Edward Dana Durand taught at Harvard for only two semesters, he also taught at Stanford for three semesters and later at the University of Minnesota for four years. The rest of his long career was in government service. This post adds the final exam questions from his taxation course taught at Harvard..
Bonus material regarding Durand’s biographical record has been added. He was not a big name in the history of economics, but definitely someone who added significantly to historical government economic statistics. His long years as a U.S. Tariff Commissioner also make him of interest to historians of economic policy.
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Papers of Edward Dana Durand
Given his long professional association with Herbert Hoover, it is appropriate that Durand’s papers are kept at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch, Iowa.
Archival Tip: Microfilm MF-65/3. Memoirs of Edward Dana Durand, 1954 (438 pages).
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Edward Dana Durand
Timeline
1871. Born October 18 in Romeo, Michigan. Lived there about eleven years.
Ca. 1882. Family moved to Huron, South Dakota where he graduated from high-school.
Freshman year at Yankton College (South Dakota).
1893. A.B., Oberlin College.
1893. Summer. Stenographer to the Secretary of the World’s Columbian Exposition at Chicago.
1896. Political and municipal legislation in 1895. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 7 (May 1896), p. 411-425.
1896. June, awarded Ph.D. (assistant to J. W. Jenks. Other instructors of Durand: C. H. Hull, Walter F. Willcox) from Cornell University. Thesis: “Finances of New York City.”
1896. Political and municipal legislation in 1896. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 9 (March, 1897), pp. 231-245.
1896-97. Legislative librarian, New York State Library at Albany.
1897. Student, University of Berlin. Quit his studies there to take the job at Stanford.
1898-1899. Assistant Professor of Political Economy and Finance at Stanford University. [added to faculty in spring 1897, “began duty” spring term 1898] Courses taught: elementary economics, practical economic questions (e.g. labor movement, labor legislation, corporations, trusts), economic history, socialism and social control, money and banking, public finance, politics and administration, municipal government.
1898. Political and municipal legislation in 1897. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 11 (March, 1898), pp. 174-190.
1899. E. Dana Durand. “Council Government versus Mayor Government,” Political Science Quarterly. Vol. 15, Nos. 3 and 4.
1899-1902. On leave from Stanford to work in Washington, D.C.
1899-1902. Editor for the federal Industrial Commission that produced a report of nineteen volumes. [ Links to all 19 volumes can be found in the following two catalog pages at hathitrust.org: all but vols. 1 and 10 here; vols. 1 and 10 (and 12 other volumes) found here.]
1900. Durand prepared “Topical digest of evidence” in the Industrial Commission’s Preliminary report on trusts and industrial combinations. (In Vol. I of the Commission’s Reports). One of authors of the “Report on labor legislation” (Vol. 5). Washington: 1900.
1902-03. Taught courses on the labor question, problems of industrial organization and theories and methods of taxation at Harvard in the second term of the 1901-02 academic year (see link immediately following) and in the first term of 1902-03.
Harvard. Exams for labor economics and industrial organization. Durand, 1902
1903. Married Mary Elizabeth Bennett (1871-1943) in New York City on July 15. Three sons and a daughter. (They compiled a Bennett Family History, 1941)
1903. Special Examiner for about four months before being called to the newly created Bureau of Corporations [forerunner of Federal Trade Commission] as Special Examiner.
Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of the Census. Street and Electric Railways 1902. Washington, 1905. Text prepared by T. Commerford and E. Dana Durand.
Report of the Commissioner of Corporations on the Beef Industry. Washington, March 3, 1905.
“As Deputy Commissioner of Corporations he gained experience with the report on the Beef Trust, for which report he was chiefly responsible.” [Garfield report]
1904. Recent tendencies in economic legislation. Yale Review, Vol. 12 (Feb., 1904), pp. 409-428.
1905. The beef industry and the government investigation. American Monthly Review of Reviews, Vol. 31 (Apr., 1905), pp. 464-471.
1907-09. Deputy Commissioner of Corporations.
1907. Report of the Commissioner of Corporations on the Petroleum Industry. Part I, Position of the Standard Oil Company in the Petroleum Industry (May 20, 1907); Part II, Prices and Profits (Aug. 5, 1907).
1909-1913. Director of the Census Bureau (appointed June 16, 1909; resigned June 30, 1913).
1910. Thirteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1910.
1913-1917. Professor of Statistics, taught ‘descriptive’ economics, agricultural economics, and statistics at the University of Minnesota. On leave October 1917-1921.
1915. Published The Trust Problem. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
1915. President of the American Statistical Association.
1915. Assessments of Railroads in North Dakota, Report to the North Dakota Tax Commission.
1916. Bulletins from the Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Minnesota.
Coöperative Livestock Shipping Associations in Minnesota. Bulletin 156, February 1916.
Farmers’ Elevators in Minnesota, 1914-1915 (with J. P. Jensen). Bulletin 164, October 1916.
1917. Bulletins from the Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Minnesota.
Coöperative Creameries and Cheese Factories in Minnesota, 1914 (with Frank Robotic). Bulletin 166, March 1917.
Coöperative Buying by Farmers’ Clubs in Minnesota (with H. B. Price). Bulletin 167, June 1917.
Coöperative Stores in Minnesota, 1914. Bulletin 171, October 1917.
