Today’s post introduces us to someone who was critical in creating the institutional infrastructure that promoted the development of economics at Columbia University. Samuel Bulkley Ruggles wanted political economy and public policy to be taught and as a trustee of Columbia College worked to have John W. Burgess hired in the first place and then supported Burgess’s plan to form a faculty of political science to fit between the School of Arts and the School of Law. There in the School of Political Science founded in 1880 would be the origins of the department of economics (sociology, mathematical statistics, public law, international institutes etc, etc).
Note: As far as the curator of Economics in the Rear-view Mirror can determine, there is no relation between Samuel Bulkley Ruggles and the Ruggles dynasty of modern economics.
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Biography of Columbia Trustee,
Samuel Bulkley Ruggles
RUGGLES, Samuel Bulkley, lawyer, b. in New Milford, Conn., 11 April, 1800; d. on Fire island, N. Y., 28 Aug., 1881. He removed at an early age to Poughkeepsie, was graduated at Yale in 1814, studied law in the office of his father, Philo, who was surrogate and district attorney at Poughkeepsie, and was admitted to the bar in 1821. He was elected a member of the assembly of 1888, and, as chairman of the committee on ways and means, presented a “Report upon the Finances and Internal Improvements of the State of New York,” which led the state to enter upon a new policy in its commercial development. This report proposed to borrow sums of money sufficient to enlarge the Erie canal within five years, and not, as had been at first decided, to rely upon part of the tolls to pay for the enlargement while waiting twenty years. The enlargement was not made at once, but Mr. Ruggles’s views, which were much assailed, were amply vindicated by the event. He was a commissioner to determine the route of the Erie railroad, and a director in 1833-’9, a director and promoter of the Bank of commerce in 1839, commissioner of the Croton aqueduct in 1842, delegate from the United States to the International statistical congresses at Berlin in 1863 and the Hague in 1869, U. S. commissioner to the Paris exposition of 1867, and delegate to the International monetary conference that was held there. He laid out Gramercy park, in the city of New York, in 1831, gave it its name, and presented it to the surrounding property-owners. He also had a considerable influence upon shaping Union square, where he resided, and he selected the name of Lexington avenue. He was for a long term of years a trustee of the Astor library, and he held the same office in Columbia college from 1836 till the end of his life. He was also a member of the Chamber of commerce of the state of New York, and of the General convention of the Protestant Episcopal church.
Mr. Ruggles’s claim to distinction rests chiefly upon his canal policy, and the steadfast attention that he continued to give to the Erie canal, both as a private citizen during his life and as canal commissioner, in which office he served from 1840 till 1842, and again in the year 1858. Yale gave him the degree of LL.D. in 1859. Among his numerous printed papers are “Report upon Finances and Internal Improvements” (1838); “Vindication of Canal Policy” (1849); “Defence of Improvement of Navigable Waters by the General Government” (1852); “Law of Burial” (1858); “Report on State of Canals in 1858” (1859); reports on the Statistical congress at Berlin (1863), the Monetary conference at Paris (1867), and the Statistical congress at the Hague (1871); “Report to the Chairman of the Committee on Canals” (1875); and a “Consolidated Table of National Progress in Cheapening Food” (1880).
Source: Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, edited by James Grant Wilson and John Fiske, Vol. 5, Pickering-Sumter (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1888), pp. 343-344.
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Research tip
Ruggles of New York: A Life of Samuel B. Ruggles by Daniel Garrison Brinton Thompson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1946). Includes a bibliography primary and secondary sources regarding Samuel Bulkeley Ruggles.
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Excerpt from Joseph Dorfman’s 1955 History of the Economics Department of Columbia
…In 1876, four years after [Francis] Lieber’s death, John W. Burgess was called from Amherst to revive Lieber’s work in the College as well as in the School of Law; it was expected that he would teach political economy. The subject was especially important in the eyes of Samuel B. Ruggles, the Trustee who led this movement for the revival of Lieber’s chair and who was well aware of the developments at Yale, Harvard, and abroad. A lawyer by profession, with extensive business interests, Ruggles was genuinely interested in the advancement of learning in general and political economy in particular. He had a reputation as a statistician, especially in monetary matters. He had served as American Commissioner to a number of international statistical and monetary conferences, had taken an active interest in the enactment of the Coinage Act of 1873, and was one of the leaders in the subsequent controversy over bimetallism.
