examination 1877-78

  1. How does the meaning of the following terms, when used in scientific discussion, differ from that which they have in popular discourse? — Wealth, Capital, Rent, Value of Money.
  2. What is the reason that rears of great unproductive expenditure e.g. years of war, are often years of great apparent prosperity? Illustrate by the cases of England and France during the wars of Napoleon.
  3. What is the objection to the “Allowance System” of poor relief, by which insufficient wages are made good by a contribution from public funds?
  4. How is the alleged tendency of profits to equivalence in different employments to be reconciled with the notorious difference in the profits of different individuals?
  5. Explain the reason for the statement that “if it were the fact that there is never any land taken into cultivation for which rent is not paid, it would be true, nevertheless, that there is always some agricultural capital which pays no rent.”
  6. Explain carefully the reason for the proposition that high wages do not make high prices.
  7. What causes determine the value of money?
  8. In the markets of the world gold bullion is worth more than seventeen times as much as silver bullion. What will be the effect on the currency of a country which establishes the double standard, makes each metal a legal tender for any amount, but adjusts the weight of the coins upon the assumption that the values of gold and silver are in the ratio of 16 to 1? What further effect will be produced if, after this has taken place, another country adopts the same measure, but with the assumed ratio of 15½ to 1?
  9. What will determine the value of an inconvertible currency which is a legal tender?
  10. What are the arguments against the possibility of general over-production, or “excess of supply”?
  11. The following are the items [in £ millions] in the Bank of England account for November 11, 1857:—
Bullion, £6.6 Private deposits, £12.9
Capital, 14.5 Notes, 21.1
Gov. Debt. & sec. 14.5 Reserve, 1.4
Gov’t. securities, 9.4 Rest, 3.4
Public deposits 5.3 Seven-day Bills 0.8
Other securities, 26.1

Arrange these items in the proper form, separating the Issue and Banking Departments, and then show the changes required by the following operations:—

An increase of loans amounting to… £4 millions
A sale of Government securities amounting to… 1 million
The withdrawal by depositors of… 3 millions

the act of 1844 being suspended.

  1. Why does the suspension of the act of 1844 give relief to the money market?
  2. How far can the Bank of England control the market rate of interest?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination papers, 1873-1915. Box 2, Bound Volume 1878-79 (sic), Papers Set for Mid-Year Examinations in Rhetoric, Logic, Philosophy, Political Economy, History, Music, Fine Arts in Harvard College, February 1878, pp. 11-12.

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PHILOSOPHY 6.
Year-end Examinations 1877-78

[Let the answers given in your book stand in their proper order. Take either 8 or *8. Take care not to omit the last four questions.]

  1. Why are the wages of skilled labor so much higher than those of unskilled?
  2. Are improvements in production ever injurious to the laboring classes?
  3. Why is it that a potential change of the supply of other commodities is enough to make their value conform to any change in their cost of production, but that in the case of gold and silver the change of supply must be actual?
  4. When it is said that improvements tend to counteract the increasing cost of production from land, what sort of improvements are meant?
  5. What effect is produced upon rents, profits and wages, respectively, in a country where population is stationary and capital advancing, like France?
  6. Explain what effect, if any, will be produced on the price of corn by,
    1. a tax upon rent;
    2. a tithe;
    3. a tax of so much per acre, irrespective of value;
    4. a tax of so much per bushel.
  7. In the theory of an ultimate stationary state of society, what is implied as to the well-being of the laboring classes when that state is reached?
  8. State and examine Mr. Wakefield’s theory of a “limited field of employment” for capital as explaining the fall of profits.

*8. “There are two senses in which a country obtains commodities cheaper by foreign trade: in the sense of Value and in the sense of Cost.”

  1. What effect does an annual payment of interest to foreign creditors have upon the imports and exports of a country? If the interest is payable in gold, will it necessarily cause gold to be sent out of the country? Why, or why not?
  2. Criticise the following statement made by a well-known member of Congress:—
    “Bank of England notes have been interchangeable with money since 1844, with three brief intervals, when the system of promising gold redemption and of issuing notes based on gold deposits in excess of £14,000,000 brought about crises.”
  3. What was the provision made by the National Bank Act as to reserves for the protection of circulation and deposits, and what reserves are now required by law?
  4. What was the amount of greenbacks outstanding in the period 1868-73, and what were the changes by which the amount settled to its present figure, $346,000,000?
  5. State briefly the history of our gold and silver coins as found in the coinage acts of 1792, 1834, 1853, 1873, and 1878.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination papers, 1873-1915. Box 2, Bound Volume 1878-79, Papers Set for Annual Examinations in Rhetoric, Logic, Philosophy, Political Economy, History, Music, Fine Arts in Harvard College, May 27 to June 20, 1878, pp. 13-14.

_______________________

Advanced Political Economy.

Course Enrollment

[Philosophy] 7. Advanced Political Economy. Cairnes’s Leading Principles of Political Economy. — McKean’s Condensation of Carey’s Social Science. — Lectures. Three times a week. Prof. Dunbar.

Total 28: 1 Graduate, 22 Seniors, 5 Juniors.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1877-78, p. 59.

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PHILOSOPHY 7.
Mid-year Examination, 1877-78

  1. What reasons make a revision of the usual definition of Cost of Production necessary? How do Mill and Ricardo use the term?
  2. What effect has the existence of “non-competing groups” on the exchange of commodities, each of which is the product of several classes of labor, as e.g. a steam engine and cotton cloth?
  3. What is the argument in favor of Mr. Cairnes’s position that the price of corn, in the progress of society, reaches a certain maximum, beyond which it cannot advance?
  4. When a permanent increase of currency occurs, what will be the difference in the effect on the prices of manufactured goods, vegetable products, and animal products, respectively?
  5. Criticise the following statement of the wages-fund doctrine:—
    “There is supposed to be, at any given instant, a sum of wealth which is unconditionally devoted to the payment of the wages of labor. This sum is not regarded as unalterable, for it is augmented by saving, and increases with the progress of wealth; but it is reasoned upon as at any given moment a predetermined amount. More than that amount it is assumed the wages-receiving class can not possibly divide among them; that amount, and no less, they can not but obtain. So that the sum to be divided being fixed, the wages of each depend solely on the divisor, the number of participants.”
  6. What is to be inferred from Mr. Cairnes’s reasoning as to a probable fall of prices in the United States, with respect to the recovery of prices after confidence shall have been restored and industry shall have revived?
  7. What is the reason for rejecting the common notion that high general wages hinder the extension of the foreign trade of a country like this?
  8. Discuss the bearing of the reasoning involved in the last question, on the theory of protection.
  9. Discuss the common argument that the national debt ought to be held at home, because if held abroad it compels the payment of a “tribute” to foreigners, and tends so far to check our prosperity.
  10. Explain the fact that only about one-ninth of the French Indemnity was paid in coin.
  11. In the progressive development of political economy as a logical system, what are the relations of Malthus, Ricardo, and Mill, respectively?
  12. Give some account of Colbert, J.-B. Say, Storch.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination papers, 1873-1915. Box 2, Bound Volume 1878-79 (sic), Papers Set for Mid-Year Examinations in Rhetoric, Logic, Philosophy, Political Economy, History, Music, Fine Arts in Harvard College, February 1878, p. 13.

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PHILOSOPHY 7.
Year-end Examination, 1877-78

[Let the answers given in your book stand in their proper order.]