1917-18. Assistant head of the meat division, Food Administration. Charged by a commission merchant of Chicago with settting prices on the behalf of meat packers. Statement before the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, March 21, 1918. (Hearings on Government Control of Meat-Packing Industry) pp. 1661-1676. The agricultural committee refused to press charges after the investigation.
1918-1919. From May 1 through February 15 in England. From February 15 to July 20 in France.
1919. Resigned professorship at Minnesota and leaves the Food Administration position to represent the Hoover relief Commission in Warsaw and advise the Polish Ministry of Food (leaving France July 20).
1921. Arrived in New York on July 21, returning from Poland.
1921. August. Appointed chief of the newly created eastern European division of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce by Secretary Hoover.
1922. Public finance of Poland. Trade Information Bulletin, No. 32 (June 19 1922). Supplement to Commerce Reports published by the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, U. S. Department of Commerce.
1924-30. Chief of the Division of Statistics and Research in the Department of Commerce.
1926. Economic and political effects of governmental interference with the free international movement of raw materials. Paper in International Conciliation, published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Number 226 (January 1927), pp. 25-34. (Reprinted from Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, Vol. 12, No. 1 (July, 1926), pp. 135-144).
1928. November. Headed the American delegation at the 1928 International Conference on Economic Statistics.
1929. Free and dutiable imports of the United States in the calendar year 1927. Trade Information Bulletin, no. 626 (1929).
1930. American Industry and Commerce. Boston: Ginn and Company. Durand identified as “Statistical Assistant to the Secretary of Commerce” on the title page.
1930-35. Chief economist for the Tariff Commission. In October 1930, it was announced that he was to take charge of the commission’s statistical work.
1935 to June 1952. Appointment annouced in December 1935 by FDR to fill the Republican vacancy on the Tariff Commission. Durand replaced John Lee Coulter of North Dakota.
1960. Died January 6 in Washington, D.C.
Sources: K. Pribram, “Edward Dana Durand, 1871-1960,” Revue de l’Institut International de Statistique / Review of the International Statistical Institute, Vol. 28, No. 1/2 (1960), pp. 118-120.
The Outing Magazine, Vol. 54, August 1909, pp. 563-564.
Miscellaneous newspaper reports have been useful in filling a few gaps.
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Course Description
7b2 hf. The Theory and Methods of Taxation, with special reference to local taxation in the United States. Half-course (second half-year).
[NOTE: Listed as omitted in 1902-03 in the announcement of course offerings. However it was indeed offered during the first semester by Durand in 1902-03.]
In this course both the theory and practice of taxation will be studied.
Attention will be given at the outset to the tax systems of England, France, and Germany; and the so-called direct taxes employed in those countries will receive special consideration. After this, the principles of taxation will be examined. This will lead to a study of the position of taxation in the system of economic science, and of such subjects as the classification, the just distribution, and the incidence of taxes. Finally, the existing methods of taxation in the United States will be studied, each tax being treated with reference to its proper place in a rational system of federal, state, and local revenues.
Written work will be required of all students, as well as a systematic course of prescribed reading. Candidates for Honors in Political Science and for the higher degrees will be given the opportunity of preparing theses in substitution for the required written work.
Course 7b is open to students who have taken Economics 1.
Source: Harvard University. Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Division of History and Political Science [Comprising the Departments of History and Government and Economics], 1902-03. Published in The University Publications, New Series, no. 55. June 14, 1902.
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Course Enrollment
Economics 7b. 1hf. Dr. Durand. — The Theory and Methods of Taxation, with special reference to local taxation, in the United States.
Total 21: 3 Gr., 13 Se., 4 Ju., 1 Other.
Source: Harvard University. Annual Report of the President of Harvard College, 1902-03, p. 68.
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Over five years ago Economics in the Rear-View Mirror posted some course materials for Durand’s Economics 7b course.
Harvard. Local taxation. Suggested topics and readings. Durand, 1902
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Final Examination
ECONOMICS 7b
1902-1903
- Compare England and France as regards:
- purpose of customs duties and character of articles taxed;
- character and weight of excise taxation;
- main forms of direct taxation;
- methods of local taxation.
- Discuss the correctness and wisdom of the recent Income Tax decision of the Supreme Court.
- To what extent would the general property tax, if evasion could be prevented, meet the demand that every citizen be taxed according to his ability?
- Mention three ways of adjusting the taxation of mortgages and mortgaged real estate. Which do you think preferable, and why?
- A man living in Massachusetts, with no property there of a tangible character, owns land in New York and stock of a corporation whose property is in New York. (a) To what extent is he and his property now legally taxable by each State? (b) To what extent ought he justly to pay taxes to each State, and what would be a feasible method of adjustment?
- Compare Pennsylvania and Ohio as regards (a) sources of State, as distinguished from local, revenue; (b) method of taxing intangible personal property.
- What would you consider the best method of taxing railroad corporations? Compare this with other methods.
- Discuss the justice of taxing the pure economic rent of land to practically its full amount.
- State and discuss briefly four rules or principles for the selection of commodities for indirect taxation.
Source: Harvard University Archives. Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 6. Papers (in the bound volume Examination Papers Mid-years 1902-1903).
Also included in: Harvard University Archives. Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 6. Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics, History of Religions, Philosophy, Education, Fine Arts, Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Music in Harvard College, June 1903 (in the bound volume Examination Papers 1902-1903).
Image Source: E. Dana Durand. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Washington, D.C. 20540. Image colorized by Economics in the Rear-View Mirror.