Tag: ClarkJM

Columbia. Economics Ph.D. Alumnus, James Walter Crook, 1895

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2017-11-26

This posting is another in the irregular series, “Get to know an economics Ph.D. alum”. I stumbled upon Professor James Walter Crook’s photo while working on the previous autobiographical posting for John Maurice Clark who was a student of his at Amherst and later a colleague. Crook spent a year in Berlin as a student and overlapped with W.E.B. Du Bois there and to whom we see below he had been introduced.

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James Walter Crook (1859-1933)
Columbia Ph.D., 1895

James Walter Crook was born Dec. 21, 1859 in Ontario, Canada. His family emigrated to the U.S. in 1868. According to the 1880 U. S. Census he was the Census Enumerator for the 1^st Ward of the City of Manistee in Manistee county, Michigan where he (21 years of age) lived with his mother and six younger brothers. While a few younger brothers were registered employed in a saw mill, James Walter Crook was listed as attending school. He married Eva Maria Lewis Sept 16, 1881 in Manistee. His occupation was “school teacher” according to the record of marriage.

Crook received his B.A. from Oberlin College in 1891 where he stayed on as a history instructor the following year. This was followed by a year of graduate work at the University of Wisconsin where he was listed as a Fellow in Economics, 1892-93.

He studied at the University of Berlin in 1893-94 where he happened to be introduced to W. E. B. Du Bois, himself an American student in Berlin. In Dubois’ papers there is a letter Crook wrote (January 21, 1905): “I suppose you do not remember me, but I recall with pleasure my meeting you in Berlin, Germany introduced by our mutual friend Knowlton, now of Fargo, N. Dakota.” In particular Crook was looking for advice regarding a sociological survey he wished to conduct among the ca. 200 African-Americans living in Amherst (population about 3,000 total).

After Germany Crook went on to do graduate work at Columbia University in 1894-95. The next year he was hired to teach Political Economy at Amherst where he worked through retirement. Crook was awarded a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1895, publishing his dissertation as German Wage Theories: A History of Their Development. Vol. IX, No. 2 of Studies in History, Economics and Public Law. New York: Columbia University, 1898.

According to the U.S. Census reports he and his wife Eva lived at 21 Main Street in Amherst for at least the four censuses 1900-1930.

James Walter Crook, died in Springfield, MA 1933.

Source: From faculty pages in the Amherst College Yearbook, Olio, 1905, page 24. Also the Dubois papers at the University of Massachusetts and U.S. Census reports.

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PROFESSORS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
Amherst College (1877-1910)

1877	Anson Daniel Morse, LL.D.	1878
1892	John Bates Clark, Ph.D.	1895
1892	Charles Augustus Tuttle, Ph.D., Associate Political Economy and International Law	1893
1895	James Walter Crook, Ph.D., Assistant	1899
1899	James Walter Crook, Ph.D., Associate	1907
1907	James Walter Crook, Ph.D.
1908	Glover Dunn Hancock, Ph.D., Assistant	1910
1910	John Maurice Clark, Ph.D., Associate

Source: General Catalogue of Amherst College including the Officers of Government and Instruction, the Alumni and Honorary Graduates, 1821-1910. Amherst, Mass., p. 9.

Image Source: From faculty pages in the Amherst College Yearbook, Olio, 1905, page 24.

Tags ClarkJB, ClarkJM, Crook, DuBois

Amherst Chicago Columbia Economists

Columbia. John Maurice Clark. Autobiographical notes, 1949

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2017-11-25

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.

______________________

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.

Tags Agger, Anderson, Chaddock, ClarkJB, ClarkJM, Copeland, Friedman, Garver, Giddings, Goodrich, Innis, Jacobstein, JohnsonA, Knight, Kuznets, Laughlin, Lyon, Moore, Seager, Seligman, Slichter, Veblen

Columbia Exam Questions Suggested Reading Syllabus

Columbia. Foundations of Social Economics. J.M. Clark 1937

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2017-01-08

Working with the papers of John Maurice Clark is not for historians who abhor dirt and disorder. Simply imagine going into an attic and finding the papers of your grandparents dumped shelf by shelf, pile by pile, with or without the social contrivance of filing, and now image the dust of decades has penetrated the recesses of box and folder. And yet there is much interesting stuff for the hardy to be found in the rummage of Clark’s career.

Three items are posted today from J. M. Clark’s course on the foundations of social economics: (i) five pages describing a course project for students to think about an economic constitution for a newly discovered, virgin continent that is 1/10 the scale of the United States which would be colonized by 1/10 of the U.S. population but run as an experiment in economics; (ii) an undated handwritten course bibliography; (iii) an undated typed final examination for the course.

Examination questions for one of the two courses taught back-to-back from a few years earlier can be found in Milton Friedman’s papers.

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COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

Economics 109—Foundations of social economics. 3 points Winter Session. Professor J. M. Clark.
M. and W. at 2:10. 401 Fayerweather.

The course pays attention to the nature of man, and of joint organizations which act as economic men; the economic ideal, viewed dynamically; the social meaning of wealth; the institution of exchange; the principles of choice, value, and cost; a functional analysis of production; the basic institutions of control; economic guidance; negotiation and bargaining; the factors of production and the laws of return; the problem of waste.

Economics 110—Dynamics of value and distribution. 3 points Spring Session. Professor J. M. Clark.
M. and W. at 2:10. 401 Fayerweather.

The functions of value and price; the dynamics of supply and demand for commodities and factors of production; the institution of competition; social vs. competitive schemes of distribution; value and expenses of production; expenses and ultimate costs of production; cumulative vs. self-limiting changes; the level of prices; economic rhythms.

Source: Columbia University Bulletin of Information, Thirty-seventh series, No. 28 (June 26, 1937). History, Economics, Public Law, and Social Science. Courses offered by the Faculty of Political Science for Winter and Spring Sessions 1937-1938, p. 27.

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Typed copy of Course Project, Econ 109
Winter Semester 1937

[handwritten note at top of page
“P.P. [per person?] 2-3 Objectives. 4-5 Strategic decisions.”]

Tentative project for Econ. 109.
(May be used as a carry-over in early meetings of 110 this year—Jan.-Feb., 1938)

Specifications for a new economic system.

A new continent, unoccupied and reproducing the area and resources of the U.S. on a one-tenth scale, has been discovered in the Pacific, and recognized as belonging to the U.S. Recognising that our present economic system is unsatisfactory, the Government has decided to use this area as a laboratory experiment in the setting-up of an altered system, starting from scratch with the advantage of hindsight as to the evils of our present system and trying to improve on them. More than one-tenth of our population, including quotas from all walks of life, have signified their willingness to try the experiment and to cooperate loyally in whatever system is selected. We needn’t take Al Capone [Chicago gangster kingpin] if we don’t want him, but we can have Owen Young [founder of RCA, the Young Plan regarding the reduction of German reparations was his namesake], Henry Dennison [important figure in scientific management movements] and others of like complexion if we want them.

This class has been designated as one of a number of groups to draw up and submit proposals, from which a plan for developing the area will ultimately be selected or otherwise made up. There are other groups concerned with religion, education and political government, and there will be interchange between all the groups before their various proposals are knit together. The political-government group is marking time until it finds what kind of a system it will have to devise a government for. There may be other groups set up on health, penology, family and social relations, art and possibly other matters as developments seem to require them.

[Handwritten title insert] First Strategic decision.

We shall use modern scientific and technical methods of production. In departing from the pattern of the existing system, we are free to go all the way to the most complete communism, or to move in the other direction and try to set up a system more genuinely individualistic (and presumably more competitive) than the present one, if we think the chief trouble is that it is not individualistic enough.

Desirable ends, formulated as standards, so far as possible.

“Maximum individual welfare”, including physical and mental health, personalities adjusted to social living, well-rounded exercise of faculties and adequate stimulus thereto, liberty of choice, within limits, barring things demonstrably harmful to individual or society but including choice of occupation, particular forms of recreation and consumption, adequate guidance in the exercise of liberty, possible special stimulation to activities regarded by proper and competent bodies as especially valuable.

More goods, for those who need them most, implying much greater equality of distribution that at present, but not neglecting importance of increasing total. Flat equality, or distribution (of all goods) according to need, debatable. What kinds of goods? Not much more food, not very much more clothing, much more adequate housing, more adequate education, much more adequate health service (but our religious board includes a couple of Christian Scientists!) “More goods” calls for stimuli to efficiency of production in all grades, and liberty to try new processes and new goods. Whole question of bureaucratic morale, of differentiated material rewards varying with performance (or in proportion to commercial worth of superior performance?) of comparative, quasi-competitive or completely competitive tests of performance.

Right to opportunity to work.

Relative stability of rate of production.

Adequate supply of capital to ensure progressive efficiency of production, with future product rationally weighted against present privation.

Rational distribution of family income over time, with balanced provision for old age and emergencies. (This may or may not be tied up with the provision of capital funds, as at present).

National defense, to the extent deemed necessary (We shall assume that it does not call for a totalitarian system.) [Handwritten note: “Can we safely assume that in 1947?]

Strategic decisions.

Scope of consumers’ preference in deciding what goods and services shall be produced. We shall surely let them decide what color wall-paper and furnishings to have, and beyond certain minimum requirements what books to read and what recreations to follow. We may ration some things—if so, what?—but there will be some realm within which we let them have purchasing power which they are free to use as they choose. This will be our money, and goods will have a price, within this realm.

Shall we also let them choose whether to spend or not to spend? The dangers here are two: fluctuations of total spending (including that on capital formation) and excess saving not spent on capital formation. Unless incomes and the feeling of insecurity fluctuate heavily, the first danger is not great. With large concentrated incomes eliminated, the second danger would be practically removed. Fluctuating credit for busing durable consumers’ goods would create more danger; and for industrial investments, more still. Control of credit can be made effective downward, but not very well upward, even if credit is a public monopoly.

As to public services, I shall assume that we keep the present list, with reservations as to poor-relief if the need is changed or other agencies substituted; and that the question is as to additions. The big question is whether we make the main body of production a public service. If we do, it will be for two main reasons: to control inequality of distribution, and to control the relation between the current volume of production and the spendings (consumer and capital) it depends on to take the goods off the market, to the end that utilized production may be limited only by power and willingness to produce, no fall short of that limit as at present.

If we do that, problems arise of means to secure efficiency from workers and managers, source and allotment of capital and possible place and reward for private savings, determination of production programs and of kinds of goods and services to be produced, including new ones, organization of invention and incentives, determination of wages, of prices, of income devoted to free public series, pensions, etc. procedure concerning workers’ choice of occupation and shifting from one to another, selection of workers and treatment of those nobody wants—that’s enough to start with and to give some idea of the sort of thing that would be encountered. How combat the stagnation of bureaucracy, the multiplication of supervisors, the business of passing the buck and finding scapegoats for poor performance (I assume we shouldn’t want the scapegoats shot)? What sort of “social accounting” shall we use?

