Tag: Anderson

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Amherst Chicago Columbia Economists

Columbia. John Maurice Clark. Autobiographical notes, 1949

 

The following recollections of John Maurice Clark of his earliest contacts with economic problems is found in a folder of his papers containing notes about his father, John Bates Clark. The hand-written notes are fairly clear until we come to a clear addition on the final page. Abbreviations are used there and the handwriting is not always clear. Still the pages together provide a few nice stories and short lists of J.M. Clark’s teachers and students.

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June 8, 1949

J.M.C.’s recollections of his earliest contacts with economic problems.

I think my earliest contact with an economic problem came on learning that the carpenter who sometimes came to do odd jobs for us at 23 Round Hill got $2.00 a day. I had a special interest in that carpenter. He was a tall man, with a full, dark beard; and it had been my imprudent interest in his operation with the kitchen double-windows (putting on? taking off?) that led me to lean out of a hammock and over the low rail of our second-story porch, to watch him (I was between two and three at the time). Mechanical consequences—I descended rapidly, landing on my head, but apparently suffering no injury except biting my tongue. Subjective consequences – maybe it pounded a little caution into me at an early age; but the present point is that it fixed that carpenter in my memory as “the man who picked me up.” It was some time later I learned that he got $2.00 a day.

I don’t remember whether I took the initiative and asked, or not. The cost of things was often discussed in our house, and my mother often talked of the difficulty of making both ends meet. I knew my father’s salary, though I can’t be sure now whether it was $3,500 or less. Anyhow, it was maybe eight or ten times the carpenter’s pay; and I began wondering how he made both ends meet, and remarked to my father that $2.00 a day wasn’t much to live on. He answered that it was pretty good pay for that kind of work. So I learned there were two ways of looking at a daily stipend—as income to live on and as the price of the service you gave your employer. Or perhaps simply the standpoints of the recipient and the payer. But especially I learned there were people who had to adjust their ideas of what they could live on, to a fraction of the income we found skimpy for the things we thought of as necessary. In short, I had a lesson in classes and their multiple standards to ponder over; without reaching any very enlightening conclusions.

I don’t think I connected this with our friends the Willistons (of the family connected with Williston seminary in Easthampton) who lived in the big house above us and from whom we rented ours. They were evidently much richer than we. They had gone to Europe (and been shipwrecked on the way, and had to transfer at sea to a lumber-schooner, which threw its deckload of lumber overboard to enable it to take on the people from the helpless steamship. — but that’s another story.)

To return to the carpenter. I suppose today he’d get perhaps $16, more?, and a Smith College salary, for a full professor, might be $7,000 or $8,000. The discrepancy has shrunk to maybe 2/5—certainly less than half—of what it was then. That puzzling discrepancy was my first lesson in economics—the first I remember.

There was another lesson—if you could call it that—the summer we spent a while at the Stanley House (now gone) in Southwest Harbor, on Mt. Desert. The rich people went to Bar Harbor. At Southwest, there was Mr. Brierly who had a yacht. We took our outings in a rowboat, sometimes with the help of a spritsail. One time we were going up Somes Sound, and were passed by one of the biggest ocean-going steam yachts—the “Sultana”. It was a very impressive sight, in those narrow waters, and looked about as big as the “Queen Mary” would to me now. I don’t remember anybody doing any moralizing; but if they did, the impression it left was that we, in our fashion, were doing the same kind of thing they were.

My first contact with economic literature (not counting the subversive economics of Robin Hood, which we boys knew by heart, in the Howard Pyle version) was at 23 Round Hill, so I must have been less than nine. I found a little book on my father’s shelves that had pictures in it – queer pictures done in pen and ink, which puzzled me. There was a boy not much bigger than I was, in queer little knee-britches, acting as a teacher to a class of grown men (including I think a Professor Laughlin, under whom I later taught at the University of Chicago.) And there were classical females being maltreated by brutal men, and other queer things. I was curious enough to read some of the text, to find out about the pictures. It was “Coin’s Financial School,” the famous free-silver tract.

I read enough to become a convinced free-silverite. And then I had the shock of discovering that my beloved and respected father was on the wrong side of that question. I decided there must be more to it than I’d gotten out of the queer picture-book. I suppose that was my first lesson in the need of preserving an open mind and holding economic ideas subject to possible reconsideration. Davenport and Veblen gave me more extensive lessons, fifteen or twenty years later, only this second time it was my father’s ideas I had to rethink, after reluctantly admitting that these opposing ideas represented something real, that needed to be reckoned with. One had to do something about it, though the something didn’t mean substituting Veblen for my father. It was a more difficult and discriminating adjustment that was called for.

To return to my boyhood. It may have been about this time that I learned something about mechanical techniques, when my father took me to see the Springfield Arsenal. They had a museum, with broadswords that had been used in battle—one was so nicked up that its edge had disappeared in a continuous series of surprisingly deep nicks—but the mechanical process that impressed me was a pattern-lathe, rough-shaping the stocks of Krags. On one side was a metal model of the finished stock revolving, with a wheel revolving against it. On the other side was the wooden blank revolving, and a wheel like the one on the model, and linked to it so as to copy its movements, and armed with knives. So the machine could make complicated shapes following any model you put into it, and do it faster and more accurately that a hand worker.

Incidentally (and as a digression) that was our first military rifle with smokeless powder, more powerful than black; our first regular military magazine rifle of the modern kind with a bolt action and a box magazine. The regulars were just getting them. The militia still had the black-powder 45-70 Springfields at the time of the Spanish War, and a Massachusetts regiment had to be ordered off the firing-line at El Caney because their smoke made too good a target. Teddy Roosevelt had pull enough to get Krag carbines for his Rough Riders plus the privilege of using their own Winchesters if individuals preferred, and, if they had the 30-40-220, which took the Krag cartridge.

But my regular education in economic theory began at the age of 9 or 10, in our first year at Amherst, when we lived on Amity Street, opposite Sunset Ave. My father had in mind James Mill’s training of his son, John Stuart Mill, and he copied the techniques of explaining something during a walk, but he didn’t follow James Mill’s example by making me submit a written report for criticism and revision. All he did was to explain about diminishing utility and marginal utility—using the illustration of the oranges. And he was satisfied that I understood it, and concluded that the simple fundamentals of economics could be taught to secondary school or “grammar-school” students. Later, my friend and former graduate student, Leverett Lyon, pithily remarked that I probably understood it better then than I ever had since. Maybe he was right. I know when I met Professor Fetter, the year the Ec. Ass. met in Princeton, he told me I didn’t understand the theory, because I had said (in print, I think) that there were some dangers about the concept of “psychic income.” I didn’t say it was wrong, but I did think it was likely to be misleading to use a term that was associated with accountants’ arithmetic. So I did probably understand the theory “better” at the age of 9 or 10. Twenty ears later, it didn’t look so simple. This was long before I disagreed with Fetter about basing-point pricing and the rightness of the uniform FOB mill price, as the price “true” competition would bring about.

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J.M.C. later history.

Amherst, C in Ec tho 85 on exam, & written work not credited. (cf French A from Wilkins, C from [William Stuart] Symington (father of present (1951) W. Stuart Symington, head of nat security Resources Board). Symie sized my attitude up as that of a gentleman & gave me a gentleman’s mark)ache Crook said he “didn’t get hold” of me. He was correct.

 

Columbia: Giddings, A. S. Johnson, H.L. Moore, Seligman, Seager, Hawkins [?], Chaddock, Agger, Jacobstein. indoctrinated: J. B. C. orthodoxy modified by overhead costs (catalogued as “dynamics”) Dynamics (defined as) everything statics leaves out. & much induction. Take “Essentials” on slow dictation.