To Ruggles, Burgess looked like the right person to teach political economy, for Burgess had taught the subject at Knox College from 1869 to 1871 as Professor of English Literature and Political Economy and had subsequently studied at Leipzig under Wilhelm Roscher, the foremost figure in the German historical school of economics. Burgess felt, however, that he could not do justice to the field because of his already heavy program, and he proposed that an assistant be secured especially for instruction in economics. A report presented by Ruggles, for the Trustees’ Committee appointed to inquire into the matter, marked the first definite, explicit recognition by a leading institution of the “historical school.” The report, submitted on October 1, 1877, declared that since [Charles Murray] Nairne had not specialized in political economy, he taught it
“…in a rather peremptory way in conformity with the methods of the old text books, in which certain general principles are first assumed to be true, and are subsequently followed out to their natural conclusions by applying to them the processes of logic. That the results thus reached have failed to command general acceptance not merely among the uneducated, but also with many who have made questions of Political Economy the principal study of their lives, is made evident by the widely discordant opinions which continue to be maintained by writers of ability in regard to matters which concern the very fountain springs of national prosperity. Either the truth of the assumed general principles of the theoretic writers is denied, or it is claimed that these principles are only true with so many qualifications and limitations as to render them practically useless. During the past half century, however, there has arisen a school of political economists, principally on the continent of Europe, who have endeavored to apply to this branch of science the same methods which have long been recognized as the only sure methods in physics and natural history, viz., the methods of induction from ascertained facts. These investigators have, with great labor, brought together and classified the immense amount of varied information in regard to the industrial condition of different countries under different systems of legislation gathered by the statistical bureaus of the several governments, and from these have sought to infer, not what on abstract principles ought to be, but what actually is, the system most favorable to industrial development, to growth in national wealth and to the fairest and most equal distribution of the rewards of labor. It was in the hope that these later views of a subject of so vast importance to the future of the world, and especially of our own country, in which questions of public economy must soon absorb the attention of our lawgivers to the exclusion of almost every other, might be introduced into our course of instruction that the Committee of this Board on the course, when, in 1876, it was proposed to appoint a professor of History and Political Science, gave their assent to such appointment on the condition that the professor so appointed should be charged with the duty of giving instruction on Political Economy.”
The report agreed with Burgess’s view that his value lay in the other branches in which he had specialized. Consequently, he should have an assistant to handle political economy. The report went on to point out that there was available for this post a former student of Burgess’s, a man who had for the “past two years been pursuing a course of instruction in Political Economy under the ablest teachers of this Science in Germany.” Accordingly, Richmond Mayo-Smith was, at the same Trustees’ meeting, appointed as an instructor to assist the Professor of History and Political Science. This was the first time in the College’s history that an appointment depended primarily on the candidate’s qualifications in political economy. Two years later he was promoted to Adjunct Professor of History, Political Science and International Law, and in 1883, at the age of twenty-seven, he obtained a full professorship. It is interesting that among the grounds given for his promotion was the fact that he had spent “three entire summers, in recent years, in study with his old instructors at Heidelberg and Berlin.” At first, half his teaching time was devoted to English constitutional history, which he taught until 1890. From the very beginning, however, he tripled the time allotted to the instruction in political economy. To the two-hour, one-semester course required of all juniors he added an elective, two-hour, one-year course for seniors. He gave the juniors “systematic work” with the aid of the familiar elementary textbooks of Fawcett or Rogers and the use of quizzes. For the seniors, however, he used the more sophisticated and advanced Principles of Political Economy of John Stuart Mill, the great codifier of classical economics.* Mayo-Smith supplemented it with lectures on “practical economics” and with “statistical and documentary works” that reflected the controversies over the tariff, bimetallism, greenbacks, the stir over Irish land reform, and Henry George’s single tax. His lecture topics included land tenure in Europe, monetary systems of Europe and America, and the financial history of the United States.
*The term “political economy” was then generally used in official records, but “economics” was often used, certainly as early as 1878. The printed form of the student’s periodical report card sent to the parent, lists “economics.” (See the report entry November 27, 1878, on E.R.A. Seligman, in Seligman Papers.)
