In preparing the previous post, “Harvard final exams in political economy and ethics of social reform, 1889-1890“, I saw that the Harvard Business School accounting professor, William Morse Cole, got his professional start in the department of political economy as Frank Taussig’s side-kick for Political Economy 1, the principles course of its time. Answering the call of due diligence, I decided to put together a biographical post on the man. To be honest, I did not feel at all inspired about the prospect of checking out the career of this early Harvard Business School professor. While I confess to loving national income and product accounts (and especially deflating them with theoretically appropriate price indexes), I’ve never warmed to the nuts-and-bolts of actual economic accounting. Literally, go figure. Still, I overcame my nasty prejudice enough to track down Professor Cole and so we “Meet a Harvard A.M. alumnus…”
Cole wrote a battery of accounting textbooks that one could logically expect from a professor of accounting. These are listed below with links. Three other books by Cole were definitely composed outside his accounting lane. Cole’s first book was a romance written under a pseudonym, his mid-life tome “An American Hope” offered his readers a series of meaning-of-life reflections, and towards the end of his career he even published a high-school elementary economics textbook (encouraged by no less a mover-shaker in the economics profession than Richard Ely).
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Harvard University, in memoriam
WILLIAM MORSE COLE, Professor of Accounting, Emeritus, died December 15, 1960, in his ninety-fifth year. A graduate of Harvard College in 1890, Mr. Cole first offered a non-credit course in accounting in the Department of Economics in 1900-01 as a vocational aid for seniors. Five years later the course achieved credit status, and when the Business School was founded in 1908, Mr. Cole became an Assistant Professor there and teacher of one of the first required courses. He was made a full Professor in 1916 and continued to teach accounting until his retirement in 1933. A highly respected teacher known for his strict intellectual discipline, he was the originator of one of the major types of accounting statements, the “source and application of funds statement,” used extensively by professional accountants, and his books on accounting were highly regarded. A gracious and thoughtful person, he continued alert and interested in Harvard affairs until his death.
Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1959-1960, p. 26.
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Life of William Morse Cole in Dates
1866. Born February 10 in Boston, Massachusetts.
Family moved to Portland, Maine. High school and Portland Business College.
1890. A.B. Harvard College
1890-93. Instructor in political economy, Harvard College.
1894-95. Secretary, Massachusetts Commission on Unemployed.
1896. A.M. Harvard.
1896-98. American University Extension Society, Lecturer.
1898-1901. High school teacher of English literature and composition in Fall River, Massachusetts.
1900-08. Harvard Instructor in Principles of Accounting.
1901-08. High School teacher of English literature and composition at South High School, Worcester, Massachusetts.
1908-13. Assistant Professor, Harvard Business School.
1913-16. Associate Professor, Harvard Business School.
1917-1919. Served twenty months as captain in the Quartermaster Corps.
1916-1933. Professor of Accounting, Harvard Business School.
1931. Visiting Instructor at University of California, Berkeley Summer Session.
1933. Professor Emeritus of Accounting, Harvard.
1960. Died December 15 at age 94 in New Britain, Connecticut.
Sources:
“William Morse Cole” in John J. Kahle, American Accountants and Their Contributions to Accounting Thought, (Reprinted Routledge).
University of California. Intersession and Summer Session 1931 at Berkeley (1931), p. 4.
Harvard Business School Yearbook 1924-25, p. 13.
Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1959-1960, p. 26.
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Life of William Morse Cole in Books
1895. An Old Man’s Romance, a Tale. (Pseudonym “Christopher Craigie”). Boston: Copeland and Day.
1908. Accounts. Their Construction and Interpretation for Business Men and Students of Affairs. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
“The first issue of this book was brought out at a time when no general, non -technical, non-professional treatise on accounting had been published . The author had then been giving for eight years a course of instruction to seniors in Harvard College on the principles of accounting, and believed that many business men and students of affairs would be interested to see briefly but comprehensively how accounts are constructed and interpreted.”
Revised and enlarged edition, 1915.
1910. Accounting and Auditing. Minneapolis: Cree Publishing Company.
1910. The American Hope. New York: D. Appleton.
“The academic point of view is apt to be out of joint with real life and may be said to be a disease to be gotten rid of at all hazards, but once in a while from academic circles comes forth a book filled with a knowledge of both the real and the ideal. The study of the use of the possessive by Shakspeare or the dative by Virgil has been supplanted by study of life understood and depicted so well by both Shakspeare and Virgil and the result is a book of real worth, as in this book on the American Hope by a Harvard teacher.
‘The fundamental ground of American hope,’ says Mr. Cole, ‘is the prevailing idealism of the American character.’ Not money or things in themselves, but power, life, and the ideal are behind our material development. Business on a large scale is the child of the ideal. The chapter on the power of choice is a pretty exposition of the responsibility of the irresponsible, and, like all essays concerning the freedom of the will, finds an escape from both heredity and surroundings by the pursuit of truth and life. The marriage tie is a great spring of progress and the ideal is brought out quite strongly. ‘It is doubtless true that if the only marriages contracted were those classed in this chapter as perfect, the marriage rate would decline rapidly. This might not be a calamity. Few parts of the world are today suffering from lack of population. What the world needs is not at all more people, but more people begotten and trained In ideal conditions.’
The Training of Powers, The Fraternal Bond, The Still, Small Voice, The Will of the Community and the Attitude Toward Life are the titles of various chapters and a reflection of the character of the book. Economic Freedom is discussed in a separate chapter and the root of progress is clearly brought out. The pressure of population on subsistence, thrift, sobriety, and industry are discussed. Civilisation in every one of its aspects is a struggle against the animal instincts.’ The book is a thoroughly readable one from beginning to end and it is not too high praise to say that it is a rare one.” Boston Evening Transcript, 22 June 1910, p. 22.
1913. Cost Accounting for Institutions. New York: Ronald Press Company.
1914. Bookkeeping, Accounting and Auditing. Racine: National Institute of Business.
1915. Problems in the Principles of Accounting. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
“These problems have been designed for use with the author’s Accounts: Their Construction and Interpretation, published by Houghton Mifflin Company, of Boston.”
1921. The Fundamentals of Accounting. With the collaboration of Anne Elizabeth Geddes, A.B. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
1926. Economic Success. New York: Macmillan.
“This book is an attempt to present fundamental economic principles in form and content comprehensible by young people of the age of the highest grades in elementary and intermediate schools.” Thanks Richard T. Ely “for the original suggestion that this book be written, and for helpful criticism both of its proposed content and of the form which the manuscript took.” (p. xii).
Image Source: Harvard Class Album 1916.