Veblen: slow infiltration of its logical & progre[?] rel. to the abstractions of J.B.C.: reverse normalizing might make[?] an arguable claim to equal legitimacy.

1912 ed. of Control of Trusts

“Contribution to theory of competive price” [QJE, August 1914] forerunner of “mon-comp”, largely empirical basis.

Germs of social & inst. ec. Rich-poor, Freedom as val in ec.[??] B. M. Anderson cf. Cooley

Revs of Hobson?, Pigou, Davenport Economics of Enterprise [Political Science Quarterly, Vol 29, no. 2]

 

To Chi. 1915 Changing basis of economic responsibility [JPE, March 1916] on moving to Chi. open declar[ation] of non-Laughlinism: backfire to an Atlantic article of Laughlin’s.

Modern Psych.

1917-18. War-ec. (“basis of war-time collectivism.”)

Students: Garver oral. Slichter, Lyon, Innis, Martin [?], Goodrich, Copeland, O’Grady [John O’Grady ?]

Ayres, Knight on faculty.

Ov. C. [Studies in the Economics of Overhead Costs]

Social Control [of Business]

 

Columbia. Students, Friedman, Ginzberg, Salera, Kuznets’ oral

 

Source: Columbia University Archives. John M. Clark Collection. History of Economic Thought. Box 37, Folder “J. B. Clark, 1847-1938”.

Image Source: John Maurcie Clark. University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-0171.  Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

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Columbia Economists Harvard Illinois Missouri Research Tip UCLA

Columbia Ph.D. Alumnus. Benjamin M. Anderson, 1886-1949

 

 

While the bulk of my internet trawling time for Economics in the Rear-View Mirror is devoted to tracking down curricular material and texts, serendipity occasionally takes me to biographically interesting places. Benjamin Anderson is of interest to ERVM both as having earned an economics Ph.D. from the Columbia School of Political Science and later as an economics professor at Harvard and UCLA. 

Research Tip: The University of California’s series of In Memoriam volumes.

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Benjamin McA. Anderson, Economics: Los Angeles
(1886-1949)

Earl J. Miller, Marvel Stockwell, John Clendenin, Vern O. Knudsen

BENJAMIN MCALESTER ANDERSON (May 1, 1886-January 19, 1949), son of Benjamin McLean and Mary Frances (Bowling) Anderson, was born in Columbia, Missouri. He married Margaret Louis Crenshaw May 27, 1909. He is survived by his wife and three children, John Crenshaw, William Bent, and Mary Louise (Brown). A fourth child, Benjamin M. Anderson III, died in 1919.

Professor Anderson received the A.B. at the University of Missouri in 1906, the A.M. at the University of Illinois in 1910, and the Ph.D. in Economics at Columbia in 1911. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and an active member of the American Economic Association, in which he served as vice-president and a member of the Executive Committee. He served as Professor of History in the State Normal School at Cape Girardeau, Missouri, in 1905; Professor of English Literature and Economics at Missouri Valley College, Marshall, Missouri, in 1906; Professor of History and Economics at the State Teachers College, Springfield, Missouri, from 1906 to 1911; Instructor in Economics at Columbia from 1911 to 1913; Assistant Professor of Economics at Columbia, 1913; Assistant Professor of Economics, Harvard, 1913-1918; economic advisor in the National Bank of Commerce in New York, 1918-1920; economist for the Chase National Bank of New York, 1920-1939; Professor of Economics in the University of California at Los Angeles, 1939-1949 (Connell Professor of Banking, 1946-1949).

Professor Anderson enjoyed a rich experience as a youth in his home at Columbia, Missouri. His father was for many years a prominent member of the Missouri State Legislature. Their home was the scene of innumerable political conferences to which Dr. Anderson was invited and from which he developed a keen interest in the then current political and economic problems.

Dr. Anderson’s publications were extensive, including four books and many articles and reviews. Outstanding among them were his books, Social Value, 1911; The Value of Money, 1917; Effects of the War on Money, Credit and Banking in France and the United States, 1919; Financing American Prosperity (coauthor with J. M. Clark, Columbia; A. H. Hansen, Harvard; S. H. Slichter, Harvard; H. S. Ellis, California at Berkeley; and J. H. Williams, Harvard), 1945. Much of his time during the last few years of his life was devoted to the writing of another book entitled Economics and the Public Welfare, a financial and economic history of the United States, 1914-1946. This extensive work was ready for proofreading at the time of his death. The book has now been published. It is a further major contribution to the field of economic literature comparable in quality to the high standard set in his previous works.

He contributed articles to many magazines and journals. Among them were the American Economic Review; Annals of the American Academy; Political Science Quarterly; Quarterly Journal of Economics; The New York Times; The Commercial and Financial Chronicle; The Bankers Magazine (London); The London Times; and the Wall Street Journal. During the past ten years he has published eight issues of the Economic Bulletin under the sponsorship of the Capital Research Company of Los Angeles. He associated himself for many years with a group of well-known economists in the organization known as the Economists’ National Committee on Monetary Policy, and served as President of that organization. Several of his articles were reprinted and circulated on a wide basis by that organization.

While economist for the Chase National Bank of New York, Professor Anderson published over two hundred issues of the Chase Economic Bulletin, which was distributed and read extensively in government, banking and educational circles in many countries. Representing the Chase National Bank he traveled extensively in foreign countries to conduct negotiations with leading government and banking officials. He was called on numerous occasions to testify before committees of the U.S. Congress and the New York State Legislature on questions of state, national and international policy relating to the fields of money and banking. These activities together with the wide circulation of his books, and of his articles in professional and financial journals and magazines, made him one of the best-known and most distinguished economists of his generation in both the national and international fields.

The firsthand contact with practical banking, with American and foreign banking officials, and with government agencies concerned with our economic and monetary affairs, which Dr. Anderson had enjoyed through many years, greatly enriched the content of his teaching and enabled him to provide for his students a sound and thoroughly practical experience. He originally possessed a scholarly command of history, literature, and languages which added impressively to his work, and he brought to his teaching and advisory tasks a broad perspective and keen judgment which made his pronouncements on economic affairs surprisingly accurate and wise.

Professor Anderson was a modest and distinguished scholar and a man esteemed by his colleagues for his personal qualities of kindly manner, stimulating humor, sympathetic appreciation and helpful cooperation. As a scholar and as a man he made a memorable contribution to the community in which he lived.

Source: Calisphere website: University of California, In Memoriam 1949, pp. 1-4.

Image Source: Benjamin M. Anderson in Harvard Class Album, 1915.

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Courses Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Money, Banking, Commercial Crises. Final examination, Anderson, 1914-1915

 

 

“Money, Banking, and Commercial Crises” was a course open to both undergraduate and graduate students at Harvard taught by Benjamin M. Anderson. The course announcement, enrollment figures, and the final examination questions come from three different sources, all of which are available on-line. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting corresponding material from the twenty economics courses offered during the 1914-15 year for which the final examination questions had been printed and subsequently published.

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Course Announcement

Economics 3. Money, Banking, and Commercial Crises. Mon., Wed., Fri., at 2.30. Asst. Professor Anderson, assisted by —.

