This post began after I noticed that it has been some time since I posted biographical and career information for a economics Ph.D. alumna. I figured it would be good to search for a candidate that Economics in the Rear-view Mirror has already caught in an earlier archival trawling expedition but for whom the details of post-doc life had not been added. Dorothy Carolin Bacon was awarded her Radcliffe economics Ph.D. in 1928 and the following item was what I had to start with.
Dorothy Carolin Bacon.
General Examination in Economics, Thursday, May 26, 1927.
Committee: Professors Persons (chairman), Carver, Crum, Gay and Holcombe.
Academic History: Simmons College, 1918-19; Radcliffe College, 1919-22, 1923-24, 1926-. A.B., Radcliffe, 1922; A.M., ibid., 1924. Assistant in Economics, Vassar College, 1924-25. Instructor in Economics, ibid., 1925-26.
General Subjects: 1. Economic Theory. 2. Sociology. 3. History of Political Theory. 4. Statistics. 5. Economic History. 6., Money, Banking and Crises.
Special Subject: Money, Banking and Crises.
Thesis Subject: A Study of the Dispersion of Wholesale Commodity Prices, 1890-1896. (With Professor Persons.)
Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examinations for the Ph.D. (HUC 7000.70), Folder “Examinations for the Ph.D., 1926-1927”.
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One of the items that came up after searching for a Google search was an advertisement for her handwritten Radcliffe student journal notes from her Physics course in 1922. Besides being surprised to see a list price of $750.00 for this notebook, I was intrigued by the relatively detailed information provided about Dorothy Bacon. While everything about the text struck me as fully plausible, I thought it worth some due diligence to confirm what I could from the bookseller’s bio-blurb. I have added links wherever possible to sources that confirm the details below. It would appear that information from the above item in Economics in the Rear-view Mirror as well as from the Dzuback chapters in Madden and Dimand (eds.) and Margaret A. Nash (ed.) have provided some (or even much) of what was included in the D. Anthem advertisement that follows.
The section on Smith College in Mary Ann Dzuback’s chapter “Women economists in the academy: struggles and strategies, 1900-1940” in the Routledge Handbook of the History of Women’s Economic Thought, Kirsten Madden and Robert W. Dimand (eds.) provides information on Dorothy Bacon from the faculty files of the Smith College Archives [Office of President William Allan Neilson Files, Box 364, Folder 34]:
Bacon came to Smith a year before finishing her Ph.D. at Radcliffe in 1928. She took research and service sabbatical leaves to work for the Works Progress Administration and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in the 1930s. She focused her research on money flows during the 1930s, cost price problems, and the development of federal level credit institutions. By the 1940s, she was working with the federal Office of Price Administration. By the 1950s, she was consulting with the Brookings Institution, had been a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and received grants from the SSRC. She published a monograph on the recent economic history of five towns around Northampton, Massachusetts, in the late 1930s, and was completing a book on the development of Philippine credit institutions by 1970.
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Another paragraph by Mary Ann Dzuback
From: Mary Ann Dzuback. Chapter 7. Research at Women’s Colleges, 1890-1940. Women’s Higher Education in the United States (Historical Studies in Education), edited by Margaret A. Nash. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
Dorothy Bacon (1927–54) arrived in 1928, eventually taking an endowed chair. She investigated the flows of currency during the Depression, cost price problems, and the growth of credit institutions, and was in great demand by private research agencies and the federal government. A sometime consultant with the National Bureau of Economic Research, in the 1920s and 1930s she worked with a range of government and research agencies. She was awarded grants by the Social Science Research Council and published regularly. Bacon’s record of research and service, and her sabbaticals, suggest that women social science scholars at Smith were encouraged to use their research to inform policy at the federal and international levels.
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From: Advertisement for “Economist Dorothy Bacon’s 1922 Physics 2 Journal from Radcliffe College (1922)
Dorothy Carolin Bacon was born in 1902 to George Preston Bacon, a professor of Physics and Dean of both the Tufts Engineering School and the Bromfield-Pearson School, and Hannah Churchill Bacon, a trained nurse. Her sister, Ruth Bacon, also attended Radcliffe College and later became the first female officer of a State Department geographical bureau (Bureau of Eastern Affairs). Bacon attended Simmons College from 1918-19 before transferring to Radcliffe, the former women’s liberal arts college that fully merged with Harvard in 1999. She earned her B.A. (1922), M.A. (1924) and Ph.D (1927) [sic, 1928] there with her dissertation concerning A Study of the Dispersion of Wholesale Commodity Prices, 1890-1896. While at Radcliffe she also worked for the Federal Reserve Board’s Division of Research and Analysis [as a Statistical Clerk starting 1 July 1922] earning an annual salary of $1600 before resigning [May 10] in 1923.