  1. In what way does skill affect the cost of the products of skilled labor?
  2. Give Cairnes’s statement of the Wages Fund doctrine. “It will perhaps strike the reader that our reasoning has conducted us into a vicious circle.” Is the circle real or apparent? Why?
  3. Cairnes says that “an alteration in the reciprocal demand of two leading nations will act upon the price, not of any commodity in particular, but of every commodity which enters into the trade.” Is this statement broad enough to cover all the effects of such an alteration?
  4. How are we to explain the fact that, while cost of production is generally the ultimate condition governing international exchange, it is seldom, if ever, the proximate or immediate cause of exchange?
  5. It has been remarked that “the object of taxation is to make all property bear its equitable share.” Is this a correct statement of the principle to be followed? Why, or why not?
  6. Criticise the following passage from a thesis on Reciprocity with Canada:—
    “Unless there is a good deal of uniformity in excise it will be difficult to maintain reciprocity between the two countries… Suppose that an income tax should be laid on in the United States, as has been proposed. Such a measure would place all United States industries at a disadvantage as regards Canadian and perhaps as regards foreign.”
  7. How does a pressure in the money market here, where paper currency is used, tend to bring gold from London to New York?
  8. What reasoning is there for or against the statement that “the balance of trade must be against the countries which export raw produce, that the precious metals must flow from these countries, and that they must, while continuing in that course of policy, abandon the idea of gold and silver as a standard of value.”
  9. Discuss this statement:
    “Interest is the compensation paid for the use of the instrument called money, and for this alone. In countries in which that is high, the rate of profit is necessarily so, because the charge for the use of his money enters so largely into the trader’s profits.”
  10. What is Mr. Carey’s theory as to the tendency (1) to decline in the value of commodities, and (2) to rise in the value of land; and how is this reconciled with his principle that the law of value is universal, embracing everything, «”whether land, labor, or their products”?
  11. What logical necessity drove Mr. Carey to the invention or discovery of a new law of population? In what does his conception of an ultimate stationary state necessarily differ from that of Ricardo and Mill?
  12. The existence of much vice and misery is ascribed by Malthus to an economic law. How far is it the result of this to “relieve the governing classes of the world from any possible responsibility for the welfare of those below them”?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination papers, 1873-1915. Box 2, Bound Volume 1878-79, Papers Set for Annual Examinations in Rhetoric, Logic, Philosophy, Political Economy, History, Music, Fine Arts in Harvard College, May 27 to June 20, 1878, pp. 14-15.

Image Source: “Charles Franklin Dunbar: Second President of the American Economic Association, 1893.” The American Economic Review, vol. 31, no. 3, 1941.
JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1805801.
Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard Social Work Socialism

Harvard. Readings and final exam for social ethics. Peabody, 1906-07

The field of social ethics was taught by the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and then Dean of the Harvard Divinity School, Francis Greenwood Peabody. It was a rather popular secondary field chosen for the graduate general examination by economics graduate students in the early 20th century.  In the spectrum of individualism through socialism, applied social ethics (poor-relief, family, temperance, and “the labor question”) were imported from philosophical/theological studies.

__________________________

Building blocks for Peabody’s course

Peabody’s short bibliography on the Ethics of Social Questions published in 1910.

Francis Greenwood Peabody. The Approach to the Social Question. New York: Macmillan, 1912. “The substance of this volume was given as the Earle Lectures at the Pacific Theological Seminary in 1907.”

__________________________

Course Enrollment
1906-07

Social Ethics 1. Professor Peabody and Dr. Rogers. — Social Ethics. The problems of Poor-Relief, the Family, Temperance, and various phases of the Labor Question, in the light of ethical theory.

Total 175: 6 Graduates, 41 Seniors, 54 Juniors, 50 Sophomores, 1 Freshman, 23 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1906-1907, p. 72

__________________________

Thick Course Description
1906-07

  1. Social Ethics . — 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 prescribed reading. Tu., Th., Sat., at 10. Professor Peabody and Dr. Rogers.

This course is an application of ethical theory to the social problems of the present day. It is to be distinguished from economic courses dealing with similar subjects by the emphasis laid on the moral aspects of the Social Question and on the philosophy of society involved. Its introduction discusses various theories of Ethics and the nature and relations of the Moral Ideal [required reading from Mackenzie’s Introduction to Social Philosophy, and Muirhead’s Elements of Ethics]. The course then considers the ethics of the family [required reading from Spencer’s Principles of Sociology (Volume 1; Volume 2; Volume 3)]; the ethics of poor-relief [required reading from Charles Booth’s Life and Labor of the People (links below)]; the ethics of the labor question [required reading from J. A. Hobson’s The Social Problem, Schäffle’s The Quintessence of Socialism, Adams and Sumner, Labor Problems]; and the ethics of the drink question [required reading from The Liquor Problem; a Summary of Investigations]. In addition to lectures and required reading two special and detailed reports are made by each student, based as far as possible on personal research and observation of scientific methods in poor-relief and industrial reform. These researches are arranged in consultation with the instructor or his assistant; and an important feature of the course is the suggestion and direction of such personal investigation, and the provision to each student of special literature or opportunities for observation.

            Rooms are expressly assigned for the convenience of students of Social Ethics, on the second floor of Emerson Hall, including a large lecture room, a seminary-room, a conference-room, a library, and two rooms occupied by the Social Museum. The Library of 1500 volumes is a special collection for the use of students of Social Ethics, with conveniences for study and research. The Social Museum is a collection of graphical material, illustrating by photographs, models, diagrams, and charts, many movements of social welfare and industrial progress.

Source: Announcement of the Divinity School of Harvard University, 1906-07, p. 22.

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Charles Booth’s Life and Labor of the People:

(Original) Volume I, East London;
(Original) Volume II, London;
(Original) Appendix to Volume II;
Note: the previous three original volumes were re-printed as four volumes that then were followed by
Volume V, Population Classified by Trades;
Volume VI, Population Classified by Trades (cont.);
Volume VII, Population Classified by Trades;
Volume VIII, Population Classified by Trades (cont.);
Volume IX, Comparisons, Survey and Conclusions.

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Note: Besides the changes in course number, a few minor changes in the course description from (Philosophy 5) 1902-03  Also in the course description Philosophy 5 (1904-05).

___________________________

SOCIAL ETHICS 1
Year-end Examination 1906-07

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

  1. Explain the significance of the titles:— “Past and Present” [by Thomas Carlyle]; “Unto this Last” [by John Ruskin]; and comment on the teachings involved.
  2. Statistics of wage-loss, employer’s loss, and assistance to employees, in the United States (1881-1900); and their lessons.
  3. The tendencies in contemporary life which appear to the scientific socialist to encourage his faith; with comments.
  4. “The normal relation of the antithesis of which I spoke,” [Socialism and Individualism, Economic and Moral] “is that of cross-correspondence”? (Bosanquet, Civilization of Christendom, p. 316). Comment on this suggestion.
  5. The effect of the growth of trade-unionism on the economic theory of wages. ( A. [Robert Archey] Woods.) [Probably Chapter 1 “The Labor Movement” in Woods’ English Social Movements (2nd ed., 1895), pp. 1-37.]
  6. Distinguish Arbitration, Conciliation, and Coöperation, and indicate the place of each in the Ethics of the Labor Question.
  7. Welfare work at Anzin, and the limitations of its usefulness.
  8. Employer’s Liability, Workmen’s Compensation Acts, and the social philosophy involved. (Adams and Sumner, pp. 478-488.)
  9. Distinguish “Profit-sharing,” “Gain-sharing,” and “Industrial Partnership,” and describe the method undertaken by the United States Steel Corporation.
  10. Compare the operation of the South Carolina liquor-law with that of the Scandinavian System. (The Liquor Problem, pp. 151-156.)

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 8, Bound volume: Examination Papers, 1906-07; Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1907), p. 59.

Image Source: Harvard University Archives.  Francis Greenwood Peabody [photographic portrait, ca. 1900], Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Categories
Exam Questions France Germany Harvard History of Economics Methodology

Harvard. Exam for 19th century French and German Economics, Gay, 1906-07

von Thünen and Le Play

Edwin Francis Gay (1867-1946) had spent over a decade studying history and economics in Europe before coming to Harvard in 1903. I am somewhat surprised that he could find even three students to take his graduate course that appears to have required a better-than-average reading knowledge of both German and French.

In 1902-03 Gay taught “Outlines of the Development of Economic Thought in Germany in the Nineteenth Century”.

In 1904-05 he then taught “German and French economists of the 19th century” but Harvard’s collection of printed economics exams for 1904-05 did not include Gay’s exam for the course.

Fortunately, the year-end examination from the academic year 1906-07 was printed and we have transcribed it below. Added bonus material: an English translation of the paragraph taken from a book written by the German economist Karl Bücher that students were expected to translate.

