Category: Radcliffe

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Economists Gender Harvard Radcliffe

Radcliffe. Schumpeter Letter Supporting Marion Crawford, 1937

Paul Samuelson’s first wife (they were married in Cambridge in 1938) and mother of their six children, Marion Estelle Crawford (b. 1915, d. 1978) graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Radcliffe in 1937, with an A.B. summa cum laude in economics. For graduate study she was awarded a Harvard Annex Fellowship in 1937-38.   In 1938-39 she received an Augustus Anson Whitney and Benjamin White Whitney Fellowship. She was awarded an A.M. in economics in 1940. Her sole publication was “The Australian Case for Protection Reexamined” (Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 1939). Her New York Times obituary closed with the sentence “She retired when her first child was born in 1946.”  It was still a time when motherhood was an absorbing state.

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High-School Honours

Source: Berlin High School (Wisconsin) 1933 Yearbook Mascoutin, pp. 16-17.

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Senior Yearbook Picture
Radcliffe, 1937

Source; The Radcliffe 30 and 7, p. 48.

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Copy of Joseph Schumpeter’s letter supporting Marion Crawford’s application for a fellowship

February 11, 1937

Dr. Bernice Cronkhite, Dean
Radcliffe College
Cambridge, Massachusetts

This is to support Miss Marion Crawford’s application for a fellowship for the next academic year. There cannot be any doubt but that she is one of our best students and that every effort should be made to make her further study financially possible. She proves her ability by the fact that, being a senior, she takes graduate courses with the utmost ease, and in fact much better than most of the graduates, whether male or female. Her equipment should prove particularly useful in the present state of economics, and I feel confident that her work will do credit to her and to Radcliffe.

Very sincerely yours,

J. A. Schumpeter

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence and Papers, 1930-1961. Box 21, Folder “Joseph A. Schumpeter 1933-1942”.

Image Source: Detail from a black-and-white photo of Marion Crawford and Paul Samuelson from the slideshow at the M.I.T. Memorial Service for Paul Samuelson (April 10, 2010).  Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

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Economists Gender Harvard Health Radcliffe

Radcliffe. Economics Ph.D. alumna, later pioneer health economist Mary Lee Ingbar, 1953

 

In this post we meet the economics Ph.D. alumna Mary Lee Gimbel Mack Ingbar (b. 18 May 1926; d. 18 September 2009). She and Lester Taylor wrote Hospital Costs in Massachusetts (Harvard University Press, 1968), a pioneering econometric study of hospital costs. 

From the biography in the guide to her papers archived at the Harvard Medical School library:

She received an SB cum laude from Radcliffe College in 1946, an AM from Radcliffe Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1948, and an PhD from Radcliffe Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1953. She then received an MPH, cum laude, from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) as a member of the class of 1956. She was the first social scientist to be allowed to matriculate for the MPH degree.

MLI has remained professionally associated with Harvard during most of her career. She was Lecturer on Medical Economics at the HSPH’s Department of Public Health Practice from 1957 to 1961, and Research Associate at the Graduate School of Public Administration from 1961 to 1966…

Add a fun fact: Mary Lee Ingbar was the daughter of NBER staff economist Ruth Prince Mack (1903-2002).

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From Wedding Announcement

Mary Mack graduated from the Lincoln School of Teachers College, Columbia University and Radcliffe College.

Source: Mary Mack, Radcliffe Graduate Student, Married to Dr. Sidney Ingbar at Sherry’s,” The New York Times, May 29, 1950, p. 10.

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Awarded Bachelor of Science cum laude, June 1946

Mary Lee Gimbel Mack, in Economics

Source: Radcliffe College, Reports of Officers Issue, 1945-46 published in Official Register of Radcliffe College, Vol. XII, No. 7 (December 1946), p. 38.
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Awarded Master of Arts 1948

Mary Lee Gimbel Mack

Source: Radcliffe College, Reports of Officers Issue, 1947-48 published in Official Register of Radcliffe College, Vol. XIV, No. 6 (December 1948), p. 21.

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Awarded Ph.D. in Economics 1953

Mary Lee Gimbel Mack Ingbar, A.M.
Subject, Economics.
Special Field, Labor Problems
Dissertation, “The Factors Underlying the Relationship between Cost and Price: A Case Study of a Textile Firm”

Source: Radcliffe College, Reports of Officers Issue, 1952-53 published in Official Register of Radcliffe College, Vol. XIX, No. 5 (December 1953), p. 21.

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Mary Lee Ingbar,
pioneer in field of health economics, dies at 83
October 15, 2009

Mary Lee Ingbar, Radcliffe ’46, Ph.D. ’53, M.P.H. ’56, who was a pioneer in applying quantitative and sophisticated computer analysis to the developing field of health economics in the 1950s and 1960s, died in Cambridge, on Sept. 18.

Ingbar was especially interested in the relationships between cost, quality, and outcomes of medical care. She brought insights from the fields of econometrics and operations research to bear upon the variability of the costs of medical care from one health care setting to another; to this end, she developed what in all likelihood was the first comprehensive statistical and econometric computer software program for analyzing hospital costs. In this work, she collaborated closely with Professor John Dunlop of Harvard (later U.S. secretary of labor) and Lester D. Taylor. She and Taylor wrote “Hospital Costs in Massachusetts” (Harvard University Press, 1968), one of the first econometric studies of hospital costs ever to be published.

In the early 1970s, while associate professor of health economics at the University of California, San Francisco, Medical School, Ingbar was a member of the California Hospital Commission, where she participated in the design and implementation of an innovative program for detailed reporting of hospital expenses and health outcomes, which allowed comparisons of costs and efficiencies of care, and helped to establish the oversight of then-emerging forms of health care delivery, such as health maintenance organizations.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, Ingbar worked to advance the use of computerized databases to track health care events, costs, and outcomes in medical care delivery systems that were growing increasingly large and complex. During these years, she held professorships at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and at the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Ingbar remained a principal research associate of the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School for the remainder of her life. She served as an Overseer for the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and as a member of the Corporation of Partners Healthcare System. Ingbar was very active in the American Public Health Association (APHA); she was a member of the APHA Governing Council and a chairperson of the APHA Medical Care Section. She was consultant on health economics to many organizations, and in recent years served on the Council of the Alumni Association of the Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Ingbar was born and raised in New York City. Her mother, Ruth P. Mack, was a noted economist. Her stepfather, Edward C. Mack, was a professor of English literature at the City College of New York. John E. Mack, her stepbrother, was a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and received the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for his biography of T.E. Lawrence

Mary Lee Ingbar was married to Sidney H. Ingbar, an internationally recognized expert on thyroid gland disease and William Bosworth Castle Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She is survived by her three sons, David Ingbar, M.D. ’78, of Minneapolis; Eric Ingbar of Carson City, Nev.; and Jonathan Ingbar of Portland, Ore.

Donations in honor of Mary Lee Ingbar may be made to the Lung Cancer Alliance and High Horses Therapeutic Riding Program. A memorial will be held at a later date.

Source: The Harvard Gazette (October 15, 2009).

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Biography from Mary Lee Ingbar papers, 1946-2008
Harvard University Medical School, Countway Library.