This course undertakes a theoretical, descriptive, and historical study of the main problems of money and banking. Historical and descriptive materials, drawn from the principal systems of the world, will be extensively used, but will be selected primarily with reference to their significance in the development of principles, and with reference to contemporary practical problems. Foreign exchange will be studied in detail. Attention will be given to those problems of money and credit which appear most prominently in connection with economic crises. Though emphasis will be thrown upon the financial aspects of crises, the investigation will cover also the more fundamental factors causing commercial and industrial cycles. [p. 64]

Source: Division of History, Government, and Economics 1914-15. Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. XI, No. 1, Part 14 (May 19, 1914).

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Course Enrollment

[Economics] 3. Asst. Professor Anderson, assisted by Mr. E. E. Lincoln.—Money, Banking, and Commercial Crises.

Total 52: 1 Graduate, 14 Seniors, 27 Juniors, 1 Sophomore, 9 Others.

Source: Report of the President of Harvard College, 1914-15, p. 59.

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Final Examination (2nd term)

  1. Discuss the theory of foreign exchange. How would the acceptance of the quantity theory modify your discussion of this problem?
  2. Trace the main events of the Panic of 1907, and indicate the conclusions that may properly be drawn therefrom with reference to monetary and banking reform.
  3. To what extent are credit instruments used in the United States as a means of effecting exchanges? Contrast retail and wholesale transactions with reference to this point. Contrast city and country. How was the information on this point obtained?
  4. Give an account of the main developments in the London money-market from the outbreak of the War till the end of February, 1915.
  5. Explain: “puts”; “borrowing and carrying”; stock-exchange clearing house. Discuss the relations of the Stock Exchange and the banks in New York.
  6. Indicate the comparative growth of State banking institutions and National banks since the beginning of the National banking system. What explanations can you give?
  7. Contrast one-name and two-name paper. Should the Federal Reserve Board seek to reintroduce two-name paper? Give reasons.
  8. Contrast England, Germany, France, Canada and the United States with reference (a) to note-issue, and (b) to use of deposits.
  9. In precisely what ways does our Federal Reserve system seek to remedy the defects in our banking system?
  10. Discuss the foreign exchange policy of the Bank of Austria-Hungary; of the Reichsbank; of the Bank of England.

 

Source: Harvard University Examinations. Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, History of Science, Government, Economics, Philosophy, Psychology, Social Ethics, Education, Fine Arts, Music in Harvard College. June 1915, pp. 46-47.

Image Source: Benjamin M. Anderson in Harvard Class Album, 1915.

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Courses Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Sociology, Final Examination. Anderson, 1914-15.

 

 

Benjamin Anderson, Jr. took over the sociology course open to both undergraduate and graduate students from Thomas Nixon Carver at Harvard for 1914-15. The course announcement, enrollment figures, and the final examination questions come from three different sources, all of which are available on-line. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting corresponding material from the twenty economics courses offered during the 1914-15 year for which the final examination questions had been printed and subsequently published.

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Course Announcement

Economics 8. Principles of Sociology. Mon., Wed., Fri., at 10. Asst. Professor Anderson and an assistant.

This course undertakes first a cross-section analysis and description of social life, in which the emphasis is chiefly put upon social psychology, and in which a psychological interpretation of social institutions and activities is given, and a theory of social forces is developed. The problems of social evolution are then taken up, and the interplay of race, physical environment and culture in social evolution is studied, illustrated by anthropological data concerning social origins. Various theories of social evolution, as the economic interpretation of history, are considered in this connection. Finally the theory of progress, as distinguished from evolution, is taken up. The course is primarily a course in principles, but practical questions are freely drawn upon to illustrate the principles. [p. 66]

Source: Division of History, Government, and Economics 1914-15. Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. XI, No. 1, Part 14 (May 19, 1914).

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Course Enrollment

[Economics] 8. Asst. Professor Anderson, assisted by Dr. H. T. Moore.—Principles of Sociology.

Total 77: 5 Graduates, 28 Seniors, 35 Juniors, 5 Sophomores, 4 Others.

Source: Report of the President of Harvard College, 1914-15, p. 59.

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Final Examination (second term)

ECONOMICS 8
Sociology

Answer ten questions. Answer questions in order.

  1. Explain the contract theory of society. What doctrines are commonly associated with the contract theory? Criticize this group of ideas.
  2. Indicate all the applications that occur to you of the principle of “the survival of the fittest” to social phenomena.
  3. Discuss the relation of the horde and the clan.
  4. Describe the Australian initiation ceremony, and indicate its social functions. In what ways are the same functions performed in modern society?
  5. Contrast evolution and progress. What, according to Giddings, are the criteria of progress? State and discuss Professor Carver’s theory of progress.
  6. What did you find to object to in Kidd’s Social Evolution?
  7. What are the causes of the present War?
  8. State and criticize the hedonistic theory of progress.
  9. What psychological differences are there between men and women? To what are these differences due? How far do they justify differences in social policy with references to the sexes?
  10. How disentangle heredity and environment? Illustrate.
  11. To what extent, if at all, and in what connections, does Giddings make use of the doctrine that acquired characters are transmitted? How far, if at all, would his conclusions be modified by the application of Weismann’s doctrine?

 

Source: Harvard University Examinations. Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, History of Science, Government, Economics, Philosophy, Psychology, Social Ethics, Education, Fine Arts, Music in Harvard College. June 1915, p. 51.

Image Source: Benjamin M. Anderson, Jr. in Harvard Class Album, 1915.

 

 

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Courses Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Graduate Economic Theory, Social Valuation. Anderson, 1914-15.

 

 

Judging from the course description and from many of the exam questions below, the Harvard assistant professor, Benjamin M. Anderson, Jr., used his graduate economic theory course in 1914-15 to continue work on theoretical issues that he had investigated in his prize-winning Columbia University dissertation, Social Value–A Study in Economic Theory, Critical and Constructive (1911). The short vita posted in his published dissertation was transcribed for an earlier posting.

This posting contains the course announcement, enrollment figures, and the final examination questions for Anderson’s graduate course in 1914-15. The information comes from three different sources, all of which are available on-line. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting corresponding material from the twenty economics courses offered during the 1914-15 year for which the final examination questions had been printed and subsequently published.

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Course Announcement

Economics 17. Economic Theory: Value and Related Problems. Two consecutive evening hours on Monday. Asst. Professor Anderson.

The work of this course will include a critical reading of leading writers, particularly of the English and Austrian schools, on the theory of value, a consideration of the psychological and sociological premises underlying their theories, a reconstruction of these premises, and a constructive theory of value based on this reconstruction. The results of the investigations will then be tested by their application to certain related problems, as capitalization, the interest problem, the problem of the value of money, etc. Considerable attention will be given to contemporary literature and to recent controversies in the field of economic theory. Instruction will be by discussion, reports, and lectures. [p. 69]

Source: Division of History, Government, and Economics 1914-15. Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. XI, No. 1, Part 14 (May 19, 1914).

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Course Enrollment

[Economics] 17. Asst. Professor Anderson.—Economic Theory: Value and Related Problems.

Total 6: 6 Graduates.

Source: Report of the President of Harvard College, 1914-15, p. 60.

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 Final Examination

ECONOMICS 17

Answer eight questions, including number 9.

  1. Summarize the constructive theory of Social Value.
  2. Indicate all the different forms you have met of the relative conception of value. Discuss in detail the points at issue between relative and absolute conceptions of value.
  3. A law requiring proprietors of saw-mills to insure workmen against accident would lead to increased cost of production, and higher prices, for lumber. Would a law requiring all employers similarly to insure lead to higher prices all around? Why or why not?
  4. Give an analytical summary of the Seager-Fisher-Fetter-Brown controversy, and give, with reasons, your own conclusions on the points at issue.
  5. Contrast Walker, Kemmerer, Fisher and Taussig with reference to the statement of the quantity theory. What common elements are there in all four versions?
  6. Discuss the applications of the notions of (a) supply and demand, (b) cost of production, and (c) marginal utility, to the problem of the value of money.
  7. What is your own theory of the value of money?
  8. Explain the capitalization theory. Contrast its psychological presuppositions with those of the quantity theory. Are the two theories consistent?
  9. What are the differentia of economic value, legal value, moral value, aesthetic value, etc.
  10. In precisely what ways does exchange modify values? What possible substitutes for exchange could socialism develop?