________________________

Course Enrollment

Economics 22. Professor Gay. — German and French Economists of the Nineteenth Century.

Total 3: 3 Graduates.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1906-1907, p. 71.

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ECONOMICS 22
Year-end Examination, 1906-07

  1. Explain von Thünen’s wage theory. What is his contribution to economic method? How does it compare with Le Play’s?
  2. Compare the conceptions of distributive justice entertained by the French socialists with those of the Austrian school.
  3. Trace the development of the concept of pure profits in the German and French economists.
  4. Discuss the attack of the German historical school on the classical economists and its justification.
  5. Translate die following:
    “Zwei Dinge müssen auf diesem Gebiete den an den Kategorien der modernen Volkswirtschaft geschulten Kopf besonders befremden; die Häufigkeit, mit der unkörperliche Sachen („Verhältnisse“) zu wirtschaftlichen Gütern werden und dem Verkehre unterliegen, und ihre verkehrsrechtliche Behandlung als Immobilien. An ihnen ist so recht zu sehen, wie die beginnende Tauschwirtschaft den Spielraum, den ihr die damalige Produktionsordnung versagte, dadurch zu erweitern suchte, dass sie in täppischem Zugreifen fast alles zum Verkehrsgut machte und so die Sphäre des Privatrechts ins Ungemessene ausdehnte. Was hat man im Mittelalter nicht verliehen, verschenkt, verkauft und verpfändet! Die herrschaftliche Gewalt über Länder und Städte, Grafschafts- und Vogteirechte, Cent- und Gaugerichte, kirchliche Würden und Patronate, Bannrechte, Fähren und Wegerechte, Münze und Zoll, Jagd- und Fischereigerechtsame, Beholzungsrechte, Zehnten, Fronden, Grundzinsen und Renten, überhaupt Reallasten jeder Art. Wirtschaftlich betrachtet, teilen alle diese Rechte und Verhältnisse mit dem Grund und Boden die Eigentümlichkeit, nicht von dem Orte ihrer Ausübung entfernt und nicht beliebig vermehrt werden zu können.”

[Note: quote comes from Professor Karl Bücher, University of Leipzig. Die  Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft, Vorträge und Versuche, 3rd ed. (Tübingen, 1901), p. 153.]

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 8, Bound volume: Examination Papers, 1906-07; Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1907), pp. 43-44.

English translation of Question 5’s quote

There are two things in connection with this that must appear especially strange to a student of modern political economy, namely, the frequency with which immaterial things (relationships) become economic commodities and subjects of exchange, and their treatment under commercial law as real property. These show clearly how primitive exchange sought to enlarge the sphere denied it under the existing conditions of production by awkwardly transforming, into negotiable property, almost everything it could lay hold upon, and thus extending infinitely the domain of private law. What an endless variety of things in mediaeval times were lent, bestowed, sold, and pawned! — the sovereign power over territories and towns; county and bailiff’s rights; jurisdiction over hundreds and cantons; church dignities and patronages; suburban monopoly rights; ferry and road privileges; prerogatives of mintage and toll, of hunting and fishing; wood-cutting rights, tithes, statute labour, ground-rents, and revenues; in fact charges of every kind falling upon the land. Economically considered, all these rights and “relationships”” share with land the peculiarity that they cannot be removed from the place where they are enjoyed, and that they cannot be multiplied at will.

Source: Karl Bücher, Industrial Evolution, third German edition (German title: Die Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft, Vorträge und Versuche. English translation by S. Morley Wickett, Lecturer on Political Economy and Statistics, University of Toronto. New York: Henry Hold and Company, 1907, p. 131.

Image Source: Johann Heinrich von Thünen (Wikimedia Commons). Frédéric Le Play (Social History Portal)

Categories
Biography Economists Harvard Transcript

Harvard. Economics Ph.D. alumnus, Daniel Houston Buchanan. 1931

 

Harvard economics Ph.D. (1931), Daniel Houston Buchanan (1883-1959) taught economics in Japan for eleven years after getting his Harvard A.M. before returning to Harvard to complete his doctorate. Over the years he also taught at Ohio State University, Harvard College, George Washington University, Fisk University, University of North Carolina and Lambuth College. The University of North Carolina (1935-54) constituted his longest academic tour of duty by far

Incidentally, Professor Daniel Buchanan was not mentioned at all in “One Hundred Years of Economics at Carolina” (1901-2001). 

This post has two parts, beginning with Buchanan’s Harvard transcript and followed by the timeline of his life. 

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Fun fact (for me): my old professor of American economic history, Bill Parker (then still a young economic historian), was hired as the successor to Daniel Houston at the University of North Carolina.

Dr. William Nelson Parker appointed as associate professor of economics in the University of North Carolina to replace Dr. Daniel H. Buchanan, professor of economics emeritus. Parker taught at Williams College for the last five years.
The Daily Tar Heel (October 25, 1956), p. 3.

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THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
Record of
Daniel Houston Buchanan

Years: 1911-12, 1928-29, 1929-30 (2 hf)

[Previous] Degrees received.

Litt.B. Cooper Coll. 1909
A.B. Colorado Coll. 1911
S.D. Keiogijuku Univ., Japan, 1928.

First Registration: 28 Sept. 1911

1911-12

Grades
First Year Course

Half-Course

Economics 2

B

Economics 6a1

B

Economics 6b2

B+

Economics 9a1

B

Economics 9b2

B-

Social Ethics 6b2

B+

Economics 291

B

Summer of 1925

Economics S7a

A

Economics S9b

A

Sept. 1911

Elementary French

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

 

1928-29

Grades
Second Year Course

Half-Course

Economics 20 (res)

A

Economics 38

A-

Division:
Scholarship, Fellowship:
Assistantship:
Austin Teaching Fellowship:
Instructorship: + Tut. in H.G.&E. $1650
Proctorship:
Degree attained at close of year: 

 

1929-30 (2hf)

Grades
Third Year Course

Half-Course

History 182

exc.(A)

Economics 202 (E.F.G.)

A
Division:
Scholarship, Fellowship:
Assistantship:
Austin Teaching Fellowship:
Instructorship:
Proctorship:
Degree attained at close of year: 

 

1930-31

Fourth Year

Degree attained at close of year:  Ph.D. June 1931

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Record Cards of Students, 1895-1930, Belding—Burton (UAV 161.2722.5). File I, Box 2, Record Card of Daniel Houston Buchanan.

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Course Names and Instructors

1911-12

Economics 2. Economic Theory. Professor Taussig.

Economics 6a1. European Industry and Commerce in the Nineteenth Century. Professor Gay, assisted by Mr. Klein.

Economics 6b2. Economic and Financial History of the United States. Professor Gay, assisted by Mr. Klein.

Economics 9a1. Problems of Labor. Professor Ripley, assisted by Mr. Hess.

Economics 9b2. Economics of Corporations. Professor Ripley, assisted by Dr. Dewing.

Social Ethics 6b2. Social Amelioration in Europe. Dr. Foerster.

Economics 291. Socialism and the Social Movement in Europe. Dr. Rappard.

1925 (Summer)

Economics S7a. Theories of Value and Distribution. Asst. Prof. John H. Williams.

Economics S9b. International Trade and Tariff Policies. [A. H. Cole or Asst. Prof. John H. Williams].

1928-29

Economics 20. (Research Seminar)

Economics 38. The Principles of Money and Banking. Mr. R. G. Hawtrey

1929-30 (2 hf)

History 182. History of the Far East since 1793. Professor Hung (Yenching University)

Economics 202. (E.F.G.) [(?) sic]

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College for 1911-12, 1924-25, 1928-29, and 1929-30.

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Daniel Houston Buchanan
Timeline of his life and career

1883. Born in Beloit, Kansas, November 29.

Father Thomas Ramsey Buchanan (1849-1933)
Mother: Alda Jane Leslie Buchanan (1855-1928)

1900. U.S. Census. Working on the family farm in Jackson Township, Madison County, Iowa.

1909. Litt.B. (Cooper Coll.)

Cooper College Commencement Announcement for June 6, 1909. Graduating class of sixteen.
Sterling Kansas Bulletin (June 4, 1909), p. 1.