Mary Lee Ingbar (MLI), PhD, MPH, is a health economist who developed theories concerning interaction between managerial structures of health care programs, and their effectiveness in meeting constituency needs. She received an SB cum laude from Radcliffe College in 1946, an AM from Radcliffe Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1948, and an PhD from Radcliffe Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1953. She then received an MPH, cum laude, from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) as a member of the class of 1956. She was the first social scientist to be allowed to matriculate for the MPH degree.

MLI has remained professionally associated with Harvard during most of her career. She was Lecturer on Medical Economics at the HSPH’s Department of Public Health Practice from 1957 to 1961, and Research Associate at the Graduate School of Public Administration from 1961 to 1966, where with Lester Taylor, she undertook the first econometric study of hospital costs using United States data. Subsequently, she worked for several years on many national and regional committees, addressing such issues as medical costs, hospital planning, day care organization, and alcoholism.

In 1972, MLI relocated to San Francisco. There she served as Associate Professor of Health in the Division of Ambulatory and Community Medicine at University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine from 1972 to 1975. From 1974 to 1975, she was also Associate Program Director of The Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar Program at UCSF.

In 1976 MLI returned east, joining HMS as a Principle Research Associate in Preventive and Social Medicine. Simultaneously, she took a one year post as Visiting Professor of Health Economics at the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth College and the Department of Community Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School. In 1977, MLI became Professor of Family and Community Medicine in the Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical School, remaining until 1982. She became Principle Research Associate in Social Medicine and Health Policy at HMS in 1980, and Principal Associate in Medicine and Health Policy in 1985, a post she held until 2003.

Throughout her career, MLI consulted on government projects concerning economic aspects of health care policy. She has held many city, state, and federal directorships and consultancies, including: Director of Program Development for the Department of Health, Hospital and Welfare of the City of Cambridge, MA, 1968-1972; Director of Research for the Office of Comprehensive Planning of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1970-1971; Regional Consultant for Health Economics and Public Health Advisor, US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service, Region I, Division of Finance and Health Economics, 1975-1976; and Consultant at the West Roxbury Veterans Administration Hospital in 1986.

MLI has directed or consulted on several specifically contracted, grant-funded projects, which have been the basis of much of her research and publications. These contracts include such research topics as: Economics and the Administration of Medical Care Programs, 1961-1966; Identification of the Data and Development if the Record-Keeping System Necessary to Evaluate the Cost-Benefit and/or Cost Effectiveness of Ambulatory Health Services Provided to Residents of Low Income Areas in Cambridge, MA, 1970-1972; Innovative Methods of Pricing Ambulatory Care Treatment (IMPACT) for Patients with Hypertension: A Means of Enhancing Positive Health Outcomes for Long-Term Care, 1980-1982; and Health Services Utilization and Cost Pre and Post Mental Health Treatment in Organized Fee for Service Health Care Settings: The Bunker Hill Health Center of the Massachusetts General Hospital, 1980-1982.

MLI has authored, co-authored, and edited dozens of articles, original reports, and monographs for professional publication, primarily hospital costs. Topics include a range of interests pertinent to a health economist, including efficient record-keeping, cost of nursing services, and teaching cost containment in medical schools. In 1990, MLI contributed to the inaugural issue of Thyroid, a tribute to her late husband, Sidney H. Ingbar, MD.

MLI maintains active memberships in many professional societies, including the Association of University Programs in Health Administration, the Massachusetts Public Health Association, Academy Health, the International Health Economies Association, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), and the American Public Health Association, in which she has held many chairmanships and served on the Governing Council.

Source: From the Collection overview to the Papers, 1946-2008, (Harvard University. Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine. Center for the History of Medicine.)

Image Source: 1946 Radcliffe Yearbook, Forty and Six, p. 92.

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Economists Gender Radcliffe Undergraduate

Radcliffe. Paul Sweezy’s blue eyes and a summary of economics courses taken by the Class of 1942.

Paul Sweezy by many accounts was a Paul Newman of academic economics. This is implicitly confirmed in the following text, written by one of his fans for the Radcliffe Class of 1942 Yearbook summarizing Harvard economics courses offered to Radcliffe women in the early years of WWII.

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Economics. Ec. A—Or is the business cycle necessary? Wages, interest, profit, rent—where that last five dollars went. If value equals distribution, why do we pay so much tuition?—Money and Banking, or How Professor Harris converts the American business man to Keynes.—Corporations. Dull? How could it be, considering its Social Significance, and Dr. Sweezy’s blue eyes.—Economic Theory—watch ring-master Chamberlin corral the whole economic system into ceteris paribus.—Ec. 18. We have to strike a defense note in these parlous times.—Did we say strike? Ec. 81, Labor Problems, led this year by Messrs. Healy and Hogan.

Source (Text and Image): Radcliffe College Yearbook, Class of 1942, p. 43.

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Gender Race Radcliffe

Radcliffe, A.B. cum laude. African-American teacher of education. 1905

By chance I found the following verse given to a member of the Radcliffe class of 1905, Evangeline Rachael Hall (1882-1947), who was one of Radcliffe’s early African-American alumnae. While the verse testifies to her active participation in Radcliffe economics class(es?), it turns out that she went on instead to a long career at the oldest historically black college, Cheyney State Teachers College, where she taught education and English. Maybe a century later she would have continued studying economics.

In any event we all know how some of our economics students “only dully stare, or sit and sigh” and how few are “keen” and ask “The ‘how’ and ‘why things were’.”

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Radcliffe Yearbook 1905

Evangeline Rachael Hall, 39 Parker St., Cambridge

In economics she was keen and asked the “how”
and “why
Things were:” while some did only dully stare,
or sit and sigh.

Source: Radcliffe College. Book of the Class of Nineteen Five. (Boston: Everett Press, 1905), p. 27.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Evangeline graduated A.B. cum laude, June 27, 1905.

Source:  Annual Report of the President of Radcliffe College, 1904-1905, p. 24.

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Taught English at the Cheyney Training School for Teachers

Hall’s Special Work in English
(as of 1914/14)

(1) Public Speaking — Summer Course at Emerson’s College of Oratory; (2) Composition and Literature, Harvard Summer School, 1912; (3) The Teaching of Oral English, Harvard Summer School, 1913.

Source: Annual Report of the Cheyney Training School for Teachers 1914/15, p. 8.

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Portrait from ca. 1930

Detail from an oil on canvas portrait painted by Laura Wheeler Waring in her style for portraits of leading African Americans.

Evangeline Rachel Hall, painted around 1930, portrays the educator and Wheeler’s long-time colleague at Cheyney as a mature, refined and educated woman, serene in her heritage and her achievements. Her pale, lightly patterned dress, draped on even paler skin, and her elongated face and pursed mouth give the impression of purity and untouchable respectability. She wears a corsage, not unlike an honored member of an exclusive sorority. She is clearly a member of the black middle class, the kind of person who inhabited Wheeler’s personal and professional sphere.”

Source: Life of a Portrait: Laura Wheeler Waring’s Anna Washington Derry by Valerie Harris in Pennsylvania Heritage, Summer 1919.

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A Pair of Obits

Miss Evangeline R. Hall

Funeral services for Miss Evangeline R. Hall, member of the faculty of Cheyney State Teachers College, Cheyney, Pa., will be held at 3 o’clock tomorrow afternoon at the Bell Funeral Home, 909 Poplar Street.

