The economics Ph.D. alumnus featured in today’s post was awarded his doctorate in 1929 by the University of Chicago. George Rogers Taylor had a long and distinguished career at Amherst College as a leading U.S. economic historian. He was the author of the history of economics at Amherst College from 1832 to 1932 transcribed for the previous post.
Taylor was an early pioneer in the interdisciplinary field of American Studies.
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George Rogers Taylor
Life and Career
1895. Born June 15 in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin.
1914. Graduates from Wayland Academy at Beaver Dam.
Fun Fact: The school was named after Francis Wayland (1796-1865), Baptist minister, economist, and president of Brown University.
1916. Graduates from Oshkosh Normal School. “He earned his way through college by waiting on tables, mowing lawns and tending furnaces. He credits the late Prof. F. R. Clow for his life-long interest in economics, Prof. M. H. Small for getting him a job as a steward in a boarding club where he received his meals and Prof. J. O. Frank, whose furnace he tended.” Source: The Oshkosh Northwestern, May 10, 1971, p. 3.
1916-17. Principal of an Blair School with ca. five teachers at Waukesha, Wisconsin. He taught seventh grade and half of the sixth grade.
The original school was established in 1847, rebuilt at new locations in 1889 and 1966 and finally closed in June 2019. Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (June 4, 2019).
1917-19. Petty Officer in the U.S. Navy, aviation operations. Assigned to wireless telephony.
1919. Summer. Worked at the post office at Beaver Dam.
1919-20. Taught eighth grade for one year at Wayland Academy.
1921. Ph.B., University of Chicago. Attended two summer school sessions plus an academic year to complete degree requirements in one year. College credit was given for some of his Navy service.
Taylor had received a four year scholarship which covered his tuition for his Chicago training. There was a long-time close connection between the Wayland Academy and Chicago. The main prize at Wayland Academy’s commencement was a four year scholarship to Chicago.
1921-22. Taught at University of Iowa. Taylor was asked by Frank Knight to go there as an instructor for a year.
Taught public speaking for part of spring term at a Hammond, Indiana high school at some point during graduate school.
1923. Taught economics at Earlham College for a semester.
1924. August 23 marries Mary Leanah Henderson in Mooresville, Indiana. He met her when she was a senior at Earlham College.
1923-24. Instructor, University of Chicago.
1924. Joins the faculty of Amherst College at the rank of instructor, coming along with Professor Paul Douglas.
1927. Promotion to assistant professor, Amherst College.
1929. Ph.D. University of Chicago.
1929. Promotion to associate professor, Amherst College.
1929-30. First semester visiting professorship at Mount Holyoke.
1930. Visiting professor at Smith College.
1930-31. Research for the International Committee on Price History.
1930. “Prices in the Mississippi Valley Preceding the War of 1812,” Journal of Economic and Business History, Vol. III, pp. 148-163.
1931. “Agrarian discontent in the Mississippi valley preceding the war of 1812,” (subject of the doctoral dissertation) Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 39, No. 4 (August 1931), pp. 471-505.
1932. “Wholesale Commodity Prices at Charleston, S.C.,” Journal of Economic and Business History, (two parts). Vol. IV (February and August).
1932. Arrived August 3 at the port of New York aboard the S.S. Europa that sailed from Southampton.
1934-35. Second semester. Visiting professor of economics at Mount Holyoke.
1937. (with Louis Morton Hacker and Rudolf Modley). The United States: A Graphic History. New York: Modern Age Books, Inc.
1938. Senior agricultural economist, U.S. Department of Agriculture.
1939. (with Edward Albertus and Lawrence Z. Waugh). Internal Barriers to Trade in Farm Products. Department of Commerce. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
1939. M.A. (hon.) Amherst College.
1939. Promotion to professor of economics, Amherst College.
1940. Spring semester. Visiting professor, Mount Holyoke College.
1940. “State Laws which Limit Competition in Agricultural Products,” Journal of Farm Economics Vol. 22, No. 1 (February).
1941-46. Office of Price Administration and War Production Board.
1943. Adviser on price and control and rationing to the Republic of Paraguay.
1948-68. General editor of the Amherst College’s American studies program book series “Problems in American Civilization” (D.C. Heath Co.). This was a part of Amherst’s “New Curriculum” introduced in 1947. Amherst was a pioneer of the field of American Studies.
1949. Jackson versus Biddle; the struggle over the second Bank of the United States. Boston: D. C. Heath and Company.
1950. Hamilton and the National Debt. Boston: D. C. Heath and Company.
1951. The Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860. Vol. IV of The Economic History of the United States.Rinehart and Co.
1952. Visiting Professor, Columbia University.
1953. The Great Tariff Debate, 1820 to 1830. Boston: D. C. Heath and Company.
1955-60. Editor of Journal of Economic History.
1956. The Turner Thesis concerning the Role of the frontier in American History. Rev. ed. Boston: D. C. Heath and Company.
1956. (with co-author Irene Neu). The American railroad network, 1861-1890. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
1956-58. President of the American Studies Association.
1959-62. Chairman of the Council on Research in Economic History.
1959. (with Ethel Hoover) Statement at Hearings before the Joint Economic Committee: Employment, Growth and Price Levels, 86th Congress, 1st Session, April 9, 1959.
1960. “Railroad Investment before the Civil War: Comment,” Trends in the American Economy in the Nineteenth Century, National Bureau of Economic Research, Studies in Income and Wealth, Vol. XXIV.
1961. Summer. Visiting professor at the University of Hawaii.
1962-64. President of the Economic History Association.
1963. The War of 1812: Past Justifications and Present Interpretations. Boston: D. C. Heath and Company.
1963. Visiting Professor, Tokyo University.
1964. Presidential address before the Economic History Association annual meeting “American Economic Growth before 1840: An Exploratory Essay,” Journal of Economic History, Vol. XXIV (December, 1964), 427-444.
1965. Retires from Amherst College.
1964. March 12. Public lecture at the University of Delaware published in “The National Economy Before and After the Civil War,” in David T. Gilchrist and David Lewis eds., Economic Change in the Civil War Era (Greenville, Delaware, 1965).
1966. “The Beginnings of Mass Transportation in Urban America, Part I,” The Smithsonian Journal of History. Part I (Summer); Part II (Autumn).
1965-70. Senior resident scholar at the Eleutherian Mills Historical Library (Wilmington, Delaware). Taught graduate seminars in economic history at the University of Delaware.
1967. “American Urban Growth Preceding the Railway Age,”Journal of Economic History, Vol. XXVII (September).
1969. Introduction to the reprint of Introduction and Early Development of the American Cotton Textile Industry to 1860 (1863) by Samuel Batchelder. New York: Harper & Row.
1969. American Economic History before 1860 (Goldentree Bibliographies in American History, ed. Arthur S. Link) compiled by George Rogers Taylor. New York: Appleton Century Croft.
1983. Died April 11 in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Sources:
Obituary, Daily Hampshire Gazette (Northampton, Massachusetts), April 12, 1983, p. 4.
Scheiber, Harry N., and Stephen Salsbury. “Reflections on George Rogers Taylor’s ‘The Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860’: A Twenty-Five Year Retrospect.” The Business History Review, vol. 51, no. 1, 1977, pp. 79–89.
May 19, 1978 interview of George Rogers Taylor from the Amherst College Archives & Special Collections, Oral History Project.
Hugh G. J. Aitken’s memorial note in The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 44, No. 2, pp. 626-629.
Image Source: Amherst College, The Olio 1930, p. 45.