1910. U.S. Census. Teaching in a public school in Valley Brook township, Lyndon City, Kansas.

1911. A.B. Colorado College.

1912. A.M. Harvard University.

1913. Marriage announcement for Daniel Houston Buchanan and Miss Eula Anderson Spencer, at the home of Dr. F. M. Spencer, on Thursday, August 21. Dr. Spencer will perform the marriage ceremony. Dr. Spencer was the president of Cooper College.
The Sterling Kansas Bulletin (August 14, 1913), p. 5.

1914. Taussig’s recommendation turns out to be Buchanan’s ticket to Tokyo.

WILL TEACH IN JAPAN

D. H. Buchanan has accepted the offer as an instructor in a university at Tokyo, Japan.

A vacancy in the chair of economics resulted in an appeal to Harvard for someone to be sent from their school to fill the vacancy. On the recommendation of Prof. Taussig, Mr. Buchanan has secured the place and will commence work the first of April. For the past two years Mr. Buchanan has been teaching geometry in the Wichita high school and will close his work there soon. He is a graduate of Cooper college, going later to Harvard, where he secured his Master’s degree.

His wife was formerly Miss Eula Spencer of this city.

The cablegram announcing he had been chosen to fill the vacancy was received at Wichita Friday morning. The position is at the same university in which Robert Ray of Sterling, is a teacher.

Mr. and Mrs. Buchanan expect to start abroad the first week in March.

The Bulletin joins in congratulations, and wishes the young people much success and happiness in the new surroundings.

The Sterling Kansas Bulletin (Feb. 19, 1914), p. 1.

1914-1925. Buchanan first went to Japan in 1914 to join the economics staff of Keio University. He lived there eleven years.

1915. “A Modification of the Ricardian Theory of Rent. A Criticism” published in Mita Gakkai, Tokyo (May, 1915).  In his March 1921 paper Buchanan begins with the footnote “The paper offered here is sufficient proof that [the author] now considers the position taken at that time as inadequate.”

Keio Journal of Economics, Vol. 9, No. 5 (May 1915),
pp. 506(30)-513(37). Link to download.

1918. Sept. 12. WWI Draft Registration of Daniel Houston Buchanan gives address as: 5 Enokigaka, Akasaka, Tokyo, Japan. Occupation: Professor of economics, Keiogijuku University in Mita, Shiba, Tokyo.

1919. Daniel Houston Buchanan arrived on the S.S. Persia Maru from Yokohama, Japan (June 27, 1919) to San Francisco (July 16, 1919). Returned from the U.S. to Japan from San Francisco on the Siberia Maru, Sept. 5, 1919.

1921. “Economic Rent and the Marginal Expenses of Production” published in Mita Gakkai, Tokyo (March, 1921).

Keio Journal of Economics, Vol. 15, No. 3 (March 1921),
pp. 402(92)-432(122). Link to download.

1921. “Professor Alfred Marshall on the Relation between Economic Rent and the Marginal Expenses of Production”published in Mita Gakkai, Tokyo (May, 1921).

Keio Journal of Economics, Vol. 15, No. 5 (May 1921), pp. 661(69)-690(98). Link to download.

1922. “The Influence of So-called Marginal Rent upon the Marginal Expenses of Production”, Mita Gakkai, Tokyo (March, 1922).

Keio Journal of Economics, Vol. 16, No. 3 (March 1922), pp. 291(1)-308(18). Link to download.

1923. Buchanan, Daniel H. “The Rural Economy of Japan.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 37, no. 4 (August 1923), pp. 545–78.
JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1884052

1925. Arrives in Seattle, Washington (March 24, 1925) on S.S. Arizona Maru from Yokohama, Japan (March 10, 1925)

1925-26. Assistant professor of economics at the Ohio State University.

1926. “Became connected with the Harvard Bureau of International Research” according to a note in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin.

1927. Research trip to study industrialization in India.

A.M. ’12—Daniel H. Buchanan, A.B. (Colorado Coll.) ’11, who is now in Japan in the interests of the Harvard Bureau of International Research, has received the degree of Keizai Gaku Hakushi, or Doctor of Science in Economics, from Keio University, Tokyo. He is the first foreigner to receive this distinction, and there are less than a dozen Japanese who have received a similar degree. The degree is awarded for outstanding written contributions in the field of economics, and has been awarded to Buchanan for his critical history of the doctrine of rent and the marginal expenses of production, covering the period from Adam Smith, 1776, to the present time, together with a study of Japanese rural economy, published a few years ago in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Buchanan first went to Japan in 1914 to join the economics staff of Keio University. He remained there eleven years, returning to the United States in 1925 to become a member of the Faculty of Ohio State University. He became connected with the Harvard Bureau of International Research in 1926, spent the past year in India in economic research with special emphasis on industrialization, and returned to Japan last January.

Source: Harvard Alumni Bulletin (June 14, 1928), p. 1080.

1928. D.Sc. (Economics) Keiogijuku (Japan).

1928-30. Research associate of Prof. Edwin F. Gay at Harvard

1929. Buchanan, Daniel H. “Historical Approach to Rent and Price Theory,” Economica, no. 26 (June 1929), pp. 123–55.
JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2548199

1930. U.S. Census gives occupation as College Professor. Address  in Cambridge, Massachusetts (192 Larch Road).

1930-31. Instructor for Principles of Economics at Harvard.

1931. Ph.D. (Harvard University).

Daniel Houston Buchanan, Litt.B. (Cooper Coll.) 1909, A.B. (Colorado Coll.) 1911, A.M. (Harvard Univ.) 1912, S.D. (Keiogijuku Univ., Japan) 1928. Subject, Economics. Special Field, Economic History since 1750. Thesis, “Chapters on the Development of Modern Industry in India.” Associate Professor of Economics, George Washington University.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1930-31, p. 114.

1931-34. Associate Professor (1931 President of Harvard report) George Washington University.

1932. Evening Star (February 10, 1932), p. 23. Meeting of Delta Phi Epsilon, foreign service fraternity at George Washington. Included guest: Dr. Daniel H. Buchanan, professor of economic thought at George Washington.

1934. Buchanan, Daniel H. The Development of Capitalist Enterprise in India. New York: Macmillan.

1934-35. Chairman of the department of economics, Fisk University.

1935. Joins the faculty at North Carolina.

“Dr. D. H. Buchanan, who is to be professor of economic history, was graduated at Colorado College in 1911 and took his M.A., at Harvard in 1912 and his Ph.D. there in 1931. He taught at Keiogijukee University in Tokyo from 1914 to 1925, was assistant professor at Ohio State in 1925-26, was research associate of Prof. Edwin F. Gay at Harvard in 1928-30 and instructor there in 1931. He taught at George Washington University from 1931-34 and was professor of economics and chairman of the departments (sic) at Fisk University last year.
The News and Observer (August 4, 1935), p. 3.

1937. AP report of his son, Daniel H. Buchanan, Jr., suffering a severe head injury from a thrown hammer in practice at a Colorado College v. Greeley State track meet. Buchanan, Jr. ran the half-mile. Daniel H. Buchanan Jr. survived to live to the age of 82.

1944. The Charlotte Observer (September 22, 1944), p. 7. UNC professor of economics Dr. Daniel H. Buchanan given extension of his leave of absence (presumably war-related)

1946. The News and Observer, Raleigh, North Carolina (January 27, 1946), p. 22. Announcement: February 25, Dr. Daniel H. Buchanan, professor of Economics at UNC, will discuss “Far Eastern Problems.” Dr. Buchanan has just returned from the Far East where he served as an advisor of the U.S. State Department.

1951. Buchanan, Daniel H. “Japan Versus ‘Asia.’” The American Economic Review, vol. 41, no. 2, 1951, pp. 359–66.
JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1910811

1954. One of five faculty retirements announced, Daniel H. Buchanan, Professor, School of Business Administration.
The News and Observer (June 2, 1954), p. 6.

