Harvard economics professor William Zebina Ripley suffered at least two serious “nervous breakdowns” during his career that are documented by contemporary acounts. To those accounts I have added the 1964 obituary of his companion in the 1927 taxicab accident that led to Ripley’s hospitalization. Grace Sharp Harper appears to have been a very well-known mover-and-shaker in the greater social philanthropic communities of her time. I remain agnostic about whether a romantic liaison was involved and I simply find her biography (as that of Ripley for that matter) quite remarkable and worth keeping in this post. Perhaps someone familiar with journalists’ code-words from the Roaring ‘Twenties can let us know whether there is more to the ill-fated taxicab ride than a pair of VIPs sharing a taxi to an event to network with yet other VIPs.
_______________________
Ripley’s First Nervous Breakdown
(1927)
Professor William Z. Ripley of Harvard injured in New York automobile accident. Cuts around the face, slight concussion. His taxicab with Miss Grace Harper of N.Y., “Professor Ripley’s companion”. [see obituary below for Grace Harper]
Source: The Boston Globe, January 20, 1927, p. 1.
“Thrown from a taxicab struck by another automobile, William Z. Ripley, 60, professor of economics at Harvard university, late last night suffered a fractured skull. His companion, Miss Grace Harper, 50, of 109 Waverly pl., suffered from shock. Both were taken to New York hospital. The collision occurred at 5th ave. and 24th st.”
Source: Daily News (New York City), January 20, 1927, p. 3.
“Prof. William Z. Ripley of the Harvard School of Business Administration, is in New York Hospital today with lacerations of the skull sustained in an automobile accident last night. The injuries were not so severe as was at first believed, and his condition was not considered serious, it was said at the hospital. The Harvard professor…was riding in a taxi down Fifth avenue when a rented automobile coming from the opposite direction struck the taxi. Prof. Ripley was thrown against one of the cab’s folding seats with great force. Miss Grace Harper, who was in the taxi with the professor, was cut and bruised, but refused to go to the hospital.”
Source: The Standard Union (Brooklyn, New York) January 20, 1927, p. 2.
“Miss Grace Harper, of 109 Waverly pl., Manhattan, who was accompanying him to a social function at the Waldorf-Astoria, Manhattan, was treated for shock.”
Source: Times Union (Brooklyn, New York), January 20, 1927, p. 33.
“Professor Ripley, accompanied by Miss Grace Harper, secretary to the State Commission for the Blind, was on his way to Hotel Waldorf to attend a social function…”
Source: Star-Gazette (Elmira, NY) January 20, 1927, p. 7.
“Professor William Z. Ripley will be unable to resume active teaching of economics at Harvard until next year, it is learned from members of his family. He was injured in an automobile accident more than a year ago and suffered a nervous breakdown. He has been recuperating at a sanitarium in Connecticut. It is expected that Professor Ripley will leave the sanitarium within two months, and will probably take an extended trip through the South and West.”
Source: New York Times. September 25, 1927, p. 76.
“Three years ago he spoke plain words about Wall Street. An automobile crash and a nervous breakdown followed…Now Professor Ripley is preparing to return to his Harvard classes next February.”
Source: S.T. Williamson, “William Z. Ripley — And Some Others” New York Times (December 29, 1929), p. 134.
“The New England Joint Board for Sanitary Control, when it meets today will have as chairman George W. Coleman, who was named for this position after the retirement of Prof William Z. Ripley, who it is said, was forced to give up the position because of illness.”
Source: The Boston Globe, May 3, 1928, p. 17.
_______________________
Ripley’s Second Nervous Breakdown
(1932)
PROF W. Z. RIPLEY OF HARVARD ILL
Noted Expert on Railroads, Now In Holland, Believed Victim of Overwork—Wife SailsWilliam Z. Ripley, Nathaniel Ropes professor of political economy at Harvard and famous throughout the country as an outstanding authority on railroads and railway problems, is seriously Ill In Holland. Latest information at Harvard is to the effect that he is confined to his bed, on physician’s orders, for an indefinite period. His wife left Boston only a week or so ago to join her husband in Holland.
The fact that Prof Ripley was ill has been guarded carefully by Harvard authorities, the first hint being contained in an announcement from the lecture platform at the first meeting of the course known as Economics 4, that he would be unable to give any lectures in the course.
Others to Give Course
This course, given for many years as a half course by Prof Ripley, is on the subject of corporations, a field in which he has done much of his work. This year the course has been united with a half course on railroads to form a full course under the title „Monopolistic Industries and Their Control.“ When the course was mapped out at the end of last year, it had been planned for Prof Ripley to devote considerable time to lecturing, but now the work will be performed entirely by Profs Edward S. Mason and Edward H. Chamberlin.
Prof Ripley went abroad at the end of the academic year last Summer. He was to have returned this Fall, but during his travels, he became gravely ill. Some years ago, he suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of an accident in a New York taxicab. His present condition is attributed largely to overwork.
During the last half of the academic year, 1931-32, Prof Ripley left Cambridge almost every week and sometimes twice a week to make trips to New York, Washington, and Chicago to confer with business leaders and Governmental authorities. Much of his attention was devoted to pending plans for trunk line consolidations. He acted special examiner on proposed railroad consolidations for the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1921.
