Category: Salaries

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Chicago Economist Market Salaries

Chicago. Suggestions to make University of Chicago professorships more attractive. Leland, 1945

 

On April 10, 1945, the chairman of the University of Chicago’s economics department, Professor Simeon E. Leland, submitted a 77 page (!) memorandum to President Robert M. Hutchins entitled “Postwar Plans of the Department of Economics – A Wide Variety of Observations and Suggestions All Intended To Be Helpful in Improving the State of the University”.

In his cover letter Leland wrote “…in the preparation of the memorandum, I learned much that was new about the past history of the Department. Some of this, incorporated in the memorandum, looks like filler stuck in, but I thought it ought to be included for historical reasons and to furnish some background for a few of the suggestions.” 

In earlier posts I have provided (1) a list of visiting professors who taught economics at the University of Chicago up through 1944 (excluding those visitors who were to receive permanent appointments); (2) supporting tables with enrollment trends and faculty data (ages and educational backgrounds); (3) three lists of names for economists who in 1945 could be taken into consideration for either permanent economics, joint appointments with other department or visiting appointments at the University of Chicago.

The excerpt transcribed for this post deals with the employment conditions and prospects of University of Chicago faculty. The basic message was that Chicago had lost its position as highest-bidder in the academic market and that relative attractiveness was a function of salary to be sure, but also other conditions (teaching loads, research support, clerical support, burden of special (extra) examinations, housing, medical benefits, etc.) should be improved as well.

Leland’s laundry list of suggestions seems pretty familiar to early 21st century academics. Would love to have an analogous memo for the present to see which additional items are now included.

_________________________

POSTWAR PLANS
OF THE
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

A Wide Variety of Observations and Suggestions
All Intended To Be Helpful
in Improving the State
of the
University

by Simeon E. Leland, Chairman
(on his own behalf and for the Department)

1945

[…]

Making University of Chicago Professorships More Attractive

The following suggestions are, in large part, the result of actual experiences in negotiating with “outsiders” over appointments to our faculty, or are reactions observed in dealing with present faculty members with respect to appointments or promotions within the Department. Some of them undoubtedly represent aspirations of the staff. They are offered, not as criticisms of present conditions, but as suggestions for improvements for realization in the future.

1. Distinguished Professorships

At the inception of the University, President Harper established a salary scale for full professors which was the highest in the country. He literally bought his faculty, outbidding all competitors for the services of distinguished men. The University of Chicago at once gained a reputation for the payment of attractive salaries. With the passage of time this situation has changed. Although the University of Chicago is still a “high-salary” institution, the emoluments it offers are by no means the most attractive in the United States.

The enhanced salaries paid (on an individual competitive bargaining arrangement) to present staff members on the 4E contracts render utterly inadequate the $10,000 salaries paid to the holders of University Distinguished Service Professorships. When these Professorships were established the salary differentials between the Distinguished Professorships and other professorships were quite large. They are far narrower today due to the liberal treatment by the University of the “ordinary” professors. Rising costs of living have also lowered the real wages paid to our Distinguished colleagues, and others as well.

If the Distinguished Professorships are to mean much to the holders over the years to come, the stipends should be increased; otherwise, the recognition bestowed will be rewarded only by a name or possibly by a degree of freedom not possessed by colleagues — both of which by that time may be empty honors. The times seem to call for $12,000 salaries as a minimum rather than $10,000 for these Professorships.

2. Divisional Professorships

If the Divisional Professorships, such as the Social Sciences Professorships, are to carry any real distinction they should be made to rank in terms of prestige and desirability next to the Distinguished Service Professorships. At present all they have to offer is some relief from fixed teaching (which is illusory for men with real scholarly interests who always talk about problems of their intellectual world with students) and the right to teach what they wish, irrespective of departmental lines. Both of these freedoms in greater or lesser degree are accorded every member of the staff, especially the freedom to teach.

In the Social Sciences Division, a Social Sciences Professorship is supposed to signify a recognition of competence or achievement. The breadth of knowledge, the spread of intellectual interest and the true humanity of the holder (or holders) indicate a degree of competence beyond that of the ordinary professor and that of many of the University’s most distinguished appointees, yet, in last analysis, all that a Social Sciences Professorship confers upon the holder is a title with, perhaps, a scintilla of freedom. Such a chair should be made into something tangible for the holder — into something to be sought after by other members of the staff — into something to attract men from abroad. The minimum salary should be $10,000 at least. The working conditions should be far above those for ordinary men.

3. A New Type of Professorship

It is believed that named professorships with research stipends attached would attract outstanding scholars to the University. Such an appointment would not only carry an adequate salary for the incumbent but also a fund to assure him of a definite research budget so long as he occupied the designated chair. The University is probably not rich enough to afford many such appointments, but certainly it should seek to establish one in at least every division and school — granted that willing donors could be found. In any case, if the University believes its own statements concerning the importance of research and has faith in its appointees, it might well combine the two, in a few instances, to provide University Research Professorships which carry with them definite research grants to be spent as the incumbent elects. The Thomas W. Lamont Professorship at Harvard is of this type. It is held at the moment by Mr. Sumner H. Slichter, a Ph.D. of the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago.

4. Research, Clerical and Library Assistance

The climate for research around the University is not as favorable as speeches and propaganda would indicate. The professorial staff — the highest-priced talent along with administrators in the University — is required and expected to do all manner of chores that should be done for them if research output is to be maximized. Adequate stenographic service is often lacking or, at most, is not always immediately available to members of the Department. The stenographic pool in the Dean’s office is inadequate, a reflection, of course, of the present labor situation. But it is operated on the basis of bookkeeping arrangements which seem to make it freely available to all staff members only on the basis of antecedent budgets. Stenographic service should be available freely to all members of the staff for University business, for correspondence arising in connection with their work (in order to save valuable time) and for all research needs, including the copying of materials. Courses also could be improved if professors could make more materials available to students, perhaps on a nominal fee basis operated through departmental offices.

Similarly, a reasonable amount of clerical and library service should be available to staff members. Now such service is extended only as given research projects are approved, as special deals are made with individual faculty members, or as special services are given as a favor or in recognition of something or other. So long as these services are not generally available or can be had only upon request, there is a tendency that they will go first to the most vocal groups. In any case, the Department has too few people available to do the odd jobs to lighten the work and increase the research output of the faculty. Arrangements might be made whereby a clerical or service pool could meet the needs of many staff members.

5. Reduction in Examinations

The emphasis on examinations other than course examinations makes such tests too arduous a task to be well performed by the University staff. Everywhere there is objection! The time given to special terminal, qualifying and other examinations is grudgingly provided. It is given at the expense of research, creative thinking, or writing. And when the work is turned over to hired examiners who know examination techniques, but who are untrained in the fields involved, the examinations themselves become an intellectual travesty. (Actual illustrations can be supplied on request.)

It is recognized that many examinations are required and that there is a place for trained examiners; but the emphasis on examinations at the University is out of proportion to their worth. At the graduate level these examinations have operated to lower scholastic standards. Part of this is due to the efforts to deprecate courses and to offer illusory means for speeding up the educational process, hardly appropriate in the graduate and professional schools. Students are told they can visit courses (registering for R’s) and as long as they can pass final examinations they can qualify for degrees. The result is that special examinations have to be prepared; that students are rated on too limited a sample of their work; that recommendations of the University count for less than they once did. Another result of the examination emphasis is that students bone up for examinations, try their luck on this or that test and if they pass (by good fortune or otherwise), they are advanced or awarded the appropriate degrees.

From every point of view, too much faculty time is spent on examinations of various kinds; too large a fraction of the student’s record is based upon them.

6. Teaching Loads

In the matter of teaching loads, the Department, on the basis of University of Chicago conditions, has little cause for complaint. The Department has been well treated. Nevertheless, for the greatest good of the University it would like to indicate that teaching loads, even in the Department, are too high for the attainment of the best standards of graduate instruction and research.

Differentiations in teaching loads are appropriate. The load in the College may well be higher than in the Division, but in graduate and professional schools the teaching load should be low if the scholarship and research of the faculty are to be maximized. It may also be appropriate to have different teaching loads, on the average, for the ranks of assistant professor, associate professor and professor. It is the load of the productive scholars which really counts. Harvard and Columbia both have a teaching load of four hours a week for professors of Economics. This is also a factor of importance in the competition with these universities for staff members. It is a factor also affecting the quality of graduate instruction.