1954. Last academic stop. Lambuth College.

Dr. Daniel H. Buchanan, of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, until recently a member of the faculty of the University of N.C., is joining the faculty of Lambuth College in September, Dr. Luther L. Gobbel, president, announced today. Dr. Buchanan will teach courses in economics and serve as head of the department.
A native of Kansas, Dr. Buchanan received the A.B. degree from Colorado College and the A.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. He also holds the degree of Doctor of Science in economics from Keiogijuku University in Japan. At Harvard he was holder of the rare Sheldon Scholarship.
Dr. Buchanan is the author of three books: “Rural Economy of Japan”, “Historical Approach to Rent and Price Theory”, and “Development of Capitalist Enterprise in India.” [sic, the first two are more likely references to his published articles]
The Jackson Sun (August 5, 1954) Jackson, Tennessee, p. 1.

1956. Dr. Robert L. Conrod succeeds Dr. D.H. Buchanan, who is retiring from teaching at his own request. Effective beginning of the second semester January 30. He and his wife retire to their home in Chapel Hill.
The Jackson Sun (January 22, 1956), p. 5.

1959.  Died February 16, 1959 in Denver, Colorado.

Daniel Houston Buchanan, 76, retired professor of economics of the University of North Carolina died at a sanatorium in Denver, Colo., yesterday after an illness of three years. He was a member of the faculty at Chapel Hill from 1935 until his retirement in 1954.
AP story from Winston-Salem Journal (Feb. 17, 1959),
p. 6.

Image Source: Daniel Houston Buchanan. Harvard 1932 Classbook. Page 24

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard Law and Economics

Harvard. Paper topics, exam questions for Industrial Relations and Commercial Law. Wyman, 1906-1907

Harvard Law School, ca. 1901

During the first decade of the twentieth century Bruce Wyman’s course on the law governing industrial relations and commercial law was one of two courses offered by the Harvard economics department that provided useful business content to undergraduates. The other one was William Morse Cole’s accounting course. Business content no doubt helps to explain the relatively high enrollment numbers in both courses. 

Fun Fact: Harvard President Lowell complained about Wyman’s course in the economics department having too soft a grade distribution (making it a “snap” course). This too could help to explain the relative popularity of Wyman’s course.

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From earlier years

1901-02. Autobiographical note, enrollment, course description, syllabus, exams.

1902-03. Obituary, enrollment, course description, exams.

1903-04. Enrollment and exams.

1904-05. Enrollment, course description, exams.

1905-06. Enrollment, paper assignments, exams.

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Course Enrollment

Economics 21. Asst. Professor Wyman. — Principles of Law governing Industrial Relations and Commercial Law.

Total 152: 6 Graduates, 83 Seniors, 43 Juniors, 14 Sophomores, 6 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1906-1907, p. 71.

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ECONOMICS 21

Paper No. 1
  1. Tell all you know about

(a) Walsh v. Dwight.
(b) Is Ayer v. Rushton rightly decided?

  1. (a) X & Co. begin the manufacture of underwear, woven with an open mesh, which they advertise as “Cellular Underclothing.” A few months later Z & Co. begin the manufacture of a similar article which they advertise as “Cellular Underclothing, a better article than that of any other manufacturer.” Can X & Co. sue Z & Co. for anything? Cite any authorities that you think in point. Give your reasons carefully. (b) A & Co., proprietors of a department store, advertise “the B Co. piano, regular price $500, our price $444.” The B Co. are much injured in their business by this; as they only allow their agents 10%, retailers cease handling their piano in the district where A & Co. sell. After A & Co. sell the piano they have had in stock they continue to run the advertisement, although the B Co. of course refuse to sell them any more pianos. Can the B Co. succeed in bringing any suits against A & Co.? Cite any cases you think in point. Give your reasons carefully.
Paper No. 2
  1. (a) Tell all you know about Pontefact v. Isenberger. (b) Is Reddaway v. Banham rightly decided?
  2. (a) Can a manufacturer of aluminum utensils sue another manufacturer who advertises as aluminum utensils articles not made of that metal? (b) Can a manufacturer who sells lime juice in long tapering bottles prevent another manufacturer from putting his product on the market in a bottle of exactly the same size, shape, and material?
Paper No. 3
  1. (a) What is decided in Lewin v. Welsbach Light Co.? (b) Is Dudley v. Briggs rightly decided?
  2. (a) X & Co. conduct a commercial credit agency. By mistake of their printers they report in a publication sent only to their subscribers that A & Co. are insolvent. Can A & Co. sue for the damages caused them? (b) X & Co. advertise that according to a series of tests made in their laboratories their fertilizer is shown to be 10% stronger in nitrates than that of A & Co. A & Co. offer to prove by expert testimony that theirs is stronger. What result?
Paper No. 4
  1. (a) Give in detail the points made in the opinion of Coleridge, J., in Lumley v. Gye. (b) Is Nichol v. Martyn rightly decided?
  2. (a) Are Graham v. St. Charles Street Ry. and Robinson v. Texas Pine Land Association consistent? (b) A superintendent is hired by A for five years, with the right reserved to either party to terminate the employment upon one month’s notice. B, a rival of A in business, goes to the superintendent and by offer of a higher salary induces him to give the notice and then come to him at the end of the month. Can A sue B?
Paper No. 5
  1. (a) What is decided in Murray v. Vanderbilt? (b) Is Bishop v. Kitchen rightly decided?
  2. (a) Are Diamond Match Co. v. Roeber and Pacific Factor Co. v. Adler consistent? (b) What essential differences are there in the facts between Jelliet v. Broade and Toby v. Major?
Paper No. 6
  1. (a) What is decided in Horick & Co. v. Wright? (b) Is Jones v. Fell rightly decided?
  2. (a) Are Scottish Society v. Glasgow Association and Plant v. Woods consistent? (b) What is objectionable in Collins v. Locke?
Paper No. 7
  1. What are the four things complained of in Mogul S. S. Co. v. McGregor. Do you agree with what the court decides as to each?
  2. How did the four judges who considered Glamorgan Coal Co. v. South Wales Miners’ Association decide the issues raised in it? With which ones do you agree?
Paper No. 8
  1. (a) What is decided in Temperton v. Russell; (b) and in Hundley v. Louisville & Nashville R. R.
  2. (a) How did Green, V. C., distinguish Mogul S. S. Co. v. McGregor from Barr v. Essex Trades Council; (b) What is the course of reasoning in Delz v. Winfree?
Paper No. 9
  1. (a) Give in detail the opinion of Lord Lindley in Latham v. Craig; (b) and the dissenting opinion of Justice Holmes in Vegelahu v. Guntner.
  2. (a) What things are enjoined in Jersey City Printing Co. v. Cassidy? (b) What were the facts in Reinecke Coal Co. v. Wood?
Paper No. 10
  1. (a) What are the characteristics of a corporation, and which are essential? (b) What tests show the distinction between a corporation and its shareholders?
  2. (a) What is decided in Gallagher v. Germania Brewing Co.? (b) Is Williamson v. Smoot rightly decided?
Paper No. 11
  1. (a) Is Trustees of Schools v. Flint rightly decided? (b) Is Ellis v. Marshall rightly decided?
  2. (a) What are all the facts in Broderip v. Salomon that are of any importance? (b) What is the solution of the case by each of the three successive courts which considered it?
Paper No. 12

[missing from folder]