 

Source: Harvard University Examinations. Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, History of Science, Government, Economics, Philosophy, Psychology, Social Ethics, Education, Fine Arts, Music in Harvard College. June 1915, p. 57.

Image Source: Benjamin M. Anderson, Jr. in Harvard Album, 1915.

 

 

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Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Single Tax, Socialism, and Anarchism. Final Exam. Anderson, 1918

 

 

Perhaps some last-minute re-staffing of courses was required during the 1917-18 academic year because of colleagues joining the war effort in Washington, D.C. All I know is that the survey course on schemes of social reform that was solidly in the teaching portfolio of Thomas Nixon Carver was taught by Benjamin M. Anderson during his last year at Harvard. Carver’s own  course outline with reading assignments for 1919-20 and the corresponding final examination questions from 1920 have been posted earlier. This posting shows the deviation between the original course announcement (Carver to teach Economics 7b) and the ex post staffing and course enrollment report for the year in the annual report of the Harvard president (Anderson taught Economics 7b). 

Judging from the examination questions, it would appear that the Russian Revolution was not yet incorporated into the Harvard economics curriculum. Marxian economics did rate one of the ten questions on its own and shared another question with everyone from Henry George Single Taxers through Anarchists, Utopians up to and including the American Federation of Labor.

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Course Announcement

7b 2hf. The Single Tax, Socialism, Anarchism. Half-course (second half-year). Mon., Wed., Fri., at 10. Professor Carver.

A critical study of the theories which underlie some of the more radical programmes of social reform. An examination also of the social utility of private property in its various forms; also some attention to the concept of justice in economic relations; the concept of progress; the significance of conservatism and radicalism.

Source:   Division of History, Government, and Economics 1917-18, Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. XIV, No. 25 (May 18, 1917), p. 62.

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Course Enrollment

[Economics] 7b 2hf. Asst. Professor Anderson.—The Single Tax, Socialism, Anarchism.

Total 21: of which 5 Seniors, 12 Juniors, 1 Sophomore, 3 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1917-18, p. 54.

 

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1917-18
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 7b2

Answer nine questions

  1. “Society is to blame when the individual goes wrong.” Discuss critically.
  2. Indicate resemblances and differences: Single Taxers; Kropotkin; Emma Goldman; Marxists; Syndicalists; Fabians; American Federation of Labor; Fourier.
  3. Discuss the theory of price-fixing under war conditions in America today.
  4. Explain the contract theory of society. What ideas are usually associated with this theory? Criticise this body of ideas.
  5. Outline the main argument of Progress and Poverty. Indicate the points of strength and weakness in the argument.
  6. What reading have you done for this course?
  7. Outline A. S. Johnson’s plan for the public capitalization of the inheritance tax.
  8. Discuss the doctrine that the unearned increment is a stimulus to the building trade.
  9. Discuss the doctrine that all taxes except the land tax are a burden on industry and raise prices.
  10. Outline the main points in Marx’s system. How much of it can stand?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Examinations. Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, History of Religions, … ,Economics, … , Fine Arts, Music in Harvard College. June, 1918. (HUC 7000.28, vol. 60 of 284).

Image Source: Benjamin M. Anderson, Jr. from Harvard Class Album 1915.

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Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Final examination for B. M. Anderson’s Money and Banking, 1918

 

 

Benjamin M. Anderson taught at Harvard for five years. A syllabus and enrollment figures for his 1917-18 course “Money, Banking, and Commercial Crises” have already been posted. The final examination questions for his course, a.k.a. Economics 3, (transcribed below) come from the second term of this two-term course. Perhaps we get lucky and I, or someone else, might locate the mid-year exam for this course eventually. 

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Course Announcement and Description

[Economics] 3. Money, Banking, and Commercial Crises. Tu., Th., at 1.30, with a third hour for sections on Friday morning, Friday afternoon, and Saturday morning.
Asst. Professor Anderson, assisted by Mr.—.

This course undertakes a theoretical, descriptive, and historical study of the main problems of money and banking. Historical and descriptive materials, drawn from the principal systems of the world, will be extensively used, but will be selected primarily with reference to their significance in the development of principles, and with reference to contemporary problems of public policy. Foreign exchange, speculation, and the money-market will be studied in some detail. Crises will be studied in both their industrial and their financial aspects.

Source: Division of History, Government, and Economics 1917-18 published in Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. XIV, No. 25 (May 18, 1917), p. 60.

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Final Examination
Money, Banking, and Commercial Crises
Assistant Professor Benjamin M. Anderson

1917-18
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 3

  1. Describe panics and crises. How may panics be controlled? How may the evils of crises be minimized?
  2. Give an account of the growth of private banks since the Civil War. What types of private banks are there? Where are the different types chiefly to be found?
  3. What evils in our monetary and banking system did the Federal Reserve Act seek to remedy? What amendments have there been to the Act? Why were these amendments made?
  4. Contrast “one-name” and “two-name” paper.
  5. Give an account of the Crisis of 1907.
  6. What theories have you met regarding bank reserves? What facts have you met by which to test these theories?
  7. What price changes have taken place during the War in the United States? How explain these price-changes?
  8. Must the value of money rest on a commodity basis?
  9. Contrast the London and the New York Stock Exchanges.
  10. Contrast the German and the English banking systems as they were before the War.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Final Examinations, 1853-2001 (HUC 7000.28, 60 of 284). Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Papers Set for Final Examinations: History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Fine Arts, Music, June, 1918. p. 43.

Image Source: Benjamin M. Anderson in Harvard Album, 1915.

 

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Columbia Economists Harvard UCLA

Columbia. Ph.D. alumnus (1911) Benjamin M. Anderson, Obituary

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Benjamin McA. Anderson, Economics: Los Angeles

by Earl J. Miller, Marvel Stockwell, John Clendenin, Vern O. Knudsen

BENJAMIN MCALESTER ANDERSON (May 1, 1886-January 19, 1949), son of Benjamin McLean and Mary Frances (Bowling) Anderson, was born in Columbia, Missouri. He married Margaret Louis Crenshaw May 27, 1909. He is survived by his wife and three children, John Crenshaw, William Bent, and Mary Louise (Brown). A fourth child, Benjamin M. Anderson III, died in 1919.

Professor Anderson received the A.B. at the University of Missouri in 1906, the A.M. at the University of Illinois in 1910, and the Ph.D. in Economics at Columbia in 1911. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and an active member of the American Economic Association, in which he served as vice-president and a member of the Executive Committee. He served as Professor of History in the State Normal School at Cape Girardeau, Missouri, in 1905; Professor of English Literature and Economics at Missouri Valley College, Marshall, Missouri, in 1906; Professor of History and Economics at the State Teachers College, Springfield, Missouri, from 1906 to 1911; Instructor in Economics at Columbia from 1911 to 1913; Assistant Professor of Economics at Columbia, 1913; Assistant Professor of Economics, Harvard, 1913-1918; economic advisor in the National Bank of Commerce in New York, 1918-1920; economist for the Chase National Bank of New York, 1920-1939; Professor of Economics in the University of California at Los Angeles, 1939-1949 (Connell Professor of Banking, 1946-1949).