If we permit private saving, what shall we do about inheritance, and how prevent evasions of our policy.

We can embody the essentials of our plan in a constitution; how shall we provide for amendment? Shall the whole be in the hands of elected officials? If so, will anyone dare to support an opposition ticket? Will dissatisfied elements believe that a reelection was genuine and fair? Will such factors as these lead the system into a dictatorship of force, even if it did not start that way?

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Bibliography for Economics 109
[no date]

Economics 109

Veblen: “The Place of Science in Modern Civilization”

The Theory of Business Enterprise
The Theory of the Leisure Class
The Instinct of Workmanship.

Davenport, H. J. “Economics of Enterprise”

Anderson, B. M. “Social Value”

Cooley, C. H. : “Social Process”

Hobson, J. A. : “Work & Wealth”.

Pigou, A. C.: “Economics of Welfare” or “Wealth & Welfare”

Tugwell, (ed): “The Trend of Economics”.

Boucke, O. F.: Critique of Economics”.

Mill, J. S.: “Principles of Economics”

Essays on “Liberty” and “Utilitarianism”.

Clark, J. B. “The Philosophy of Wealth”.

“Essentials of Economic Theory”.

Dickinson: Motives in Economic Life

Parker, Carleton: The Casual Laborer.

Wicksteed: “The Common Sense of Pol. Econ.”

Watkins: G. P. “Welfare as an Economic Quantity”.

Hoover Committee “Waste in Industry”

Chase, Stuart: The Tragedy of Waste”.

Clark, J.M.: “Social Control of Business”

“Economics of Overhead Costs”.

Ely: “Property & Contract”.

Commons: “Legal Foundations of Capitalism”.

Sidgwick: Principles of Political Economy.”

Tawney: The Acquisitive Society”

Edie: Principles of the New Economics.”

[Day, Clarence] “This Simian World.”

_________________________________

Economics 109
Final Examination
[undated]

Answer two questions, but not more than one of questions 3-8, inclusive.

Discuss effects of recent military techniques on problems of the economic organization of a country.
With respect to equality as a social-economic objective, what does the prevailing American social judgment favor? Note questions of degree of equality or inequality, and questions of different matters in respect of which people may be equal or unequal.
“Individuals allocate expenditures so as to secure equal marginal utilities from money spent for different things, or to put themselves on a basis of indifference as between different expenditures”. Discuss. If true, why and by what psychological process; if not true, suggest amendments in the light of more realistic psychology.
If you were founding a new society, what would you do about consumers’ freedom of choice, and why? If you allow such freedom in important degree, consider how far this commits you to other features of the present economic system.
Discuss the economic importance of the “instinct of workmanship”.
Compare the theory of “balked dispositions” with the tradition utilitarian treatment of the subjective sacrifices of production.
Discuss economic significance of intelligence tests, in the light of the question what kind of a population is suitable or unsuitable to a system of private enterprise, either complete or modified.
Discuss the social productivity of advertising and salesmanship, and compare this problem with the traditional concept of production, as bearing on the social productivity of private enterprise.
Do the same for the social productivity of “bargaining” activities.
Discuss the range of possible kinds of agencies available to perform economic functions.
Would you assume that the attempt to maximize profits (with or without competition) standardizes economic behavior sufficiently to warrant using this assumption as a sufficient basis for deductive theorizing: that is, as furnishing all the basis such theorizing needs to take account of?
Discuss the meaning of supply schedules or demand schedules, taking account of complexities or difficulties involved.

Source: Columbia University Libraries. Manuscript Collections. Papers of John M. Clark. Box 24, Unlabeled Folder.

Image Source: Detail from Columbia University group photo of economics department from the early 1930s. Columbia University Libraries. Manuscript Collections. Columbiana, Department of Economics Collection, Box 9, Folder “Photos”.

Tags ClarkJM

Columbia Curriculum Fields

Columbia. J. M. Clark on Teaching “modern tools of economic thinking”, 1942

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2016-12-03

In my examination of department archives I have been somwhat surprised at the relative scarcity of paper traffic with regard to curriculum reform. Here a short note from Maurice Clark to the executive officer of the economics department (i.e. chairman) Robert M. Haig about Columbia’s hiring strategy and whether two “math. Ec’ist[s]” aren’t enough for the task of teaching the “modern tools of economic thinking.” Looking at the faculty list for that year, I presume Clark meant Harold Hotelling and Abraham Wald. The note sounds as though Clark is looking for a way to get out of the “Current types of economic theory” course that he had taken over from Wesley Clair Mitchell and to teach instead a core theory course again.

_____________________________________

COPY

January 9, 1942

Dear Bob [R. M. Haig]:

I heard Lange’s paper. Impressions very favorable per se: but he’s one more high-power mathematical economist, and with three, wouldn’t we be unbalanced? And if it takes a math. Ec’ist to do the job of “modern tools of economic thinking” we had in mind, aren’t two enough?

Another unmatured impression: that part of the gap we’re thinking of would be met by a development and more up-to-date and adequate treatment of the sort of thing I used to do in the course I quit giving when I took Mitchell’s “Types” course:–more specifically, the second half-year where I dealt with the concepts of demand, supply and cost curves in an attempt to relate them to actual behavior. I adumbrated the possibility of treating the distinction between competition and monopoly in terms of slopes of “individual demand schedules” (before Chamberlin’s book). Had ‘em read Foster & Catchings to get the “Income-flow” approach, before Keynes’ books appeared. (I note Neisser of Penn. still finds use for F. & C. in teaching.) Suggested the discrepancy between saving and investment (without, I freely admit, seeing the significances that Keynes developed). And of course I had played with “multipliers”.

A course in which I ruthlessly condensed what used to be my first half-year into two or three lectures, and developed the other kind of material more adequately and systematically, might be considered, while we’re considering things.

Yours,

J. M. Clark

_____________________________________

January 13, 1942

Professor John Maurice Clark,
Fayerweather Hall.

Dear Maurice:

Many thanks for your note of January 9^th. I am assuming that you have no objection to my showing it to Mitchell, Angell, and Goodrich.

Faithfully yours,

[R.M. Haig]

_____________________________________

January 13, 1942

Memorandum to Professors Angell, Goodrich and Mitchell
from Professor R. M. Haig:

You will be interested in the enclosed comments from Maurice Clark

_____________________________________

Source: Columbia University Libraries. Manuscript Collections. Columbiana. Department of Economics Collection. Faculty. Box 2. Folder “Department of Economics—Faculty Beginning January 1, 1944 (sic)”.

Image Source: John Maurice Clark at The History of Economic Thought Website.

Tags Angell, ClarkJM, Goodrich, Haig, Mitchell

Chicago Fields

Chicago. Doctoral Examination Committees by Fields 1923-24

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2016-10-18

____________________________

Three memos that propose the faculty members in Political Economy (and Commerce and Administration) to prepare the written doctoral examination questions by fields, 1923-1924 along with a list of the names of the examinees by fields for the summer quarter of 1925.

____________________________

October 24, 1923

MEMORANDUM to the PERSONS mentioned below
SUBJECT: Written Examinations for the Doctorate. Autumn Quarter, 1923.

New questions will need to be prepared in the fields indicated below.
It has been customary to have the questions cover a very broad territory and to give a considerable number of options. Each examination lasts for three and a half hours.
Will Mr. Clark and Mr. Viner assume joint responsibility for the questions in “Economic Theory”.
Will Mr. Wright and Mr. Clark assume joint responsibility for the questions in “Capitalistic Organization”.
Will Mr. Barnes and Dr. Duddy assume joint responsibility for the question in “The Manager’ Relationship to the Market”.
Will Mr. Wright prepare the questions in “The Historical Evolution of Industrial Society”.
Will Mr. Millis and Mr. Douglas assume joint responsibility for the questions in “Labor”.
Will Mr. Field and Mr. McKinsey assume joint responsibility for the questions in “Statistics and Accounting”.
Will Mr. Viner assume responsibility for the questions in “Economics of Government Administration”, conferring with such other persons as seems to him appropriate.

W. H. Spencer, for Commerce and Administration
C. W. Wright, for Political Economy

WHS:EL

____________________________

January — 1924

Memorandum to the persons mentioned below
Subject: Written Examination for the Doctorate. Winter Quarter, 1924.

New questions will need to be prepared in the fields indicated below. Please remember that the examinations are in fields and not in courses.
It has been customary to have the questions cover a very broad territory and to give a considerable number of options. Each examination lasts for three and a half hours.
Will Mr. Clark prepare a paper on “Economic Theory”, consulting with Mr. Viner?
Will Mr. Christ prepare a paper on “Social Direction and Control of Economic Activity”, conferring with Messrs. Wright, Spencer, and Clark?
Will Mr. Marshall prepare a paper on “The Pecuniary and Financial System” and the “Manager’s Relationship to Finance”?
Will Mr. Douglas assume the responsibility for the paper on “Capitalistic Organization”, consulting with Messrs. Marshall, Viner, and Wright?
Will Mr. McKinsey and Mr. Field assume joint responsibility of preparing a paper in “Statistics and Accounting”?
Will Mr. Millis, Chairman, and Mr. Douglas prepare a paper on “Labor and the Manager’s Relationship to Personnel”?
Will Mr. Viner prepare a paper on “The Economics of Government Administration”, consulting, perhaps, with Messrs. Merriam and Millis?
Will Mr. Wright prepare a paper on “Historical Evolution of Industrial Society”, conferring with such other persons as seems to him appropriate?

____________________________

WRITTEN EXAMINATION FOR THE DOCTORATE, SPRING QUARTER 1924

Memorandum to the persons mentioned below:

New questions will need to be prepared in the fields indicated below. Please remember that the examinations are in fields and not in courses.
It has been customary to have the questions cover a very broad territory and to give a considerable number of options. Each examination lasts for three and a half hours.
Will Mr. Clark prepare a paper on “Economic Theory”, consulting with Mr. Viner?
Will Mr. Christ prepare a paper on “Social Direction and Control of Economic Activity”, conferring with Messrs. Wright, Spencer, and Clark?
Will Mr. Marshall prepare a paper on “The Pecuniary and Financial System” and the “Manager’s Relationship to Finance”?
Will Mr. Viner prepare the paper on “Capitalistic Organization”, consulting with Messrs. Millis, Douglas, and Wright?
Will Mr. McKinsey and Mr. Field assume joint responsibility of preparing a paper in “Statistics and Accounting”?
Will Mr. Millis, Chairman, and Mr. Douglas prepare a paper on “Labor and the Manager’s Relationship to Personnel”?
Will Mr. Viner prepare a paper on “The Economics of Government Administration”, consulting, perhaps, with Messrs. Merriam and Millis?
Will Mr. Wright prepare a paper on “Historical Evolution of Industrial Society”, conferring with such other persons as seems to him appropriate?