Paper No. 13
  1. (a) In Bundy v. Ophir Iron Co. what is decided as to Bundy’s rights and what is left undecided? (b) Give all the facts you remember as to Scovill v. Thayer.
  2. (a) Are the doctrines in Currie’s Case (re Gt. Northern Coal Co.) and Hospes v. Northwestern Mfg. Co. alike? (b) Is Coit v. Gold Amalgamating Co. rightly decided?
Paper No. 14
  1. (a) What is decided in McNab v. McNab & Harlin Mfg. Co.? (b) What distinctions are taken in McDonald v. Williams?
  2. (a) What is the difference in the situation between Monument Bank v. Globe Works and Jemison v. Citizens’ Savings Bank? (b) If the Mt. Washington Road Co. had accepted the omnibuses would they have had to pay Downing & Sons for them anything at all?
Paper No. 15
  1. (a) What is decided in Ashton v. Burbank? (b) And in Hartford & New Haven R. R. v. Croswell?
  2. (a) A & B, forming a firm engaged in the cotton business, meet a cotton broker, X, who offers them a large lot of cotton at a high price. A agrees that the firm will buy it, B openly protesting; can X hold A & B? (b) Is Dudley v. Kentucky High School rightly decided?
Paper No. B1
  1. (a) What is decided in Chicago City Ry. Co. v. Allerton? (b) and in Sweutzel v. Penn. Bank?
  2. (a) Directors in a banking corporation supervise the business by examining carefully each month the statements drawn up by the cashier. Later it is discovered that the cashier has for over a period of two years been using the funds of the bank for speculation, covering his embezzlements by fabricated statements. Are the directors liable for these losses? (b) The directors in a copper mining company are proposing to sell the entire output of the mine for the next six months to a copper selling company at 15½ c. per lb. They call a stockholders’ meeting to discuss the sale; three-fourths of the shares are voted against the proposition at that meeting. Nevertheless the directors of the mining company go ahead and sign the contract in the name of the company. Everybody in the selling company knows of the adverse vote by the stockholders. Can the selling company hold the mining company to this contract?
Paper No. B2
  1. (a) What are the points decided in Boyd v. American Carbon Co.? (b) And in Emery v. Ohio Candle Co.?
  2. (a) Is Bates v. Coronado Beach Co. rightly decided? (b) Suppose a partnership arrangement between a locomotive manufacturer and a cotton mills corporation for five years. If the corporation breaks the contract with partnership funds in its hands, what are the manufacturer’s rights? Suppose instead of a locomotive manufacturer it was another cotton milling corporation, what would be its rights?
Paper No. B3
  1. (a) What does Gould v. Head decide? (b) Give all the points made in People v. North River Sugar Co.
  2. (a) Is Smith v. San Francisco & N. P. R. R. rightly decided? (b) Would Milbank v. N. Y., L. E., & W. R. R. be decided differently if both corporations concerned had not been in the same business?
Paper No. B4
  1. (a) What is decided in St. Louis, etc. R. R. v. Terre Haute, etc. R. R.? (b) Is McCutcheon v. Merz Capsule Co. rightly decided?
  2. (a) Should Trenton Potteries Co. v. Olyphant be decided as it is? (b) Is Whitwell v. Continental Tobacco Co. rightly decided?
Paper No. B5
  1. To what extent does the corporation law interfere with the consolidation of corporations with intent to gain monopoly. Cite a case upon each form of organization?
  2. What seems to you the best solution of the trust problem in each of these forms?
Paper No. B6
  1. (a) What does Cincinnati, H. & D. R. R. decide? (b) Do you agree with Fleming v. Montgomery Light Co.?
  2. (a) Would the A telephone company be obliged to permit the B telephone company to have its (B’s) subscribers’ local lines connected with its (A’s) long distance lines? (b) Can an electric light company refuse to install current for power for an applicant who lights his house with gas bought from a rival company?
Paper No. B7
  1. (a) What is decided in State v. Dalton? (b) Is Jenks v. Coleman rightly decided?
  2. (a) Would a law be constitutional which required oleomargarine to be colored pink? (b) Would a law be constitutional which limited the employment of bricklayers and plasterers to eight hours per day?
Paper No. B8
  1. (a) What is decided in State v. Campbell? (b) Is State v. Nebraska Telephone Co. rightly decided?
  2. (a) Suppose a ticket agent, to whom you pay money for a ticket good to stop over, stamps it in some secret way so that it reads as a limited ticket to the conductor of the second train you take after stopping over, and this conductor puts you off, using necessary force, but causing you injury. For what can you sue the railroad company? (b) Is Forsee v. Alabama Ry. rightly decided?
Paper No. B9
  1. (a) Must a telegraph company transmit despatches from race tracks to pool rooms? (b) May a ferry company refuse to transport a forger?
  2. (a) Must a railroad company allow a telephone company to install a pay-station in a terminal station? (b) May a theatre refuse to sell a ticket to a man in naval uniform?
Paper No. B10
  1. (a) What is decided in Coupland v. Housatonic R. R.? (b) Can Craker v. Chicago & N. W. Ry. and Batton v. S. & N. Ala. R. R. both be right?
  2. (a) A traveller comes to an inn and asks for room 15 which is vacant, but the innkeeper assigns him to room 16; later in the day he changes him to room 17. Can the guest complain of his action at either time? (b) A Pullman agent has a telegram reserving a berth on file; he accordingly refuses to sell his last berth to an applicant or to order another car put on. Has the applicant any complaint?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Folder: “Economics 1906-1907”. Note: Harvard College Library stamp Jan 29, 1907 on Papers No. 1-14; Stamp Jul 5, 1907 Papers No. 15, B1-B10. Each of these paper assignments was printed on a separate sheet of paper.

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ECONOMICS 21
Mid-year Examination, 1906-07

First give your answers, then your reasons, supporting your views by authorities, but not writing more than 30 pages.

  1. A is a manufacturer of soap, who is dealing with a jobber named B, among others. C, another manufacturer of soap, goes to B and first offers him a rebate of 10% if B will not handle the soap of A any longer, but will deal with C exclusively, and then threatens B that unless he will do this he will not sell him any soap at all. B then accedes with much protestation. A, thus cut off by B, brings suit against C for loss of business, — what decision? Would A have had any complaint if C had not made the threat?
  2. The Meadow Dairy, incorporated, is formed by X, Y, and Z, who constitute themselves the board of directors, with X president, and Y general manager. Soon after, Z, being in poor health, goes to Europe. The corporation thus managed by X and Y, begins an advertising campaign in which it claims: ‘that all its milk is produced upon its own farms, and contains 15% of solids, whereas that sold by their largest competitor, the Hill Farm Dairy, is bought from irresponsible farmers, and never contains 10% of solids.’ The truth of the matter is, that it is the Meadow Dairy which has no cows of its own, and resells a poor grade of milk (10%), while the Hill Farm has its own herds and a high grade of milk (15%). A State statute makes it a misdemeanor to sell milk containing less than 12% of solids. The Hill Farm proprietors (it is a partnership, composed of A, B, and C) decide to take action. Before any proceedings are begun, C gives public notice that he wants the whole matter dropped. A and B seek counsel as to the extent to which they can get redress of any sort against any one, civil or criminal?
  3. An association of refiners of kerosene oil adopt the following policies. How many of these will give a rival refiner who is injured an action for damages: (a) Refusing to sell any oil to retailers who deal at all with refiners outside the association. (b) Reducing prices 25% in districts where rival refiners are selling. (c) Giving 33 1/3% discount to those retailers who will agree to deal with members of the association exclusively. (d) Fining any member of the association who sells to any retailer who deals with any outside refiner.
  4. In a strike at a paper mill, called to get recognition of the Union by getting the non-union men discharged, the union of the employees adopt the following tactics. How many of these will be stopped by an injunction asked for by the employers: (a) Posting two pickets at the mill gates with instructions to them to use no violence. (b) Refusing to patronize dealers who advertise in newspapers which buy their paper from this mill. (c) Posting upon billboards an appeal to workingmen urging “all honest laborers not to employ for employment at the mill while the strike is in progress.” (d) Paying non-union men who have taken employment at this mill $25 each to quit work at the end of the week for which they are employed.
  5. An association of dealers in plumbers’ supplies, of which X, Y, and Z are members, has a rule that all plumbers who are in arrears to any member over ninety days shall be reported to the secretary, who shall send copies of the report to all other members L, M, and N, three other members of the association, introduce a motion at the annual meeting of the association that no member shall extend credit to any delinquent plumber so reported, but the motion fails, they alone voting for it. A, a plumber who is in arrears and is so reported, finds himself unable to get goods on credit from L or from X, what redress has he at law?
  6. A newspaper publisher employs only union printers, who are hired by the day. He is building a house, on which he employs by the day a non-union carpenter. A retail grocer, with whom the union printers are accustomed to deal, advertises in the newspaper.
    In order to prevent the carpenter from continuing in the employ of the publisher, the union printers tell the grocer that they intend to withdraw their patronage from his store, unless he ceases to patronize a newspaper whose proprietor employs a non-union carpenter. The grocer holds out for awhile, but finally (as the union printers hoped he would) notifies the publisher that he shall cease to advertise in the newspaper, unless the publisher ceases to employ the carpenter. In consequence of this notice, the publisher ceases to employ the carpenter.
    The union printers were not actuated by personal ill will toward the carpenter; but by a wish to strengthen the general cause of labor unionism and to increase the power of labor unions in general.
    Has the carpenter an action against the union printers? Has the grocer?
  7. A corporation owns a building worth $40,000. X owns one fourth of the corporate stock. The corporation effects an insurance of $35,000 on the building. X effects an insurance of $10,000 on his interest in the building. The building is totally destroyed by fire.
    In a suit by the corporation on its policy, the insurance company offers to prove an admission made by X that he set the fire negligently, but unintentionally. Is the evidence competent?
    In a suit by X on his policy, the insurance company claims that, as the building belonged to the corporation, X had no insurable interest in it. What decision in X’s suit?
  8. All the shares in the X Brewing Co., the capital stock of which is $90,000, are purchased from the corporation by A, B, and C, who convey to it a brewery, which is worth about $30,000, in which they each have a one-third interest; the agreement with the corporation is that the corporation shall take the brewery as full subscription price and issue to A, B, and C $30,000 each in fully paid shares. The next year the corporation issues $40,000 in debentures on all the assets of the corporation to A who loans them that sum. A year after this is done the X corporation fails, owing $100,000 to X for supplies, with nothing but the brewery itself left. How much on a dollar will X get? How will A, B, and C come out?
  9. A shareholder in a bank accepts dividends for the year 1904 which are paid out of capital which he would have known if he had attended the annual meeting; in 1905 he accepts dividends, although the bank is then hopelessly insolvent, which he has no reason to suspect. What rights have depositors against him? What rights have other shareholders?
  10. A corporation, not authorized to borrow money, or to purchase real estate, borrows $1000 of X giving its note due in 30 days for $1000; expends $500 of the amount in paying a valid corporate debt to B; and expends the balance in purchasing land. X sues the corporation on this note for $1000. Decision is given against him on the ground that the borrowing by the corporation was ultra vires. Are there any remedies open to X?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Mid-year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 7, Bound Volume: Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1906-07.

