“European Industry and Commerce in the Nineteenth Century” was a course open to both undergraduate and graduate students at Harvard taught by Edwin F. Gay. The course announcement, enrollment figures, and the final examination questions come from three different sources, all of which are available on-line. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting corresponding material from the twenty economics courses offered during the 1914-15 year for which the final examination questions had been printed and subsequently published.
The outline and reading assignments for this course in 1910-11 has been transcribed earlier here at Economics in the Rear-View Mirror.
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Course Announcement
Economics 2a1. European Industry and Commerce in the Nineteenth Century. Half-course (first half-year). Tu., Th., Sat., at 9.
Professor Gay, assisted by —.
Course 2a undertakes to present the general outlines of the economic history of western Europe since the Industrial Revolution. Such topics a the following will be discussed: the economic aspects of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic régime, the Stein-Hardenberg reforms, the Zoll-Verein, Cobden and free trade in England, labor legislation and social reform, nationalism and the recrudescence of protectionism, railways and waterways, the effects of transoceanic competition, the rise of industrial Germany.
Since attention will be directed in this course to those phases of the subject which are related to the economic history of the United States, it may be taken usefully before Economics 2b. [p. 63.]
Source: Division of History, Government, and Economics 1914-15. Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. XI, No. 1, Part 14 (May 19, 1914).
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Course Enrollment
[Economics] 2a 1hf. Professor Gay, assisted by Mr. A. H. Cole.—European Industry and Commerce in the Nineteenth Century.
Total 88: 21 Graduates, 18 Seniors, 27 Juniors, 16 Sophomores, 6 Others.
Source: Report of the President of Harvard College, 1914-15, p. 59.
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Final Examination
ECONOMICS 2a1
- Comment on the following statement by a recent writer:
“The conjunction of three main factors was necessary to this radical transformation [the Industrial Revolution] — (a) surplus capital, (b) surplus labor, (c) a new market. Whenever these major quantities come together, the lesser conditions, such as invention, better communications, and a favorable state policy, will soon appear.” - Compare the attitude of the countries in the northern half of the Zollverein with those in the southern half as to governmental policy regarding railroads and the customs tariff. What is the connection between these policies and the agricultural situation in those regions?
- What ground is there for the assertions that the land of the English landlord has been, since 1880, “a millstone about his neck,” and that he “has been treated as if the land did not belong to him”?
- Outline the case for and against government ownership of railroads in Germany.
- Compare the forms of industrial combination, trade unionism, and cooperation in England and Germany.
- Was the situation of British trade “ominous” during the decade 1900-1910? Give the grounds for your view.
Source: Harvard University Examinations. Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, History of Science, Government, Economics, Philosophy, Psychology, Social Ethics, Education, Fine Arts, Music in Harvard College. June 1915, p. 45.
Image Source: Edwin F. Gay in Harvard Class Album, 1915.