Professor Anderson enjoyed a rich experience as a youth in his home at Columbia, Missouri. His father was for many years a prominent member of the Missouri State Legislature. Their home was the scene of innumerable political conferences to which Dr. Anderson was invited and from which he developed a keen interest in the then current political and economic problems.

Dr. Anderson’s publications were extensive, including four books and many articles and reviews. Outstanding among them were his books, Social Value, 1911; The Value of Money, 1917; Effects of the War on Money, Credit and Banking in France and the United States, 1919; Financing American Prosperity (coauthor with J. M. Clark, Columbia; A. H. Hansen, Harvard; S. H. Slichter, Harvard; H. S. Ellis, California at Berkeley; and J. H. Williams, Harvard), 1945. Much of his time during the last few years of his life was devoted to the writing of another book entitled Economics and the Public Welfare, a financial and economic history of the United States, 1914-1946. This extensive work was ready for proofreading at the time of his death. The book has now been published. It is a further major contribution to the field of economic literature comparable in quality to the high standard set in his previous works.

He contributed articles to many magazines and journals. Among them were the American Economic Review; Annals of the American Academy; Political Science Quarterly; Quarterly Journal of Economics; The New York Times; The Commercial and Financial Chronicle; The Bankers Magazine (London); The London Times; and the Wall Street Journal. During the past ten years he has published eight issues of the Economic Bulletin under the sponsorship of the Capital Research Company of Los Angeles. He associated himself for many years with a group of well-known economists in the organization known as the Economists’ National Committee on Monetary Policy, and served as President of that organization. Several of his articles were reprinted and circulated on a wide basis by that organization.

While economist for the Chase National Bank of New York, Professor Anderson published over two hundred issues of theChase Economic Bulletin, which was distributed and read extensively in government, banking and educational circles in many countries. Representing the Chase National Bank he traveled extensively in foreign countries to conduct negotiations with leading government and banking officials. He was called on numerous occasions to testify before committees of the U.S. Congress and the New York State

Legislature on questions of state, national and international policy relating to the fields of money and banking. These activities together with the wide circulation of his books, and of his articles in professional and financial journals and magazines, made him one of the best-known and most distinguished economists of his generation in both the national and international fields.

The firsthand contact with practical banking, with American and foreign banking officials, and with government agencies concerned with our economic and monetary affairs, which Dr. Anderson had enjoyed through many years, greatly enriched the content of his teaching and enabled him to provide for his students a sound and thoroughly practical experience. He originally possessed a scholarly command of history, literature, and languages which added impressively to his work, and he brought to his teaching and advisory tasks a broad perspective and keen judgment which made his pronouncements on economic affairs surprisingly accurate and wise.

Professor Anderson was a modest and distinguished scholar and a man esteemed by his colleagues for his personal qualities of kindly manner, stimulating humor, sympathetic appreciation and helpful cooperation. As a scholar and as a man he made a memorable contribution to the community in which he lived.

 

Source: Academic Senate of the University of California. University of California: In Memoriam 1949, pp. 1-4.

Image Source:  Wikipedia article on Benjamin McAlester Anderson.

Categories
Courses Harvard Suggested Reading Syllabus

Harvard. Syllabus for Money, Banking & Commercial Crises. Anderson, 1917-18.

Benjamin McAlester Anderson (1886-1949) was awarded a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University in 1911. His dissertation, Social Value–A Study in Economic Theory Critical and Constructive was published in the Hart, Schaffer & Marx Prize Essays series. From 1913-18 he held the rank of Assistant Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Today I post his syllabus for the course “Money, Banking and Commercial Crises” from 1917-18 that is wonderfully detailed  both with respect to topics and detailed reading assignments. The final examination questions for the second-term of the two-term course have been transcribed and posted too. I have included Anderson’s c.v. as of the publication of his dissertation in November, 1911 below. I’ll next post the University of California’s brief biography of Anderson published in its “In Memoriam” series.

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VITA
[Benjamin M. Anderson 1911]

The author was born in Columbia, Missouri, May 1, 1886. He was prepared for college in the high
school in Columbia, and attended the State University of Missouri, receiving the A. B. degree from that institution in 1906. His work in economics at Missouri was chiefly with Professor J. E. Pope. He was made a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Alpha of Missouri, in 1905. He filled a temporary vacancy in the chair of history at the State Normal School in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, during the summer session of 1905. He was Professor of Political Economy at Missouri Valley College, Marshall, Missouri, 1906-7, and from 1907 to 1911 was Head of the Department of History and Political Economy in the State Normal School at Springfield, Missouri, though on leave of absence during the years 1909-10 and 1910-11. He was Fellow in Economics at the University of Illinois during the term 1909-10, working in the seminars of Dean Kinley and Professor E. L. Bogart, and, in philosophy, in the seminar of Professor B. H. Bode. He received the A. M. degree at Illinois in 1910. As Garth Fellow in Political Economy at Columbia University, 1910-11, he studied under Professors Seligman, Seager, H. L. Moore, Giddings and John Dewey, doing seminar work with Professors Seligman, Seager and Giddings. He was appointed in 1911 Instructor in Political Economy at Columbia University. In May, 1909, he was married to Miss Margaret Louise Crenshaw, at St. Louis, Mo.

Source: Benjamin M. Anderson, Social Value–A Study in Economic Theory Critical and Constructive, p. i.

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Course Enrollment

[Economics] 3. Asst. Professor Anderson, assisted by Mr. Laporte.—Money, Banking, and Commercial Crises.

Total 38: 13 Seniors, 15 Juniors, 4 Sophomores, 6 Other.

 

Source: Harvard University. Reports of the President and the Treasurer of Harvard College, 1917-18, p. 54.

_______________________

 

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
1917-18

SYLLABUS FOR ECONOMICS 3

(Money, Banking, and Commercial Crises)
Assistant Professor Anderson

Required reading is marked with an asterisk

 

Part I. MONEY

  1. FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS.
    1. Definitions: money; specie; currency, etc.
    2. Origin of money; origin of gold and silver money; gold as a commodity.
    3. Functions of money; common measure of values; medium of exchange; legal tender; standard of deferred payments; store of value; bearer of options; reserve for credit operations.
    4. Standard and subsidiary money; Gresham’s law and monometallism; the gold standard.
    5. Value of money: preliminary statement.

Reading.

Anderson, Value of Money, pp. 397-427.*
Phillips, Readings in Money and Banking, pp. 1-26.*
Moulton, Money and Banking, Pt. I, pp. 45-62.*
Laughlin, Principles of Money, passim.
Menger, art. “Geld” in Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften.

  1. GOVERNMENT PAPER MONEY.
    1. Colonial and Revolutionary Paper Money.
    2. The French Assignats.
    3. The Greenbacks.
    4. Causes governing the value of inconvertible paper.
      1. Gold premium and index numbers.
    5. Financial results of inconvertible paper.
    6. Social and industrial consequences of inconvertible papers.

Reading.

Moulton, Pt. I, pp. 134-162; 168 (chart); 178-209, 260-66.*
Horace White, Money and Banking, chs. on Revolutionary Bills of Credit, and Greenbacks.*
Phillips, pp. 26-70, 115-120.*
Mitchell, W. C., History of the Greenbacks, and Gold, Wages and Prices under the Greenback Standard.

