Category: Missouri

While the bulk of my internet trawling time for Economics in the Rear-View Mirror is devoted to tracking down curricular material and texts, serendipity occasionally takes me to biographically interesting places. Benjamin Anderson is of interest to ERVM both as having earned an economics Ph.D. from the Columbia School of Political Science and later as an economics professor at Harvard and UCLA. 

Research Tip: The University of California’s series of In Memoriam volumes.

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Benjamin McA. Anderson, Economics: Los Angeles
(1886-1949)

Earl J. Miller, Marvel Stockwell, John Clendenin, Vern O. Knudsen

BENJAMIN MCALESTER ANDERSON (May 1, 1886-January 19, 1949), son of Benjamin McLean and Mary Frances (Bowling) Anderson, was born in Columbia, Missouri. He married Margaret Louis Crenshaw May 27, 1909. He is survived by his wife and three children, John Crenshaw, William Bent, and Mary Louise (Brown). A fourth child, Benjamin M. Anderson III, died in 1919.

Professor Anderson received the A.B. at the University of Missouri in 1906, the A.M. at the University of Illinois in 1910, and the Ph.D. in Economics at Columbia in 1911. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and an active member of the American Economic Association, in which he served as vice-president and a member of the Executive Committee. He served as Professor of History in the State Normal School at Cape Girardeau, Missouri, in 1905; Professor of English Literature and Economics at Missouri Valley College, Marshall, Missouri, in 1906; Professor of History and Economics at the State Teachers College, Springfield, Missouri, from 1906 to 1911; Instructor in Economics at Columbia from 1911 to 1913; Assistant Professor of Economics at Columbia, 1913; Assistant Professor of Economics, Harvard, 1913-1918; economic advisor in the National Bank of Commerce in New York, 1918-1920; economist for the Chase National Bank of New York, 1920-1939; Professor of Economics in the University of California at Los Angeles, 1939-1949 (Connell Professor of Banking, 1946-1949).

Professor Anderson enjoyed a rich experience as a youth in his home at Columbia, Missouri. His father was for many years a prominent member of the Missouri State Legislature. Their home was the scene of innumerable political conferences to which Dr. Anderson was invited and from which he developed a keen interest in the then current political and economic problems.

Dr. Anderson’s publications were extensive, including four books and many articles and reviews. Outstanding among them were his books, Social Value, 1911; The Value of Money, 1917; Effects of the War on Money, Credit and Banking in France and the United States, 1919; Financing American Prosperity (coauthor with J. M. Clark, Columbia; A. H. Hansen, Harvard; S. H. Slichter, Harvard; H. S. Ellis, California at Berkeley; and J. H. Williams, Harvard), 1945. Much of his time during the last few years of his life was devoted to the writing of another book entitled Economics and the Public Welfare, a financial and economic history of the United States, 1914-1946. This extensive work was ready for proofreading at the time of his death. The book has now been published. It is a further major contribution to the field of economic literature comparable in quality to the high standard set in his previous works.

He contributed articles to many magazines and journals. Among them were the American Economic Review; Annals of the American Academy; Political Science Quarterly; Quarterly Journal of Economics; The New York Times; The Commercial and Financial Chronicle; The Bankers Magazine (London); The London Times; and the Wall Street Journal. During the past ten years he has published eight issues of the Economic Bulletin under the sponsorship of the Capital Research Company of Los Angeles. He associated himself for many years with a group of well-known economists in the organization known as the Economists’ National Committee on Monetary Policy, and served as President of that organization. Several of his articles were reprinted and circulated on a wide basis by that organization.

While economist for the Chase National Bank of New York, Professor Anderson published over two hundred issues of the Chase Economic Bulletin, which was distributed and read extensively in government, banking and educational circles in many countries. Representing the Chase National Bank he traveled extensively in foreign countries to conduct negotiations with leading government and banking officials. He was called on numerous occasions to testify before committees of the U.S. Congress and the New York State Legislature on questions of state, national and international policy relating to the fields of money and banking. These activities together with the wide circulation of his books, and of his articles in professional and financial journals and magazines, made him one of the best-known and most distinguished economists of his generation in both the national and international fields.

The firsthand contact with practical banking, with American and foreign banking officials, and with government agencies concerned with our economic and monetary affairs, which Dr. Anderson had enjoyed through many years, greatly enriched the content of his teaching and enabled him to provide for his students a sound and thoroughly practical experience. He originally possessed a scholarly command of history, literature, and languages which added impressively to his work, and he brought to his teaching and advisory tasks a broad perspective and keen judgment which made his pronouncements on economic affairs surprisingly accurate and wise.

Professor Anderson was a modest and distinguished scholar and a man esteemed by his colleagues for his personal qualities of kindly manner, stimulating humor, sympathetic appreciation and helpful cooperation. As a scholar and as a man he made a memorable contribution to the community in which he lived.

Source: Calisphere website: University of California, In Memoriam 1949, pp. 1-4.

Image Source: Benjamin M. Anderson in Harvard Class Album, 1915.