Work Hailed by Coolidge
Always a practical economist, and conspicuous among the faculty in economics at Harvard for his disdain of economic theorizing. Prof Ripley’s most celebrated work of recent years was “Main Street and Wall Street,” published in 1929, during the height if the speculative boom. This work, exposing the methods of corporations, created a sensation throughout the country. Before the work was published in book form, parts of it appeared in magazines, and at that time Calvin Coolidge urged every American to read them.
One of the most interesting comments on Prof Ripley’s career is the fact that he began his studies as an anthropologist. His degrees include those of SB, PhD, LittD and LLD. As an undergraduate he was a student of science, and later published a book, “The Races and Cultures of Europe,” which is still recognized as a leading textbook in anthropology. Later he became interested in railroads and turned his efforts from anthropology to economics. He is one the “old guard” in the Harvard Department of Economics, ranking with the men who made Harvard famous for economic studies, such as Prof F. W. Taussig, Thomas N. Carver and Edwin F. Gay.
Prof Ripley’s home is in Newton.
Source: The Boston Globe, October 4, 1932, pp. 1,3.
PROF RIPLEY RESIGNS CHAIR AT HARVARD
Noted Authority on Finance, Railroads
William Zebina Ripley, Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy at Harvard, known as well for his scourging of Wall Street stock jobbers as for his work as a Government expert in labor and railroads, has resigned his professorship at Harvard to become professor emeritus. The resignation of Prof Ripley, who has been seriously ill in Holland since last Summer, will take effect on March 1, 1933. He is beyond the retiring age at Harvard, being more than 65 years old.
Prof Ripley’s best-known book is “Main Street and Wall Street,” an expose of corporation finance as practiced in the United States, published in 1927. While various chapters of the book were appearing in current magazines the then President Coolidge advised every American to read them. Other volumes by Prof Ripley include “The Financial History of Virginia,” 1890; “The Races of Europe,” 1900 [Supplement: A Selected Bibliography of the Anthropology and Ethnology of Europe, 1899]; “Trusts, Pools and Corporations,” 1905; “Railway Problems,” 1907; “Railroads—Rates and Regulation,” 1912; “Railroads—Finance and Organization,” 1914. The book, “Races of Europe,” is still a standard text in anthropology, a field in which Prof Ripley spent his early study before turning to economics.
Expert in Many Fields
Prof Ripley is known as an expert in many fields, ranging from anthropology to transportation. Besides his books in these fields he has served on several national boards and commissions. In 1918 he was administrator of labor standards for the War Department, and the following two years he was chairman of the National Adjustment Commission Of the United States Shipping Board. In 1916 he was the expert appointed to President Wilson’s Eight-Hour Commission, spending months under actual working conditions gathering material for his report.
From 1920 to 1923 he served with the Interstate Commerce Commission, acting in 1921 as special examiner on the consolidation of railroads in the United States. In 1917 he became a director of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad and served on that board for a number of years.
His illness was caused by an accident in a taxicab in New York some three years ago, after which he suffered a nervous breakdown. He became ill again this Summer and has been recuperating in Holland since. A tall man, with white hair and a distinguished white beard, he was a well-known figure in the Harvard Yard during his teaching days there.
At Harvard Since 1901
Prof Ripley was born in Medford in 1890 he graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He obtained his master’s degree at Columbia University in 1892, and his doctor’s degree at the same institution in the following year. In 1895, he returned to M.I.T., serving as professor of economics of six years and, during the same period, he was also lecturer on sociology at Columbia. Since 1901, he has been a member of the teaching staff at Harvard University. In 1902 he was appointed professor political economy. Since 1911, he has been Nathaniel Ropes professor political economy. In 1898, and again in 1900 and 1901, Prof Ripley served as vice president of the American Economics Association and in December of 1932 he was elected president of the association.
Source: The Boston Globe, February 10, 1933, p. 5.
Image Source: William Z. Ripley, Harvard Class Album, 1934.
_______________________
Grace Sharp Harper, 82, Dead: Led State Commission for Blind
NY Times obituary, September 27, 1964
Miss Grace Sharp Harper of 220 East 73d Street, who retired in 1951 as director of the Commission for the Blind of the State Department of Social Work, died yesterday at the Hospital for Special Surgery. Her age was 82.
Since her retirement Miss Harper had continued with the commission as a member of its medical advisory committee. A much-decorated heroine of World War I, in which she served in France with the American Red Cross, she also held several civilian awards for her work for the blind.
Miss Harper began her career as a staff assistant of the Boston Children’s Aid Society. Later she was executive secretary of the Massachusetts Infant Asylum and of the Kings Chapel Committee for the Handicapped of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Appointed director of the hospital’s medical special service department, she lectured on case work education at Harvard University and then came to this city to conduct a course in social case work at Teachers College, Columbia University.
She volunteered for overseas duty in the war, and was named chief of American Red Cross rehabilitation for French, Belgian and other disable soldiers. Later Miss Harper was chief of the Red Cross bureau for the re-education of mutilated soldiers. She returned home as a member of the Inter-Allied Commission on War Cripples, wearing three gold stars awarded to her by various foreign governments.
Miss Harper became executive secretary of the Commission for the Blind in 1919, and was made an assistant commissioner of the division during the 1930’s. She was named director not long thereafter.
Miss Harper held the Migel Award of the American Foundation for the Bind and the Leslie Dana Award of the St. Louis Society for the Blind.
Source: New York Times, Feb. 27, 1964, p. 31.
From Grace Sharp Harper’s Passport Application
July 5, 1918
From Grace Sharp Harper’s Passport Application
November 16, 1922
Born at Chicago, Illinois on May 12, 1881.