  1. THE STANDARD QUESTION.
    1. Early history of metallic money.
    2. History of bimetallism.
      1. Mediaeval and early modern times.
      2. England
      3. France
      4. United States.
    3. Theory of bimetallism:
      1. Theory of the ratio:
        1. Gresham’s Law.
        2. The compensatory principle.
      2. The standard of deferred payments: justice between debtor and creditor:
        1. Index numbers: of commodity prices; of wages.
        2. The commodity standard upheld by bimetallists.
        3. The labor standard by monometallists.
      3. Theory of exchanges between gold and silver countries.
    4. The monetary system of the United States.

Reading.

Phillips, Chs. VI and VII.*
Moulton, Pt. I, pp. 66-68, Chs. IV, VI, and VIII.*

    1. The gold exchange standard, and the triumph of the gold standard.
      1. India.
      2. Philippines.
      3. Mexico.
      4. Straits Settlement.
      5. Gold standard in 1914.

Reading.

Phillips, Chs. XII and XIV.*
Kemmerer, Modern Currency Reforms.

  1. THE VALUE OF MONEY.
    1. Economic Value.

Reading.

Anderson, Ch. I.

    1. Must the value of money rest on a commodity basis? Quantity theory doctrine that inconvertible paper may be sustained in value by limitation in supply.
    2. The quantity theory v. Gresham’s Law.

Reading.

Anderson, Chs. VII and XVII.
Fisher, Purchasing Power of Money, pp. 14-32.*

  1. STABILIZING THE GOLD DOLLAR.

Reading.

Moulton, Pt. I, pp. 258-60; 266-71.*
Phillips, Ch. XIII.*

PART II. CREDIT AND BANKING

  1. NATURE OF CREDIT.
    1. Kinds of credit instruments.
    2. Definitions of credit.
    3. Bank-credit—analysis of bank statement.
    4. The mechanism of the modern bank.

Reading.

Moulton, Pt. II, pp. 12-37.*
Anderson, Ch. XXIII.*
Dunbar, Theory and History of Banking, Chs. I-V.*
Fiske, The Modern Bank, pp. 25-260, omitting Chs. XXI, XXVIII, XXX.*
Horace White, ch. on Bank Statement.*

    1. The use of checks in payments in the United States.

Reading.

Phillips, pp. 150-58.*
Kinley, The Use of Credit Instruments in Payments in the United States, National Monetary Commission Report.

    1. The volume of money and credit and the volume of trade,—trade and speculation.

Reading.

Anderson, Ch. XIII.*

  1. BANK-NOTES AND BANK DEPOSITS: “CURRENCY SCHOOL” v. “BANKING SCHOOL.”
    1. Currency School and the quantity theory.
    2. Essential identity of notes and deposits under “assets banking.”
    3. Systems of bank-note issue: Suffolk system; Canada; England; France; Germany; Austria; United States national banking system.

Reading.

Anderson, Ch. XIV.*
Mill, J. S., Principles of Political Economy, Bk. III, Ch. XXIV, pars. 1 and 2.*
Moulton, Pt. II, pp. 225-58.*
Conant, Modern Banks of Issue, passim.

  1. THE ENGLISH BANKING SYSTEM.
    1. History.
    2. Analysis of present system in London: Bank of England; Joint Stock Banks; branches of foreign banks; discount houses; acceptance houses; bill brokers; Stock Exchange; commodity speculation; warehousing system and commission houses; insurance; foreign exchange.

Reading.

Withers and Palgrave, English Banking System, National Monetary Commission Report, pp. 3-110.*
Phillips, pp. 435-442; 464-473.*
Withers, The Meaning of Money.
Bagehot, Lombard Street.
Conant, Modern Banks of Issue.

  1. FOREIGN EXCHANGE.

Reading.

Escher, Foreign Exchange.*
Anderson, Ch. XVI, and Appendix to Ch. XIII.*
Weekly article in Annalist on foreign exchange market.

  1. SPECULATION ON THE STOCK AND PRODUCE EXCHANGES.
    1. Theory of speculation.
    2. The New York Stock Exchange.
      1. Methods of doing business.
      2. Contrasted with London, Paris, and Berlin exchanges.
    3. Investment bankers and underwriters.
    4. Chicago Board of Trade; New York Cotton Exchange.

Reading.

Emery, Speculation on the Stock and Produce Exchanges.
Pratt, Work of Wall Street.
Van Antwerp, The Stock Exchange from Within.
Passages to be assigned.
Weekly articles in Annalist on stock and bond markets.

  1. “COMMERCIAL BANKING” AND SPECULATION; BANK ASSETS AND BANK RESERVES.

Reading.

Fisher, Purchasing Power of Money, pp. 47-54.*
Anderson, Ch. XXIV, and pp. 363-81, and 177-85.
Moulton, Pt. II, pp. 66-89.*

  1. CLEARING HOUSES.
    1. Methods.
    2. Extraordinary functions.
    3. The interpretation of “clearings.”

Reading.

Phillips, Ch. XIX.

  1. THE “MONEY MARKET.”
    1. “Money” v. money.
    2. “Money rates” v. interest rates.
    3. Analysis of causes governing money rates:
      1. General causes.
      2. Causes affecting special types of “paper.”

Reading.

Scott, W. A., Money and Banking, ch. on “Money Market.”* (1910 or later editions.)
Anderson, pp. 375-79; 425-32; 453-58;495-97; 516-27; 529-44.*
Moulton, Pt. II, pp. 120-136.*
Weekly article on “Money” in the Annalist.

  1. BANKING IN GERMANY.

Reading.

Phillips, Ch. XXV.*

  1. BANKING IN CANADA.

Reading.

Phillips, Ch. XXI.*

  1. BANKING IN FRANCE.

Reading.

Phillips, Ch. XXIV.*

  1. BANKING IN THE UNITED STATES.
    1. Before the Civil War.
      1. The two National Banks.
      2. State and private banks.
    2. Origin of the national banking system.
    3. State banks and trust companies; private banks; savings banks, etc.
    4. Comparative growth and present status of different classes of institutions. Geographical distribution.

Reading.

Horace White, Chs. on First and Second National banks, The Bank War, The Suffolk Bank System, The Safety Fund System, The Free Bank System, The National Bank System.*
Phillips, Chs. XV and XX.*
Barnett, State Banks and Trust Companies.

 

PART III. CRISES AND PANICS

  1. THEORY OF CRISES.
  2. FINANCIAL PANICS.

Reading.

Phillips, pp. 644-71.*

  1. HISTORY OF CRISES UNDER THE NATIONAL BANKING ACT.

Reading.

Sprague, History of Crises under the National Banking System, National Monetary Commission Report, pp. 153-320.*

  1. THE ENGLISH BANKING SYSTEM DURING THE FIRST YEAR OF THE WAR. OTHER EUROPEAN COUNTRIES.
  2. NEW YORK AND THE CRISIS OF 1914.

Reading.

Phillips, Ch. XXXII.*

  1. REMEDIES FOR CRISES AND PANICS. BUSINESS BAROMETERS.

 

PART IV. THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM

Reading.

Moulton, Pt. II, pp. 259-337.*

 

PART V. MISCELLANEOUS

  1. AGRICULTURAL CREDIT.

Reading.

Phillips, Ch. XXVII.*

  1. THE “MONEY TRUST.”

Reading.

Phillips, Ch. XXVIII.*
Anderson, pp. 516-20.*
Moulton, Pt. II, pp. 471-95.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003, Box 1, Folder “Economics 1917-1918”.

Image Source: Benjamin M. Anderson in Harvard Album, 1915.