The reduction of teaching loads should be made a matter of University policy.

7. Salary Schedules

Salaries of members of the Department are believed to compare favorably with other salaries paid in the University. The general level of salaries paid at the University of Chicago places it among the high-salaried institutions, but it no longer ranks at the top. Harvard has recently raised its minimum professorial salary to in excess of $9,000, with commensurate increases along the line. The level of payments at Columbia, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and California Institute of Technology, for example, exceeds the level prevailing at Chicago.

Nor is it certain that the new salary plan will help attract eminent scholars to the University of Chicago. The experience of the Department to date has not been favorable to the new plan. Regardless of sentiments for and against the 4E Contract, its operation should be watched with care lest it adversely affect the quality of new appointments. In order to correct one evil, a greater one — the refusal of offers of appointment — may have been created. Many features of the 4E Contract make such terms unattractive to men who have been well treated by other institutions of high repute. If an outstanding scholar will not accept the 4E Contract, another type of contract should be offered. It is more important to secure the right scholars than to preserve a unique salary plan.

Changes in living costs have greatly decreased the value of payments here. Among the items on the postwar agenda should be new salary scales.

8. Faculty Housing

The Department was much gratified to see that the question of adequate housing for the faculty is again being considered. During the past year, more than one person who was being approached as a potential faulty member declined to consider an offer from the University as long as housing facilities are what they are in Chicago, and especially in Hyde Park. These facilities will remain unattractive until the University improves them. Princeton and Stanford, for example, have made notable contributions to the development of faculty housing. Appropriate housing should also be a good investment. If the Trustees should be unwilling to invest endowment funds in a faculty housing venture, a private company, or even a public housing corporation, should be organized in the neighborhood to meet this vital need.

Attention should also be given to the improvement of the University neighborhood. Its deterioration is a matter of great concern, affecting far more than the value of adjacent properties.

9. Miscellaneous Suggestions

There has always been much talk about improving the lot of younger men. Greater equality could be provided if faculty perquisites were increased. Former tuition differentials to faculty children and wives could be restored, or even increased with the number of children in each family. Hospital rates could be reduced. Out-patient medical service could be provided for University families at small cost. The present shortage of practicing physicians would make such a service a real boon. The University in its own interest, too, could afford to provide free medical examinations for faculty members and employees with increased public health services available at nominal cost. It might thus decrease illness among staff members or even add to their span of life (a thing in which it may not be interested under the rigid enforcement of retirement at age 65). Even the retirement policy might be examined in connection with the state of health and mental ability of emeriti over the last decade. It may be that the University is losing the services of distinguished men a few years too soon. All of these things could be done on a group basis with returns far in excess of cash outlays. To the members of the staff they would constitute significant increases in real wages.

[…]

Source: University of Chicago Library. Department of Special Collections. Office of the President. Hutchins Administration Records. Box73, Folder “Economics Department, ‘Post-war Plans,’ Simeon E. Leland, 1945” pp. 30-36.

Image Source: Portrait of Simeon E. Leland. University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-03716, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. Image colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

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Columbia Economists Salaries

Columbia. Economics Ph.D. alumnus. Frederick C. Mills, 1917

 

There are two principal purposes for this post. The first is to provide the salaries received by Columbia economics Ph.D. (1917) and later professor of economics, Frederick C. Mills, over his academic career. The second purpose is to provide a pair of obituaries for Mills and to insert him into the series “Meet an economics Ph.D. alumnus/a”. 

Fun Fact: “In May 1914, twenty-two-year-old Frederick C. Mills accepted his first job: a two-month mission, authorized by the California Corn mission on Immigration and Housing, to join the itinerant work force in central California and investigate hobo connections with the violent clashes involving the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).” See the transcribed blurb below for the 1992 book based on Mills’ notes and reports from his observer/participant hobo experience.

________________________

Frederick Cecil Mills

(B.L., California, 1914; A.M., 1916; Ph.D., Columbia, 1917)
(born March 24, 1892)

Columbia University Service:

1919    Instructor in Economic, $1,500

1/1/29 Salary increased to $2,200

1920 Assistant Professor of Business Organization, School of Business, $3,000

1922    Salary increased to $3,300

1923    Associate Professor of Business Statistics at $4,500

1925    Salary increased to $5,000

1927    Professor of Statistics at $6,000

1928    Salary increased to $7,500

1931    Change of title — Professor of Economics and Statistics

1937    Salary increased to $9,000

1946    Salary increased to $10,000

1/1/47 Salary increased to $11,000.

1/7/53 Hepburn Professor of Economics at $12,000

Executive Officer of Department of Economics from 7/1/43 to 6/30/46.

Source: Columbia University Archives. Central Files 1890—, Box 396, Folder: “Mills, Frederick Cecil (1/1)”.

________________________

In the Floating Army:
F.C. Mills on Iterant Life in California, 1914.

by Gregory Ray Woirol, Frederick Cecil Mills
University of Illinois Press, 1992.

In the Floating Army chronicles the awakening of social consciousness in a well-educated urban progressive and offers one of the most detailed personal accounts available of itinerant life in California just prior to the United States’ entry into World War I. In May 1914, twenty-two-year-old Frederick C. Mills accepted his first job: a two-month mission, authorized by the California Corn mission on Immigration and Housing, to join the itinerant work force in central California and investigate hobo connections with the violent clashes involving the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Mills set out, self-consciously clad in rags, expecting adventure. What he experienced firsthand, however, appalled and angered him. Using Mills’s daily journal and his reports to the commission, Gregory Woirol follows the young man’s progress. To meet migrant workers and study their employers, Mills took jobs in the orange industry, in a Sierra lumber camp, and on a road-building crew. He slept in ramshackle sheds and fresh-cut haystacks, and he learned to hop a freight with his fellow travelers, despite the railroad guards’ efforts to eject freeloaders. Throughout the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys, he shared meals and boxcars with bitter men forced by a recession to seek menial jobs far from home, footloose men driven by wanderlust to accept only short-term employment, con artists who filled their pockets by less strenuous means, and pathetic wretches endlessly in search of a drink. In the decade before World War I, large numbers of men took to the road, seeking employment whenever and wherever it was offered. California already depended heavily upon seasonal workers to pick citrus fruits and other crops, build roads, and lay railroad tracks. But farmers and businessmen were rarely grateful for this convenient source of labor. They expected seasonal employees to accept squalid housing, inadequate rations and sewage provisions, insulting treatment on the job, and the “bum’s rush” out of town the moment work ended. Itinerant workers were shunned by the citizenry, cheated by employment agencies, and harassed by lawmen for loitering. This “floating army” of hungry, homeless men, assisted by IWW activists, protested these injustices both peaceably and violently. Mills spent several days conversing with IWW members, and he concluded “I have seen, to a very limited degree, some of the workings of the inner circle, the brains of this great army, the organizing force that is trying to tell this army of its strength, trying to teach them how to get their share of the goods of this world. And the message they bring, the message millions of men are listening to, is one of violence, bloodshed, ‘Direct Action’ they call it”.

Source: Book blurb from Google books.

________________________

CU Emeritus Prof. F. Mills Dies Sunday
Was One of Columbia’s Foremost Economists

Frederick C. Mills, Hepburn Professor Emeritus of Economics and one of the nation’s leading economists, died Sunday after a long illness. He was 71.

A memorial service will be held today at 2 p.m. in St. Paul’s Chapel

Dr. Mills retired from the faculty of the Graduate School of Business in 1959. He had been a faculty member since 1919.

In 1953 Professor Mills represented all the Columbia faculties in delivering greetings at the installation of Dr. Grayson Kirk as president of the University. In that same year he was named Barton Hepburn Professor of Economics.

Professor Mills was born in Santa Rosa, Calif. He received his B.A. in 1914 and M.A. in 1916, both from the University of California, Berkeley. He was awarded his doctorate by Columbia in 1917.

Professor Mills was associated with the National Bureau of Economic Research from 1925 to 1953, as a member of the research staff. For the last ten years he has been a member of the board of directors of that group.

He also served as director of the survey of federal statistical agencies for the Hoover Commission. In 1934 he was president of the American Statistical Association and was elected president of the American Economic Association in 1940.