Miss Hall, a native of Cambridge, Mass., died Sunday in Delaware Hospital. She received her B.A. degree with honors from Radcliffe College, and did graduate work at Harvard University where she won her master of arts degree. She had taught at Cheney for 42 years.

Surviving are: A sister, Mrs. Madeline Hall Wheeler, this city; two nieces, Mrs. Mary Ann Avent, Buffalo. N. Y., and Mrs. Wheeler Murphy of Baltimore, and a nephew, Arthur E. Wheeler, Jr, this city.

Source: The Morning News (Wilmington, Delaware), 2 Dec 1947, p. 4.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Miss Evangeline Hall

Miss Evangeline Rachel Hall, connected for more than 42 years with the State Teachers College at Cheyney, Pa., died Sunday morning in Delaware Hospital, Wilmington, Del.

Miss Hall was director of the Coppin Laboratory Practice School and a teacher of education and English at the Cheyney School. She held an A.B. degree from Radcliffe College and a Master of Education degree from Harvard University.

Funeral services will be held at 3 P. M. today at 909 Poplar st., Wilmington. A memorial service will be held in Pennsylvania Hall at the college at 3:30 P.M. Sunday.

Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer, 03 Dec 1947, p. 32.

Image Source: Radcliffe College. Book of the Class of Nineteen Five. (Boston: Everett Press, 1905).

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Berkeley Economists Gender Oxford Radcliffe Smith

Radcliffe/Oxford. An economics major who got away (to history of art). 1919

Ruth Doggett was on the start of a promising academic career as an economist until she completely switched her focus to Italian art history, having (presumably happily) worked together with her art historian husband, Clarence Kennedy, in Florence. As the record shows, economics’ loss turned out to be art history’s gain. 

Something in me hopes that I find a case of an art historian who turns to economics. What are the odds?

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Ruth Wedgewood Doggett Kennedy
c.v.

Ruth Wedgewood Doggett was born August 19, 1896 in Greenville, Rhode Island. Her father was the President of Springfield College.

Ruth Doggett began her undergraduate studies 1915-16 at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1919  she graduated with an A.B. (Phi Beta Kappa) from Radcliffe College, receiving a magna cum laude in Economics.

Her obituaries report that she was an instructor in Economics at Smith College 1919–20, but I have not been able to confirm any economics and sociology course for her other than “Principles of Sociology” (e.g. Smith Catalogue 1921-22, p. 69).

Ruth Doggett spent a year (1921) at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford where she was awarded a Diploma in Economics with first class honors. In London she married the young art historian/photographer Clarence Kennedy in 1921. They had previously met at Smith College.

The young couple returned to Smith College, Ruth Doggett Kennedy  as an instructor in Economics (1921–23) and Clarence was appointed assistant professor of art history.

In 1923 the Kennedys moved to Florence to teach in the Art Department’s Division of Graduate Study program. Ruth Kennedy served as assistant to the Director of Graduate Study in Art, 1925–26, 1927–28. She was a special lecturer in History of Italian Art, 1928–29, Smith College.

Ruth Kennedy was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation fellowship to complete a study of the Florentine painter, Alesso Baldovinetti and of his associates, in Italy; tenure, six months from March 10, 1930.

From that time on she lectured on art at Smith, Springfield College and Wellesley. Her major publications were:

  • Alesso Baldovinetti, a critical & historical study. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938.
  • The Renaissance painter’s garden. New York: Oxford University Press, 1948.
  • The Italian Renaissance. New York: Art Treasures of the World, 1954.

1960-61. Ruth and Clarence Kennedy were invited to serve as Resident Art Historians at the American Academy in Rome.

1961 Ruth Kennedy officially retires as emeritus professor of art at Smith College..

  • Novelty and tradition in Titan’s art. Katharine Asher Engel lectures. Northampton, Mass., Smith College, 1963.

Ruth Wedgewood Kennedy died November 30, 1968 in Boston.

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Obituaries.

Lee, R. W. (1969). Ruth Wedgwood Kennedy. Renaissance Quarterly, 22(2), 206–208.

The Boston Globe, December 1, 1968, p. 110.

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From the Finding Aid for Kennedy Family papers, Smith College Archives.

Clarence Kennedy was born in Philadelphia in 1892. He received his bachelor’s degree in architecture and a master’s degree in art history from the University of Pennsylvania, and studied at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece, as a Charles Eliot Norton Fellow of Harvard University. While working on his Ph.D. at Harvard, he joined the Smith College Art Department faculty. Kennedy received his doctorate from Harvard in 1924. His dissertation was titled The Effect of Lighting on Greek Sculpture.

Ruth Wedgewood Doggett was born in Greenville, Rhode Island in 1896, and was raised in Springfield, MA, where her father was President of Springfield College. She attended the University of California at Berkeley for two years and completed her undergraduate education at Radcliffe College with a degree in Economics, magna cum laude. She taught at Smith College in the Economics Department for a year after her graduation and then spent a year at Lady Margaret Hall of Oxford University furthering her study of economics.

Clarence Kennedy and Ruth Wedgewood (Doggett) Kennedy were married in England in 1921. At the time Clarence was traveling in Italy and Greece, photographing classical sculpture. The next fall they returned to Northampton, where both had held positions in the Art and Economics departments, respectively. In 1923 the Kennedys moved to Florence to teach in the Art Department’s Division of Graduate Study program. By this time Ruth had begun to establish herself as a Renaissance scholar, while Clarence continued his photographic and academic work. Their collaboration was continuous and they were among the pioneers of modern techniques in the study of art history. Among their innovations was the teaching of art history in situ instead of in the classroom. During this time the Kennedys had two children, Melinda, born in 1924, and Robert, called Bobby, born in 1928.

Ruth Kennedy was a member of the Art Department from 1941 to 1961. She taught courses on Italian Renaissance artists and on the cultures and cities that informed their art. During her time at Smith she undertook research on Alesso Baldovinetti, Fra Bartolomeo, Francesco Laurana, as well as projects on flowers in Renaissance art. She also was active nationally and internationally in her field of Renaissance art; her articles and reviews appeared often in art journals and she served on the editorial board of Art in America, Renaissance Quarterly, and the Art Bulletin. During her career Ruth received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Philosophical Society. She also lectured at other institutions, including Springfield College and Wellesley College.

From 1928 to 1932, Clarence Kennedy and Smith College published Studies in the History and Criticism of Sculpture, a seven-part series of volumes, issued in editions of 100, containing over three hundred black and white gelatin photographs of Ancient and Renaissance sculpture.

After Clarence and Ruth’s return to Northampton from Italy in 1933, Clarence continued to teach art history and photography; he soon added typography to his courses when he and Ruth set up the Cantina Press in their home at 44 Pomeroy Terrace in 1936-37. Cantina Press published little under its own imprint, but the Kennedys helped to establish the tradition of typography and printing at Smith College and produced much ephemeral work, such as invitations, broadsides, and programs.