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ECONOMICS 21
Year-end Examination, 1906-07

First give your answers clearly; then give your reasons briefly.

  1. What is the position of a person who has sold steel rails at
    16 2/3% profit to a railway company if he is (1) a promotor of the corporation, (2) a large stockholder in the corporation,
    (3) the treasurer of the corporation, (4) a director who resigned from office while the sale was being negotiated and was then immediately re-elected?
  2. Can an action for damages be brought (1) by a retail tobacco dealer against a tobacco trust which will not sell to him because he handles rival brands; (2) by a newspaper against a press association which makes lower rates to others which deal with it exclusively; (3) by a city which has paid an artificially high price for iron pipe to an iron foundry which is a member of a pool; (4) by one railroad against another which makes lower rates to those persons who will ship by it exclusively?
  3. Are there legal objections to the following arrangements?
    (1) a rich man, who is a large stockholder in two competitive railroads, increases his holdings in both to over 50% of the shares in each; (2) three rich men, holding each 20% of the shares in these two roads, agree to vote these shares as a majority of them shall decide; (3) the organization of a corporation to buy the controlling interest in these two roads; (4) an agreement between the two roads to maintain the maximum rates fixed by the law?
  4. Can a street railway urge against the constitutionality of legislation reducing fares that the gross receipts so reduced
    (1) will leave no net profit: (2) or will leave nothing for replacements, (3) or nothing for depreciation; or (4) nothing for losses by accidents?
  5. Can an innkeeper refuse to admit to his premises (1) a driver of a stage line seeking passengers; (2) a caller for a guest;
    (3) a neighbor with a dog; (4) a prize fighter who has come to train for a month?
  6. Can a gas company refuse to supply (1) an applicant who uses electricity; (2) an applicant who owes his last month’s bill;
    (3) a tenant in an apartment house; (4) a householder on a street where there are no gas mains?
  7. Is it illegal for a water company to make lower rates
    (1) for factories than for residences; (2) for hospitals than for churches; (3) for customers who use over 100,000 gallons than for less; (4) for customers who pay in advance.
  1. Is it illegal for a railroad to charge lower rates per pound
    (1) for trainloads than for carloads; (2) for carloads than for less than carloads; (3) for 100 lb. packages than for less; (4) for barrels than for boxes?
    [Note: Questions IX and VIII were reversed in the original printed copy]
  1. (1) Can a railroad work coal mines? (2) Can a gas company make lower rates to those who have gas stoves? (3) Can the proprietor of a grain elevator store his own grain in his own warehouse? (4) Can a railroad refuse to take at the carload rate a lot of goods offered by various shippers who have got together for the purpose?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 8, Bound volume: Examination Papers, 1906-07; Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1907), pp. 42-43.

Image Source: Harvard Law School ca. 1901 from the Detroit Publishing Company photograph collection (Library of Congress).

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Principles of accounting, final examinations. Cole, 1906-07

William Morse Cole, his life, career, and publications.

The essence of Cole’s accounting course is to be found in his textbook:

Accounts. Their Construction and Interpretation for Business Men and Students of Affairs. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1908.

“The first issue of this book was brought out at a time when no general, non -technical, non-professional treatise on accounting had been published . The author had then been giving for eight years a course of instruction to seniors in Harvard College on the principles of accounting, and believed that many business men and students of affairs would be interested to see briefly but comprehensively how accounts are constructed and interpreted.”
Revised and enlarged edition, 1915.

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Local boy makes good
(a sample)

At a recent meeting of the president and fellows of Harvard College William Morse Cole was appointed assistant professor of accounting for five years from Sept. 1. Mr. Cole was formerly one of the teaching staff of the B.M.C. Durfee High school, which he left to teach in Worcester [South High School].

Source: Fall River [Massachusetts] Daily Evening News (May 19, 1908), p. 7.

William Morse Cole, who for a number of years was an instructor in English in the B.M.C. Durfee High school, but at the present time professor in the new school of business of Harvard University, has recently published a book entitled “Business Law and Methods.”

Source: Fall River [Massachusetts] Daily Evening News (August 20, 1909), p. 6.

William Morse Cole, formerly an instructor in the B.M.C. Durfee High school, now assistant professor of accounting in Harvard University, has published through D. Appleton & Co., a volume entitled “The American Hope,” an attempt to look beyond the unfavorable symptoms of American life to show the rational point of view toward American conditions.

Source: Fall River [Massachusetts] Daily Evening News (April 1, 1910), p. 11.

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Earlier accounting exams

1901-02
1902-03
1903-04
1904-05
1905-06

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Course Enrollment
1906-07

Economics 18. Mr. W. M. Cole. — Principles of Accounting.

Total 90: 7 Graduates, 50 Seniors, 21 Juniors, 8 Sophomores, 4 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1906-1907, p. 71.

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ECONOMICS 18
[Homework?]

            The following transactions are to be entered in complete form, with full details and index references; the resulting figures are to be carried through a six-column statement; the books are then to be closed as for the end of the year, and a Balance Sheet for the beginning of the new year is to be shown.

            The books to be used are a journal, a special-column cash-book, a sales book, a purchase book, and a ledger. When insufficient details for a complete entry are given below, reasonable details are to be assumed. Interest and discount should be figured at 6%.

            In determining and recording profit, all additional facts necessary to know are to be assumed at fairly reasonable figures. Care should be taken that all necessary additional facts are considered.

            Do not attempt in this case to analyze the profit into its three elements, wages of management, interest on investment, and pure profit, but consider it an entity and carry it to the account of the proprietor, to the amount of an even $1000.