One of his numerous works in the field of economics, “The Behavior of Prices,” was chosen by the Social Science Research Council as the outstanding American contribution to economics since World War I. He received honorary degrees from both the University of California and Columbia. Professor Mills is survived by his widow, the former Dorothy K. Clarke, two sons and a daughter.

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Vol. CVIII, No. 68, 11 February 1964.

________________________

U.C ‘Hobo’ Prof Dies In East

Dr. Frederick C. Mills, 71, who before he became a professor of economics posed as a hobo to gather labor statistics is dead in New York city.

Friends have learned of memorial services Tuesday in the chapel at Columbia University, where he was professor for 40 years until 1959.

In 1947 he received an honorary degree from his alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley, and was honored at a reception by his 1914 class mates. In 1961, Columbia University gave him an honorary degree.

LABOR STUDENT

At U.C, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, honorary scholastic fraternity, he became one of the early day students of labor economics. While doing graduate work he posed as an itinerant laborer to work in hop fields and road camps.

It was on the basis of these investigations into the problems of itinerant labor done under the sponsorship of the Immigration and Housing Division that he was awarded his doctor of philosophy degree at Columbia. It was regarded as “an exciting” thesis.

He had received his masters degree at U.C. in 1961.

His work was not confined to academic halls. He was former president of the American Statistical Association, the American Economic Association, was special agent for the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, 1914-15 and a member of the Bureau of Economic Research from 1924-54.

SANTA ROSA NATIVE

A native of Santa Rosa, he was a graduate of Fremont High School in Oakland and has served overseas with the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I.

Dr. Robert Gordon Sproul, president emeritus of U.C, who was one of his lifetime friends, recalls that at U.C. Dr. Mills was an outstanding soccer player.

He is survived by his widow, Dorothy Clarke Mills; three children, William, Helen and Robert, two brothers, Harold F., and Robert, both of Oakland and two sisters, Mary Mills, of 1163 Ashmont Ave., Oakland, and Mrs. Ethel Smith of Nogales, Ariz.

Source: Oakland Tribune, Feb. 15, 1964, p. 22.

Image Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Vol. CVIII, No. 68, 11 February 1964.

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Columbia Faculty Regulations Salaries

Columbia. Definition of Sub-professorial Ranks, 1966

 

Since universities and their departments are formal organizations with hierarchical structures, from time to time Economics in the Rear-view Mirror digs out and preserves information useful in understanding employment histories of individual academic economists. Today’s post is concerned with the pre- or sub-professorial appointment ranks and comes from a Columbia University document found in the economic department records at the Columbia University archives.

____________________

Revised April 28, 1966

Office of the Secretary
208 Low Memorial Library

DEFINITION OF RANKS:

Lecturer A Lecturer is an officer of mature experience, holding the doctorate or having equivalent special preparation, who is appointed annually to give part- or full-time instruction, and who does not qualify for the title of Adjunct Professor (see 1965 Faculty Handbook, Pages 28-30).

A Lecturer’s salary is generally determined with reference to that of an Assistant Professor and for the academic year 1966-67 should be based on a minimum of $1,250 for a three- or four-point semester course. Prorated variations shall be made for courses of other point values only when there is a substantial difference in the number of teaching hours involved.
Associate An Associate is an officer of mature experience, not a candidate for a higher degree, who is appointed annually because of special competence in a given field to give part- or full-time service and who does not qualify for the title of Lecturer. An Associate may have full responsibility for a course or courses or he may conduct under the supervision of a regular member of the faculty, drill or recitation sections related to courses offered by that member of the faculty.

An Associate’s salary is generally determined with reference to that of an Instructor and for the academic year 1966-67, the salary of an Associate who has full responsibility for a course or courses should be based on a minimum of $1,000 for a three-point semester course. Prorated variations shall be made for course of different point values only when there is a substantial difference in the number of teaching hours involved. The salary of an Associate who, under the supervision of a regular member of the faculty, conducts drill or recitation sections related to courses offered by that member of the faculty, shall be computed for a normal week of 16 hours at the rate of $7.50 per hour.

Note: Associates and Lecturers are not entitled to fringe benefits, including tuition exemption, except by special arrangement recorded in the Office of the Director of Personnel and subject to the rules governing Presidential appointments.

Note: The title of Associate or Lecturer requires a Presidential Appointment.

Preceptor A Preceptor is a full-time candidate for the Ph.D. degree who has completed the course work and preferably the oral examinations for that degree and who is appointed annually, for not more than 3 years (or, in exceptional situations, 12 consecutive courses, not more than two of which shall be given in any one semester), to teach, under the supervision of a regular member of the faculty, one or more courses not to exceed six points a term. Appointment to this rank shall normally be limited to students of outstanding teaching potential. Candidates for the Ph.D. degree who have had suitable teaching experience are eligible for appointment to a Preceptorship before completing the residence requirement.

A Preceptor’s stipend is at the rate of $2,000 per semester. Appointments for less than the full assignment of two courses per semester carry a prorated stipend but do not reduce the tuition exemption benefits of 15 points per term or the equivalent if the appointee is a student in Graduate Faculties.
Teaching
Assistant (I)		 A Teaching Assistant (I) is a full-time candidate for a higher degree who is given an appointment for one or two terms to conduct a section or an elementary or intermediate course under the supervision of a regular member of the faculty. Normally a person in this category, if reappointed for further service, should qualify on the basis of teaching experience as a Preceptor. Although normally for use in the Language Departments, this rank may be used in special cases in other departments.

The compensation for Teaching Assistant I is at the rate of $900 per course per semester. Two-point conversation courses shall be paid at the rate of $600 a course. Tuition exemption is granted up to 15 points a term (or the equivalent if the appointee is a student in Graduate Faculties) for a teaching load of 2 courses and is prorated for a lesser assignment.
Teaching
Assistant (II)		 A Teaching Assistant (II) is a full-time candidate for a higher degree, preferably having completed one year’s residence for that degree, who is appointed for one or more terms, not to exceed four consecutive years, and who is not in charge of a course or courses but who conducts drill or recitation sections related to courses offered by a regular member of the faculty. Although normally for use in the Language Departments, this rank may be used in special cases in other departments.

The compensation for Teaching Assistant II is at the rate of $1,000 per semester for service of 8 or more class hours per week. Tuition exemption is granted up to 15 points per term (or the equivalent if the appointee is a student in Graduate Faculties), both stipend and exemption to be prorated for a lesser assignment.

Note: Assistants who work only in the Language Laboratory will be paid an appropriate hourly rate determined by the Director of the Laboratory.

Teaching
Assistant (S)		 A Teaching Assistant (S) is a full-time candidate for a higher degree in one of the sciences who is appointed annually, for not more than four consecutive years, to conduct recitation, discussion, laboratory or other sections related to courses offered by a regular member of the faculty. Normally for use in the Science Departments, this rank may be used in special cases in other departments.

The compensation for a Teaching Assistant (S) is at the discretion of the department but should range between $2,000 and $2,400 per year. It is prorated on the basis that a full assignment amounts to 15 hours of service per week. Appointments for less than the full assignment do not reduce the tuition exemption benefits of 15 points per term or the equivalent if the appointee is a student in Graduate Faculties.
Graduate
Research
Assistant		 A Graduate Research Assistant is a student who is engaged in research while registered in the University as a candidate for a higher degree. The research must be under the supervision and guidance of a member of the academic staff and must be of a kind which will satisfy academic requirements in connection with the particular degree for which the student is a candidate. In addition, equivalent research must be required of all candidates for the same degree as a condition to receiving the degree.

The compensation for a Graduate Research Assistant is generally at the rate of $250 per month for 20 hours of service a week. Tuition exemption is granted up to 15 points per term or the equivalent if the appointee is a student in Graduate Faculties.

Caution: Consult the memorandum entitled Secretary’s Appointment for Graduate Research Assistants (revised January 17, 1966) from the Office of the Secretary.

Departmental
Research
Assistant
(I or II)		 A Departmental Research Assistant (I or II) is a full-time candidate for a higher degree who is appointed for one or more terms not to exceed four consecutive years, to assist the Department or one of its regular members in research and other academic work.

The stipend of a Departmental Research Assistant I is at the rate of $375 a term for 10 hours of service a week. Tuition exemption is granted up to 15 points a term, or the equivalent if the appointee is a student in Graduate Faculties, —both stipend and tuition exemption to be prorated for a lesser assignment.