Clarence Kennedy collaborated with scientist and inventor Edwin H. Land, co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation, on a system for the projection of stereoscopic lantern slides using Land’s invention of Polaroid filters over the lenses of a double projector. Viewing the projected images through special glasses with Polaroid filters identical to those on the projectors, the audience could see the image in three dimensions. Clarence also worked with Land during World War II on development of a Vectograph system using polarized stereographic images for three-dimensional maps. He was a member of the Monuments and Fine Arts Commission, established by the United States government to minimize the destruction of works of art within enemy-held territory during World War II. Clarence was also a consultant to the Eastman Kodak Company on photographic matters.

Together, Ruth and Clarence were invited to serve as Resident Art Historians at the American Academy in Rome for 1960-61.

Ruth Kennedy became a Professor Emeritus at Smith in 1961, but continued to lecture, research, and work on potential publications until her sudden death after a short illness on November 30, 1968 in Boston.

Clarence Kennedy retired from Smith in 1960, and died on July 29, 1972 in Northampton.

Melinda Kennedy (1924-2002) was the first child and only daughter of Clarence and Ruth Kennedy. Melinda attended Smith College and graduated with the class of 1945. Melinda was married for several years to Alfred Lester Talkington, who was known as Hank. Melinda and Hank had two daughters, Sylvia and Amy. Hank also had a daughter, Jo Lynn, from a previous marriage. Melinda was a poet and translator, and taught English for many years at Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, CT.

Image Source:  The Radcliffe College Yearbook 1919, p. 31.

Categories
Economists Gender Harvard Radcliffe

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

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

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Born in Texas

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

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First Marriage

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

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Undergraduate degree

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

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Correspondence with John Kenneth Galbraith

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

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Marriage to Charles Ray Griffith

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

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

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

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

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Ph.D. CONFERRED IN 1960-61

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Rosemary Coward Griffith, B.A.

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

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

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Probably Last Job

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

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

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Hospitalized about six weeks before her death

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

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

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

Dismissed from Hospital. Mrs. Rosemary Griffith.

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Funeral Notice

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

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

Categories
Economists Gender Michigan Radcliffe Wellesley

Radcliffe. Economics Ph.D. alumna. Margaret Elliott, 1924

 

To the irregular series “Meet an Economics Ph.D. alumna” I am pleased to add the 1924 Ph.D. graduate of Radcliffe, Margaret Elliott. I was hard-pressed to uncover much a a publication record for her, but what could be found indicates a career-long interest in the occupational experience of women. 

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Margaret Elliott’s 1924 Radcliffe Ph.D.

Margaret Elliott, A.M.

Subject, Economics.
Special Field, Labor Problems.
Dissertation, “Statistics of Occupation: A Study in Classification.”

Source: Annual Report of Radcliffe College, 1923-24, (March, 1925), p. 31.

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Biographical Note from the University of Michigan Archives

Margaret Elliott was born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1891 [28 October]. She received her A.B. degree from Wellesley in 1914, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Radcliffe in 1921 and 1924, respectively. Her dissertation was titled Earnings of Women in Business and the Professions.

Margaret Elliott was an instructor at Abbott Academy, Andover, Massachusetts from 1915 to 1917, and was appointed as an assistant professor of Personnel Management in the newly organized School of Business Administration at the University of Michigan in 1924, after she received her doctoral degree. In 1929, she was promoted to associate professor in both the business school and the Department of Economics in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. She was promoted to full professor in 1931 in both departments. Margaret Elliott was the first woman to be a full professor at the School of Business Administration.

Margaret Elliott was an active member of several organizations, including the National Federation of Business and Professional Women, and the American Association of University Women (AAUW). After she retired from her work with the AAUW, a national fellowship was established in her name.

Margaret Elliott married Professor John Evarts Tracy of the Michigan Law School in 1933. The couple had no children of their own, but they did raise his sister’s children after her death. John Tracy died in 1959. Margaret Elliott Tracy died in 1978 [12 May] at the age of 87.

Source: University of Michigan, Bentley Historical Library. Papers of Margaret Elliott: 1920-1954.

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Biographical Note (5 July 1941)

Personnel Expert Holds Chairs On Two Faculties: Margaret Elliot Tracy

The housewife who has been convinced by bouts with the family budget that men are welcome to the lion’s share of participation in economic matters would look with awe upon the achievements of Dr. MARGARET ELLIOTT TRACY, Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics and Professor of Personnel Management in the School of Business Administration.

Mrs. Tracy is the wife of Professor John E. Tracy, of the Law School. A native of Lowell, Massachusetts, where she was born on October 28, 1891, she went to Wellesley College after completing her early schooling in the Lowell public schools, and in 1914 received her Bachelor’s degree. She was Instructor at Abbot Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, from 1915 to 1917, when she determined to fit herself to teach economics.

At Radcliffe College in 1917-1918, she pursued graduate study in this field, but with American entry into World War I left college to assume personnel duties at the U. S. Ordnance Department’s Watertown Arsenal in charge of women’s work. Finding this type of occupation to her liking, she sought and obtained the position of Personnel Director for Waitt and Bond, Inc., of Newark, New Jersey, after the close of the war, staying for a year, 1919-1920, before returning to Radcliffe to complete her graduate studies. From Radcliffe in 1921, she received the M.A. degree, and in 1924, the Ph.D. degree. It was in this latter year that she took the first of the trips abroad which became her chief extra-curricular interest, although the jaunt over England and the Continent as a Whitney Traveling Fellow from Radcliffe combined much business with pleasure, since she was engaged throughout in study of European labor conditions.

In 1925, she came to Michigan as Assistant Professor of Economics, in 1929 was made Associate Professor, and assumed her present duties in the two branches of the University in 1932. While on sabbatical leave in 1931-1932, she took her longest trip, a complete globe-circling journey in which she centered her interest in the Far East and some of the remote islands of that region. Had the present war not intervened, she and Professor Tracy planned to continue sight-seeing in Egypt and the Near East on their sabbatical leave this year.

Mrs. Tracy is the author of Earnings of Women in Business and the Professions, published by the University of Michigan Press in 1930, and of a number of articles, including “Some Factors Affecting Earnings of Women in Business and the Professions,” appearing in Annals of the American Academy, May, 1929. She has been a member of the Board of Trustees of Wellesley College since 1936, and is affiliated with the American Economic Association, American Statistical Association, American Association for Labor Legislation, and the Personnel Research Federation.

Source: University of Michigan, The Michigan Alumnus (5 July 1941) posted at the University of Michigan  Faculty History Project page for Margaret Elliot Tracy.

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Biographical Note (1 September 1955)

Memoir: Margaret Elliot Tracy

The Regents of the University express to Margaret Elliott Tracy, Professor of Personnel Management, upon the occasion of her retirement from active membership on the University faculty, their kind appreciation of the contributions she has made as a brilliant scholar, a stimulating teacher, and a wise counselor of students.

Dr. Elliott received the A.B. degree from Wellesley College in 1914. From 1915 to 1917 she was Instructor at Abbot Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. In 1918, working for the United States Ordnance Department, she was in charge of Women’s Work at Watertown Arsenal. From 1919 to 1920, she was Personnel Director of Waitt & Bond, Inc. She earned the A.M. degree in 1921 and the Ph.D. in 1924 from Radcliffe College.

After studying at London University in 1924 as a Whitney Traveling Fellow of Radcliffe College, Dr. Elliott joined the faculty of the School of Business Administration of the University of Michigan as Assistant Professor of Personnel Management. Dr. Elliott held the dual appointment first as Associate Professor and later as Professor of Economics in the College of Literature, Science. and the Arts and as Professor of Personnel Management in the School of Business Administration, from 1931 to 1950.