January

1. You (use any name you wish) begin business with the following capital: cash, 15,000; store building, 15,000; promissory notes to the amount of 5000 (as follows: Felix Holt, 1000, dated to-day, payable in two months; Adam Bede, 2000, dated Dec. 1, two months; Silas Marner, 500, dated Dec. 16, one month; Richard Feverel, 1500, dated Nov. 1, payable on demand with interest). Buy office and store furniture for cash, 500. Pay for postage, 15. Buy stationery, books, etc., for cash, 125.

2. Buy goods of David Copperfield, payment due in 10 days, 4000. Buy goods of Oliver Twist for cash, 3000.

3. Pay freight, 65. Pay telephone bill, three months, in advance, 25.

4. Buy horses and wagon, cash, 500. Pay for advertising, 30.

5. Sell goods to Dombey & Son, 30 days time, 700. Buy goods of Enoch Arden, cash, 6000.

8. Pay wages: bookkeeper, 25; three clerks, at 15 each; driver, 10.

9. Buy goods of Henry Esmond, 10 ds., 7000. Accept David Copperfield’s draft on you, payable in three days, for the amount of your bill.

10. Discount at a bank your own note (signed for the business) for 5000, 30 days. Richard Feverel pays his note.

11. Buy goods of Silas Lapham, cash, 6000.

12. Discount Adam Bede’s note, getting 1993.33. Pay your acceptance of the 9th.

13. Sell goods to Roderick Hudson, 10 ds., 575.

15. Sell goods to David Balfour, 10 ds., 200.

16. S. Marner’s note is paid. Sell goods to John Halifax for his note, 30 ds., 600.

17. Sell goods to John Nicholson, cash, 300.

18. Borrow on your own note for 30 ds., bearing interest, 4000.

19. Pay H. Esmond in full. Pay insurance, 100.

20. Pay freight, 75. Sell goods for cash, 150. Sell goods to Nicholas Nickleby, 30 ds., 1200.

22. Pay wages, two weeks, at the same rates as on the 8th. Pay for remodelling offices, 400. Three months’ rent is paid in advance by a tenant to whom one of the remodelled offices is let, 100.

23. R. Hudson’s bill is paid. Paid for coal, 100.

24. Pay subscription for flood sufferers, 100. Sell goods for cash, 1200.

25. Draw a draft on Dombey & Son, payable in ten days, to your own order, for the amount of their bill due Feb. 4. Pay a dry-goods bill for your wife out of the cash drawer, 75. David Balfour’s bill is paid.

26. You receive, accepted, the draft drawn on the 25th.

27. You discount at a bank Dombey & Son’s acceptance.

29. Sell goods to David Balfour, 30 ds., 1300.

30. Pay wages as before.

31. Pay for lighting, 15. You draw for your own use, 150.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Box 1, Folder “Economics, 1906-07”.

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ECONOMICS 18
Mid-year Examination, 1906-07

Perform and arrange your work strictly in the order of the questions, and so present it that each topic shall be in a paragraph by itself

  1. (a) Jan. 1, X invests in a partnership a note of his wife, for $5000, due in one month. (b) Jan. 14, X exchanges the note for one of his own payable at the same time. (c) Jan. 25, X takes up his own note, leaving in exchange an accepted draft, due Feb. 1, on B, who is a creditor of the partnership. (d) Feb. 1, the debt of the firm to B becomes due, and B’s acceptance is sent to him in payment.
    Journalize the entries, designating each by a letter as above.
    (e) In the meantime, B, not knowing that X is a member of the firm and that his acceptance will be used to cancel a debt to him, sends his check to X for payment of the acceptance. The two letters cross, and X, not knowing that the acceptance has been sent to B, turns in the check to the cashier, who misunderstands X and thinks the check is invested by X.
    What entry will the cashier make?
    (f) X discovers that the cashier has misunderstood him, and explains. The correct situation is discovered, is confirmed by a letter from B, and a check is sent to B, his check being already deposited.
    What entry shall now be made to correct the books?
  2. “The profit and loss account on the balance sheet is simply the difference between resources and liabilities.”
    “The profit and loss account on the balance sheet is taken directly from the ledger and represents the balance of all undistributed loss and gain.”
    Either reconcile these two statements or show why one is correct and the other incorrect.
  3. You are in charge of “taking account of stock” in a store. The clerks give you the numbers and descriptions of articles, and the invoice book-keeper fills in prices as they appear on incoming bills. How far is this material adequate for an inventory?
  4. You have balance sheets of a corporation for two successive years, but you can get no other information. How much can these sheets tell you of the business for the intervening year?
  5. A man’s business is of the cash mail-order variety, both for purchases and for sales. He handles no goods, but orders others to ship directly to his customers. For some classes of goods, he issues catalogues, which he sells for a small fee intended to pay for postage and printing; for other goods he advertises in magazines; and for other goods not covered by magazines and catalogues, he advertises by means of painted signs. He conducts a premium department for second and third orders exceeding a definite sum in value. He pays his office help, for their correspondence, on the piece-price plan, with deductions for errors.
    What ledger accounts should you recommend him to use? If you would recommend any unusual ones, state the method and the purpose of their use.
  6. Describe the principal books that you would recommend for the business described in the preceding question, and show how they could be employed with minimum labor. Illustrate by rough but intelligible forms, showing by posting-checks how posting is to be done.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Mid-year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 7, Bound Volume: Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1906-07.

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ECONOMICS 18
Year-end Examination, 1906-07

The points indicated at the beginning of each question show comparative value on a scale of one hundred. Omit questions to the value of fifteen points. Follow the order of the questions. Write on the exact subject set, not on some other subject that chances to be allied. As far as practicable, put your answers in tabular or parallel-column form. Give a new paragraph to each part of each answer.

  1. (7½ points.) What are the advantages and the disadvantages of keeping a separate sales ledger?
  2. (7½ points.) Is it possible (whether it is desirable or not) to keep books without a journal? If so, explain under that plan how one could best enter the exchange of bonds for stock, and defend such treatment.
  3. (15 points.) State briefly what facts are shown by each of the following ledgers: stock; stores; bond; purchase; machine; deposit.
    Classify these ledgers on the following bases: those represented by general ledger accounts; those to which posting is done; those from which posting is done; those which are purely statistical.
  4. (40 points.) Assume your inability to go behind the returns. Arrange the following items in intelligible form, and show the mathematical correctness or discrepancy of the conclusions:
Sales $249,000 Material on hand a year ago $21,600
Accounts receivable 17,000 Taxes paid 800
Material on hand 14,000 Taxes accrued to pay 800
Capital Stock 90,000 Plant 65,000
Wages due 7,000 Merchandise 67,000
Wages paid 83,000 Rentals earned and rec’d 200
Dividends paid 9,000 Rentals accrued but not due 300
Bonds issued 30,000 Accounts payable 46,000
Real estate 25,000 Suspense accounts 1,000
Cash 12,000 Repairs of plant 6,000
Patent rights 16,000 Surplus for the year 4,000
Sundry sums written off 13,000 Miscellaneous costs 11,500
Bills receivable 7,000 Material purchased 85,000
Interest paid 900 Selling costs 20,000
Interest accrued to pay 600 Estimated value of outstanding advertising paid for 2,000
Surplus on ledger 52,100
Insurance paid 500
Insurance unexpired 200
  1. (15 points.) Discuss the general principle of distinction between charging to revenue and charging to capital. Does this apply to the treatment of premium on bonds? Explain.
  2. (7½ points.) What sets of records should be kept for bonds held under each of the following circumstances: (a) ownership; (b) in trust; (c) as collateral?
  3. (7½ points.) On which side of a balance sheet are you likely to find the following accounts; will corresponding or related accounts, under the same or another name, appear for each on the other side of the sheet; if so, what relation, both as to nature and as to amount, will exist between the two: depreciation fund; treasury stock; collateral trust bonds?
  4. (7½ points.) What is the usual method of recording individual holdings of capital stock?
  5. (7½ points.) What is the argument for figuring depreciation of machinery at a fixed rate on depreciated valuation rather than on original cost?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers, 1873-1915. Box 8, Bound vol. Examination Papers 1906-07 (HUC 7000.25), pp. 41-42.