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Economic History Exam Questions Johns Hopkins Undergraduate

Johns Hopkins. Exam questions for undergraduate economic history. Broadus Mitchell, 1937-1938

 

Associate Professor Broadus Mitchell taught the standard undergraduate survey course in economic history at Johns Hopkins in 1937-1938. He resigned from Johns Hopkins the following year over the matter of admitting an African American student to the department of political economy (the admission was fought by the Johns Hopkins University administration).

Much more about Mitchell can be found in the 90 page transcript of an oral history interview with him from August 14 and 15, 1977 that can be found in the Southern Oral History Program Collection at the website Documenting the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

It is the regret of my life that at Johns Hopkins University I did not pursue to the bitter end the defense of the proposal to admit a qualified Negro graduate student in the Department of Political Economy. He was Edward S. Lewis, who was the Secretary of the Urban League, of which I had been the first President in Baltimore. He was a graduate, I believe, of the University of Chicago and maybe of the Columbia University School of Social Work; I’ve forgotten. At any rate he was in every way a highly qualified, mature applicant for admission to graduate work. He was a leading black social worker in Maryland, where there’s a large negro population with a much higher incidence of poverty, disease, and so on than the whites. And he had been doing graduate work in economics at the University of Pennsylvania, commuting weekends. He could only get weekends, because he was holding his position as Secretary of the Urban League in Baltimore. And this was unsatisfactory and costly and interrupted and so on, so why shouldn’t he come to Johns Hopkins where we had every facility? … pp. 76-77.

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Course Description
Economic History
1937-1938

12 B. Economic History. Associate Professor Mitchell. Three hours weekly through the year. M., Tu., W., 9.30. Gilman Hall 314.

In the first part of this course a study is made of English economic history, the purpose being to show not only the industrial development of the English people as such but the way in which the economic motive has influence the whole of social life. Particular attention is given to the characteristic forms of economic organization—the manorial system, the guild system, the entrance of capitalism and the causes and consequences of the Industrial Revolution. Special reference is made to those features of English economic history which have influenced industrial life in the United States. The second part of the course is a survey of the economic history of our own country. Here the same effort is made, as in the case of England, to show the bearing of economic considerations on political evolution, especially in the direction of the growing importance of the Federal Government.

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Semester Examinations
Economic History
1937-1938

THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
MID-YEAR EXAMINATION
POLITICAL ECONOMY 12 B

Dr. Mitchell

February 1, 1938
9 a.m.

  1. Contrast life in an English manorial village of the 13th century with agricultural life in the United States today.
  2. What were the main causes and consequences of the enclosures movement?
  3. Contrast the conduct of industry and commerce in the towns of England in the Middle Ages with industrial and commercial life in the United States today.
  4. Trace the transition from the guild system through the domestic system to capitalism.
  5. Describe the Industrial Revolution.
  6. Give a brief account of two of the following movements: labor unionism, the factory acts movement, Chartism, socialism, consumers’ co-operation.
  7. What is meant by the economic interpretation of history?
  8. What is the status of the laissez faire theory in the United States today?
  9. Make an argument that mankind would be better off if the inventors of the 18th century never lived.

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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
FINAL EXAMINATION
IN
POLITICAL ECONOMY 12 B

Dr. Mitchell

May 31, 1938
9 a.m.

  1. What was the economic position of the country at the time the Constitution was formed?
  2. Discuss the “American System”
  3. Give an outline of banking from 1791 to the adoption of the Federal Reserve Act.
  4. Contrast economic conditions in North and South on the eve of the Civil War.
  5. Tell what you can of the growth of large-scale business enterprise and its economic and legislative consequences.
  6. Discuss the protective tariff in America.
  7. Identify briefly: Mathew Carey, Friedrich List, Salmon P. Chase, Nicholas Biddle, James B. Duke, Samuel Slator.
  8. Tell what you know of governmental intervention in economic life during the depression which began in 1929.

Source: Johns Hopkins University, Eisenhower Library. Ferdinand Hamburger, Jr. Archives. Department of Political Economy. Curricular Materials. Series 6. Box 2. Folder “Department of Political Economy — Exams, 1936-1940”.

Image Source:  Broadus Mitchell in his office, ca. 1938. From the Johns Hopkins university graphic and pictorial collection. Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.