Robert Franz Foerster (b. July 8, 1883; d. July 29, 1941) was the son of the American composer Adolph Martin Foerster, earned his BA from Harvard a year ahead of his class and went on at Harvard to earn a Ph.D. in economics on the topic of Italian emigration. The first twenty years of his career following his undergraduate education is sketched in the following four notes he submitted to the secretary of the Class of 1906. Foerster went on to become Professor of Industrial Relations at Princeton University. Some details about his undergraduate years can be gleaned from the Secretary’s First Report Harvard College Class of 1906, Cambridge, Crimson Printing, June 1907.
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1912
ROBERT FRANZ FOERSTER
Graduating in 1905, as of 1906, I spent in Europe fourteen months of 1905-1906, travelling in England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Holland and Belgium. For four months I was in Italy, for five in Berlin, where I took courses at the university. In the fall of 1906 I returned to Harvard, where for three years I was in the Graduate School. In 1909 I received the degree of Ph.D. in economics, my thesis dealing with Italian emigration. From 1908-1909 I was an assistant at Harvard in social ethics, from 1909-1911 an instructor, and since 1911 an instructor on the Faculty. I am chairman of the Immigration Committee of the American Unitarian Association and director of the Social Research Council of Boston. The latter has recently been affiliated with the department of social ethics, with offices in Emerson Hall, Cambridge. Books or plays of my authorship: “A Statistical Survey of Italian Emigration,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, November, 1908; “The French Old Age Insurance Law of 1910,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, August, 1910; “The British National Insurance Act,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, February, 1912; reviews and translations in economic journals; bibliographies in “A Guide to Reading in Social Ethics and Allied Subjects,” Harvard University, 1910. Member: American Economic Association, American Statistical Association, American Association for Labor Legislation. Business address: Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Present residence: 71 Perkins Hall, Cambridge, Mass.
Source: Secretary’s Second Report Harvard College Class of 1906, Cambridge, Crimson Printing, June 1912, pp. 99-100.
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1916
ROBERT FRANZ FOERSTER
Born Pittsburgh, Pa., July 8, 1883.
Parents Adolph Martin Foerster, Henrietta Margaret Reineman.
School Central High School, Pittsburgh, Pa.
Years in College 1902-1905.
Degrees A.B., 1905 (1906); Ph.D., 1909.
Occupation University Professor.
Address (home) 11 Shady Hill Square, Cambridge, Mass. (business) Emerson Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
I have continued to teach in the department of social ethics at Harvard. In 1913 I was promoted to an assistant professorship. Upon the retirement of Dr. Peabody, early in that year, Professor Ford and I took over the conduct of the course “Social Ethics 1” which our predecessor had for many years given as “Philosophy 5″—the first course of a department, established in 1906, which has continued to grow both in courses and in student enrolments. In 1912 I was appointed by Governor Foss chairman of a commission to study the question of the dependency of widows’ families. Our report was presented to the legislature in January of the following year. In the spring, after a considerable fight, a measure providing a system of “mothers’ aid,” based partly on the commission’s bill, was enacted. During the summer of 1913, in an absence from America of six or seven weeks, I journeyed, via the Azores, Madeira, and Algiers, to Sicily, Calabria, and Basilicata, regions in which I had become interested in a study of Italian emigration; I returned via the Tyrol, Switzerland, and France. The summer of 1914 I spent largely in Cambridge, doing a piece of work for Dr. Mackenzie King in connection with the department of industrial relations newly established by the Rockefeller Foundation. In these several years I have maintained connections with various social and philanthropic enterprises. In 1915 I became engaged to Miss Lilian Hillyer Smith, Radcliffe 1915, of Forest Hills, Mass, subsequently of Princeton, N. J. After our marriage, we expect to settle, in the fall, in No. 11 Shady Hill Square, Cambridge. I have written: Report (majority) of the Massachusetts Commission on the Support of Dependent Minor Children of Widowed Mothers (Boston, 1913). Member: Colonial Club, Cambridge, Harvard Club of Boston, American Economic Association, American Association for Labor Legislation, American Statistical Association.
Source: Secretary’s Third Report Harvard College Class of 1906, Cambridge, Crimson Printing, 1916, pp. 139-40.
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1921
ROBERT FRANZ FOERSTER
Address: (home) 11 Shady Hill Sq., Cambridge, Mass.
Occupation: University Professor.
Married: Lilian Hillyer Smith, Princeton, N. J., June 5, 1916.
I continued after the War broke out to teach at Harvard, and by the Spring of 1918 was the only person left teaching in my department. I had been overworking for a considerable period and suffered a breakdown in April, 1918. Though I continued to teach for the remainder of the Spring Term, I found it impossible to return to the University in the Fall. The Fall and Winter were devoted to the effort to regain my health and included a considerable stay in Johns Hopkins Hospital. At the end of March, 1919 I returned to Harvard to teach. Last Summer (1920) I went abroad with my wife, returning in much sounder health than when I went away, and to-day I regard myself as quite restored to health. (But what an absurdly common thing it is for professor folk at some stage or other to go to pieces!) Late in 1919 I published a comprehensive volume on Italian emigration, which had been on my hands for some years and which I had virtually completed, except for seeing through the press, by the Spring of 1918.
Have written: “The Italian Emigration of our Times” (558 pages). (Published by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., December, 1919.)
Member: American Economic Association; American Association for Labor Legislation; American Statistical Association.
Source: Harvard College Class of 1906, Fifteenth Anniversary Report (No. 4), Cambridge, Massachusetts: University Press, 1921, pp. 112-113.
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1926
ROBERT FRANZ FOERSTER
Address: 4 College Rd., Princeton, N. J.
Occupation: Economist.
Married: Lilian Hillyer Smith, Princeton, N. J., June 5, 1916.
Children: Lilian Egleston, born April 16, 1922; Margaret Dorothea, born October 15, 1924.
In the summer of 1920 I went with my wife to Europe, visiting scenes familiar and unfamiliar. In the late summer of the following year I entered upon various field studies dealing with labor relationships, first in Colorado and subsequently in Western Pennsylvania, and chiefly concerned with the coal industry.
In the summer of 1922 I was appointed to a professorship of economics in Princeton University, where my duties were essentially those of a director of the Industrial Relations Section, an organization interested mainly in constructive action in the field of industrial relations. My immediate duty here was the assembling of documentary information on labor relationships. I have had unusual opportunities for contact with employers and with representatives of the employed and have traveled considerably to places where interesting activities were being carried on.
During my free time in recent years I have undertaken advisory or research work in labor subjects. The results of one such employment, undertaken for the Secretary of Labor, were published in 1925 under the title “The Racial Problems Involved in Immigration from Latin America and the West Indies to the United States,” and brought a variety of interesting reactions.
Have written: “The Italian Emigration of our Times” (558 pages). (Published by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., December, 1919.) Various articles; and a report, “The Racial Conditions Involved in Immigration from Latin America and the West Indies to the United States,” published by the Department of Labor, Washington, 1925.
Member: American Economic Association; American Statistical Association; American Association for Labor Legislation; American Management Association; Advisory Committee, Washington Branch Internal Labor Office; Committee on Immigration of Social Science Research Council; Committee on Personnel Management of American Management Association.
Source: Harvard College Class of 1906, Twentieth Anniversary Report (No. 5), Cambridge, Massachusetts: University Press, 1926, pp. 95-96.
Image Source: Assistant Professor of Social Ethics, Robert Franz Foerster in Harvard Album 1920.