THIS MATTER NEEDS TO BE RUSHED THIS CURRENT QUARTER; WE NEED TO HAVE ALL EXAMINATION PAPERS IN SOME CONSIDERABLE TIME AHEAD OF THE BEGINNING OF THE EXAMINATION PERIOD. SEVERAL COLLECTIONS OF PAPERS HAVE TO GO TO OUTSIDE PARTIES TO ADMINISTER THE EXAMINATIONS. WE OUGHT TO SEND THESE EXAMINATIONS IN ONE BUNCH.

LCM: EL

____________________________

SUMMER QUARTER, 1925

August 1. Economic Theory

Mr. [S. E.] Beckett
Mr. [Clifford Austin] Curtis
Mr. [Harold Amos] Logan
Mr. [Royal Ewert] Montgomery
Mr. [H. V.] Olson
Mr. [Christian] Van Riper

August 8. Govt. Finance

Mr. [Harold Amos] Logan
Miss [Mabel] Magee

August 8. Social Direction and Control

Mr. [Christian] Van Riper

August 15. Labor

Mr. [S. E.] Beckett
Mrs. [Helen] Homan
Miss [Leila] Houghteling
Mr. [Harold Amos] Logan
Mr. [H. V.] Olsen

August 22. Economic History

Mr. [S. E.] Beckett
Mrs. [Helen] Hohman
Mr. [H. V.] Olsen

Source: University of Chicago Archives. Department of Economics. Records, Box 26, Folder 9.

Image Source: University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf4-01703, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Tags ClarkJM, CW Wright, Douglas, MarshallLC, Millis, Viner

Columbia Economists Exam Questions History of Economics

Columbia. Classical Economics Exam by J.M. Clark. 1951

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2016-10-14

John Maurice Clark taught a history of economic theory sequence at Columbia University that had its origins in a similar course that had been taught earlier by Wesley Clair Mitchell. On the back of Clark’s examination questions for the first session of the 1950-51 academic year one finds a list of names and grades that we can strongly presume constitute the grade distribution for the course. 43 students were listed by John Maurice Clark in his handwritten grade sheet for the first semester of formative types of economic theory, of whom 26 received grades (3.12 average on a 4 point scale, median 3.17). Mark Blaug, whose magnum opus Economic Theory in Retrospect has served as a staple of the analytic narrative of the evolution of economics, received only a grade of B- (2.67) which put him tied with two other students at rank 21. A few years later Blaug was to find his mentor and dissertation adviser, George Stigler.

The later Congressional Research Service economist John P. Hardt (Columbia Ph.D., 1954) was on the list but not awarded a grade for the course.

Oops it happens every so often, I have repeated myself. The original posting along with another year’s examination can be found here.

_____________________

Course Announcement

Economics 115-116 — Formative types of economic theory.
3 points each session. Professor Clark.
M. W. 12. 313 Fayerweather.

Readings and critical discussion of outstanding examples of the parent stock of classical economics with some regard to historical setting, and of subsequent outstanding contributions.

Source: Columbia University. Announcement of the Faculty of Political Science for the Winter and Spring Sessions 1950-51, p. 46.

_______________________________

Course Description

Economics 115-116—Formative types of economic theory. 3 points each session. Professor Clark.

M.W. 12. 313 Fayerweather.

Readings and critical discussion of outstanding examples of the parent stock of classical economics, with some regard to historical setting, and of subsequent outstanding contributions.

Source: Columbia University. Announcement of the Faculty of Political Science for the Winter and Spring Sessions 1950-51, p. 46.

_______________________________

Take-Home Examination Questions

Economics 115
Final Examination
January, 1951

Answer any two questions, taking about the time for the actual writing that a regular examination would take. Those who do the work during Christmas holidays will please return papers January 8; others Friday, January 26, unless otherwise specified.

Do the views of ancient writers (Hebrew, Greek or Roman) afford the same kind of evidence as the writings of modern economists as to economic conditions and practices of their time?
Discuss extent of applicability of medieval doctrine on price; variations or relaxations; and how far the doctrine was effective in practice.
Explain and appraise Quesnay’s “Tableau Économique”.
State key doctrines of the Physiocrats and indicate how they could be regarded as adaptations to an historical situation.
Compare views of Smith and Ricardo on the relation of labor to value.
Compare treatment of rent in Smith, Malthus and Ricardo.
On what grounds did Adam Smith sanction departures from laissez-faire?
Topic: dominant conceptions of what economic activity is for. Compare the dominant conception (or at most a few dominant conceptions) of as many of the following as you feel you can reasonably cover: typical Mercantilists, Physiocrats, Ricardo, John Stuart Mill.
What does Bentham’s theory contribute to the basic rationale of economics, aside from his ideas on economic matters themselves? (Book V of J. S. Mill’s “Principles of Political Economy” might contain hints.)
State doctrines of Ricardo which had roots in historical conditions of the time, and indicate the connection.
Compare Ricardo’s treatment of value with either Adam Smith’s or John Stuart Mill’s.
What were the sources of J. S. Mill’s departure from strict Ricardianism?

_______________________________

Probable Grade Distribution

Letter Grade	Number of students
A	2
A to A-	1
A-	5
B+	5
B	6
B to B-	1
B-	2
C+	1
C	3

Note: Mark Blaug received the B to B- grade.

Source: Columbia University Archives. John M. Clark Papers. Box 24 (Courses Misc.), Unlabeled Folder.

Image Source: Portrait of John Maurice Clark from the collection of portraits of economists presented in 1997 as a gift to the Department of Economics of Duke University by Professor Warren J. Samuels of Michigan State University. Free use of these portraits in Web documents, and for other educational purposes, is encouraged: users are requested to acknowledge that the images come from The Warren J. Samuels Portrait Collection at Duke University.

Tags Blaug, ClarkJM

Chicago Economists

Chicago. Talent-Scouting for New Faculty, Joint Appointments and Visiting Faculty, 1945

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2016-10-09

__________________________

On April 10, 1945, the chairman of the University of Chicago’s economics department, Professor Simeon E. Leland, submitted a 77 page (!) memorandum to President Robert M. Hutchins entitled “Postwar Plans of the Department of Economics–A Wide Variety of Observations and Suggestions All Intended To Be Helpful in Improving the State of the University”.

In his cover letter Leland wrote “…in the preparation of the memorandum, I learned much that was new about the past history of the Department. Some of this, incorporated in the memorandum, looks like filler stuck in, but I thought it ought to be included for historical reasons and to furnish some background for a few of the suggestions.”

In recent posts I have provided a list of visiting professors who taught economics at the University of Chicago up through 1944 (excluding those visitors who were to receive permanent appointments) and supporting tables with enrollment trends and faculty data (ages and educational backgrounds).

In this post we have three lists of names for economists who in 1945 could be taken into consideration for either permanent economics, joint appointments with other department or visiting appointments at the University of Chicago. Many names are immediately recognisable, others less so, and other known names left unnamed. Instead of observing the actual choices of the department, we have, so to speak, an observation of the “choice set” as perceived by the department.

______________________________

The following list of possible additions to the staff of the Department of Economics represents an enumeration of suggestions made by various members of the Department. It, of course, does not include all of those whom the Department would like to invite as permanent members of the University staff. Many of those whom we would most like to have, it is well-known, are not available; nor can the Department be sure that those listed below would favorably consider an invitation to join our staff. Likewise, this list must not be construed as nominations for membership in the Department. Some members of the staff are known to object to the inclusion of some of the names listed below. But if unanimous consent were required before suggestions could be made, little progress in building a Department would be possible. In its present state, the list is only an enumeration of suggestions warranting further inquiry. The fields of interest of many of the potential candidates overlap and the appointment of some individuals would make it undesirable, or at least uneconomic, to appoint others. Nevertheless, the list does given an idea of some persons who might be considered for future appointments. This list, like any other enumeration, is subject to constant revision, both in the addition or subtraction of names.

Name	Present Location	Field of Interest or Specialization
Abraham (sic) Bergson	University of Texas	Wages and Wage Theory
Robert Bryce	Ottawa, Canada
Norman Buchanan	University of California	Public Utilities, Corporation Finance, Business Cycles (also possible interest in United States Economic History)
Earl Hamilton	Northwestern University	Economic History
Albert G. Hart	C.E.D., Chicago	Theory, Finance, etc.
J. R. Hicks	University of Manchester, England	Economic Theory
Harold A. Innis	University of Toronto	Economic History
Maurice Kelso	University of Wisconsin	Land Economics
Tjalling Koopmans	Cowles Commission	Statistics; Mathematical Economics; Business Cycles; Shipping
Simon Kuznets	University of Pennsylvania	National Income; Historical Statistics
Sanford Mosk	University of California	Economic History
Charles A. Myers	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Labor; Industrial Relations
Walter Rostow	Columbia University	Economic History (XIX Century)
Leonard Salter	University of Wisconsin	Land Economics
T. Scitovszky	London School of Economics; U.S. Army	Theory of Capital and Interest; Theory of Tariffs
Arthur Smithies	University of Michigan; Bureau of the Budget, Washington, D. C.	Fiscal Policy; Theory; Money and Banking
Eugene Staley	School of Advanced International Studies (Washington, D.C.)	International Economics; Foreign Trade
George Stigler	University of Minnesota	Theory and Foreign Trade
R. H. Tawney	London School of Economics	Economic History
Allen Wallis	Stanford University	Statistics

______________________________

Joint Appointments

The Department of Economics shares an interest in many fields with other departments, schools and divisions of the University. It recognizes that most problems of the Social Sciences have economic aspects, and other aspects as well. Many of the fields embraced within particular disciplines are explained by accident or tradition, not always by logic. No one department can, therefore, assert a valid claim for the exclusive staffing of fields of interest held in common with other branches of knowledge. It seems wisest to develop these common grounds through joint appointments. Not only does this enable us to attract to the University more outstanding scholars than the fellowship of one department might provide, but it should also place at the disposition of those interested in promoting joint fields, perhaps, larger resources than either acting alone could command.

Joint appointments, too, will tend to integrate the Social Sciences with the other schools and departments affected, as well as contribute to the unity of the University as a whole. The Department of Economics, therefore, ventures to suggest joint appointments in the following fields:

Fields	Units Affected
Trusts and Monopolies	Business, Law, Economics
Railroads and Transportation	Business, Economics
Public Utilities	Economics, Political Science, Law
Social Control of Business	Business, Law, Political Science, Economics
Advanced Applied Mathematics and Statistics	Economics, Mathematics, Business, Institute of Statistics, other departments interested in statistics
Urban Planning (or the Utilization of Land)	Geography, Political Science, Economics, Law, Business, Sociology
Social Legislation, particularly affecting Labor	Business, Sociology, Social Service Administration, Law, Political Science, Economics

[…]

Among those who might be proposed for joint appointments are the following:

Name	Present Location	Field of Interest	Appropriate Appointment
Charles L. Dearing	Brookings Institution and U.S. Government	Transportation	Economics, Business
Corwin D. Edwards	Northwestern University	Trusts, Monopolies, Control of Business	Political Science, Law, Economics
Milton Friedman	Columbia University	Economic Theory, Public Finance, Monetary Policy	Economics, Institute of Statistics
Homer Hoyt	Regional Plan Association, Inc., New York, N.Y.	Land Planning	Economic Geography, Political Science
David E. Lilienthal	T. V. A.	Public Utilities	Political Science, Law, Economics
Abraham Wald	Columbia University	Applied Mathematics, Statistics	Mathematics, Economics
Allen Wallis	Columbia University	Applied Mathematics, Statistics	Mathematics, Economics
Samuel S. Wilks	Princeton University	Applied Mathematics, Statistics	Mathematics, Economics

Visiting Professorships

Each department needs to diversify its courses. Too frequently the attempt at diversification is made by adding permanent members to the regular staff. The need can best be met by the appointment of visiting professors.