Categories
Columbia Economists

Columbia. History of Economics Department. Luncheon Talk by Arthur R. Burns, 1954

The main entry of this posting is a transcription of the historical overview of economics at Columbia provided by Professor Arthur R. Burns at a reunion luncheon for Columbia economics Ph.D. graduates [Note: Arthur Robert Burns was the “other” Arthur Burns of the Columbia University economics department, as opposed to Arthur F. Burns, who was the mentor/friend of Milton Friedman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, chairman of the Board of Governors of the Fed, etc.]. He acknowledges his reliance on the definitive research of his colleague, Joseph Dorfman, that was published in the following year:

Joseph Dorfman, “The Department of Economics”, Chapt IX in R. Gordon Hoxie et al., A History of the Faculty of Political Science, Columbia University. New York: Columbia University Press, 1955.

The cost of the luncheon was $2.15 per person. 36 members of the economics faculty attended, who paid for themselves, and some 144 attending guests (includes about one hundred Columbia economics Ph.D.’s) had their lunches paid for by the university.

_____________________________

[LUNCHEON INVITATION LETTER]

Columbia University
in the City of New York
[New York 27, N.Y.]
FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

March 25, 1954

 

Dear Doctor _________________

On behalf of the Department of Economics, I am writing to invite you to attend a Homecoming Luncheon of Columbia Ph.D.’s in Economics. This will be held on Saturday, May 29, at 12:30 sharp, in the Men’s Faculty Club, Morningside Drive and West 117th Street.

This Luncheon is planned as a part of Columbia University’s Bicentennial Celebration, of which, as you know, the theme is “Man’s Right to Knowledge and the free Use Thereof”. The date of May 29 is chosen in relation to the Bicentennial Conference on “National Policy for Economic Welfare at Home and Abroad” in which distinguished scholars and men of affairs from the United States and other countries will take part. The final session of this Conference, to be held at three p.m. on May 29 in McMillin Academic Theater, will have as its principal speaker our own Professor John Maurice Clark. The guests at the Luncheon are cordially invited to attend the afternoon meeting.

The Luncheon itself and brief after-luncheon speeches will be devoted to reunion, reminiscence and reacquaintance with the continuing work of the Department. At the close President Grayson Kirk will present medals on behalf of the University to the principal participants in the Bicentennial Conference.

We shall be happy to welcome to the Luncheon as guests of the University all of our Ph.D.’s, wherever their homes may be, who can arrange to be in New York on May 29. We very much hope you can be with us on that day. Please reply on the form below.

Cordially yours,

[signed]
Carter Goodrich
Chairman of the Committee

*   *   *   *   *   *

Professor Carter Goodrich
Box #22, Fayerweather Hall
Columbia University
New York 27, New York

I shall be glad…
I shall be unable… to attend the Homecoming Luncheon on May 29.

(signed) ___________

Note: Please reply promptly, not later than April 20 in the case of Ph.D.’s residing in the United States, and not later than May 5 in the case of others.

_____________________________

[INVITATION TO SESSION FOLLOWING LUNCHEON]

Columbia University
in the City of New York
[New York 27, N.Y.]
FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

May 6, 1954

 

TO:                 Departments of History, Math. Stat., Public and Sociology
FROM:            Helen Harwell, secretary, Graduate Department of Economics

 

Will you please bring the following notice to the attention of the students in your Department:

            A feature of Columbia’s Bicentennial celebration will be a Conference on National Policy for Economic Welfare at Home and Abroad, to be held May 27, 28 and 29.

            The final session of the Conference will take place in McMillin Theatre at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 29. The session topic is “Economic Welfare in a Free Society”. The program is:

Session paper.

John M. Clark, John Bates Clark Professor. Emeritus of Economics, Columbia University.

Discussants:

Frank H. Knight, Professor of Economics, University of Chicago
David E. Lilienthal, Industrial Consultant and Executive
Wilhelm Roepke, Professor of International Economics, Graduate Institute of International Studies, University of Geneva

 

Students in the Faculty of Political Science are cordially invited to attend this session and to bring their wives or husbands and friends who may be interested.

Tickets can be secured from Miss Helen Harwell, 505 Fayer.

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[REMARKS BY PROFESSOR ARTHUR ROBERT BURNS]

Department of Economics Bicentennial Luncheon
May 29th, 1954

President Kirk, Ladies and Gentlemen: On behalf of the Department of Economics I welcome you all to celebrate Columbia’s completion of its first two hundred years as one of the great universities. We are gratified that so many distinguished guests have come, some from afar, to participate in the Conference on National Policy for Economic Welfare at Home and Abroad. We accept their presence as testimony of their esteem for the place of Columbia in the world of scholarship. Also, we welcome among us again many of the intellectual offspring of the department. We like to believe that the department is among their warmer memories. We also greet most pleasurably some past members of the department, namely Professors Vladimir G. Simkhovitch, Eugene Agger, Eveline M. Burns and Rexford Tugwell. Finally, but not least, we are pleased to have with us the administrative staff of the department who are ceaselessly ground between the oddity and irascibility of the faculty and the personal and academic tribulations of the students. Gertrude D. Stewart who is here is evidence that this burden can be graciously carried for thirty-five years without loss of charm or cheer.

We are today concerned with the place of economics within the larger scope of Columbia University. When the bell tolls the passing of so long a period of intellectual endeavor one casts an appraising eye over the past, and I am impelled to say a few retrospective words about the faculty and the students. I have been greatly assisted in this direction by the researches of our colleague, Professor Dorfman, who has been probing into our past.

On the side of the faculty, there have been many changes, but there are also many continuities. First let me note some of the changes. As in Europe, economics made its way into the university through moral philosophy, and our College students were reading the works of Frances Hutcheson in 1763. But at the end of the 18th century, there seems to have been an atmosphere of unhurried certainty and comprehensiveness of view that has now passed away. For instance, it is difficult to imagine a colleague of today launching a work entitled “Natural Principles of Rectitude for the Conduct of Man in All States and Situations in Life Demonstrated and Explained in a Systematic Treatise on Moral Philosophy”. But one of early predecessors, Professor Gross, published such a work in 1795.

The field of professorial vision has also change. The professor Gross whom I have just mentioned occupied no narrow chair but what might better be called a sofa—that of “Moral Philosophy, German Language and Geography”. Professor McVickar, early in the nineteenth century, reclined on the even more generous sofa of “Moral and Intellectual Philosophy, Rhetoric, Belles Lettres and Political Economy”. By now, however, political economy at least existed officially and, in 1821, the College gave its undergraduates a parting touch of materialist sophistication in some twenty lectures on political economy during the last two months of their senior year.

But by the middle of the century, integration was giving way to specialization. McVickar’s sofa was cut into three parts, one of which was a still spacious chair of “History and Political Science”, into which Francis Lieber sank for a brief uneasy period. His successor, John W. Burgess, pushed specialization further. He asked for an assistant to take over the work in political economy. Moreover, his request was granted and Richmond Mayo Smith, then appointed, later became Professor of Political Economy, which, however, included Economics, Anthropology and Sociology. The staff of the department was doubled in 1885 by the appointment of E. R. A. Seligman to a three-year lectureship, and by 1891 he had become a professor of Political Economy and Finance. Subsequent fission has separated Sociology and Anthropology and now we are professors of economics, and the days when political economy was covered in twenty lectures seem long ago.

Other changes stand out in our history. The speed of promotion of the faculty has markedly slowed down. Richmond Mayo Smith started as an instructor in 1877 but was a professor after seven years of teaching at the age of 27. E. R. A. Seligman even speeded matters a little and became a professor after six years of teaching. But the University has since turned from this headlong progression to a more stately gait. One last change I mention for the benefit of President Kirk, although without expectation of warm appreciation from him. President Low paid J. B. Clark’s salary out of his own pocket for the first three years of the appointment.