The stipend of a Departmental Research Assistant II is at the rate of $550 a term for 10 hours of service a week. No tuition exemption is granted for this rank.
Reader A Reader is a full-time candidate for a higher degree who is appointed for one or more terms, not to exceed four consecutive years, to read and grade papers, take attendance, proctor examinations, and perform other similar functions as may be required by the departmental supervisor of assistants.

A Reader’s stipend ranges from $100 to $300 a term, depending on the estimated number of hours of service. A Reader is entitled to tuition exemption up to 6 points a term or the equivalent if the appointee is a student in Graduate Faculties.

Please refer all questions concerning this Memorandum to:

Mr. John C. Graham
Assistant to the Secretary
213 Low Memorial Library
Extension 2570

 

Source: Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections. Columbia University Department of Economics Collection, Carl Shoup Materials, Box 10, Folder “Columbia University. General”.

Image Source: Low Memorial Library, Columbia University from the Tichnor Brothers Collection, New York Postcards, at the Boston Public Library, Print Department.

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Columbia Economist Market Economists Iowa Salaries

Columbia. Hiring Albert Gailord Hart as visiting professor. Bureaucracy light, 1946

 

Up through the academic year 1945-46, Arthur F. Burns offered the first core economic theory course, Economic Analysis (Economics 153-154), in the Columbia graduate program. The following year, 1946-47, the course was taught by the visiting professor of economics (who would be offered and accepted a regular appointment that same year), Albert G. Hart.

Materials from Hart’s core economic courses in his first year at Columbia have been posted earlier.

This post provides a few brief items regarding Albert G. Hart’s initial Columbia appointment. What I was most struck with is the relative brevity of the documentation expected (demanded) by university administrators for a visiting professor appointment.

________________________

From the budget proposals for 1946-47,
Columbia’s salary structure for economics professors

Actual professorial salary appropriations at Columbia for 1945-46
and proposed for 1946-47

Professors:

Robert M. Haig, Leo Wolman, John Maurice Clark, Harold Hotelling:  $9,000

James Waterhouse Angell, Carter Goodrich, Horace Taylor, Arthur F. Burns, Abraham Wald: $7,500

Associate Professors ranged from $4,500 to $7,500.

Assistant Professors ranged from $3, 500 to $4,000

A vacant professorship: for Hart ($7,500) and a slot proposed for a visiting professor of international economics, also budgeted at $7,500.

________________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York

[New York 27, N.Y.]

FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

March 25, 1946

Dr. Frank D. Fackenthal, Acting President,
Columbia University,
213 Low Memorial Library.

Dear Mr. President:

I am writing to advise you that Dr. Albert Gailord Hart, formerly of Iowa State College, has accepted the invitation of the Department of Economics to serve as Visiting Professor of Economics during the academic year 1946-47. Dr. Hart’s salary for the period will be $7,500, chargeable to the vacant professorship in Economics carried in our budget for the year 1946-47.

I am requesting Professor Evans, chairman of the Committee on Instruction of the faculty of Political Science, to take what steps may be necessary in order that Dr. Hart may have a seat on the Faculty of Political Science during the period of his residence.

A brief statement on Dr. Hart’s education and scholarly background is enclosed.

Sincerely,
[signed] Frederick C. Mills

________________________

ALBERT GAILORD HART

Born in 1909.

A.B., Harvard, 1930; Ph.D., Chicago, 1936.

Sheldon Traveling Fellow, 1930-31.

Spent 1934-35 in London.

Title of Doctoral dissertation: Anticipations, business planning, and the cycle.

Full professor, Iowa State College, Department of Economics, 1944-45.

At present on research staff, Committee on Economic Development.

Major interests: Economic theory, public finance, consumption, business fluctuations.

Publications:

Debts and recovery (Twentieth Century Fund, 1938)
Paying for defense (with E. D. Allen and others). 1941.
The social framework of the American economy. (with J. R. Hicks). 1945.

Lectured in California, 1936, and served at one time as Economic Analyst with the United States Department of the Treasury.

Source:  Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Archives. Central Files 1890-. Box 396, Folder “Mills, Frederick Cecil”.

Image Source:  Columbia University Record, vol. 23, no. 5 (Oct. 3, 1997).

Categories
Chicago Economists Salaries

Chicago. Selected salaries. Hayek visiting, Friedman as associate professor, 1946

 

 

Since economists put much store in the notion of people putting their (own or other people’s) money where their mouths are, Economics in the Rear-view Mirror provides from time to time some historical faculty salaries to shine a little light on where those professors of economics before us stood in the willingness-to-pay of their respective departments and university administrations. In this post we see how the brief visiting professorship of Friedrich Hayek and the tenured associate professorship of Milton Friedman fit into the 1946 salary structure at the Univerity of Chicago’s department of economics.

Note: For his half-quarter service Hayek was offered $2,000 (quoted in a January 23, 1945 note  from the director of the U of Chicago Press to VP E. C. Colwell). I presume the $4,000 figure includes $2,000 compensation from (or on behalf of) Stanford University.

_______________________

Comparison: Selected 1945-46 Chicago Salaries
(and recommendations for 1946-47)

Jacob Viner. $10,000
Frank Knight. $9,000 ($10,000)
S.E. Leland. $9,000 ($9,500 Note: resigned to go to Northwestern)
T.W. Schultz. $9,000 ($9,000)
John U. Nef. $8,000 ($8,000)
Jacob Marschak. $8,000 ($8,500)
Paul H. Douglas. $7,000 ($8,000)
Oscar Lange. ($6,000) ($6,000) on leave 1 Oct 1945 to 30 June 1947
Henry Simons. $6,000 ($6,000)
L. W. Mints. $5,500 ($6,000)
Tjalling Koopmans $5250 ($6,740. Note: new salary effective 1 January 1946)

Source:  “Budget and Appointment Recommendations 1946-47 (December 7, 1945)”

_______________________

Hayek’s Half-Quarter, Spring 1946

 

May 10, 1946

Mr. Robert Redfield Social Sciences
R. G. Gustavson Central Administration

On May 9, 1946 the Board of Trustees approved the following recommendations:

It is recommended that Friedrich A. Hayek be appointed Visiting Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics for the period April 8, 1946 to May 11, 1946. For this service and a similar period of service at Stanford University it is recommended that an honorarium of $4,000 be approved.

cc:
Mr. T. W. Schultz
Mr. L. A. Kimpton)      Salary not mentioned
Mrs. K. Turabian)        Salary not mentioned

 

Board—5/9/46:

It is recommended that Friedrich a. Hayek be appointed Visiting Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics for the period April 8, 1946 to May 11, 1946. For this service and a similar period of service at Stanford University it is recommended that an honorarium of $4,000 be approved.

Form sent to Comptroller—5/13/46

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Milton Friedman’s tenured associate professorship
Effective October, 1946

March 19, 1946

Mr. Robert Redfield Social Sciences
R. G. Gustavson Vice President

On March 28, 1946 the Committee on Instruction and Research approved the following recommendation:

It is recommended that Milton Friedman be appointed Associate Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics on indefinite tenure on a 4E Service basis at an annual salary of $6,000 effective October 1, 1946.

cc:
Mr. T. W. Schultz
Mr. L. A. Kimpton)      Salary not mentioned
Mrs. K. Turabian)        Salary not mentioned

 

I & R. 28 March 1946:

It is recommended that Milton Friedman be appointed Associate Professor in the Department of Economics on indefinite tenure on a 4E service basis at an annual salary of $6,000 effective October 1, 1946.

 

Source: University of Chicago Library. Department of Special Collections. Office of the President. Hutchins Administration Records. Box 284. Folder “Economics, 1943-1947”.

Image Source: National Portrait Gallery. Photographs Collection. NPG x187289. Friedrich August von Hayek by Walter Stoneman, half-plate glass negative, June 1945. The portrait has been cropped to fit the format of this webpage.
Creative Commons License Creative Commons license. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Categories
Columbia Salaries

Columbia. Major increase in salaries for instructional staff announced, 1928

 

Several interesting aspects to this post: (1) there was a major across-the-board increase in the salary scale at Columbia University in 1928; (2) the salary scale was not differentiated according to faculties or departments; (3) E.R.A. Seligman’s salary was at the top of the full professor scale.

Pro-tip:  Clicking on the “salaries” keyword at the bottom of this post will take you to other artifacts with salary information.