[…]

A list of some who might be invited to the University as Visiting Professors is as follows:

Name	Present Location	Fields of Interest
John D. Black	Harvard	Agricultural Economics
(J.) Roy Blough	U. S. Treasury	Public Finance
Kenneth Boulding	Iowa State College	Economic Analysis; Theory of Capital
Karl Brandt	Food Institute, Stanford U.	Agricultural Economics
Harry G. Brown	University of Missouri	Economic Theory, Public Finance
J. Douglas Brown	Princeton University	Industrial Relations
Edward H. Chamberlain(sic)	Harvard	Economic Theory; Monopolistic Competition
J. M. Clark	Columbia University	Economic theory
J. B. Condliffe	California	International Trade; International Commercial Policy
Joseph S. Davis	Food Institute, Stanford U.	Agricultural Economics
Milton Gilbert	Office of Price Administration, Washington, D.C.	Economic Theory; Price Control
T. Haavelmo	Norwegian Shipping Administration, New York, N.Y.	Econometrics
Alvin Hansen	Harvard	Economic Theory; Fiscal Policy
F. A. Hayek	London School of Economics and Political Science	History of Social Thought; Economic Theory; Monetary Policy
J. R. Hicks	University of Manchester	Economic Theory
George Jaszy	U. S. Dept. of Commerce	National Income; Business Analysis
O. B. Jesness	University of Minnesota	Agricultural Economics
Nicholas Kaldor	London School of Economics	Theory of the Firm; Imperfect Competition; Money; Business Cycles
M. Kalecki	Institute of Statistics of University of Oxford, England	Economic Fluctuations; Expenditure Rationing
M. Slade Kendrick	Cornell University	Public Finance; Farm Taxation
Arthur Kent	San Francisco Attorney-at-Law	Taxation
J. M. Keynes	Cambridge University	Fiscal and Monetary Policy
Simon S. Kuznets	National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Pennsylvania	Statistics; National Income and Its Problem
A. P. Lerner	New School for Social Research	Economic Theory; Fiscal Policy; Public Finance
Edward S. Mason	Harvard University	Economic Theory; International Trade and Trade Practices
Wesley C. Mitchell	Columbia University	Money and Prices
Jacob Mosak	Office of Price Administration, Washington, D.C.	Economic Theory; Statistics; Control of Prices
R. A. Musgrave	Federal Reserve Board, Washington, D. C.	Public Finance
Randolph Paul	Lord, Day and Lord, Attorneys-at-Law	Taxation
Paul A. Samuelson	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Economic Theory; Money and Banking; Fiscal Policy
Lawrence H. Seltzer	Wayne University	Money and Banking; Public Debts; Fiscal Policy
Carl S. Shoup	Columbia University	Public Finance
Sumner H. Slichter	Harvard University	Business Economics
Richard Stone	England	Statistics; National Income
R. H. Tawney	London School of Economics	Economic History
Abraham Wald	Columbia University	Mathematics and Statistics
John H. Williams	Harvard University	Money and Banking

In the past, the Department has supplemented its staff by the appointment of visiting professors, but the invitations have ordinarily been restricted to the Summer Quarter in order (1) to relieve the regular staff from summer teaching and (2) to provide “window-dressing” to make the Summer Quarters more attractive to new students. The potentialities of the visiting professorship can hardly be realized when the practice is applied only to the Summer Quarter. That it has made that Quarter more attractive would seem to be indicated by the outstanding economists who have been guests of the University of Chicago.

[…]

The practice of inviting outstanding men to the University of Chicago seems to have been more prevalent in the early years of the University than it is today. Visiting appointments also declined with the strained finances of the University during the late depression. The Department is anxious to develop a program of instruction and research based upon the policy of the regular employment of visitors. A sum, equal to the stipend of a full professor, if used to finance a program of regular visitors, would add greater content and prestige to the Department than could be secured in any other way.

Source: University of Chicago Library, Department of Special Collections. Office of the President. Hutchins Administration Records. Box 73, Folder “Economics Dept., “Post-War Plans” Simeon E. Leland, 1945″.

Tags Bergson, BlackJD, Blough, Boulding, BrandtK, BrownHG, BrownJD, Bryce, Buchanan, Chamberlin, ClarkJM, Condliffe, DavisJS, Dearing, EdwardsCD, Friedman, GilbertM, Haavelmo, Hamilton, Hansen, HartAB, Hayek, Hicks, Hoyt, Innis, Jaszy, Jesness, Kaldor, Kalecki, Kelso, KendrickMS, Kent, Keynes, Koopmans, Kuznets, Leland, Lerner, Lilienthal, Mosaic, Mosk, Myers, PaulR, Rostow, Salter, Samuelson, Scitovszky, Seltzer, Shoup, Slichter, Smithies, Staley, Stigler, Stone, Tawney, Wald, Wallis, Wilks, Williams

Columbia Economists

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

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2016-07-17

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 117^th 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.

_____________________________

[REMARKS BY PROFESSOR ARTHUR ROBERT BURNS]

Department of Economics Bicentennial Luncheon
May 29^th, 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 18^th 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 19^th 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”.

_____________________________

[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”.

Tags Agger, Anderson, Burgess, BurnsAF, BurnsAR, BurnsEM, ClarkJB, ClarkJM, DorfmanJ, Douglas, Ely, Goodrich, GrossJD, Haig, Hollerith, JohnsonA, Knight, Kuznets, Lieber, Mayo-Smith, McVickar, Mills, Mitchell, Moore, Ripley, RobinsonEVD, Roepke, SchultzH, Schumpeter, Seager, Seligman, Simkhovitch, Stocking, Strayer, Thorp, Tugwell, Weld, Wilcox

Berkeley Chicago Columbia Economists

Columbia. Wesley C. Mitchell’s Methodological Thoughts, 1928.

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2016-05-16

The following excerpts from a typed copy of a letter from Wesley C. Mitchell to John Maurice Clark dated August 9, 1928 come from Mitchell’s papers with a hand-written note at the top of the first page, “Revised Feb 11, 1929”. The copy was made by Clark and perhaps given to Mitchell for further comment.

Mitchell begins with a longish response to a question posed by Clark regarding Mitchell’s own professional revealed preference for empirical investigation. This is followed by shorter responses to questions about the origin of his interest in business cycles, the relationship of “analytical description” to “causal theory”, and finally Mitchell’s confessed own perceived shortcomings in the use of statistical techniques for trend and seasonal analysis.

_____________________________________

If you find this posting interesting, here is the complete list of “artifacts” from the history of economics I have assembled. You can subscribe to Economics in the Rear-View Mirror below. There is also an opportunity for comment following each posting….

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Letter from Wesley C. Mitchell to John Maurice Clark
9 August 1928 (excerpt)

[…]

Concerning the inclination you note to prefer concrete problems and methods to abstract ones, my hypothesis is that it got started, perhaps manifested itself would be more accurate, in childish theological discussions with my grand aunt. She was the best of Baptists, and knew exactly how the Lord had planned the world. God is love; he planned salvation; he ordained immersion; his immutable word left no doubt about the inevitable fate of those who did not walk in the path he had marked. Hell is no stain upon his honor, no inconsistency with love.—I adored the logic and thought my grand aunt flinched unworthily when she expressed hopes that some back-stairs method might be found of saving from everlasting flame the ninety and nine who are not properly baptized. But I also read the Bible and began to cherish private opinions about the character of the potentate in Heaven. Also I observed that his followers on earth did not seem to get what was promised them here and now. I developed an impish delight in dressing up logical difficulties which my grand aunt could not dispose of. She always slipped back into the logical scheme, and blinked the facts in which I came to take a proprietary interest.

I suppose there is nothing better as a teething-ring for a child who likes logic in the garden variety of Christian theology. I cut my eye-teeth on it with gusto and had not entirely lost interest in that exercise when I went to college.

There I began studying philosophy and economics about the same time. I found no difficulty in grasping the differences between the great philosophical systems as they were presented by our text-books and our teachers. Economic theory was easier still. Indeed, I thought the successive systems of economics were rather crude affairs compared with the subtleties of the metaphysicians. Having run the gamut from Plato to T. H. Green (as undergraduates do) I felt the gamut from Quesnay to Marshall was a minor theme. The technical part of the theory was easy. Give me premises and I could spin speculations by the yard. Also I knew that my “deductions” were futile. It seemed to me that people who took seriously the sort of articles which were then appearing in the Q.J.E. might have a better time if they went in for metaphysics proper.

Meanwhile I was finding something really interesting in philosophy and in economics. John Dewey was giving courses under all sorts of titles and every one of them dealt with the same problem – how we think. I was fascinated by his view of the place which logic holds in human behavior. It explained the economic theorists. The thing to do was to find out how they came to attack certain problems; why they took certain premises as a matter of course; why they did not consider all the permutations and variance of those problems which were logically possible; why their contemporaries thought their conclusions were significant. And, if one wanted to try his own hand at constructive theorizing, Dewey’s notion pointed the way. It is a misconception to suppose that consumers guide their course by ratiocination – they don’t think except under stress. There is no way of deducing from certain principles what they will do, just because their behavior is not itself rational. One has to find out what they do. That is a matter of observation, which the economic theorist had taken all too lightly. Economic theory became a fascinating subject – the orthodox types particularly – when one began to take the mental operations of the theorists as the problem, instead of taking their theories seriously.

Of course Veblen fit fitted perfectly into this set of notions. What drew me to him was his artistic side. I had a weakness for paradoxes – Hell set up by the God of love. But Veblen was a master developing beautiful subtleties, while I was a tyro emphasizing the obvious. He did have such a good time with the theory of the leisure class and then with the preconceptions of economic theory! And the economists reacted with such bewildered soberness! There was a man who really could play with ideas! If one wanted to indulge in the game of spinning theories who could match his skill and humor? But if anything were needed to convince me that the standard procedure of orthodox economics could meet no scientific tests, it was that Veblen got nothing more certain by his dazzling performances with another set of premises. His working conceptions of human nature might be a vast improvement; he might have uncanny insights; but he could do no more than make certain conclusions plausible – like the rest. How important were the factors he dealt with and the factors he scamped was never established.