I turn now to some of the continuities in the history of the department. Professor McVickar displayed a concern for public affairs that has continued since his time early in the nineteenth century. He was interested in the tariff and banking but, notably, also in what he called “economic convulsions”, a term aptly suggesting an economy afflicted with the “falling sickness”. Somewhat less than a century later the subject had been rechristened “business cycles” to remove some of the nastiness of the earlier name, and professor Wesley Mitchell was focusing attention on this same subject.

The Columbia department has also shown a persistent interest in economic measurement. Professor Lieber campaigned for a government statistical bureau in the middle of the 19th century and Richmond Mayo Smith continued this interest in statistics and in the Census. Henry L. Moore, who came to the department in 1902, promoted with great devotion Mathematical Economics and Statistics with particular reference to the statistical verification of theory. This interest in quantification remains vigorous among us.

There is also a long continuity in the department’s interest in the historical and institutional setting of economic problems and in their public policy aspect. E. R. A. Seligman did not introduce, but he emphasized this approach. He began teaching the History of Theory and proceeded to Railroad Problems and the Financial and Tariff History of the United States, and of course, Public Finance. John Bates Clark, who joined the department in 1895 to provide advanced training in economics to women who were excluded from the faculty of Political Science, became keenly interested in government policy towards monopolies and in the problem of war. Henry R. Seager, in 1902, brought his warm and genial personality to add to the empirical work in the department in labor and trust problems. Vladimir G. Simkhovitch began to teach economic history in 1905 at the same time pursuing many and varied other interests, and we greet him here today. And our lately deceased colleague, Robert Murray Haig, continued the work in Public Finance both as teacher and advisor to governments.

Lastly, among these continuities is an interest in theory. E. R. A. Seligman focused attention on the history of theory. John Bates Clark was an outstanding figure in the field too well known to all of us for it to be necessary to particularize as to his work. Wesley C. Mitchell developed his course on “Current Types of Economic Theory” after 1913 and continued to give it almost continuously until 1945. The Clark dynasty was continued when John Maurice Clark joined the department as research professor in 1926. He became emeritus in 1952, but fortunately he still teaches, and neither students nor faculty are denied the stimulation of his gentle inquiring mind. He was the first appointee to the John Bates Clark professorship in 1952 and succeeded Wesley Mitchell as the second recipient of the Francis A. Walker medal of the American Economic Association in the same year.

Much of this development of the department was guided by that gracious patriarch E. R. A. Seligman who was Executive Officer of the Department for about 30 years from 1901. With benign affection and pride he smiled upon his growing academic family creating a high standard of leadership for his successors. But the period of his tenure set too high a standard and executive Officers now come and go like fireflies emitting as many gleams of light as they can in but three years of service. Seligman and J. B. Clark actively participated in the formation of the American Economic Association in which J. B. Clark hoped to include “younger men who do not believe implicitly in laisser faire doctrines nor the use of the deductive method exclusively”.

Among other members of the department I must mention Eugene Agger, Edward Van Dyke Robinson, William E. Weld, and Rexford Tugwell, who were active in College teaching, and Alvin Johnson, Benjamin Anderson and Joseph Schumpeter, who were with the department for short periods. Discretion dictates that I list none of my contemporaries, but I leave them for such mention as subsequent speakers may care to make.

When one turns to the students who are responsible for so much of the history of the department, one is faced by an embarrassment of riches. Alexander Hamilton is one of the most distinguished political economists among the alumni of the College. Richard T. Ely was the first to achieve academic reputation. In the 1880’s, he was giving economics a more humane and historical flavor. Walter F. Wilcox, a student of Mayo Smith, obtained his Ph.D. in 1891 and contributed notably to statistical measurement after he became Chief Statistician of the Census in 1891, and we extend a special welcome to him here today. Herman Hollerith (Ph.D. 1890) contributed in another way to statistics by his development of tabulating machinery. Alvin Johnson was a student as well as teacher. It is recorded that he opened his paper on rent at J. B. Clark’s seminar with the characteristically wry comment that all the things worth saying about rent had been said by J. B. Clark and his own paper was concerned with “some of the other things”. Among other past students are W. Z. Ripley, B. M. Anderson, Willard Thorp, John Maurice Clark, Senator Paul Douglas, Henry Schultz and Simon Kuznets. The last of these we greet as the present President of the American Economic Association. But the list grows too long. It should include many more of those here present as well as many who are absent, but I am going to invite two past students and one present student to fill some of the gaps in my story of the department.

I have heard that a notorious American educator some years ago told the students at Commencement that he hoped he would never see them again. They were going out into the world with the clear minds and lofty ideals which were the gift of university life. Thenceforward they would be distorted by economic interest, political pressure, and family concerns and would never again be the same pellucid and beautiful beings as at that time. I confess that the thought is troubling. But in inviting our students back we have overcome our doubts and we now confidently call upon a few of them. The first of these is George W. Stocking who, after successfully defending a dissertation on “The Oil Industry and the Competitive System” in 1925, has continued to pursue his interest in competition and monopoly as you all know. He is now at Vanderbilt University.

The second of our offspring whom I will call upon is Paul Strayer. He is one of the best pre-war vintages—full bodied, if I may borrow from the jargon of the vintner without offense to our speaker. Or I might say fruity, but again not without danger of misunderstanding. Perhaps I had better leave him to speak for himself. Paul Strayer, now of Princeton University, graduated in 1939, having completed a dissertation on the painful topic of “The Taxation of Small Incomes”.

The third speaker is Rodney H. Mills, a contemporary student and past president of the Graduate Economics Students Association. He has not yet decided on his future presidencies, but we shall watch his career with warm interest. He has a past, not a pluperfect, but certainly a future. Just now, however, no distance lends enchantment to his view of the department. And I now call upon him to share his view with us.

So far we have been egocentric and appropriately so. But many other centres of economic learning are represented here, and among them the London School of Economics of which I am proud as my own Alma Mater. I now call upon Professor Lionel Robbins of Polecon (as it used sometimes to be known) to respond briefly on behalf of our guests at the Conference. His nature and significance are or shall I say, is, too well known to you to need elaboration.

[in pencil]
A.R. Burns

Source: Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections, Columbiana. Department of Economics Collection, Box 9, Folder “Bicentennial Celebration”.

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[BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION FOR ARTHUR ROBERT BURNS]

 

BURNS, Arthur Robert, Columbia Univ., New York 27, N.Y. (1938) Columbia Univ., prof. of econ., teach., res.; b. 1895; B.Sc. (Econ.), 1920, Ph.D. (Econ.), 1926, London Sch. of Econ. Fields 5a, 3bc, 12b. Doc. dis. Money and monetary policy in early times (Kegan Paul Trench Trubner & Co., London, 1926). Pub. Decline of competition (McGraw-Hill 1936); Comparative economic organization (Prentice-Hall, 1955); Electric power and government policy (dir. of res.) (Twentieth Century Fund, 1948) . Res. General studies in economic development. Dir. Amer. Men of Sci., III, Dir. of Amer. Schol.

Source: Handbook of the American Economic Association, American Economic Review, Vol. 47, No. 4 (July, 1957), p. 40.

 

Obituary: “Arthur Robert Burns dies at 85; economics teacher at Columbia“, New York Times, January 22, 1981.

Image: Arthur Robert Burns.  Detail from a departmental photo dated “early 1930’s” in Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections, Columbiana. Department of Economics Collection, Box 9, Folder “Photos”.