The founding head of the University of Chicago’s Department of Political Economy, James Laurence Laughlin, was originally trained at Harvard where he taught for five years. He moved on to Cornell for two years before going to Chicago. During Laughlin’s early years at Harvard, one of his economics students was Theodore Roosevelt (Harvard Class of 1880, better known as the 26th President of the United States of America). Roosevelt was eight years younger than Laughlin and died in 1919. Five years later Laughlin published an essay on “Roosevelt at Harvard”. An original typed draft of the essay can be found in his papers at the Library of Congress. While Laughlin spends much of the essay going through Roosevelt’s transcript with interesting comments and observations on Harvard personalities of the late 1870’s, I have only included those parts that deal with the economic education of the future President.
I have not yet compared this draft to the published version, but I have corrected obvious typing errors and inserted some material from what appears to be an earlier draft of page 9 of the typed manuscript.
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From “Roosevelt’s College Days”
by James Laurence Laughlin
…As a freshman Roosevelt entered the university in 1876 just as a new régime inaugurated by President Eliot had got fairly into working order. The new captain had already introduced the elective system and had enlisted some forward-looking members of his faculty such as C. C. Langdell, Charles F. Dunbar, and Henry Adams. The potentialities of this situation are so interesting that one might be tempted to linger too long on them. They involved epoch-making changes for the nation in education for law, economics, and history. The appointment of Dean Langdell in the Law School brought in the case-system, revolutionized the teaching of law throughout the country, and attracted the attention of foreign jurists. With the creation of the first professorship in economics at Harvard for Dunbar in 1871 there then began the modern teaching in economics which has had so remarkable a development for the last thirty years in all the universities of the country. While Gurney and Torrey were princes of the blood in History, Henry Adams came as the paladin of new adventure. He had the dash and spirit of the crusader. He held the first seminar for research in history in this country. He tied up American history not only with British institutions but also with those of our Teutonic forebears. Such men as these added a new touch to the temple of learning by which Harvard had already won distinction an on which she is till receiving credit….
…For the first time [Roosevelt’s] mind turned from the languages and natural history to those of public interest with which his future was to be so much occupied [during his junior year, 1878-79]. He selected a course in Political Economy then known as Philosophy 6. Although Professor Dunbar had been appointed in 1871, there was no separate department of Political Economy until 1879-80. Previously economics had been briefly taught by Francis Bowen, the professor of philosophy, and for a time the new subject found shelter in his department. Roosevelt’s first introduction to that field was announced in the catalogue as: “Political Economy. –J. S. Mill’s Political Economy.—Financial Legislation of the United States. Prof. Dunbar and Dr. Laughlin.” Professor Dunbar gave lectures on the public finance of the Civil War in which he was a master. To me fell the duty of conducting recitation and discussions on Mill’s original two-volume treatise. [Laughlin’s own Abridged version of Mill’s Principles] Inasmuch as the work was exacting, Roosevelt’s mark for the year of 89 was high.…
[In his senior year, 1879-80…] In Political Economy he studied with Professor Dunbar Cairnes’s Leading Principles of Political Economy, McLeod’s Elements of Banking, and Bastiat’s Harmonies Économiques in which he got 78.
During his junior year, in order to widen the interest of my students in applying economics to public questions, I suggested to a group of them the advantage of forming a Finance Club for the purpose of inviting outside economists to speak at the university. Besides Roosevelt there were George Hoadley, J. G.Thorp, A. B. Hart, F. J. Ranlett, W. H. Rhett, Josiah Quincy and Charles G. Washburn. The plan evidently appealed to Roosevelt, for he writes to his sister in the autumn of 1878 as follows:
‘I have begun studying fairly hard now, and shall keep it up until Christmas. I am afraid I shall not be able to come home for Thanksgiving; I really have my hands full, especially now that my Political Economy Professor wishes me to start a Finance Club, which would be very interesting indeed, and would do us all a great deal would of good, but which will also take up a great deal of time”.
The President of the club was J. G. Thorp (of 1879) and the Secretary was A. B. Hart. The meetings were held in the rooms of the department on the first floor of University Hall, on the window sills of which along side the wide front steps was placed the “shingle” of the club as a means of announcing a meeting to members. That “shingle” is now hanging on the wall of Professor Hart’s office in the Widener Library.