On December 22, 1933, Dr. Elliott married John Evarts Tracy, Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. She was a member of the American Statistical Association, of the American Association for Labor Legislation, and of the American Economic Association. From 1926 to 1938 she belonged to the National Federation of Business and Professional Women, acting as Research Chairman of the Association from 1926 to 1930. Professor Tracy, in addition to her teaching and research, gave much time and ability to the consideration of student problems. As a member of the first Board of Governors of Residence Halls and of the first Executive Committee of the Institute for Human Adjustment, she helped establish fundamental policies of these organizations. Her work in the American Association of University Women, particularly while she was Chairman of the National Fellowship Awards Committee from 1949 to 1951, reflected her executive capacity. She did much good work in the University community and in her city to bring them into closer harmony.

The Regents in granting Professor Tracy’s request that she retire before her seventieth birthday extend to her their sincere congratulations upon her distinguished career and confer upon her the title Professor Emeritus of Personnel Management and hope that she may enjoy the courtesies usually offered emeritus members of the faculty.

Source: University of Michigan, Regents’ Proceedings (1 September 1955) posted at the University of Michigan Faculty History Project page for Margaret Elliot Tracy.

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Publications

Elliott, Margaret, and Grace E. Manson. “Some Factors Affecting Earnings of Business and Professional Women.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 143 (1929): 137–45.

____________. Earnings of Women in Business and the Professions. Michigan Business Studies, vol. III, No. 1 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1930).

Reviewed: American Economic Review, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Jun., 1931), pp. 321-323.

____________. “Review of The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization, by E. Mayo.” American Economic Review 24, no. 2 (1934): 322–23.

____________. “Review of Women and Wealth, by M. S. Branch.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 175 (1934): 271–271.

____________. “Review of College Women and the Social Sciences, by R. E. Mills.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 175 (1934): 272–272.

____________. “Review of The Women’s Trade Union Leagues in Great Britain and the United States of America, by G. Boone.” American Economic Review 32, no. 4 (1942): 919–20.

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Image Source:  Margaret Elliott Tracy giving a lecture [1958-59?]. University of Michigan, Bentley Historical Library, Ross School of Business Records.

 

 

 

Categories
Brookings Bryn Mawr Economists Gender Radcliffe Wisconsin

Brookings. Economics PhD Alumna, Helen Everett, 1924

 

Today we rejoin our series, “Get to Know an Economics PhD Alumna.”

Helen Meiklejohn née Everett (1891-1982) was the daughter of a Brown University philosophy professor, Walter Goodnow Everett. Helen received her A.B. from Bryn Mawr (1915), A.M. from Radcliffe (1918), and was among the first (!) PhDs awarded at Brookings (1924).

Helen Everett’s personal academic ambitions appear to have immediately taken a back seat to those of her husband, Alexander Meikeljohn, who had been a professor of philosophy and former colleague of Helen’s father at Brown. He actually knew her as a child. Before Helen and Alexander married in 1926, he had already served as Dean of Brown University (1901-1912) and as President of Amherst College (1912-1924). He was professor of philosophy at Wisconsin (1926-1938). He established the Experimental College of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1927-32). The Experimental College is considered “the forebearer of the Integrated Liberal Studies program at Wisconsin“. Alexander Meikeljohn had made a name for himself as a dynamic and passionate educational reformer and his picture was even on the cover of Time magazine (October 1, 1928). After Wisconsin’s Experimental College was closed in 1932 in no small part because of the fiscal austerity induced by the great depression, in 1938 Helen and Alexander switched full-time to his next big project for adult education, the San Francisco School of Social Studies that ended with WWII. Besides his legacy as an educational reformer, an even greater fame was achieved through his unconditional advocacy of free speech during the McCarthy era. He was selected for the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy–the award was presented by President Lyndon B. Johnson after Kennedy’s assassination.

Joseph Tussman (center) with Alec and Helen Meiklejohn, Berkeley 1961. Photo by David Tussman.

Since this is a post about Helen Everett, we move on to some details of her life and career. A casual newspaper search turned up numerous instances of Helen Meiklejohn speaking at a wide variety of progressive social and economic policy events after her marriage but the only post-marriage publication to have received any note was her chapter on pricing policy in the dress industry (see below).

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Born in Providence, R.I. on December 8, 1891 to Walter G. Everett and Harriet Mansfield Cleveland.

Died in Berkeley, CA on August 3, 1982.

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Education

1915. A.B., Bryn Mawr

1918. A. M. Radcliffe

1924. Ph.D. Robert Brookings Graduate School  of Poitics and Economics

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Employment

  • Vassar College. [1918/19(?)-1920] Instructor of Economics.
  • American Association for Labor Legislation in New York.
  • “Helen Everett left Vassar last June, worked a month as a factory worker in Cleveland in order to make reports to the Consumers’ League, and sailed in September for England, where she is studying at the London School of Economics.”
    Source: Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin, 1921, p. 27.
  • Institute of Economics (Washington, D.C.) [ca. 1924-26]
  • “Helen Everett Meiklejohn, wife of Alexander Meiklejohn of the University of Wisconsin, has been added to the staff of associate editors responsible for books on economics and political science, published by W. W. Norton & Co. “
    Source: July 1, 1928. Wisconsin State Journal p. 1.
  • San Francisco School of Social Studies

“Tussman: … Now, Meiklejohn had started before the war, he had started the San Francisco school of social studies. He was a great believer in adult education. It was a free-wheeling enterprise which had classes for working people, mostly, not devoted to career stuff, just general social theory and philosophy. We read things like Veblen, a good deal. And at one point, although I was still a graduate student, he asked me to teach a couple of classes. So I would drive out with Helen, his wife, who was a PhD in economics, and very bright, and another two guys, to Santa Rosa, where once a week we taught a class in Santa Rosa, and then drove back here to Berkeley, and once a week I met a class in San Francisco. I was doing that until the war. During the war the enterprise came to an end, but it was a rather interesting quixotic venture.”
Source: Lisa Rubens, Interviews from 2004 conducted with Joseph Tussman: Philosopher, Professor, Educator. University of California. The Bancroft Library, Regional Oral History Office. Berkeley, 2012.

  • Research Economist, Consumer Needs Unit, Office of Price Administration.
    Source: The Boston Globe, 26 February 1945, p. 11.

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Foreign Travel

I.

Arrived from Plymouth on S.S. Nieuw Amsterdam in Port of New York City on November 17, 1920.

[Her passport application was dated August 24, 1920 to leave New York on the S.S. Olympic on September 18, 1920 for the purpose of study in Great Britain, France, and Italy.]

II.

[From passport application filed June 1, 1922 in Berlin, Germany]

England. July 1921 to December 1921.
France. December 1921 to May 1922.
Germany (Berlin). May 1922 to September 1922.

