In 1904-05 Professor William Zebina Ripley of Harvard co-taught his course on the economics of corporations with his dissertation student Vanderveer Custis, who went on to teach economics at the University of Washington and later at Northwestern University where he attained professorial rank. The economics of corporations course was at least implicity paired to a course on labor problems (material found in the previous post). The common thread through the sequence would have been the study of market power through combination of laborers (trade unions) on the one hand and corporations (trusts) on the other.
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Other Corporations/Industrial Organization Related Posts
for William Z. Ripley
Problems of Labor and Industrial Organization, 1902-1903.
Economics of Corporations, 1903-1904.
Economics of Corporations, 1914-1915.
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Course Readings
Cases for the course are most certainly found in Trusts, Pools and Corporations (1905), edited with an introduction by William Z. Ripley. From the series of Volumes Selections and Documents in Economics, edited by William Z. Ripley published by Ginn and Company, Boston.
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Course Enrollment
1904-05
Economics 9b 2hf. Professor Ripley and Mr. Custis. — Economics of Corporations.
Total 190: 17 Graduates, 31 Seniors, 95 Juniors, 34 Sophomores, 1 Freshman, 12 Others.
Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1904-1905, p. 75.
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Course Description
1904-05
[Economics] 9b 2hf. Economics of Corporations. Half-course (second half-year) Tu., Th., Sat., at 11. Professor Ripley.
The work of this course will consist of a discussion of the problems connected with the fiscal and industrial organization of capital, especially in the corporate form. The principal topic considered will be industrial combination and the so-called trust problem. This will be treated in all its phases, with comparative study of the conditions in the United States and European countries. The growth and development of corporate enterprise, promotion, capitalization and financing, publicity of accounting, the liability of directors and underwriters, will be Illustrated fully by the study of cases, not from their legal but from their purely economic aspects; and the effects of industrial combination and integration upon efficiency, profits, wages, the rights of investors, prices, industrial stability, the development of export trade, and international competition will be considered in turn.
The course is open to those students only who have taken Economies 1. Systematic reading and report work will be assigned from time to time.
Source: Harvard University. Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Division of History and Political Science Comprising the Departments of History and Government and Economics, 1904-05 (May 16, 1904), pp. 43-44.
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ECONOMICS 9b
Year-end Examination, 1904-05
- In what respect did the English Company Law of 1900 fall short of providing an adequate remedy for abuses which had developed?
- What was the gist of the Federal decision in the Knight (Sugar Trust) case; and how does it bear upon the present situation?
- What is the form of the Anti-Trust laws of the different states? Discuss the feasibility of this remedy.
- What are Meade’s final propositions as to the need and nature of reform in corporate management?
- Compare the two principal methods of administering corporate sinking funds.
- Outline three important cases showing the attitude of the English common law toward monopoly.
- What appears to you as the most serious social evil in the present situation? Distinguish carefully between economic, social, and political aspects.
- How has economy in the matter of freights been sought by industrial combinations, and with what success?
Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 7, Bound volume: Examination Papers, 1904-05; Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1905), p. 30.
Image Source: Harvard University Archives. William Zebina Ripley [photographic portrait, ca. 1910], J. E. Purdy & Co., J. E. P. & C. (1910). Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.