That was a sort of problem which was beginning to concern me. William Hill set me a course paper on “Wool Growing and the Tariff.” I read a lot of the tariff speeches and got a new side-light on the uses to which economic theory is adapted, and the ease with which it is brushed aside on occasion. Also I wanted to find out what really had happened to wool growers as a result of protection. The obvious thing to do was to collect and analyze the statistical data. If at the end I had demonstrated no clear-cut conclusion, I at least knew how superficial were the notions of the gentlemen who merely debated the tariff issue, whether in Congress or in academic quarters. That was my first “investigation” – I did it in the way which seemed obvious, following up the available materials as far as I could, and reporting what I found to be the “facts.” It’s not easy to see how any student assigned this topic could do much with it in any other way.

A brief introduction to English economic history by A. C. Miller, and unsystematic readings in anthropology instigated by Veblen reinforced the impressions I was getting from other sources. Everything Dewey was saying about how we think, and when we think, made these fresh material significant, and got fresh significance itself. Men had always deluded themselves, it appeared, with strictly logical accounts of the world and their own origin; they had always fabricated theories for their spiritual comfort and practical guidance which ran far beyond the realm of fact without straining their powers of belief. My grand aunt’s theology; Plato and Quesnay; Kant, Ricardo and Karl Marx; Cairnes and Jevons, even Marshall were much of a piece. Each system was tolerably self-consistent – as if that were a test of “truth”! There were realms in which speculation on the basis of assumed premises achieved real wonders; but they were realms in which one began frankly by cutting loose from the phenomena can observe. And the results were enormously useful. But that way of thinking seem to get good results only with reference to the simplest of problems, such as numbers and spatial relations yet men practice this type of thinking with reference to all types of problems which could not be treated readily on a matter-of-fact basis – creation, God, “just” prices in the middle ages, the Wealth of Nations in Adam Smith’s time, the distribution of incomes in Ricardo’s generation, the theory of equilibrium in my own day.

There seem to be one way of making real progress, slow, very slow, but tolerably sure. That was the way of natural science. I really knew nothing of science and had enormous respect for its achievements. Not the Darwinian type of speculation which was then so much in the ascendant – that was another piece of theology. But chemistry and physics. They had been built up not in grand systems like soap bubbles; but by patient processes of observation and testing – always critical testing – of the relations between the working hypotheses and the processes observed. There was plenty of need for rigorous thinking, indeed of thinking more precise than Ricardo achieved; but the place for it was inside the investigation so to speak – the place that mathematics occupied in physics as an indispensable tool. The problems one could really do something with in economics were problems in which speculation could be controlled.

That’s the best account I can give offhand of my predilection for the concrete. Of course it seems to me rather a predilection for problems one can treat with some approach to scientific method. The abstract is to be made use of it every turn, as a handmaiden to help hew the wood and draw the water. I loved romances – particularly William Morris’ tales of lands that never were – and utopias, and economic systems, of which your father’s when I came to know it seemed the most beautiful; but these were objects of art, and I was a work man who wanted to become a scientific worker, who might enjoy the visions which we see in mountain mists but who trusted only what we see in the light of common day.

* * * *

Besides the spice of rationalizing which doubtless vitiates my recollections – uncontrolled recollections at that – this account worries me by the time it is taking, yours as well as mine. I’ll try to answer the other questions concisely.

Business cycles turned up as a problem in the course of the studies which I began with Laughlin. My first book on the greenbacks dealt only with the years of rapid depreciation and spasmodic war-time reaction. I knew that I had not gotten to the bottom of the problems and wanted to go on. So I compiled that frightful second book as an apparatus for a more thorough analysis. By the time it was finished I had learned to see the problem in a larger way. Veblen’s paper on “Industrial and Pecuniary Employments” had a good deal to do with opening my eyes. Presently I found myself working on the system of prices and its place in modern economic life. Then I got hold of Simmel’s Theorie des Geldes – a fascinating book. But Simmel, no more than Veblen, knew the relative importance of the factors he was working with. My manuscript grew – it lies unpublished to this day. As it grew in size it became more speculative. I was working away from any solid foundation – having a good time, but sliding gaily over abysses I had not explored. One of the most formidable was the recurring readjustments of prices, which economists treated apart from their general theories of value, under the capitation “Crises.” I had to look into the problem. It proved to be susceptible of attack by methods which I thought reliable. The result was the big California monograph. I thought of it as an introduction to economic theory.

* * * *

This conception is responsible for the chapter on “Modern Economic Organization.” I don’t remember precisely at what stage the need of such a discussion dawned upon me. But I have to do everything a dozen times. Doubtless I wrote parts of that chapter fairly early in other parts late as I found omissions in the light of the chapters on “The Rhythm of Business Activity.” Of course, I put nothing in which did not seem to me strictly pertinent to the understanding of the processes with which the volume dealt. That I did not cover the field very intelligently, even from my own viewpoint, appears from a comparison of the books published in 1913 and 1927. Doubtless before I am done with my current volume, I shall be passing a similar verdict upon the chapter as I left it last year.

* * * *

As to the relation between my analytic description and “causal” theory I have no clear ideas – though I might develop some at need. To me it seems that I tried to follow through the inter-lacing processes involved in business expansion and contraction by the aid of everything I know, checking my speculations just as far as I can buy the data of observation. Among the things I “know” are the way in which economic activity is organized in business enterprises, and the way these enterprises are conducted for money profits. But that is not a simple matter which enables me to deduce certain results – or rather, to deduce results with certainty. There is much in the workings of business technique which I should never think of if I were not always turning back to observation. And I should not trust even my reasoning about what business men will do if I could not check it up. Some unverifiable suggestions do emerge; but I hope it is always clear that they are unverified. Very likely what I try to do is merely carrying out the requirements of John Stuart Mill’s “complete method.” But there is a great deal more passing back and forth between hypotheses and observation, each modifying and enriching the other, than I seem to remember in Mill’s version. Perhaps I do him injustice as a logician through default of memory; but I don’t think I do classical economics injustice when I say that it erred sadly in trying to think out a deductive scheme and then talked of verifying that. Until science has gotten to the stage of elaborating the details of an established body of theory – say finding a planet from the aberrations of orbits, or filling a gap in the table of elements – it is rash to suppose one can get an hypothesis which stands much chance of holding good except from a process of attempted verification, modification, fresh observation, and so on. (Of course, there is a good deal of commerce between most economic theorizing and personal observation of an irregular sort – that is what has given our theories their considerable measure of significance. But I must not go off into that issue.)

* * * *

[…] when writing the first book about business cycles I seem to have had no clear ideas about secular trends. The term does not appear to occur in the index. Seasonal variations appear to be mentioned only in connection with interest rates. Of course certain rough notions along these lines may be inferred; but not such definite ideas as would safeguard me against the errors you point out. What makes matters worse for me, I was behind the times in this respect. J. P. Norton’s Statistical Studies in the New York Money Market had come out in 1902. I ought to have known and make use made use of his work.

That is only one of several serious blemishes upon the statistical work in my 1913 volume. After Hourwich left Chicago, and that was before I got deep into economics, no courses were given on statistics in my time. I was blissfully ignorant of everything except the simplest devices. To this day I have remained an awkward amateur, always ready to invent some crude scheme for looking into anything I want to know about, and quite likely to be betrayed by my own apparatus. I shall die in the same sad state.

[…]

Ever yours,
Wesley C. Mitchell.
(Copy by J.M.C.)

Source: Columbia University Archives. Wesley Clair Mitchell Collection, Box 8 “Ch-Ec”, Folder “Clark, John Maurice: v.p., 8 Apr 1926 & 21 Apr 1927. To Wesley C. Mitchell 2 a.l.s. (with related material)”.

Image Source: Foundation for the Study of Cycles.

Tags Adolph Miller, ClarkJM, Hourwich, Mitchell, Veblen, William Hill

Chicago Economists

Chicago. 25th anniversary of Dept of Political Economy, 1916

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2016-05-07

In 1916 the department of political economy of the University of Chicago celebrated its 25^th anniversary (coinciding with that of the university) with a privately printed pamphlet in which were listed the names of the 38 members of the instructional staff, 12 assistants, 98 fellows, 637 graduate students and 31 Ph.D.’s of its first quarter century. Note: some names are listed in more than a single category. Appended to the end of the pamphlet is a statistical record of instructional staff, graduate students and political economy course registrations annually for the period.

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TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF THE
DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

DEPARTMENT
OF
POLITICAL ECONOMY.
1892-3.

OFFICERS OF INSTRUCTION:

J. LAURENCE LAUGHLIN, Ph. D.,

Head-Professor of Political Economy.

ADOLPH C. MILLER, A. M.,

Associate-Professor of Political Economy.

WILLIAM CALDWELL, A. M.,

Tutor in Political Economy.

___________________________________

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS
OF THE
DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

JAMES LAURENCE LAUGHLIN
Professor and Head of the Department of Political Economy
1892-1916

CHICAGO
PRIVATELY PRINTED
MCMXVI

___________________________________

JAMES LAURENCE LAUGHLIN
Professor and Head of the Department of Political Economy, 1892-1916.

* * *

Edith Abbott

Special Lecturer in Political Economy, 1909-10.

William George Stewart Adams

Lecturer on Finance and Colonial Policy, 1901-2.

Trevor Arnett

Lecturer in Accounting, 1909-13.

John Graham Brooks

University Extension Lecturer in Political Economy, 1893-97.

William Caldwell

Instructor in Political Economy, 1892-94.

John Bennet Canning

Special Assistant in Political Economy, 1914; Assistant, 1914-15; Instructor, 1915-

John Maurice Clark

Associate Professor in Political Economy, 1915-

Carlos Carleton Closson

Instructor in Political Economy, 1895-96.

John Cummings

Reader in Political Economy, 1893-94; Assistant Professor, 1903-10.

Herbert Joseph Davenport

Instructor in Political Economy, 1902-4; Assistant Professor, 1904-7; Associate Professor, 1907-8.

Ernest Ritson Dewsnup

Professorial Lecturer on Railways and Curator of the Museum of Commerce, 1904-7.

Garrett Droppers

Professorial Lecturer, 1906-7.

Carson Samuel Duncan

Instructor in Commercial Organization, 1915-

Jay Dunne

Assistant in Accounting, 1913-14; Instructor, 1914-

James Alfred Field

Instructor in Political Economy, 1908-10; Assistant Professor, 1910-13; Associate Professor, 1913-

Worthington Chauncey Ford

Lecturer on Statistics, 1898-1901.

Frederic Benjamin Garver

Assistant in Political Economy, 1911-13; Instructor, 1913-14.

Elgin Ralston Lovell Gould

Professor of Statistics, 1895-96.

Stuart McCune Hamilton

Instructor in Political Economy, 1914-16.

Walton Hale Hamilton

Assistant Professor of Political Economy, 1913-15.

Henry Rand Hatfield

Instructor in Political Economy, 1898-1902; Assistant Professor, 1902-4.

Frank Randal Hathaway

Reader in Statistics, 1892-93.