Return September 23, 1922 Port of N.Y.C. [travelling with her parents]

“The Class Editor [1913] had news of Helen Everett indirectly the other day. She (the c.e.) sat next to two Vassar Seniors at luncheon, who, on finding that their neighbor was a Bryn Mawr alumna, immediately asked if she knew “Miss Everett.” On replying in the affirmative a most enthusiastic account of Helen’s career as an instructor at Vassar followed, ending with an expression of deep regret that she was no longer there. Helen is studying economics in London this winter, according to these same Vassar Seniors.”
Source: Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin, 1922, p. 27.

III.

Return from England (via Southampton to port of N.Y.C.) on October 23, 1925 S.S. Berengaria. [Alexander Meiklejohn travelled with her according to the ship manifest. They were married Wednesday, June 9, 1926 in Boston. (pre-honeymoon?)]

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Publications identified (to date)

Everett, Helen. 1924. The Reorganization of the British Coal Industry. Ph.D. thesis, Robert Brookings.

——. 1925. Book Review of “The Women’s Garment Workers: A History of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union.” American Economic Review 15(3) (September): 524–5.

——, with Isador Lubin [Lubin had been a student of Veblen’s at Missouri, had worked with Veblen at the wartime Food Administration, and with Mitchell in the Prices Section of the WIB.”]. The British Coal Dilemma. (New York, Macmillan, 1927).

——. Book Review of “A Theory of the Labor Movement” by Selig Perlman. New York: Macmillan, 1928. Social Service Review Vol. 3, No. 3 (Sept. 1929), pp. 523-525.

——. Book Review of “British Industry Today” by Ben M. Selekman and Sylvia Kopald Selekman. New York: Harper & Bros., 1929.

—— (Chapter on the dress industry), in Walton Hamilton (principal author, Gasoline industry.), Mark Adams (automobile industry), Albert Abrahamson (automobile tires), Irene Till, George Marshall (cottonseed industry) and Helen Meiklejohn. Price and Price Policies. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1938.  Vol. 7 of Reports prepared for the President’s Cabinet Committee on Price Policy.   [industries covered by other authors: whiskey and milk].

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Survived the Derailment of the Streamliner “City of San Francisco”
August 12, 1939 in Carlin, Nevada

…Mrs. Helen C. Meiklejohn, of 1525 LaLoma Avenue, Berkeley, told the same story as she smiled through bandages on her nose. Mrs. Meiklejohn, whose husband, Alexander, is connected with the University of Wisconsin, was in her berth but not asleep when the crash came.
She was thrown into the aisles, banging her nose and eyes, and then remained pinned for hours while volunteer workers tried to release her.
“I never was so glad to see anyone as I was the cowboy who finally climbed in and freed me. I had been bleeding all the while, though it wasn’t serious and I never was unconscious. The cowboys helped me climb out of the train and up to a girder to land.”

Source: Oakland Tribune, August 14, 1939, p. 3

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Helen Meiklejohn, Obituary

BERKELEY — A private family memorial service is pending for Helen Everett Meiklejohn, prominent professional economist and educator who had been a Berkeley resident since 1934.

A native of Providence R.I., Mrs. Meiklejohn died Aug. 3 [1982] in a Berkeley hospital. She was 89.

Mrs. Meiklejohn was the widow of Alexander Meiklejohn, noted educator and civil libertarian, and the youngest daughter of Walter Goodrow Everett, professor of philosophy at Brown University.

She graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1915 and held advanced degrees in Economics from Radcliffe and Washington University of St Louis [Note: the Brookings PhD program was originally part of the Washington University Program]. She taught at Vassar College and worked on the staff of the Brooking Institution in Washington D.C.

She was co-author, with Isador Lubin, of “The British Coal Dilemma” and published articles in a number of professional journals.

She married Mr. Meiklejohn in 1926 and lived in Madison, Wis., for a number of years before moving to Berkeley, where she and her husband founded and taught in the San Francisco School of Social Studies. She was a member of the Council on the National Institution of Mental Health and was for many years an active participant in Planned Parenthood.

She is survived by four stepchildren, Ann Stout, of Richmond, Kenneth Meiklejohn, of Alexandria, Va., Donald Meiklejohn, of Syracuse, N.Y., and Gordon Meiklejohn, of Denver Colo., a niece, Mrs. John Nason, of Keene, N.Y., and two nephews, George and Douglas Mercer.

Source: Obituary. Helen Meiklejohn. The Berkeley Gazette (August 11, 1982), p. 2.

Categories
Economists Gender Harvard NBER Radcliffe Smith Vassar

Radcliffe.Economics Ph.D. Alumna, Dorothy Carolin Bacon, 1928

 

This post began after I noticed that it has been some time since I posted biographical and career information for a economics Ph.D. alumna. I figured it would be good to search for a candidate that Economics in the Rear-view Mirror has already caught in an earlier archival trawling expedition but for whom the details of post-doc life had not been added. Dorothy Carolin Bacon was awarded her Radcliffe economics Ph.D. in 1928 and the following item was what I had to start with.

Dorothy Carolin Bacon.

General Examination in Economics, Thursday, May 26, 1927.
Committee: Professors Persons (chairman), Carver, Crum, Gay and Holcombe.
Academic History: Simmons College, 1918-19; Radcliffe College, 1919-22, 1923-24, 1926-. A.B., Radcliffe, 1922; A.M., ibid., 1924. Assistant in Economics, Vassar College, 1924-25. Instructor in Economics, ibid., 1925-26.
General Subjects: 1. Economic Theory. 2. Sociology. 3. History of Political Theory. 4. Statistics. 5. Economic History. 6., Money, Banking and Crises.
Special Subject: Money, Banking and Crises.
Thesis Subject: A Study of the Dispersion of Wholesale Commodity Prices, 1890-1896.  (With Professor Persons.)

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examinations for the Ph.D. (HUC 7000.70), Folder “Examinations for the Ph.D., 1926-1927”.

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One of the items that came up after searching for a Google search was an advertisement for her handwritten Radcliffe student journal notes from her Physics course in 1922. Besides being surprised to see a list price of $750.00 for this notebook, I was intrigued by the relatively detailed information provided about Dorothy Bacon. While everything about the text struck me as fully plausible, I thought it worth some due diligence to confirm what I could from the bookseller’s bio-blurb. I have added links wherever possible to sources that confirm the details below. It would appear that information from the above item in Economics in the Rear-view Mirror as well as from the Dzuback chapters in Madden and Dimand (eds.)  and Margaret A. Nash (ed.) have provided some (or even much) of what was included in the D. Anthem advertisement that follows.

The section on Smith College in Mary Ann Dzuback’s chapter “Women economists in the academy: struggles and strategies, 1900-1940” in the Routledge Handbook of the History of Women’s Economic Thought, Kirsten Madden and Robert W. Dimand (eds.) provides information on Dorothy Bacon from the faculty files of the Smith College Archives [Office of President William Allan Neilson Files, Box 364, Folder 34]:

Bacon came to Smith a year before finishing her Ph.D. at Radcliffe in 1928. She took research and service sabbatical leaves to work for the Works Progress Administration and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in the 1930s. She focused her research on money flows during the 1930s, cost price problems, and the development of federal level credit institutions. By the 1940s, she was working with the federal Office of Price Administration. By the 1950s, she was consulting with the Brookings Institution, had been a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and received grants from the SSRC. She published a monograph on the recent economic history of five towns around Northampton, Massachusetts, in the late 1930s, and was completing a book on the development of Philippine credit institutions by 1970.

