Harvard. Examinations for both political economy courses. Dunbar and Laughlin, 1881-1882

 

Course offerings in economics at Harvard were pretty meager at the start of the 1880s. Two instructors covered two courses in 1881-82. Professor Charles Dunbar was serving his last year as Dean which probably explains why a young Ph.D., J. L. Laughlin (Harvard PhD, 1876), was even needed to share the burden of teaching the large introductory course.

Note: the mid-year examinations appeared to have been missed during my last visit to the Harvard archives, so  I’ll need to try to fill that gap during a future visit.

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Course Announcement

POLITICAL ECONOMY.
ELECTIVE COURSES.

1. Mill’s Principles of Political Economy.—Financial Legislation of the United States.—Lectures. Three times a week. Professor Dunbar and Dr. Laughlin.

Course 1 may be taken twice a week, if notice to that effect is given in advаnсе.

2. Cairnes’s Leading Principles of Political Economy.—Giffen’s Essays in Finance.—Lectures. Three times a week. Professor Dunbar.

As a preparation for Course 2, it is necessary to have passed satisfactorily in Course 1 (three hours).

Source: Harvard University Catalogue, 1881-82, p. 84.

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Course Enrollments

Political Econ. 1. Mill’s Principles of Political Economy.— Lectures on Banking and the Financial Legislation of the United States (3 hours, 2 sections). Prof. Dunbar and Dr. Laughlin.

Total 147: 23 Seniors, 97 Juniors, 17 Sophomores, 2 Freshmen, 8 Others.

Political Econ. 2. Cairnes’s Leading Principles of Political Economy.— Giffen’s Essays in Finance.— Lectures and Theses. (3 hours, 1 section). Prof. Dunbar.

Total 32: 2 Graduates, 21 Seniors 9 Juniors.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1881-82, p. 5.

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Course Examination

POLITICAL ECONOMY 1.
Year-end 1881-1882

(Omit one question from each group.)

I.

1. What conclusion is reached by Mr. Mill respecting the objections to the use of labor-saving machinery?
2. Are railway shares, stocks of wine, wheat, munitions of war, and land considered capital, or not?
3. Explain fully why it is that capitalists cannot compensate themselves for a general high cost of labor through any action on values and prices.
4. What determines the rate of interest on loanable funds? Is the “current [or ordinary] rate of interest the measure of the relative abundance or scarcity of capital”?

II.

5. How is it that some agricultural capital pays rent, even if resort is not had to different grades of land?
6. What connection exists between the rate of wages in any country and the productiveness of its soil?
7. Explain what is meant by the tendency of profits to a minimum, and by the stationary state.
8. In what cases would duties on imported commodities fall on the producers?

III.

9. What are the reasons for the change in the normal values of manufactured and of agricultural commodities, respectively, during the progress of society?
10. In trying to explain high prices (as at the present time), point out what other factor than quantity of money is to be taken into account. As a matter of fact, how does the importation of specie enter the channels of trade and affect prices?
11. Why is it necessary to make any different statements of the laws of value for foreign than for domestic products? What is the law of international value?
12. In what way are gold and silver distributed among the different trading countries? Between different parts of the same country?

IV.

13. How did depreciation of the currency facilitate the sale of five-twenty bonds in 1863-64?
14. What advantage did the government obtain by giving the five-twenty form to so many of its bonds?
15. What provision was made in the original National Bank Act as to reserves to protect circulation and deposits, and what reserves are now required by law
16. In what cases can payments be legally made in greenbacks and in national bank-notes respectively?

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers, 1873-1914, Box 2, Bound Volume Examination Papers, 1881-83. Annual Examinations in Rhetoric, Philosophy, Political Economy, History, Roman Law, Fine Arts, and Music in Harvard College (June, 1882), pp. 7-8.

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Course Examination

POLITICAL ECONOMY 2.
Year-end 1881-1882

In answering the questions do not change their order.

1. What is the reason for Adam Smith’s proposition that “the price of corn, in the progress of society, reaches a maximum, beyond which it cannot advance”? Can you work out the same result by a different course of reasoning from that given by Cairnes?
2. Explain the statement that “the high scale of industrial remuneration in America, instead of being evidence of a high cost of production in that country, is distinctly evidence of a low cost of production.”
3. If the common saying that “the value of gold is the same all the world over” has no foundation, how does a supply of new gold distribute itself over all countries and over all commodities in each country?
4. Malthus, Ricardo, Mill, Cairnes:—State their relation to each other in the development of economic science.
5. How did the payment of the French indemnity to Germany affect the economic condition of Austria and of the United States?
6. In a speech made in April, 1876, Senator Sherman says that, after the introduction of the gold standard by Germany in 1873 and the limitation of the coinage of silver by the Latin Union,—
   “A struggle for the possession of gold at once arose between all the great nations, because everybody could see that if $3,200,000,000 of silver coin were demonetized, and $3,500,000,000 of gold coin made the sole standard, it would enormously add to the value of gold, and the Bank of France, the Bank of England and the Imperial Bank of Germany at once commenced grasping for gold in whatever form. Therefore, what we have observed recently is not so much a fall of silver as it is a rise of gold, the inevitable effect of a fear of the demonetization of silver.”
   In what form would the process of “grasping for gold” manifest itself, and how do the facts bear out the above statement?
7. To what extent is it, in the long run, a misfortune for England that her agriculture should be in part superceded by supplies of cheap food poured in from America?
8. State your views as to the economic significance and probable permanence of the present excess of exports from the United States.
9. How is the supposed accumulation of capital by England in the period from 1875 to 1881 to be reconciled.
   (1), with the great depression of business for most of the time;
   (2), with the remarkable excess of imports?
10. Examine the reasoning of the following extract:—
    “About $11,000,000 is now spent in the United States annually for new ships, wooden and iron, and about $2,000,000 more for the repair of old ones….Under a policy of government encouragement, expenditures for iron and wooden ships would be increased at least to $40,000,000 a year….[and] the expenditures for American labor and supplies, in operating the ships, would be increased by $10,000,000 or $15,000,000, perhaps considerably more. That is to say, there would then be expended in the United States an immense sum of money not now expended, which might be as large as $40,000,000, which would diffuse itself throughout the community, and bless and quicken every department of human industry. Best of all, the money, thus spent, would be principally obtained from the foreigner. It would come from the earnings of the ships, which, in the export trade at least, are paid by consumers in foreign lands. In the import trade the money is paid by consumers here and is carried away from the country. The larger part of the money, therefore, would be a pure gain to the United States…These lines would save to the country at least one half of the $50,000,000 of freight money now paid on imported goods, and they would earn at least one half of the large sum paid by foreign nations on the goods exported from this country. Then, they would give encouragement to tens thousands more of American citizens on land and sea.”

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers, 1873-1914, Box 2, Bound Volume Examination Papers, 1881-83. Annual Examinations in Rhetoric, Philosophy, Political Economy, History, Roman Law, Fine Arts, and Music in Harvard College (June, 1882), pp. 8-9.

Image Source:  Harvard Library, Hollis Images. Charles F. Dunbar (left) and James Laurence Laughlin (right).