She was hired as an assistant professor [sic, “Assistant” is a lower rank than “Assistant Professor”] in economics at Vassar in 1924 [cf. AER, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Dec. 1924), p. 829 “Miss Dorothy C. Bacon is assistant in economics at Vassar College.”], but was recruited by Esther Lowenthal, Dean of the Faculty and chair of the economics department at Smith, to join Smith’s faculty in 1927. At Smith she focused her research on money flows during the 1930s, cost price problems, and the development of credit institutions at the federal level. In 1930, she was one of three research associates selected for the National Bureau of Economic Research where she studied the relation of current stock prices to earnings per share from the twenty corporations comprising the Index of Industrial Stock Prices of the Harvard Economic Service. Her monograph, Recent Economic History of the Five Towns (1937) was published by the Works Progress Administration. In 1942, Bacon left her post at Smith [sic, only temporary leave] to work under Leon Henderson at the Office of Price Administration. It was there that she wrote a study of the scrap metal market in Syracuse, NY. By the 1950s, she was consulting with the Brookings Institution and was publishing her research in the Review of Economic Statistics, the Journal of the American Statistical Association and the National Encyclopedia. She appears to have never married [she wasn’t] and when she died in 1998 she was buried at Shawsheen Cemetery in Bedford, MA, alongside her parents and sister.
Source: D. Anthem, Bookseller advertisement for “Economist Dorothy Bacon’s 1922 Physics 2 Journal from Radcliffe College (1922) [posted price: $750.00!]
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A.E.A. Biographical Listing, 1969
BACON, Dorothy Carolin, academic; b. Beloit, Wis., 1902; student Simmons Coll., 1918-19; A.B., Radcliffe Coll., 1922, A.M., 1924, Ph.D., 1928. FIELDS 2c, 5e, 4a. Research asso., Nat. Bur. Econ. Research, 1930-31; formerly sr. research asso., Fed. Deposit Ins. Corp.; fed. Dir. Research project, Work Progress Adm., 1935-36; asst. div. economist, food price div., OPA [Office of Price Administration], 1943-47, OPS [Office of Price Stabilization], 1951; Fulbright prof., U. Philippines, 1956-57; mem. Faculty, Smith Coll. Since 1927, prof. since 1938, Robert A. Woods prof. since 1956. ADDRESS Smith Coll., 115 Elm St., Northampton, MA 01060.
Note. Fields: 2c (Economic Development Studies); 5e (General International Economics); 4a (Monetary and Financial Theory and Institutions).
Source: The American Economic Review, Vol. 59, No. 6, 1969. Handbook of the American Economic Association (January 1970), p. 17.
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Bachelor of Arts, Radcliffe (1922)
With Distinction in Special Subjects
Cum Laude
Dorothy Carolin Bacon [of] Medford. In Mathematics.
Source: Report of the Dean in Annual Report of Radcliffe College for 1920-1923, p. 43.
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Master of Arts, Radcliffe (1924)
Dorothy Carolin Bacon, A.B.
Source: Report of the Dean in Annual Report of Radcliffe College for 1923-1924, p. 31.
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Doctor of Philosophy, Radcliffe (1928)
Dorothy Carolin Bacon A.M.
Subject, Economics. Special Field, Money and Banking. Dissertation, “Maladjustment of Prices with Special Reference to the Wholesale Prices of Commodities in the United States; 1890-1896”
Source: Report of the Dean in Annual Reports of Radcliffe College for 1927-1928, p. 23.
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Publications of Dorothy C. Bacon
A Monthly Index of Commodity Prices, 1890-1900. Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 8, No. 4 (October 1926), pp. 177-83.
The Significance of Fixed-base and Link Relatives in Studies of Price Stability: A Comment on the Behavior of Prices. Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 23 (September 1928), pp. 274-81.
Maladjustment of Prices with Special Reference to the Wholesale Prices of Commodities in the United States, 1890-1896. Ph.D. thesis, Radcliffe College.
Encyclopedia articles in the National Encyclopedia.
Recent Economic History of Five Towns. Northampton, Mass.: Smith College, 1937.
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Vital Dates and Miscellaneous Information
Born: 25 February 1902 in Beloit, Wisconsin.
Last Residence: Niceville, Okaloosa, Florida [Socal Security death index].
Died: 8 November in Meriden, New Haven County, Connecticut. [Apparently visiting: the Connecticut Death Index notes her address 2475 Virginia, Residence Andover, District of Columbia].
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Image Source: Senior year picture of Dorothy Carolin Bacon in the Radcliffe Year Book 1922, p. 23.