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Another paragraph by Mary Ann Dzuback

From: Mary Ann Dzuback. Chapter 7. Research at Women’s Colleges, 1890-1940. Women’s Higher Education in the United States (Historical Studies in Education), edited by Margaret A. Nash. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Dorothy Bacon (1927–54) arrived in 1928, eventually taking an endowed chair. She investigated the flows of currency during the Depression, cost price problems, and the growth of credit institutions, and was in great demand by private research agencies and the federal government. A sometime consultant with the National Bureau of Economic Research, in the 1920s and 1930s she worked with a range of government and research agencies. She was awarded grants by the Social Science Research Council and published regularly. Bacon’s record of research and service, and her sabbaticals, suggest that women social science scholars at Smith were encouraged to use their research to inform policy at the federal and international levels.

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From: Advertisement for “Economist Dorothy Bacon’s 1922 Physics 2 Journal from Radcliffe College (1922)

Dorothy Carolin Bacon was born in 1902 to George Preston Bacon, a professor of Physics and Dean of both the Tufts Engineering School and the Bromfield-Pearson School, and Hannah Churchill Bacon, a trained nurse. Her sister, Ruth Bacon, also attended Radcliffe College and later became the first female officer of a State Department geographical bureau (Bureau of Eastern Affairs). Bacon attended Simmons College from 1918-19 before transferring to Radcliffe, the former women’s liberal arts college that fully merged with Harvard in 1999. She earned her B.A. (1922), M.A. (1924) and Ph.D (1927) [sic, 1928] there with her dissertation concerning A Study of the Dispersion of Wholesale Commodity Prices, 1890-1896. While at Radcliffe she also worked for the Federal Reserve Board’s Division of Research and Analysis [as a Statistical Clerk starting 1 July 1922] earning an annual salary of $1600 before resigning [May 10] in 1923.

She was hired as an assistant professor [sic, “Assistant” is a lower rank than “Assistant Professor”] in economics at Vassar in 1924 [cf. AER, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Dec. 1924), p. 829 “Miss Dorothy C. Bacon is assistant in economics at Vassar College.”], but was recruited by Esther Lowenthal, Dean of the Faculty and chair of the economics department at Smith, to join Smith’s faculty in 1927. At Smith she focused her research on money flows during the 1930s, cost price problems, and the development of credit institutions at the federal level. In 1930, she was one of three research associates selected for the National Bureau of Economic Research where she studied the relation of current stock prices to earnings per share from the twenty corporations comprising the Index of Industrial Stock Prices of the Harvard Economic Service. Her monograph, Recent Economic History of the Five Towns (1937) was published by the Works Progress Administration. In 1942, Bacon left her post at Smith [sic, only temporary leave] to work under Leon Henderson at the Office of Price Administration. It was there that she wrote a study of the scrap metal market in Syracuse, NY. By the 1950s, she was consulting with the Brookings Institution and was publishing her research in the Review of Economic Statistics, the Journal of the American Statistical Association and the National Encyclopedia. She appears to have never married [she wasn’t]  and when she died in 1998 she was buried at Shawsheen Cemetery in Bedford, MA, alongside her parents and sister.

Source: D. Anthem, Bookseller advertisement for “Economist Dorothy Bacon’s 1922 Physics 2 Journal from Radcliffe College (1922) [posted price: $750.00!]

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A.E.A. Biographical Listing, 1969

BACON, Dorothy Carolin, academic; b. Beloit, Wis., 1902; student Simmons Coll., 1918-19; A.B., Radcliffe Coll., 1922, A.M., 1924, Ph.D., 1928. FIELDS 2c, 5e, 4a. Research asso., Nat. Bur. Econ. Research, 1930-31; formerly sr. research asso., Fed. Deposit Ins. Corp.; fed. Dir. Research project, Work Progress Adm., 1935-36; asst. div. economist, food price div., OPA [Office of Price Administration], 1943-47, OPS [Office of Price Stabilization], 1951; Fulbright prof., U. Philippines, 1956-57; mem. Faculty, Smith Coll. Since 1927, prof. since 1938, Robert A. Woods prof. since 1956. ADDRESS Smith Coll., 115 Elm St., Northampton, MA 01060.

Note. Fields: 2c (Economic Development Studies); 5e (General International Economics); 4a (Monetary and Financial Theory and Institutions).

Source: The American Economic Review, Vol. 59, No. 6, 1969. Handbook of the American Economic Association (January 1970), p. 17.

________________________

Bachelor of Arts, Radcliffe (1922)

With Distinction in Special Subjects
Cum Laude

Dorothy Carolin Bacon [of] Medford. In Mathematics.

Source: Report of the Dean in Annual Report of Radcliffe College for 1920-1923, p. 43.

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Master of Arts, Radcliffe (1924)

Dorothy Carolin Bacon, A.B.

Source: Report of the Dean in Annual Report of Radcliffe College for 1923-1924, p. 31.

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Doctor of Philosophy, Radcliffe (1928)

Dorothy Carolin Bacon A.M.

Subject, Economics. Special Field, Money and Banking. Dissertation, “Maladjustment of Prices with Special Reference to the Wholesale Prices of Commodities in the United States; 1890-1896”

Source:  Report of the Dean in Annual Reports of Radcliffe College for 1927-1928, p. 23.

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Publications of Dorothy C. Bacon

A Monthly Index of Commodity Prices, 1890-1900. Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 8, No. 4 (October 1926), pp. 177-83.

The Significance of Fixed-base and Link Relatives in Studies of Price Stability: A Comment on the Behavior of Prices. Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 23 (September 1928), pp. 274-81.

Maladjustment of Prices with Special Reference to the Wholesale Prices of Commodities in the United States, 1890-1896. Ph.D. thesis, Radcliffe College.

Encyclopedia articles in the National Encyclopedia.

Recent Economic History of Five Towns. Northampton, Mass.: Smith College, 1937.

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Vital Dates and Miscellaneous Information

Born:  25 February 1902 in Beloit, Wisconsin.

Last Residence: Niceville, Okaloosa, Florida [Socal Security death index].

Died: 8 November in Meriden, New Haven County, Connecticut. [Apparently visiting: the Connecticut Death Index notes her address 2475 Virginia, Residence Andover, District of Columbia].

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Image Source: Senior year picture of Dorothy Carolin Bacon in the  Radcliffe Year Book 1922, p. 23.

 

 

 

Categories
Bryn Mawr Chicago Economists Gender Home Economics Illinois Radcliffe

Bryn Mawr. Economics Ph.D. Alumna. Lorinda Jane Perry, 1913.

 

This new entry in the series “Meet an economics Ph.D. alumna/us” features the 1913 Bryn Mawr Ph.D., Lorinda Jane Perry. Details about the last 25 years of her life are relatively scarce compared to the events leading up to her last academic position as an associate professor at Hunter College in New York City, i.e. up through the first half of the 1920s. She apparently left economics to go to the Law School at the University of Chicago and as of the 1940 Census was sharing a home in Chicago with four likewise single siblings (a former member of the Illinois Legislature, an attorney, a urologist in private practice and a medical doctor working in the Health Department). 

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Lorinda Jane Perry
Timeline

1884. Born December 23rd in Melvin, Illinois.

1900-1904. Illinois State Normal University.