William Hill

Associate in Political Economy, 1893-94; Instructor, 1894-97; Assistant Professor, 1897-1908; Associate Professor, 1908-12.

Isaac A. Hourwich

Docent in Statistics, 1892-94.

Robert Franklin Hoxie

Instructor in Political Economy, 1906-8; Assistant Professor, 1908-12; Associate Professor, 1912-

Alvin Saunders Johnson

Associate Professor of Political Economy, 1910-11.

John Koren

Professorial Lecturer on Statistics (Political Economy and Sociology), 1909-10.

Leon Carroll Marshall

Assistant Professor of Political Economy, 1907-8; Associate Professor, 1908-11; Professor of Political Economy, 1911-

Hugo Richard Meyer

Assistant Professor of Political Economy, 1903-5.

Adolph Caspar Miller

Associate Professor of Political Economy, 1892-93; Professor of Finance, 1893-1902.

Wesley Clair Mitchell

Assistant in Political Economy, 1900-1; Instructor, 1901-2.

Robert Morris

Instructor in Political Economy, 1904-7.

Harold Glenn Moulton

Assistant in Political Economy, 1910-11 ; Instructor, 1911-14; Assistant Professor, 1914-

Frederic William Sanders

Lecturer in Statistics, 1896-97.

Frederick Myerle Simons

Assistant in Industrial Organization, 1913- 15; Instructor, 1915-

Thorstein B. Veblen

Reader in Political Economy, 1893-94; Associate, 1894-96; Instructor, 1896-1900; Assistant Professor, 1900-06.

Chester Whitney Wright

Instructor in Political Economy, 1907-10; Assistant Professor, 1910-13; Associate Professor, 1913-

* * *

[Assistants]

Clarence Elmore Bonnett

Assistant in Political Economy, 1910-11.

Ezekiel Henry Downey

Assistant in Political Economy, 1909-11.

John Franklin Ebersole

Assistant in Political Economy, 1909-10.

Edith Scott Gray

Assistant in Political Economy, 1915-

Homer Hoyt

Assistant in Political Economy, 1915-

Edgar Hutchinson Johnson

Assistant in Political Economy, 1909-10.

John Curtis Kennedy

Assistant in Political Economy, 1908-11.

Robert Russ Kern

Assistant in Political Economy, 1908-9.

Hazel Kyrk

Assistant in Political Economy, 1913-14.

Duncan Alexander MacGibbon

Assistant in Political Economy, 1912-13.

Ernest Minor Patterson

Assistant in Political Economy, 1910-11.

Leona Margaret Powell

Assistant in Political Economy, 1915-

___________________________________

FELLOWS

Edith Abbott (1903-05)

William Harvey Allen (1897-98)

Eugene Charles deAndrassy (1913-14)

Charles Criswell Arbuthnot (1901-03)

Leon Ardzrooni (1910-13)

Trevor Arnett (1899-1900)

Edward Martin Arnos (1912-13)

Otho Clifford Ault (1913-14)

Edward Donald Baker (1912-14)

Sturgeon Bell (1906-07)

Clarence Elmore Bonnett (1912-13)

Donald Elliott Bridgman (1905-07)

Howard Gray Brownson (1906-07)

Francis Lowden Burnet (1912-13)

George Chambers Calvert (1894-95)

John Cummings (1893-94)

Rajani Kanta Das (1914-16)

Herbert Joseph Davenport (1897-98)

Katharine Bement Davis (1897-98; 1899-1900)

William John Alexander Donald (1911-12)

James Alister Donnell (1902-03)

Ezekiel Henry Downey (1908-09)

Ephraim Edward Erickson (1911-12)

Katharine Conway Felton (1895-96)

Albert Lawrence Fish (1899-1900)

Ralph Evans Freeman (1915-16)

Hamline Herbert Freer (1892-93)

Frederic Benjamin Garver (1910-11)

Marshall Allen Granger (1915-)

Homer Ewart Gregory (1915-)

Gudmundur Grimson (1905-06)

Willard Neal Grubb (1908-09)

Charles Kelly Guild (1911-12)

William Buck Guthrie (1900-01)

William Fletcher Harding (1894-95)

Sarah McLean Hardy (1893-95)

Henry Rand Hatfield (1897-98)

Chauncey Edward Hope (1912-13)

Albert Lafayette Hopkins (1905-06)

John Lamar Hopkins (1899-1900)

Earl Dean Howard (1903-05)

Robert Franklin Hoxie (1893-95; 1902-03)

Homer Hoyt (1913-15)

Howard Archibald Hubbard (1909-12)

Walter Huth (1912-13)

John Curtis Kennedy (1907-09)

Robert Russ Kern (1907-08)

Benjamin Walter King (1913-14)

William Lyon Mackenzie King (1896-97)

Delos Oscar Kinsman (1898-99)

Hazel Kyrk (1912-13)

Manuel Lippitt Larkin (1911-12; 1913-14)

William Jett I.auck (1903-05)

Ferris Finley Laune (1915-)

Stephen Butler Leacock (1900-02)

Mary Margaret Lee (1907-08)

Svanto Godfrey Lindholm (1900-02)

Simon James McLean (1896-97)

James Dysart Magee (1909-10)

Basil Maxwell Manly (1909-10)

Howard Sherwood Meade (1897-98)

Albert Newton Merritt (1905-06)

Frieda Segelke Miller (1912-15)

John Wilson Million (1892-93; 1894-95)

Harry Alvin Millis (1898-99)

Wesley Clair Mitchell (1896-99)

James Ernest Moffat (1915-)

Harold Glenn Moulton (1909-11)

Walter Dudley Nash (1901-02)

Robert Samuel Padan (1900-01)

Eugene Bryan Patton (1905-08)

Clarence J. Primm (1908-10)

Yetta Scheftel (1913-14)

D. R. Scott (1911-12)

Frederick Snyder Seegmiller (1909-10)

George Cushing Sikes (1893-94)

Selden Frazer Smyser (1901-02)

Lewis Carlyle Sorrell (1915-)

George Asbury Stephens (1908-09)

Worthy Putnam Sterns (1897-1900)

Henry Waldgrave Stuart (1894-96)

Laurence Wardell Swan (1914-15)

William Walker Swanson (1905-08)

Archibald Wellington Taylor (1909-12)

John Giffin Thompson (1903-04)

George Gerard Tunell (1894-97)

Helen Honor Tunnicliff (1893-94)

Victor Nelson Valgren (1911-12)

Cleanthes Aristides Vassardakis (1911-12)

Thorstein B. Veblen (1892-93)

Merle Bowman Waltz (1895-96)

Samuel Roy Weaver (1911-12)

Victor J. West (1908-09)

Henry Kirke White (1893-94)

Murray Shipley Wildman (1901-04)

Henry Parker Willis (1895-98)

Ambrose Pare Winston (1893-94; 1896-97)

Anna Pritchett Youngman (1905-06; 1907-08)

___________________________________

GRADUATE STUDENTS

Abbott, Edith

Agate, William Richard

Akers, Dwight La Brae

Allen, William Harvey

Alvord, Clarence Walworth

Andrassy, Eugene Charles de

Apel, Paul Herman

Appell, Carl John

Apps, Elizabeth

Arbuthnot, Charles Criswell

Ardzrooni, Leon

Arnett, Trevor

Arnos, Edward Martin

Atcherson, Lucile

Ault, Otho Clifford

Bacon, Margaret Gray

Baker, Edward Donald

Balch, Emily Greene

Baldwin, James Fosdick

Ball, Ernest Everett

Barden, Carrie

Barnes, Jasper Converse

Barnes, Mabel Bonnell

Baron, Albert Heyen Nachman

Barrett, Don Carlos

Barrett, Roscoe Conkling

Bassett, Wilbur Wheeler

Bealin, Nella Ellery

Beall, Cornelia Morgan

Belknap, William Burke, Jr.

Bell, Hugh Samuel

Bell, James Warsau

Bell, Spurgeon

Bender, Christian Edward

Bengtson, Caroline

Benson, Madison Hawthorne

Berghoff, Lewis Windthorst

Bernstein, Nathan

Beyle, Herman Carey

Bischoff, Henry J.

Blachly, Clarence Day

Black, John Donald

Blankenship, Harry Alden

Bliss, George Morgan

Blotkin, Frank Ernest

Board, Willis Marvin

Bolinger, Walter Allen

Bond, William Scott

Bonnett, Clarence Elmore

Borden, Edwin Howard

Bosworth, William Baeder

Bournival, Phillippe

Bouroff, Basil Andreevitch

Boyce, Warren Scott

Boyd, Carl Evans

Boyd, Charles Samuel

Boyd, William Edington

Bozarth, Maud

Bradenburg, Samuel Jacob

Bradley, Frederick Oliver

Bramhall, Frederick Dennison

Brandenberger, William Samuel

Breckinridge, Roeliff Morton

Breckinridge, Sophonisba Preston

Bridgman, Donald Elliott

Bridgman, Isaac Martin

Briggs, Claude Porter

Brister, John Willard

Bristol, William Frank

Bristow, Oliver Martin

Brooks, Samuel Palmer

Brown, Fanny Chamberlain

Brown, Samuel Emmons

Brownson, Howard Gray

Bryant, William Cullen

Buchanan, Daniel Houston

Buchanan, James Shannon

Buechel, Fred A.

Bulkley, Herman Egbert

Bullock, Theodore Tunnison

Burnet, Francis Lowden

Burnham, Smith

Bushnell, Charles Joseph

Butts, Alfred Benjamin

Byers, Charles Howard

Byram, Perry Magnus

Cable, Joseph Ray

Calhoun, Wilbur Pere

Calvert, George Chambers

Cammack, Ira Insco

Canning, John Bennet

Capitsini, George Peter

Carlton, Frank Tracy

Carmack, James Abner

Carroll, John Murray

Carroll, Mollie Ray

Cartwright, Lawrence Randolph

Cassells, Gladys May

Catterall, Ralph Charles Henry

Chamberlain, Elizabeth Leland

Chapin, Lillian

Chen, Huan Chang

Chen, Po

Cheng, Pekao Tienton

Cheu, Beihan H.