The lecturers invited by the club stirred up a wide interest in economics. Few of us had known William G. Sumner personally. The vigor of his writing had given us the impression of a very austere personality. At Yale a student who had been invited to supper with Sumner’s family came bursting into his chum’s room late on a wintry night, shouting: “Fellows, Billy Sumner is kind to his family.” Any such impression was dispelled by a very interesting lecture [on “The Relation of Legislation to Money”] marked by Sumner’s usual felicity of style. It was a pleasure, also, to come into contact with the unusually agreeable personality of Gen. Francis A. Walker, another lecturer [on “The Principles of Taxation”]. His experience in the army with Hancock, his administrative ability, his work on the census, and his suggestive economic mind created a desire to know him. Likewise, in the case of Edward Atkinson we came to know an active business man who without academic training had attempted to formulate economic theory. [He had a genius for lucid exposition, so that his lectures on “American Competition with Europe”, “Capital and Labor”, “Railways”, and “The National Banking System”, attracted many students. Later, the one lecture which stirred up the most permanent interest was that by Col. T. W. Higginson on “Young Men in Politics”, which led to the formation of a Harvard Union after the example of the one at Oxford. Another result of the new interest in economics was the action of the university authorities in bringing Hugh McCulloch and Simon Newcomb each to give a course of three lectures.]
[Of especial value was the writing and discussion of papers by the members themselves. Early in the first year five papers had been read. In February, 1879, one of them was by Robert Bacon and Theodore Roosevelt on “Taxation.”]
There was an interesting meeting of the Finance Club on the occasion of the presence of Henry George. I can recall the small group of members gathered in University Hall to whom George spoke informally. After his talk there was a general discussion, in which the students freely exchanged arguments with the speaker. They had had a fairly good grind in the fundamental principles of economics. As a consequence, George did not show to advantage in the give-and-take. It is an interesting coincidence that only seven years after (in 1886) Theodore Roosevelt was the Republican candidate for Mayor of new York city against Henry George, the Labor candidate, and Abram S. Hewitt, the candidate of the United Democracy.
There was a reason why George did not fare well in this discussion. It is a curious fact that George’s system was almost always regarded as a problem in taxation, and in the discussion of it attention was only directed to the matter of so taxing land value that there would be no object in holding land in private property ownership. Strangely enough, the course of the arguments by which he reached this conclusion, the very supports on which his system of taxation rested, were generally disregarded, or what is more likely were little understood. To this day there is no adequate study of the logic of “Progress and Poverty”. It does not seem to be realized that his plan of taxation depended on the dictum that payment of rent was a subtraction from wages, and that abolition of rent for land would remove the existence of low wages and wipe out poverty. Such an outcome was reached only by granting as proved that payment of interest on capital could be eliminated. This part of this theorizing was extremely weak. if his reasoning was wrong, his system of taxation had no supports.
In the copy of the first edition of “Progress and Poverty” [Link to Fourth Edition, 1881] now lying on my table, I find a request for a review of it from the editor of the International Review as follows:
Jan. 11., 1880
“My dear Laughlin:
About 2pp. on this book, please. I should suppose from glancing at it that it was rubbish. But there may be ideas in it.
Truly yrs.
H.C-Lodge.”
Senator Lodge had ceased to be an instructor in history after 1878-79, and when Roosevelt was a senior he had become editor of the International Review….
…In his junior year I had an interesting conference with [Roosevelt]. He came to me to discuss whether it would be better for him to specialize on natural history or to take more economics. He gave no indication that he was thinking of a public career. My advice was that the country at that time especially needed men trained to think correctly on public questions and that these questions were nine-tenths economic. I can no say, of course, that my advice influenced him, but he did continue his economics in his senior year. Nor could one say that in after life he always thought correctly on economics. in public office, in order to get things done, it is too often supposed that economic considerations must be sacrificed to political expediency. Yet he did not forget his college courses in economics. After he had left the presidency and was contributing editor on the Outlook, when I was in charge of the campaign of education for the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, I had an interview with him in order to secure his support of the measure. On sending in my card, he appeared at the other end of the open floor entirely covered with desks, holding up my card at arm’s length, and shouting: “Where’s the fellow that taught me Political Economy”. In conference, after explaining the measure and asking him for advice how to proceed, he said “Have it associated as little as possible with Aldrich’s name. Have it come up from the small bankers of Florida or Oregon.” Then, as we finished, he added: “I will do all I can to help you. I wish I could do more. I could make a speech on the free coinage of silver; but when you get me into compound differentials and finance”—here his voice rose into his characteristic falsetto—“I am all up in the air.” To which I replied “That does not speak well for your teaching at the university”. “On the contrary, Mr. Laughlin, patting me cordially on the knee, “that was the best course I had at the university”. It was a bit of kindly good fellowship…
Source: Library of Congress, The Papers of James Laurence Laughlin. Box 7, Folder “Roosevelt at Harvard Oct/24” published as J. L. Laughlin, “Roosevelt’s College Days,” American Review of Reviews, October, 1924.
Image Source: Library of Congress, The Papers of James Laurence Laughlin. Box 7, Folder “Roosevelt at Harvard Oct/24”.