From the Index, 1904 Yearbook of I.S.N.U.

While in high school I burned with a desire to know all of the latest slang. But that fire has been quenched. Now I can’t bear such expressions as “Oh! Deah,” or “By Jinks” and others. Now I see the wrong and wish to form a society for the “Purification of the American Girl’s Language.” I have not outlined my course of action, but hope some day to sing with the poet:

“Hail to the graduating girl, who is sweeter far than some,
Who when she talks, speaks no slang and chews no chewing gum.”

Between 1904 and 1906. Lorinda Perry taught in country schools near Melvin and Monmouth, Ill.

1906-1909. A.B. in Economics and History at the University of Illinois.

1909-1910. A.M. University of Illinois. The History of the Lake Shipping Trade of Chicago. Simon Litman, thesis supervisor.

1910-11. Women’s Educational and Industrial Union Fellowship at Radcliffe.

A fellowship of $500.00 established and maintained by the Massachusetts Federation of Women’s Clubs and the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, 1905-1909, has been continued by the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union for the year 1910-11. This fellowship is offered to a graduate student who has been recommended by the Professors of Economics in Radcliffe College. The holder of the fellowship must devote one year to research under the Department of Research of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union with a stipend of $500, and one year to graduate courses at Radcliffe College with the usual tuition fees as stated in the Radcliffe College catalogue; or she may devote one-half time to research work at the Union and one-half time to graduate courses at the College for two years, with a stipend of $300 per year. Applications for the year 1911-12 should be made before May 1, 1911, through the Dean of Radcliffe College.
The fellowship was awarded in 1905-07 to Caroline Manning (Carleton College) A.B. 1898, (Radcliffe) A.M. 1907; in 1907-08 to Grace Faulkner Ward (Smith) A.B. 1900; in 1908-10 to Edith Gertrude Reeves (University of South Dakota) A.B. 1906, (Radcliffe) A. B. 1907, A.M. 1910; in 1910-11 to Lorinda Perry (University of Illinois) A.B. 1909, A.M. 1910.
Source: Annual Reports of the President and Treasurer of Radcliffe College 1909-10, p. 66.

1911-13. Graduate Student at Bryn Mawr College. Fellow in the Department of Research, Women’s Educational and Industrial Union.

1913. Ph.D. Bryn Mawr. Millinery as a Trade for Women. New York: Longmans, Green, and Company. Susan Myra Kingsbury and Marion Parris Smith, dissertation supervisors.

[From the Preface, written by Susan M. Kingsbury, pp. viii-iv]

“In the fall of 1910, Miss Lorinda Perry, a graduate of the University of Illinois, 1909, securing a Master’s degree in 1910, and Miss Elizabeth Riedell, a graduate of Vassar College, 1904, were awarded Fellowships in the Department of Research of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union and selected for investigation the subject of Millinery as a Trade for Women. During the year employers and employees were interviewed, and the results secured from the former were analyzed and interpreted by Miss Perry, from the latter by Miss Riedell.

In the years 1911 to 1913, Miss Perry held a Fellowship at Bryn Mawr College and under the direction of Dr. Marion Parris Smith, Associate Professor of Economics, continued the study of the millinery trade in Philadelphia. Miss Perry’s discussion of the trade in the two cities was accepted by Bryn Mawr College in partial fulfilment for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in May, 1913. In Philadelphia the field work was conducted by the Consumers’ League and at their expense under Miss Perry’s direct supervision. Fortunately the information on the trade in Boston was brought up to date by the courtesy of a number of Boston employers who permitted their entire pay rolls to be copied from their books by the secretaries of our Research Department. Tabulations of this data and retabulations of the earlier Boston material by our secretaries enabled Miss Perry to unify the two studies and to revise most of her earlier work and that prepared by Miss Riedell. Those sections dealing with the effect of seasons on Boston employees and on Boston workers in the trade as secured from personal interviews are therefore the combined work of the two students.

The method of attack, the range of inquiry and the extent of returns in the investigation are all presented in the introductory chapter. As this was one of the first studies of the type by the department and indeed in the country, the schedules were far from perfect resulting in an incompleteness which in later studies of the series has been avoided. It is to be regretted that the opportunity to use pay rolls came only within the last year so that detailed information as to wages was not obtained from the workers who were visited in their homes, as was done in the study of The Boot and Shoe Industry in Massachusetts as a Vocation for Women. It is also unfortunate that pay rolls could not be secured in Philadelphia.

Prepared for the purpose of affording students training in social investigation, the study must lack in finish of presentation and completeness of interpretation; but the work has been carefully supervised and supplemented by every means available to the Research Department. In order that the survey may serve as large a group as possible, the material is often presented in much greater detail and the tables arranged with much smaller class intervals than might at first appear necessary or desirable, although discussions in the text often deal with larger groupings. Indeed in many tables the facts are presented for each case, especially where subclassification has made the number considered too small for generalization. We hope that agencies interested in a study of minimum wage laws, in other regulation of working conditions by legislation, in vocational guidance and placement, in industrial education, and especially, in awakening the public conscience may each find here data which can be rearranged or grouped so as to form a basis upon which to act.”

1914-1916. Head of Department of Political and Social Sciences at Rockford College

1916. Dissertation published The Millinery in Boston and Philadelphia: A Study of Women in Industry. Binghamton,New York: Vail-Ballou.

1916-1920. Associate in Department of Household Science. University of Illinois.

DR . PERRY TO GIVE COURSE IN HOUSEHOLD ACCOUNTING

Dr . Lorinda Perry, associate in home economics, will have charge of a class in household accounting to be given under the auspices of the Home Improvement association of Champaign . The course will be open to members of the association only, but membership in the organization is open to any who wish to join. The object of the course is to teach the women how to place their homes on a business basis.

Source: Daily Illini, March 8, 1919, p. 5.

1917-1918. “Some Recent Magazine Articles on the Standard of Living,” Journal of Home Economics. Vol. 9 (December 1917), pp. 550-558. Concluding Part. Vol. 10 (January 1918), pp. 9-17.

1919. Taught in Chicago according to report in the Daily Illini, Nov. 22, 1919, p. 8.

1920. Appointed Associate Professor of Economics at Hunter College, New York City.

Ca. 1928. J.D. University of Chicago.

1926-27 Registration of Second Year Student, Lorinda Perry, Resident Autumn, Winter, Spring Quarters.
Source: University of Chicago, The Law School, 1927-28. In Announcements Vol. XXVII, no. 22 (May 10, 1927). p. 20.

1931. [Miss Lorinda Perry of Chicago] while in Melvin during the Thanksgiving season, learned that she had been successful in passing the state bar examination”. The Paxton Record (Illinois), Dec. 3, 1931, p. 10.

1940. U.S. census. Living with brothers and sisters, in Chicago Ward 5, University Ave. No occupation listed either for her or her older sister Josephine (who had twice been elected to the Legislature of Illinois from the Fifth district from 1930 to 1934).

1951. Died August 30th in Chicago, Illinois. Last residing at 6221 University Ave., Chicago.

 

Principal Source: Obituary in The Paxton Record (Illinois), September 6, 1951, p. 1.

Image Source: from the Holton/Kinney/Foster/Watson family tree posted at ancestry.com.