Church, Clarence Cecil

Church, James Duncan

Clark, Fred Emerson

Clark, Henry Tefft

Clarkson, Matthew Alexander

Cleveland, Frederick Albert

Clifford, Wesley Nathaniel

Cole, Warren Bushnell

Collicott, Jacob Grant

Collins, Laurence Gerald

Colton, Ethan Theodore

Colvin, David Leigh

Colvin, William Elmer

Conover, William Bone

Cordell, Harry William

Cox, William Edward

Craig, Earl Robert

Cross, William Thomas

Crowther, Elizabeth

Cummings, John

Curran, James Harris

Cutler, Ward Augustus

Daniels, Eva Josephine

Darden, William Edward

Das, Rajani Kanta

Davenport, Frances Gardiner

Davenport, Herbert Joseph

Davidson, Margaret

Davis, Blanche

Davis, Katharine Bement

Davison, Leslie Leroy

Davison, Madeline

Dawley, Almena

Day, James Frank

DeCew, Louisa Carpenter

Dies, William Porter

Dodd, Walter Fairleigh

Dodge, LeVant

Donald, William John Alexander

Donnell, James Allister

Downey, Ezekiel Henry

Duncan, Carson Samuel

Duncan, George Edward

Duncan, Marcus Homer

Duncan, Margaret Louise

Dunford, Charles Scott

Dunlap, Arthur Beardsley

Dunn, Arthur William

Durand, Alice May

Durno, William Field

Duval, Louis Weyman

Dye, Charles Hutchinson

Dyer, Gustavus Walker

Dymond, Edith Luella

Dyson, Walter Mitchell

Easly, Walter Irving

Easton, William Oliver

Ebersole, John Franklin

Edwards, Anne Katherine

Eidson, Lambert

Ellis, Charles Hardin

Ellis, Mabel Brown

Elmore, Edward Bundette

Engle, John Franklin

Erickson, Ephraim Edward

Eslick, Theodore Parker

Eyerly, Elmer Kendall

Felton, Katharine Conway

Fine, Nathan

Fish, Alfred Lawrence

Fitzgerald, James Anderson

Fleming, Capen Alexander

Fleming, Herbert Easton

Fleming, William Ebenezer

Flocken, Ira Graessle

Foley, Roy William

Forrest, Jacob Dorsey

Fortney, Lorain

Foucht, Pearl Leroy

Francis, Bruce

Franklin, Frank George

Frazier, Edgar George

Freeark, Frederick Aaron

Freeman, Helen Alden

Freeman, Ralph Evans

Freer, Hamline Herbert

Galloway, Ida Gray

Galloway, Louis Caldwell

Gamble, George Hawthorne

Gardner, Emelyn Elizabeth

Gardner, William Howatt

Garver, Frederic Benjamin

Gebauer, George Rudolph

Geddes, Joseph Arch

Genheimer, Eli Thomas

Gephart, William Franklin

Glover, Ethel Adelia

Going, Margaret Chase

Goodhue, Everett Walton

Goodier, Floyd Tompkins

Graham, Theodore Finley

Granger, Marshall Allen

Granger, Roy T.

Grant, Laura Churchill

Gray, Edith Scott

Gray, Helen Sayr

Gray, Victor Evan

Green, Martha Florence

Gregg, Eugene Stuart

Gregory, Homer Ewart

Griffith, Elmer Cummings

Grimes, Anne Blanche

Grimson, Gudmundur

Griswold, George C.

Gromer, Samuel David

Grubb, Willard Neal

Guice, Herman Hunter

Guild, Charles Kelly

Guildford, Paul Willis

Guthrie, William Buck

Hagerty, James Edward

Hahne, Ernest Herman

Hall, Arnold Bennett

Hamilton, John Bascom

Hamilton, Robert Houston

Hammond, Alva Merwin

Hand, Chester Culver

Hanks, Ethel Edna

Harding, William Fletcher

Hardy, Eric West

Hardy, Sarah McLean

Hargrove, Pinkney Settle

Harris, Estelle

Harris, Ralph B.

Hastings, Cora Walton

Hatfield, Henry Rand

Haynes, Fanny Belle

Hearon, Cleo Carson

Hedrick, Wilbur Olin

Herger, Albert August Ernst

Herndon, Dallas Tabor

Herron, Belva Mary

Hewes, Amy

Hidden, Irad Morton

Hill, Harvey Thomas

Hinton, Vasco Giles

Hitchcock, William

Hodgdon, Mary Josephine

Hodge, Albert Claire

Hodgin, Cyrus Wilbur

Holman, Guy

Holmes, Marion

Honska, Otto James

Hope, Chauncey Edward

Hopkins, Albert Lafayette

Hopkins, John Lamar

Horner, John Turner

Hotchkiss, Irma Helen

Hourwich, Isaac A.

Howard, Earl Dean

Howe, Charles Roland

Howerth, Ira Woods

Hoxie, Robert Franklin

Hoyt, Homer

Hubbard, Howard Archibald

Hughes, Elizabeth

Humble, Henry William

Humphries, Louis Kyle

Hunt, Duane Garrison

Hunter, Estelle Belle

Huntington, Ellery Channing

Huth, Walter

Ito, Jiniro

Jacobson, Henry Anthony

Jalandoni, Jose Ledesma

Johnson, Edgar Hutchinson

Johnson, Edna Margaret

Jones, Austin Franklin

Jordan, Elijah John

Juchhoof, Frederik

Jude, George Washington

Kaiser, Arthur

Kammeyer, Julius Ernest

Karsten, Eleanor G.

Keeney, George Albert

Kelley, James Herbert

Kellor, Frances Alice

Kelly, Arthur Caryl

Kennedy, John Curtis

Kern, Robert Russ

Kerr, Robert Floyd

Kester, Roy Bernard

Kibler, Thomas Latimer

Kilpatrick, Elizabeth Smith

King, Benjamin Walter

King, Harriet Gertrude

King, James Alexander

King, James Stanhope

King, William Lyon Mackenzie

Kinsman, Delos Oscar

Kirkham, Francis Washington

Kling, Henry Frank

Kobayashi, Kaoru

Koepke, Frank Oswald

Kyrk, Hazel

Lamar, Clyde Park

Lamborn, William Henry

Landis, George Butts

Lane, Elmer Burr

Lang, Ellen Flora

Lange-Wilkes, Friedrich Fred

Larkin, Manuel Lippitt

La Rowe, Eugene

Latourette, Lyman Ezra

Lauck, William Jett

Lauder, Charles Edward

Laune, Ferris Finley

Lavery, Maud Ethel

Leacock, Stephen Butler

Learned, Henry Barrett

Leavitt, Orpha Euphemia

Le Drew, Henry Herbert

Lee, Mary Margaret

Leff, Samuel

Lefler, Shepherd

Legh, Sydney Cornwall

Lenhart, Harry Hull

Lennes, Nels Johan

Leonard, Walter Anderson

Lewis, Henry

Lewis, Neil Madison

Lindholm, Svanto Godfrey

Lippincott, Isaac

Lipsky, Harry Alexander

Lobdell, Charles Walter

Logan, Harold Amos

Logan, John Lockheart

Loomis, Milton Early

Loveless, Milo James

Lowry, Russell

Lucas, William Hardin

Luehring, Frederick William

Lurton, Freeman Ellsworth

McAfee, Lowell Mason

McClintock, Euphemia E.

MacClintock, Samuel Sweeny

McCord, Robert Bryan

McCrimmon, Abraham Lincoln

McCurdy, Raymond Scott

McCutchen, George

McDonald, Julius Flake

McDonald, Neil C.

McElroy, Charles Foster

McGaughey, Hester Grier

McGee, Walter Scott

MacGibbon, Duncan Alexander

Machen, John Gresham

McIntosh, Donald Howard

McKenzie, Floyd Stanley

McKinley, Alexander Daniel

McKinley, Gertrude

Kinney, Winfield Scott

McLean, Earl

MacLean, Murdoch Haddon

McLean, Simon James

Maclear, John Fulton

McMullen, Samuel

MacQueary, Thomas Howard

Magee, James Dysart

Magee, James Edward

Mangold, George Benjamin

Manly, Basil Maxwell

Mann, Albert Russell

Marsh, Benjamin Clarke

Martin, Asa Earl

Martin, William Chaille

Marxen, William Bartenick

Matheny, Francis Edmund

Mather, Arlen Raymond

Matlock, Ernest

Maw, Vung Tsoong

Maynard, Archibald Benton

Meade, Edward Sherwood

Meek, James Rariden

Menge, George John

Merrell, Oscar Joe

Merritt, Albert Newton

Merry, Paul Horace

Miller, Christian A.

Miller, Clarence Heath

Miller, Edmund Thornton

Miller, Frieda Segelke

Miller, Roy Newman

Miller, Wiley Austin

Million, John Wilson

Millis, Harry Alvin

Mills, Florence Howland

Mitchell, James Ennis

Mitchell, Wesley Clair

Moffat, James Ernest

Monroe, Paul

Montgomery, Louise

Montgomery, Stafford

Moore, Blaine Free

Moore, Stephen Halcut

Morris, Robert

Mosser, Stacy Carroll

Moulton, Harold Glenn

Mumford, Eben

Munn, Glenn Gaywaine

Nagley, Frank Alvin

Nash, Walter Dudley

Naylor, Augustine Francis

Neff, Andrew Love

Neill, Charles Patrick

Nesbitt, Charles Rudolph

Newton, John Reuben

Nida, William Lewis

Niece, Ralph Harter

Northrup, John Eldridge

Norton, Elvin Jensen

Norton, Grace Peloubet

Nourse, Edwin Griswold

Noyes, Edmund Spencer

O’Brien, Charlotte Louise

O’Dea, Paul Montgomery

O’Hara, Frank

Okada, George F.

Olin, Oscar Eugene

Padan, Robert Samuel

Paden, Thomas Hosack

Parker, Bertrand De Rolph, Jr.

Parker, Norman Sallee

Parker, Robert Lincoln

Parker, Ulysses Simpson

Parish, Charles O.

Paschal, Rosa Catherine

Patterson, Ernest Minor

Patton, Eugene Bryan

Pattrick, John Hezzie

Payne, Walter A.

Peabody, Susan Wade

Pease, Theodore Calvin

Pease, William Arthur

Perrine, Cora Belle

Peterson, Otto Edward

Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell

Pierce, Paul Skeels

Polzin, Benzamin Albert

Porter, Nathan Tanner

Potts, Charles Shirley

Powell, Bert Eardly

Powell, Leona Margaret

Prescott, Arthur Taylor

Price, Maude Azalie

Primm, Clarence J.

Putnam, James William

Putnam, Mary Burnham

Quaintance, Hadley Winfield

Rabenstein, Matilda Agnes

Radcliffe, Earle Warren

Rainey, Alice Hall

Reasoner, Florence

Reed, Ralph Johnston

Refsell, Oscar Norton

Reighard, John Jacob

Remick, Mary Ethel

Remp, Martin

Renninger, Warren Daub

Reticker, Ruth

Rice, Dorothy Lydia

Richardson, Russell

Richey, Mary Olive

Richter, Arthur William

Riley, Elmer Author

Ristine, Edward Ransom

Robertson, James Rood

Rogers, May Josephine

Rosenberg, Edwin J.

Rosseter, Edward Clark

Rygh, George Taylor

Sanderson, Dwight

Sandwich, Richard Lanning

Schafer, Joseph

Scheftel, Yetta

Schloss, Murray L.

Schmidt, Lydia Marie

Schmidt, Otto Gustave

Schmitt, Ella

Schoedinger, Fred H.

Schroeder, Charles Ward

Scott, D. R.

Scott, Edward Lee

Scott, James M.

