Historians need to deal with “missing values” in their archival work on a daily basis. For instance in the Harvard Archives there is a box with the promising title “Examinations for the Ph.D.” What you find in that box are officially printed lists of candidates (with their respective academic histories) and their general examinations by academic year in which the examiners and thesis advisers are identified together with the six fields covered in the general examination as well as the “special subject” field and the thesis subject. That is the good news.
The bad news is that these printed lists suffer significant gaps in coverage. In this box we find information for the academic years 1902-03 through 1904-05, 1906-07 through 1913-14, 1915-16, 1917-18 through 1918-19, and finally 1926-27. This gives me hope that perhaps in some departmental folder (not necessarily in the economics department) there still are copies of some of those missing listings to fill in the gap and/or extend the range of the examination lists.
This posting provides us the general examination information for Charles Beardsley, Jr. who it turns out was never awarded a Ph.D. from Harvard. More about Charles Beardsley’s life is found in my earlier posting taken from the Secretary’s Report of the Harvard Class of 1892 (1912).
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From:
Division of History and Political Science Examinations for the Degree of Ph.D., 1903-04, pp. 1-2.
- Charles Beardsley.
General Examination in Political Science, Wednesday, February 24, 1904.
Committee: Professors Ripley, Lowell, Haskins, Carver, Bullock, Gay and Dr. Sprague.
Academic History: Harvard College, 1888-92; Graduate School, 1893-94, 1896-97, 1902-03; Harvard, 1897[sic, he received his A.B. in 1892] (A.B.); Harvard, 1902 [sic, he received his A.M. in 1897] (A.M.).
(A) General Subjects.
1. Constitutional History of England since the beginning of the Tudor Period.
2. Modern Government and Comparative Constitutional Law.
3. Economic Theory and its History.
4. Applied Economics: Money and Banking, International Trade, Taxation and Finance.
5. Economic History of the United States, with special reference to the Tariff, Financial Legislation, and Industrial Combinations.
6. Sociology, including the Labor Question.
7. (Special subject.)
(B) Special Subject: Tariff Legislation and Controversy in England since the time of Adam Smith.
(C) Thesis Subject: “Huskisson’s Tariff Reforms in England.” (With Professors Taussig and Gay.)
Source: Harvard University Archives. HUC7000.70. Harvard University, Examinations for the Ph.D. Folder “1903-1904”.
Image Source: John Harvard Statue (1904). Library of Congress. Photos, Prints and Drawings.