__________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York
President’s Room

April 5, 1928

My dear Professor Seligman

It is with great pleasure and profound satisfactions that I advise you of action taken by the Trustees at their meeting on April 2, 1928, greatly to improve the scale of compensation paid to full-time teachers and administrative officers who are appointed directly by the Trustees of Columbia University. This action, effective from July 1, 1928, affects every member of the teaching and administrative staff on full-time service, 450 in number, with two exceptions,–first, those who have heretofore, and as exceptional cases, been advanced in the manner now made general for their group; and, second, those who, by the provisions of the Budget for 1928-29 as just adopted, have been just now, through promotion or advancement in salary, brought up to the present minimum level of the group to which they belong. The salaries of this latter class, 32 in number, will naturally be increased to the new minimum scale in the next or following years, as may be found practicable.

By the terms of the new salary scale, the full Professor will receive a normal minimum salary of $7,500 instead of $6,000 as heretofore, and there will be groups at $9,000, at $10,000, and at $12,000, to which, for special reasons or under exceptional circumstances, individuals may be from time to time advanced or appointed.

The Associate Professor will receive a normal minimum salary of $5,000, instead of $4,500 as heretofore, and there will be a group at $6,000, to which, for special reasons or under exceptional circumstances, individuals may be from time to time advanced or appointed.

The Assistant Professor will receive a normal minimum salary of $3,600, instead of $3,000 as heretofore, and there will be groups at $4,000, at $4,500, and at $5,000, to which, for special reasons or under exceptional circumstances, individuals may be from time to time advanced or appointed.

The Instructor will receive a normal minimum salary of $2,400, instead of $2,000 as heretofore, with advancement in subsequent years, if reappointed, to $2,700 and $3,000.

Fourteen officers of administration will receive additional compensations amounting in all to $9,500 annually; and seventeen members of the Library Staff will receive additional compensations amounting in all to $5,300 annually.

The compensation paid for service in the Summer Session or in University Extension is not to be increased because of the changes now made in the general salary schedule. Officers who accept Summer Session or University Extension service do so voluntarily, and the present stipends are as large as the resources of the University will permit.

I congratulate the entire University staff upon this most important action by the Trustees, which will do so much to make more comfortable and more satisfying the conditions of academic life and service at Columbia.

I have particular pleasure in advising you that your salary from July 1, 1928 has been fixed in the Budget as amended at $12,000.

With cordial regards,

I am,

Faithfully yours,

[signed] Nicholas Murray Butler
President

Professor E. R. A. Seligman

__________________

Response by E.R.A. Seligman
Carbon copy

April 11, 1928

President Nicholas Murray Butler,
Columbia University.

My dear Mr. President:

I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter of April 5th. I need not say with what appreciation the news has been received among all my colleagues and I want to thank you very warmly also on my own behalf for what constitutes a notable step forward in the history of higher education.

When this is coupled with what you told me the other day, it will certainly be a landmark in university history.

What we must now try to do is to insist upon the highest possible standard in the quality of the scholars connected with Columbia.

            Respectfully yours,

[unsigned copy: E.R.A. Seligman]

 

Source:  Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections. Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman Collection, Box 37, containing “Box 100: Columbia 1924-30”.

Image Source: Art and Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. (1913). Library Columbia University, New York City. Retrieved from http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e2-8bad-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

 

Categories
Columbia Economist Market Salaries Teaching

Columbia. Due to exploding graduate economics enrollments, Stigler hired as visiting professor, 1946

 

 

The graduate economics courses at Columbia University were swamped by registrations one year after the end of the Second World War. Over 160 students were registered for the two graduate economic theory courses offered by A.G. Hart and William S. Vickrey. The executive officer of the economics department, Carter Goodrich, requested the central university allow the department to hire a visitor to ease the burden on Hart and Vickrey. That victory won with the visiting appointment for George Stigler (then a professor at Brown), Goodrich next pushed for an increase in the general budget for teaching assistants as well as for hiring Dorothy Fox assist him in his U.S. economic history class.

______________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Faculty of Political Science

September 30, 1946

Dr. Frank D. Fackenthal
Acting President, Columbia University
Low Memorial Library

Dear Mr. President:

The extremely heavy enrollment for the graduate work in economics raises serious questions for the future staffing of the Economics Department. I should very much appreciate the opportunity to discuss these with you when the final figures are in, and when we can assess the situation more fully.

Meanwhile, however, there is one question on which emergency action at once seems essential. We advise the great majority of our students to take a general, systematic course in economic theory or economic analysis. We offer this year two such courses: Economics 153-4, given by Prof. A.G. Hart; and Economics 159-60, given by Mr. William S. Vickrey. Prof. Hart and Mr. Vickrey have between them over one hundred and sixty students registered. The work in these courses cannot be given on a mass lecture basis in a way that would meet the standards of any first-rate institution. It would not serve the purpose for which the Department intends it if there were not at least some degree of individual instruction.

I wish, therefore, to request an additional man to take one section of this basic course. I should like authority to approach Prof. Arthur Smithies, who taught Economic Theory at the University of Michigan, but who is at present in the Bureau of the Budget, at Washington. The proposal would be that the class should meet for two hours one day a week. I suggest $2500 for the year as the appropriate compensation. If preferred, $500 of this might properly be described as traveling expenses.

The money is available in the present budget, partly from the salary allotted for the professor of international economics on which only a half-time appointment was made for the present year, and from the money available for the unfilled position on economic history. Both these salaries, I should add, will be needed next year.

I should be most grateful if you would give me a decision on this at once, since the step must be taken immediately if it is to bring effective relief.

Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Carter Goodrich

CG:jg

______________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Faculty of Political Science

October 14, 1946

Dr. Frank D. Fackenthal
213 Low Memorial Library.

Dear Mr. President:

This time the report is not wholly negative. Following our conversation of Thursday afternoon, I invited Prof. George J. Stigler, of Brown University, to come to help us in the emergency situation in Economic Theory. Prof. Stigler has agreed to come for the first semester, but is not as yet prepared to commit himself for the entire year. I am therefore enclosing a form for his appointment for the Winter Session on the terms agreed. The salary for the first semester is available from the unused portion of the salary of Professor A.F. Burns.

I hope that we may be able to persuade Prof. Stigler to continue the work throughout the year. If not, there is a possibility that Prof. Smithies may be able to come for the second semester.

Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Carter Goodrich

______________________

[Carbon Copy]

October 18, 1946

Professor Carter Goodrich
Fayerweather

Dear Professor Goodrich

I have your letter of October 14 in regard to the appointment of Stigler as Visiting Professor and will see that the appointment goes through the next meeting of the Trustees.

Maybe I had better point out that there is no money available in Prof. Burns’ position. In addition to his own half pay, the salaries of Vickrey ($2000) and Alexander ($1700) have already charged against that. However, we will make the appointment against the balance remaining in the vacant professorship.

Very truly yours

Frank D. Fackenthal
Acting President

VS

______________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Faculty of Political Science

October 22, 1946

Dr. Frank D. Fackenthal, Acting President,
213 Low Memorial Library.

Dear Mr. President:

I very much appreciate your action on the Stigler appointment.

The second paragraph of your letter of October 18 puzzled me, since I had never heard of Alexander. We have tracked the matter down and it appears to be an appointment in Contemporary Civilization, chargeable to a budget of Dean Carman’s. It should not be a charge on the Department of Economics.

Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Carter Goodrich
Executive Officer, Department of Economics.

______________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Faculty of Political Science

October 24, 1946

Dr. Frank D. Fackenthal, Acting President,
213 Low Memorial Library,
Columbia University

Dear Mr. President:

In my letter of September 30th I spoke of the problems raised for the Economics Department by the extremely heavy enrollment in the graduate school. Now that the final enrollment is in, I wish to recommend two further measures, in addition to the emergency adjustment in Theory which you have been good enough to authorize. The total registration in the graduate courses borne on the budget of the Department of Economics for this session is double that for the Spring Session of 1946, which in turn was very much larger than that for the Winter Session of 1945. In 22 courses last spring there were 788 registrations; in 24 courses this session there are 1578. 7 of these courses have enrollments of more than 100 students (Angell, 112; A. R. Burns, 127, 153; Bergson, 142; Goodrich, 141; Nurkse, 130; Wolman, 140.)