Seegmiller, Frederick Snyder

Selian, Avedis Bedros

Sellery, George Clark

Senseman, Ira Roscoe

Seward, Ora Philander

Shaw, George Washington

Shelton, William Arthur

Shepherd, Fred Strong

Shoemaker, Lucile

Shue, William Daniel

Sikes, George Cushing

Simons, Frederick Myerle

Sinclair, James Grundy

Singer, Martin

Skelton, Oscar Douglas

Slemp, Campbell Bascom

Smith, Almeron Warren

Smith, Gerard Thomas

Smith, Guy Carlton

Smith, Roy

Smith, Walter Robertson

Smyser, Seldon Frazer

Snavely, Charles

Sorenson, Alban David

Sorrell, Lewis Carlyle

Sparks, Edwin Erle

Spencer, Simpson Edward

Splawn, William Marshall Walter

Sproul, Alexander Hugh

Stark, William Belle

Stearns, Tilden Hendricks

Steiner, Jesse Frederick

Stephens, George Asbury

Stephenson, George Malcolm

Sterns, Worthy Putnam

Stevens, William Spring

Stone, Raleigh Webster

Stoneberg, Philip John

Stoner, Thurman Wendell

Stowe, Frederick Arthur

Stuart, Henry Waldgrave

Styles, Albert Frederick

Sullivan, Margaret Veronica

Sundstrom, Ingeborg

Sutherland, Edwin Hardin

Swan, Laurence Wardell

Swanson, William Walker

Swift, Elizabeth Andrews

Sydenstricker, Edgar

Tajima, Kazuyoshi

Takimoto, Tanezo

Tan, Chang Lok

Tanner, Alvin Charles

Tarr, Stambury Ryrie

Taylor, Archibald Wellington

Taylor, William G.

Temple, Frances Congdon

Teng, Kwangtang

Textor, Lucy Elizabeth

Thomas, David Yancey

Thompson, Carl William

Thompson, Charles Sproull

Thompson, Edwin Elbert

Thompson, John Giffin

Thorne, Florence Calvert

Thornhill, Ernest Algier

Thurston, Henry Winfred

Tiffany, Orrin Edward

Tilton, Howard Cyrus

Towle, Ralph Egbert

Towne, George Lewis

Treleven, John Edward

Tunell, George Gerard

Tunnicliff, Helen Honor

Turner, Mary

Updegraff, Elizabeth

Valgren, Victor Nelson

Varkala, Joseph Paul

Vassardakis, Cleanthes Aristides

Veblen, Thorstein B.

Vernier, Chester Garfield

Vogt, Paul Leroy

Vondracek, Olga Olive

Waldo, Karl Douglas

Waldorf, Lee

Waldron, George Burnside

Walker, Edson Granville

Walling, William English

Walrath, Albert Leland

Waltz, Merle Bowman

Wardlow, Chester Cameron

Ware, Richard

Warren, Henry Kimball

Warren, Worcester

Watson, Robert Eli

Watts, Cicero Floyd

Weaver, Samuel Roy

Webster, Arthur Ferdinand

Webster, William Clarence

Weisman, Russell

Wells, Emilie Louise

Wells, Oliver Edwin

West, Max

West, Victor J.

Westlake, Ruby Moss

Weston, Jessie Beatrice

Wethington, Joseph Francis

Whipple, Elliot

Whitaker, Hobart Karl

Whitcomb, Adele

White, Francis Harding

White, Henry Kirke

White, Laura Amanda

Whited, Oric Ogilvie

Wilcox, William Craig

Wildman, Murray Shipley

Willard, Laura

Williams, Arthur Rowland

Williams, Charles Byron

Williams, Frank North

Williams, John William

Williams, Pelagius

Willis, Henry Parker

Wilson, Eugene Alonzo

Winans, Clarence Henry

Winston, Ambrose Pare

Winston, James Edward

Wirt, William Albert

Witmer, John Earl

Woods, Erville Bartlett

Woolley, Edwin Campbell

Wright, Helen Russell

Yahn, Harold George

Yeisaku, Kominami

Youngman, Anna Pritchett

Zaring, Aziel Floyd

Zee, Treusinn Zoen

Zimmerman, John Franklin

___________________________________

DOCTORS OF PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

Edith Abbott (1905)

A Statistical Study of the Wages of Unskilled Labor in the United States, 1830-1900.

Charles Criswell Arbuthnot (1903)

The Development of the Corporation and the Entrepreneur Function.

Donald Elliott Bridgman (1907)

Economic Causes of Large Fortunes.

John Cummings (1894)

The Poor Law System of the United States.

Herbert Joseph Davenport (1898)

The French War Indemnity.

Katharine Bement Davis (1900)

Causes Affecting the Standard of Living and Wages.

William John Alexander Donald (1914)

The History of the Canadian Iron and Steel Industry.

Henry Rand Hatfield (1897)

Municipal Bonding in the United States.

Earl Dean Howard (1905)

The Recent Industrial Progress of Germany.

Robert Franklin Hoxie (1905)

An Analysis of the Concepts of Demand and Supply in Their Relation to Market Price.

Edgar Hutchinson Johnson (1910)

The Economics of Henry George’s Progress and Poverty.

Stephen Butler Leacock (1903)

The Doctrine of Laissez Faire.

Isaac Lippincott (1912)

The Industrial History of the Ohio Valley to 1860.

Duncan Alexander MacGibbon (1915)

Railway Rates and the Canadian Railway Commission.

Simon James McLean (1897)

The Railway Policy of Canada.

James Dysart Magee (1913)

Money and Prices: A Statistical Study of Price Movements.

Albert Newton Merritt (1906)

Federal Regulation of Railway Rates.

Harry Alvin Millis (1899)

History of the Finances of the City of Chicago.

Wesley Clair Mitchell (1899)

History of the United States Notes.

Harold Glenn Moulton (1914)

Waterways versus Railways.

Edwin Griswold Nourse (1915)

A Study in Market Mechanism as a Factor in Price Determination.

Robert Samuel Padan (1901)

Studies in Interest.

Eugene Bryan Patton (1908)

The Resumption of Specie Payment in 1879.

Oscar Douglas Skelton (1908)

An Examination of Marxian Theory.

George Asbury Stephens (1909)

Influence of Trade Education upon Wages.

Worthy Putnam Sterns (1900)

Studies in the Foreign Trade of the United States.

William Walker Swanson (1908)

The Establishment of the National Banking System.

George Gerard Tunell (1897)

Transportation on the Great Lakes of North America.

Murray Shipley Wildman (1904)

The Economic and Social Conditions Which Explain Inflation Movements in the United States.

Henry Parker Willis (1898)

A History of the Latin Monetary Union.

Anna Pritchett Youngman (1908)

The Economic Causes of Large Fortunes.

___________________________________

A STATISTICAL RECORD OF GROWTH
1892-1916

Source: James Laurence Laughlin, Twenty-Five Years of the Department of Political Economy, University of Chicago. Chicago: Privately printed, 1916.

Image Source: “JLL” initials from the title page, ibid.

Tags Adolph Miller, Arnett, Brooks, Caldwell, Canning, ClarkJM, Closson, CummingsJohn, CW Wright, Davenport, Dewsnup, Droppers, Duncan, Dunne, Edith Abbott, Field, FM Simons, Ford, Garver, Gould, Hatfield, Hathaway, Hourwich, Hoxie, HP Willis, Koren, Kyrk, Laughlin, MarshallLC, MeyerHR, Mitchell, Morris, Moulton, Sanders, Skelton, SM Hamilton, Veblen, WGS Adams, WH Hamilton, Wm Hill

James Walter Crook (1859-1933) Columbia Ph.D., 1895

PROFESSORS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY Amherst College (1877-1910)

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

J.M.C. later history.

COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

Typed copy of Course Project, Econ 109 Winter Semester 1937

Tentative project for Econ. 109. (May be used as a carry-over in early meetings of 110 this year—Jan.-Feb., 1938)

Bibliography for Economics 109 [no date]

Economics 109

Economics 109 Final Examination [undated]

October 24, 1923

MEMORANDUM to the PERSONS mentioned below SUBJECT: Written Examinations for the Doctorate. Autumn Quarter, 1923.

January — 1924

Memorandum to the persons mentioned below Subject: Written Examination for the Doctorate. Winter Quarter, 1924.

WRITTEN EXAMINATION FOR THE DOCTORATE, SPRING QUARTER 1924

Memorandum to the persons mentioned below:

SUMMER QUARTER, 1925

August 1. Economic Theory

August 8. Govt. Finance

August 8. Social Direction and Control

August 15. Labor

August 22. Economic History

Course Announcement

Course Description

Take-Home Examination Questions

Economics 115 Final Examination January, 1951

Probable Grade Distribution

Joint Appointments

Visiting Professorships

[LUNCHEON INVITATION LETTER]

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

[INVITATION TO SESSION FOLLOWING LUNCHEON]

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

Session paper.

Discussants:

[REMARKS BY PROFESSOR ARTHUR ROBERT BURNS]

Department of Economics Bicentennial Luncheon May 29th, 1954

[BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION FOR ARTHUR ROBERT BURNS]

Letter from Wesley C. Mitchell to John Maurice Clark 9 August 1928 (excerpt)

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 1892-3.

OFFICERS OF INSTRUCTION:

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL ECONOMY UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

JAMES LAURENCE LAUGHLIN Professor and Head of the Department of Political Economy 1892-1916

JAMES LAURENCE LAUGHLIN Professor and Head of the Department of Political Economy, 1892-1916.

[Assistants]

FELLOWS

GRADUATE STUDENTS

DOCTORS OF PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

A STATISTICAL RECORD OF GROWTH 1892-1916

James Walter Crook (1859-1933)
Columbia Ph.D., 1895

PROFESSORS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
Amherst College (1877-1910)

Typed copy of Course Project, Econ 109
Winter Semester 1937

Tentative project for Econ. 109.
(May be used as a carry-over in early meetings of 110 this year—Jan.-Feb., 1938)

Bibliography for Economics 109
[no date]

Economics 109
Final Examination
[undated]

MEMORANDUM to the PERSONS mentioned below
SUBJECT: Written Examinations for the Doctorate. Autumn Quarter, 1923.

Memorandum to the persons mentioned below
Subject: Written Examination for the Doctorate. Winter Quarter, 1924.

Economics 115
Final Examination
January, 1951

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

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

Department of Economics Bicentennial Luncheon
May 29^th, 1954

Letter from Wesley C. Mitchell to John Maurice Clark
9 August 1928 (excerpt)

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF THE
DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

DEPARTMENT
OF
POLITICAL ECONOMY.
1892-3.

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS
OF THE
DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

JAMES LAURENCE LAUGHLIN
Professor and Head of the Department of Political Economy
1892-1916

JAMES LAURENCE LAUGHLIN
Professor and Head of the Department of Political Economy, 1892-1916.

DOCTORS OF PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

A STATISTICAL RECORD OF GROWTH
1892-1916