To meet this situation I request, first, that the appropriation for Assistance be raised from $1,000-$1,500. Prof. Taylor estimates the needs of the College department, which has in the past used the greater part of the Assistance fund, as $500. Professors Angell, Bergson, A.R. Burns, Nurkse, and Wolman have all asked this year for reading assistance and will certainly need it in these courses.

Second, I request the appointment of Mrs. Dorothy G. Fox as an assistant in Economics to aid in my own course Economic history of the United States, so that a part of the time may be given to discussion in sections of a reasonable size. Mrs. Fox is at present an instructor in Economic principles in University Extension. I propose a salary of $700 for the academic year.

Money for these adjustments may be taken, if necessary, from what remains in the salary allotted to the vacant professorship. I should add, however, that these adjustments are made necessary solely by the extraordinary enrollment and that making them would not in any way diminish the long-run needs of the Department.

Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Carter Goodrich
Executive Officer of the Department of Economics.

______________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Faculty of Political Science

January 15, 1947

Dr. Frank D. Fackenthal, Acting President,
Columbia University

Dear Mr. President:

I beg to request the appointment of Dr. Moses Abramovitz as Visiting Lecturer in Economics for the Spring Session, at a compensation of $1,000. This is a further adjustment to meet the emergency situation in economic theory. As indicated in my letter of October 14th, 1946, Professor Stigler, of Brown University, agreed to come for the first semester, but was not prepared to commit himself for the entire year. He has informed us, much to our regret, that he cannot continue and I am therefore proposing a substitute. Dr. Abramovitz is one of the very best of the recent Ph.D.’s in this Department and holds a responsible research position with the National Bureau of Economic Research. He taught the same course in this Department during 1940-1941 and 1941-1942.

The total compensation for Professor Stigler, as you recall, was $1,250, of which $250 was counted as traveling expenses. The $1,000 requested for Dr. Abramovitz is available, $500 from the unused portion of the salary of Professor Arthur F. Burns and $500 from the funds for the vacant professorship.

I am enclosing the form for Dr. Abramovitz’ appointment and I very much hope you will be able to make it.

Respectfully yours,
[signed]
Carter Goodrich
Executive Officer, Department of Economics.

 

Source:  Columbia University Archives. Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Central Files 1890-. Box 406, Folder “Goodrich, Carter. 1/1”.

Image Source: Low Memorial Library, Columbia University from the Tichnor Brothers Collection, New York Postcards, at the Boston Public Library, Print Department.

Categories
Economists Harvard Radical Salaries

Harvard. Economics Ph.D. alumnus. Not hired as a teaching assistant. W. H. Crook, 1928

 

The meat of the following post is found in the correspondence regarding a one year appointment of a Harvard graduate student in 1922 as Thomas Nixon Carver’s assistant for Economics 8 (Principles of Sociology). Wilfrid Harris Crook’s appointment was shot down by the Harvard Corporation over the express positive recommendation of the department chairman (who happened to be Thomas Nixon Carver himself). There were two economics faculty members (unnamed) who voted against hiring Crook, and one suspects that one or both had raised red flags of pacifism and socialism in their dissent high enough for President Lowell to have seen them. I am simply amazed that any candidate for a humble teaching assistantship would have been vetted by the President of the university himself.

For those interested in what had become of Crook, who eventually went on to complete his Ph.D. in 1928, I have assembled a few snippits of biographical and career data. His irregular employment is consistent with both a difficult personality (“In a world of teetotalers Crook would be a conscientious drunkard”) and the challenges posed by dual academic careers.

Small world:  The above image of Crook’s calling card from his time as Assistant Minister, Central Congregational Church, Boston, 1916-1918 was found in the online material from the W.E.B. Du Bois archive.

_______________________

Scraps of information from the life and career of Wilfrid Harris Crook

Born: May 16, 1888 in Swinton, Lancastershire, England.

Married: Lucy Mildred Cluck, Sept. 1 1917 in New London, New Hampshire. (still together in 1930 according to the U.S. Census)
Son: Sydney L. Crook (b. ca. 1919)

Married: Evelyn Buchan Sept 8 1931 in Glens Falls New York. She was a professor at the University of Maine at the time according to the Bangor Maine City Directory, 1931.

1929-30. Bowdoin College Catalogue. Listed as Assistant Professor of Economics and Sociology. Besides listed with the other members of the department of economics and sociology, he is listed for the three semester courses in sociology (Principles of Sociology, Applied Sociology, and Social Evolution of the Hebrew People)

1930-31. Bowdoin College Catalogue. Listed as Associate Professor of Economics and Sociology on leave of absence.

1933-34 Boston City Directory: Wilfrid H. Crook and Evelyn B.  instr. Simmons College (see item below)

1935 Haverhill, Mass. City Directory.  Crook Wilfrid H. inst. Bradford Junior College.

1935 Wilkes-Barre, Penn. City directory. Wilfrid H. Crook and Evelyn B. instr. Bucknell University Jr. College.

Bucknell Junior College, Wilkes-Barre, Pa. (1942, Draft registration of Wilfrid H. Crook)

Wilfrid H. Crook born 16 May 1888, Social Security Claim date 30 April 1956.

Died April 16, 1963 in DeKalb, Georgia

Two details about Wilfrid H. Crook’s second wife Evelyn Buchan

From a UP report, Sept. 17 1946, Albany in the Dunkirk Evening Observer (Dunkirk, New York)

“Three professors of sociology join the faculty today of the Associated Colleges of upper New York. They are Mrs. Evelyn Buchan Crook, who has taught at five other universities….The associated college [is] located at Sampson…”

From The 1962 Yearbook of the Westminster Schools, Atlanta, Georgia (Vol. V):  Mrs Wilfrid Harris Crook, Testing and Counseling, Ph.B. and M.A., University of Chicago. (Note how in 1962 women still lost both their first and last names upon marriage!)

_______________________

Economics Ph.D. awarded 1928

Wilfrid Harris Crook, A.B. (Univ. of Oxford, England) 1911, A.M. (ibid.) 1914. Subject, Economics. Special Field, Labor Problems. Thesis, “The General Strike in Theory and Practice to 1914.” Assistant Professor of Economics and Sociology, Bowdoin College.

Source:  Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1927-28, p. 113.

_______________________

Instructorship at Simmons College

Wilfrid Harris Crook, Special Instructor in Economics. B.A., Lincoln College, Oxford, 1911; M.A., 1914; Hibbert Scholar, 1915; Harvard, 1914-16, 1921-1923; Ph.D., 1928.

Formerly: Assistant Minister, Central Congregational Church, Boston, 1916-1918; Editorial work, New York, 1919-1920; Special Instructor in Economics, 1922-1923; Assistant and Associate Professor of Economics and Sociology, Bowdoin College, 1923-1931.

Publications: The General Strike, 1931; articles in Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, The Survey. The Nation.

Source: 1933 Microcosm, Simmons College Yearbook, p. 35.

_______________________

The case made against hiring Wilfrid Harris Crook as a teaching assistant at Harvard in 1922…in spite of the departmental recommendation to hire him

Economics department’s recommendation to hire

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Oct. 23, 1922

The Division Department of Economics respectfully recommends to the Corporation the appointment of W. H. Crook [as] Assistant [in] Economics for one year from Sept. 1, 1922 at a salary of $400. Courses in which instruction or assistance is to be given: Economics 8.

Remarks:  See letter to President Lowell.

[Signed|
T. N. Carver
Chairman.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Letter to President Lowell from the economics department chairman

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Cambridge, Massachusetts
October 24, 1922

Dear President Lowell:

At a meeting of the Department of Economics held Monday afternoon, October 23, it was voted to recommend to the President and Fellows that W. H. Crook be appointed Assistant for one year in Economics 8, and that C. N. Burrows be appointed as Assistant for the first half-year in Economics 9a.

Sincerely yours,

[signed]
T. N. Carver
Chairman

President A. Lawrence Lowell

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Elaboration by economics department chairman regarding the case of W. H. Crook

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Cambridge, Massachusetts
October 24, 1922

Dear President Lowell:

The case of W. H. Crook was pretty thoroly [sic] discussed at the Department Meeting before the vote was taken. The vote stood eight in favor of the recommendation, two against it, the Chairman not voting.

When I talked with you about the case several days ago you stated that if new information could be furnished regarding the case you would take it into consideration. I asked Dean Sperry to write you what he knew about it. Mr. Crook has given me some documents, including his certificate of discharge from military service on the ground of physical unfitness, his correspondence with the Hibbert Trustees, etc. The information is pretty well summarized in the enclosed copy of a letter which he wrote to Professor Bullock in 1921. I think that this correspondence with the Hibbert Trustees and other documents which he submits support every important statement which he makes in the letter. It appears that his anti-war attitude in this country was by no means so positive as it has been made out to be. Being a pacifist he could not do otherwise than urge peaceful mediation on the part of this country rather than actual war. After war was declared he seems to have quite accepted the situation, did not take advantage either of the fact that he was an ordained minister or a conscientious objector to evade the draft. In fact I think he showed a much finer spirit in refusing to enjoy the luxuries of peace in war time than many of our people who pass as respectable.

I should be glad to hand you the other correspondence which Mr. Crook gave me if you care to be bothered with them. Their only value, however, would be to verify what Mr. Crook has said.

Very sincerely,
[signed]
T. N. Carver
Chairman

President A. Lawrence Lowell

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

President Lowell’s letter to Harvard Corporation member John F. Moors

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
CAMBRIDGE

PRESIDENT’S OFFICE

October 25, 1922

Dear John:

Would you mind looking over these papers and sending them back to me as soon as you can, for it is a question that will come up at the next Corporation meeting. Professor Bullock evidently thinks Crook a rather blatant propagandist for socialism and pacifism; and of course this is one of the cases where we shall be somewhat blamed whatever we do. But while protecting free speech on the part of our professors, I do not think that we are obliged to appoint to the instructing staff men who would bring us into unnecessary criticism, or people of a quarrelsome disposition. This last impression of Crook I derive rather strongly from the enclosed letter from Dean Sperry. This is a question of balance of judgment. What do you think?

Very truly yours,
[stamp] A. Lawrence Lowell

John F. Moors, Esq.
111 Devonshire Street
Boston, Mass.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Theology Dean’s assessment of Wilfrid Harris Crook

The Theological School in Harvard University
Andover Hall, Francis Avenue
Cambridge, Mass.

Office of the Dean

October 20, 1922

My dear President Lowell:

Professor Carver tells me that the name of Wilfrid Harris Crook has been suggested as an assistant in one of the economics courses, and that objection to this appointment has been filed with you, on the ground that he was an ‘English draft dodger’, etc. Professor Carver asks me to send you a word on the matter.

I know Mr. Crook well. He was my assistant for two or three years in Central Church, Boston.

The basic fact about Crook is this. He comes of a long line of English dissenters and Non-conformists. And the ‘dissidence of dissent’ is bred in his blood and bone. He had been, for years, a more or less doctrinaire pacifist of the Tolstoian type.

But he is not a ‘draft dodger’ in any correct sense of the word. In the spring of 1914 he had received from the Hibbert Trustees and Manchester College, Oxford, their Hibbert Fellowship for foreign study. He had intended to take the academic year 1914-15 doing economics in Germany, and was caught there at the outbreak of the War.

He came back at once to England, and with the consent of the Hibbert Trustees transferred his fellowship to this country and to Harvard. The draft was not then in force in England. Whether he ought to have stayed and volunteered, or faced the ultimate consequences of not volunteering is another matter.

He has been in this country ever since. He remained a ‘doctrinaire pacifist’ all through the War. His native non-conformity, with its anti-imperialist heckling temper was not understood here at all. His best friends deplored a good many of his utterances, and found it hard to bear with him at times. While he made a good many enemies who did not hesitate to go far beyond the facts and accuse him of actual political irregularities of which he was technically quite innocent.

The whole case of the man was put in a nutshell by the Chairman of my Parish Committee, who once said that, “In a world of teetotalers Crook would be a conscientious drunkard.”

It seemed impossible for him to do much useful work in our Parish in Boston after we had entered the War and he eventually dropped out. His opinions on War in general were abhorrent to most of our people at that time. But I never heard anything but words of respect and affection for the man’s character, his personal charm and his transparent integrity.

He must have been under suspicion here during the War. But so far as I know he never ran foul of any actual trouble with the authorities.

He was, I think, in process of becoming an American citizen during the war, and was called for the draft but dismissed at once for a shockingly bad heart, the result of rheumatic fever.

My impression is that his citizenship has since been granted, and that if there had been any technical case against him it would have appeared at that time and would have held that matter up permanently.

Perhaps he ought to have gone back to England, perhaps he ought to have felt differently here. All that is debatable ground.

Technically, I think his case stands clear. As to the basic fact of the man himself, it is the problem of the rather remote idealism of the Tolstoian type.

He has been plugging along latterly for the Ph.D. degree in economics. My latest impressions of him are of a man somewhat sobered and reluctantly making concessions to the stubborn world of hard facts, which his dissenting heredity and romantic temperament incline him to regard as given over to Satan.

Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Willard L. Sperry

President A. Lawrence Lowell
Harvard University

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

President Lowell’s response to Theology Dean

October 24, 1922

Dear Mr Sperry:

Thank you very much for your letter about Mr Crook. He does not seem to be the kind of person the Corporation would like to appoint as a member of the instructing staff.

I asked Mr. Foote to inform me about the denominational relations of the members of the Faculty, and I think you would be interested in his answer, which you need not return. It shows very clearly that the School has not been Unitarian; but I am not sure that the publicity would do us any good.

Very truly yours,
[stamp] A. Lawrence Lowell

Rev. Willard L. Sperry
Andover Hall
Cambridge

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Harvard Corporation member John F. Moors responds to President Lowell

MOORS & CABOT
111 Devonshire Street
Boston, Mass.
Telephone Main 8170

Members
Boston Stock Exchange

John F. Moors
C. Lee Todd
Francis E. Smith
William Ferguson
Willis W. Clark

October 26, 1922.

President A. Lawrence Lowell,
Harvard University,
Cambridge, Mass.

Dear Lawrence:

I have read and return herewith the documents received from you today about Mr. Crook.

Let me say at the outset that it speaks well for Carver, who himself analyzes socialism, to advocate a man of the Crook type, for Carver, we know, is himself so far from being a socialist that it would be very easy for him to feel prejudiced.

Our bookkeeper in this office is a prominent member of Mr. Sperry’s church. I have today asked him about Crook and find that, though he likes him personally and respects him as a man, he has pronounced abhorrence of his views and says that in thus speaking he feels sure that he reflects a vast majority of the congregation.

I have heard Crook speak and have addressed audiences in the Chapel of the Central Congregational church at which Crook as assistant minister has been present. His voice is soft, he is gentlemanly, he has no brilliant sparks such as Laski threw forth, he is, I think, very much as Sperry describes him, a natural dissenter of the outwardly rather meek but inwardly recalcitrant type. He would, I imagine, present socialism sympathetically rather than analytically.

While his letter to Bullock indicates that Bullock took a rough attitude toward him, which may have led him to feel sore, it seems to me that the first paragraph and the next to the last paragraph in his letter lack self-restraint; and I though this before I read the rest of the correspondence, my eye having caught this letter first.

Having seen Crook mostly in the pleasant relationship of a speaker being introduced (as speakers are introduced!) I should have said before I read the correspondence that I liked him. I suppose too that no one can really teach anything who does not heartily believe in it; and Carver’s reasonableness is the thing which most impressed me in the whole correspondence. I should like to back him up in it. But while all great men are cranks, all cranks are not great men. Judgment seems to lie in distinguishing which is the great man without the crankiness, which the crank without the greatness. I am inclined to think that Crook would get us into hot water without our being sure, when we were in it, that we were right.

Yours very truly,
signed]
John F. Moors

Dict. J.F.M.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Department Chair T. N. Carver senses one or two other persons with a “vindictive disposition” are the source of Crook’s troubles

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Cambridge, Massachusetts
November 6, 1922

Dear President Lowell:

I have your letter of October 31 informing me that the Corporation did not think wise to appoint Mr. Crook as Assistant in Economics 8. The reason given must be based on information that was not in the possession of the Chairman of the Department. You state that it was not on account of his opinions but on account of his disposition, and that the Corporation felt that it would be a mistake to introduce into the teaching staff a man who has shown so much capacity for getting into trouble. So far as any information has come to the Chairman of the Department, Mr. Crook has had no trouble since early in the war on account of his own disposition. Such trouble as he has had seems to be due entirely to the vindictive disposition of one or two other persons.

I think that Mr. Crook would like to have the carbon copy of his letter to Professor Bullock which I enclosed with my letter to you of recent date. Will you kindly have some one return it to me and I will hand it to Mr. Crook?

Very sincerely,
[signed]
T. N Carver

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Wilfrid Harris Crook’s request to speak with Harvard Corporation member John F. Moors

20a Prescott Street
Cambridge, Mass.
November 9, 1922

Mr. John F. Moors
32 Mr. Vernon St.
Boston, Mass.

Dear Mr. Moors

Professor Carver of Harvard, in a letter of Nov. 6th, writes me as follows: The Department of Economics recommended your appointment as assistant in Economics 8, but the President and Fellows, as you learned the other day when in my office, declined to make the appointment. Inasmuch as all appointments have to be made by the President and Fellows, there is nothing more that the Department can do about it.”

As you are the only member of the Corporation with whom I am to any degree acquainted, I take the liberty of inquiring, for my own satisfaction, what were the reasons for the attitude of the Fellows to my appointment as Professor Carver’s assistant. I am studying for a Ph.D. at Harvard, and am meanwhile acting as Special Instructor of Economics at Simmons College. The decision is, therefore, one that causes me some degree of regret and of interest as to its cause.

I wonder if you will give me the privilege of a brief personal talk with you on this matter? If so, I should be glad to meet your convenience any afternoon next week, or any hour on Tuesday or Saturday, on which days I have no class.

Faithfully yours,
[signed]
Wilfrid Harris Crook

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Harvard Corporation member J. F. Moors declines with “kindest personal feelings”

MOORS & CABOT
111 Devonshire Street, Boston

November 10, 1922.

Rev. Wilfrid Harris Crook,
20a Prescott St.
Cambridge, Mass.

Dear Mr. Crook:

I wish I could give you the information which you ask for. It is, however, essential that the views of the individual members of the Board on which I serve and the nature of our discussions should not be divulged except through the President of the University.

I have sent him your letter.

With the kindest personal feelings, I am,

Yours very truly,

 

Dict. J.F.M.

 

Source:   Harvard University Archives. President Lowell’s Papers 1922-1925, Box 189, Folder 188 (1922-25).

Image Source: Crook, Wilfrid Harris, b. 1888. W. Harris Crook, 1915?. W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries

 

Categories
Harvard Salaries

Harvard. Salary of the economics department secretary, Miss A. Pauline Ham, 1911-12

 

In an earlier post we encountered Martha P. Robinson, the Harvard secretary responsible for the economics tutorial program from 1935 to at least 1954. Today we have a short post that documents the salary of Miss Annie Pauline Ham that was covered by the economics department, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and the central university budget at Harvard.

Two salary numbers for comparison:  Allyn A.Young’s visiting position at Harvard (1910-11) was budgeted for $4,000 (Dec. 10, 1910 letter of Taussig to President Lowell in President Lowell’s Papers, 1909-1914. Harvard University Archives, Box 15, Folder 413). Thus Miss Hamm was paid one fifth of what Allyn A. Young was paid. Incidentally,  John Bates Clark salary that year at Columbia was $5,000. 

________________

Annie Pauline Ham
Vital Data

Born 20 March 1881 (Shapleigh, York County, Maine), died 1 July 1968 (Lenox, Berkshire County, Massachusetts.  Father: Marcus L Ham and Mother: Martha Ann Ham.  Buried at the Riverside Cemetery in Springvale , York County, Maine.

Source: Find A Grave Webpage for Annie Pauline Ham.

________________

Census data

1910. 27 year old Pauline Ham (born in Maine and working as a teacher; incidentally, a fellow roomer was Harry N. Gardiner, a Smith college professor of psychology and philosophy), at 23 Crafts Ave. Northampton (Ward 1) Massachusetts.

1920. 38 year old, single Annie P. Ham (born in Maine and working as a secretary in the university) was one of four roomers  living at the home of John J. and Nattie M. Ritchie, 29 Mail Street, Cambridge (Ward 8), Massachusetts.

________________

Letter to Taussig

June 26, 1911

My dear Professor Taussig:—

Confirming our telephone conversation of this morning, I wish to state that Mr. Blake has agreed to the apportionment of Miss A. P. Ham’s salary, provided she is retained.

Salary of Miss Ham to be $65 per month, or $780 a year, of which three months, or $195, is chargeable to the President’s office, and nine months, or $585, is chargeable to the Department of Economics–$485 goes to the account of the Department appropriation, and $100 goes to the account of the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

I am also enclosing the letter from Chancellor Strong about which I spoke to you.

Very sincerely,
CCL
Secretary

 

Professor F.W. Taussig
Enclosure

________________

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics

Cambridge, Massachusetts
August 3, 1912.

Dear Mr. Hunnewell:

I believe there is a misunderstanding regarding the salary for the current year (that is, for the fiscal year beginning July 1st of Miss A. Pauline Ham, who acts as secretary for the Department of Economics, and is during the summer months also at work in University Hall. When making out the Department budget in May, I arranged with Mr. Blake that Miss Ham’s salary should be $70, and arranged also for the mode in which her total salary for the year 1912-’13 was to be apportioned between the Department of Economics, the staff in University Hall, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Unfortunately, my memoranda regarding this matter are not on file at my house in Cambridge and I cannot get at them. I trust enough is on record in your office to authorize the settlement of Miss Ham’s salary at the revised figure, namely $70 per month. If you wish to see the papers which are in […]

 

Source:  Harvard University Archives. President Lowell’s Papers, 1909-1914. Box 15, Folder 413 (1909-14).

Categories
Berkeley Carnegie Institute of Technology Columbia Economist Market Modigliani Ohio State Salaries

Columbia. Economist salaries below market. Examples of Modigliani and James W. Ford, 1956

 

The following letter provides interesting testimony to Franco Modigliani‘s market value in 1956 as well as how A. G. Hart hoped to offer Modigliani’s other offers together with an offer extended to James William Ford (Harvard economics Ph.D., 1954) by Ohio State University as evidential ammunition in the economics department plea for a significant increase in Columbia University salaries to remain competitive.

_________________

COPY

[Stamp: Office of the Vice President, July 13, 1956, Columbia University]

July 8, 1956

Prof. Carl S. Shoup
Executive Officer
Department of Economics
503 Fayerweather

Dear Professor Shoup:

This is to give further background on the scrap of evidence about the adequacy of Columbia University salary scales that is offered by Franco Modigliani’s comment on our offer of a visiting professorship for next year. As your note points out, the interpretation hinges largely on his professional status.

Against our offer of $10,000 for a one-year visit, as I read Modigliani’s letter with its gentlemanly absence of specific figures, he was offered $12,000 for a year as visiting professor at Harvard and at least $12,500 as permanent professor at Berkeley, and settled for (I take it) $12,000 to stay at Carnegie Tech. His age is 37 or 38, I believe, and he has been professor for two or three years at Carnegie Tech.

Modigliani’s reputation is established, but not very wide. He has published several distinguished articles, and has important work in progress; but his only book publication to date has been a collaboration with Neisser. Furthermore, he has lacked the backing of the major graduate schools (being an immigrant with a doctorate from the New School), and has thus tended to be undervalued by the market. Besides, he suffered a setback because he had the misfortune to be in the thick of the fracas at the University of Illinois. When working conditions there became intolerable, he felt such an unconditional urge to leave that he sacrificed the bargaining power of his tenure there as associate professor. At the time he went to Carnegie Tech, he could not command a tenure appointment but went on a term arrangement which however it took them only a few months to convert to an appointment with tenure.

In short, here is the kind of man we will want when next we have an appointment to make—and undervalued rather than overvalued on the national economics market—and our salary scale is at least $2500 below what he can command at good centers with about our teaching load, and with a lower cost of living. Another interesting comparison has come in meanwhile. James Ford, whom we let go from a Columbia instructorship to be assistant professor at Vanderbilt, writes that he has refused a post at Ohio State as associate professor at $8100. This is for a man of about the caliber and stage of development we think suitable for an assistant professorship at Columbia. We must be a good $1500 below the market at that level, if this is evidence.

Very truly yours,
/s/ Albert Gailord Hart
Professor of Economics

Source:  Columbia University Archives, Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Central Files, 1890-, Box 400. Folder “Shoup, Carl Sumner (2/2); 1/1956—6/1948”.

Image Source: Franco Modigliani, from MIT Museum website.