Source: Joseph Dorfman, Chapter 9, “The Department of Economics” in A History of the Faculty of Political Science, Columbia University. New York: Columbia University Press, 1955), pp. 169-172.
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Burgess Recounts Ruggles’ Role in the Establishment of the School of Political Science
In the early autumn of 1875 I received from Professor Theodore W. Dwight, warden of Columbia Law School in New York City, a communication to the effect that the trustees of Columbia College had voted to invite me to deliver a course of lectures on political science to the students of the Law School during the following winter and had authorized him to transmit the invitation to me and to request from me an early reply. This was the second or third time that they had made this offer to me. I had declined it on account of lack of time to prepare the course, but now that I was to have no graduate students in the year 1875-76, I accepted the call and occupied all of my surplus time and energy during the autumn of 1875 in constructing the desired lectures. The month of January, 1876, was employed in the delivery of the same. The audiences were very large, consisting of the trustees of the college, members of the faculty, and the students of the Law School.
It was on the occasion of the first lecture that I made the acquaintance of Mr. Samuel B. Ruggles, the chairman of the committee of the trustees on the Law School, one of the most extraordinary men whom it has ever been my privilege to know. Mr. Hamilton Fish once said to me: “Ruggles can throw off more brilliant and pregnant ideas in a given moment than any man I ever saw.” He was then already seventy-five years of age and I but thirty-one, but from the first moment of our meeting we flew together like steel and magnet. He came to every lecture, and at the end of the course he said to me, “You are the man we have been looking for ever since Lieber’s death. You must come to Columbia.”…
… The months of February, March, April, and May of the year 1876 were among the most distressing of my life. Mr. Ruggles was continually writing and urging me to give my consent to his bringing my name before the trustees of Columbia College for election to a chair in that institution. Professor Dwight and President Barnard were doing likewise, and I was inventing all sorts of subterfuges for delay. At last, on the first Monday of May, 1876, the trustees, on recommendation of the committee of which Mr. Ruggles was chairman, backed by the approval of Professor Dwight and President Barnard, unanimously elected me professor of history, political science, and international law, without my having given any assurance of accepting the office. The action of the trustees was so cordial and complimentary that I cannot refrain from transcribing the resolution in the language of their own records. It ran as follows:
At a meeting of the Trustees of Columbia College of the City of New York on Monday, May 1st, 1876, it was
RESOLVED, that during the pleasure of the Trustees the salary of the Professor of History, Political Science and International Law shall be. . . . The Board then proceeded to an election for Professor and on counting the ballots Professor John W. Burgess was found to be unanimously elected.
Whereupon it was
RESOLVED, that Professor John W. Burgess be appointed Professor of History, Political Science and International Law to hold his office during the pleasure of the Trustees.
Notwithstanding this unanimous and hearty invitation, I still hesitated. Towards the end of the month of May I received a letter from Mr. Ruggles and also one from President Barnard urging me to send my answer before the meeting of the trustees on the first Monday of June following. At the last moment, with a heavy heart and many misgivings, I accepted the call….
…With the assistance of Mayo-Smith alone, I had worked on thus through the four years from 1876 to 1880, both in the School of Arts and in the School of Law, with some moderate measure of success, and had learned the obstacles to greater success and had felt the way towards it. My first plan was to have a third year added to the curriculum of the School of Law and expand the courses in political science and public law in the law curriculum. But Professor Dwight was distinctly opposed to this as impairing the practical nature of the law instruction according to his view. The peculiar relation of the Law School to the college at that time, which I have already stated, made his opposition to any project for change therein fatal to the undertaking. In the School of Arts all the time had been assigned to the courses in history and political economy which could be afforded in the stiff, required program of studies then obtaining in this school. No relief could be found there.
There was only one other way out of the cramping, unbearable situation, and that was to found a new faculty and a new school for the study, teaching, and development of the historical, political, economic, and social sciences. This was so progressive an idea that I did not dare to broach it for a long time to anybody. I had learned from experience with the vanity of man, to say nothing of that of woman, that the way to succeed in realizing any idea when it must be done through the will of another or others is to make the person or persons in the controlling position think that the idea emanates from him or them. This is not always an easy thing to do. It requires a good deal of skill in psychology to construct approaches through suggestion to the customary obstinacy and obstructiveness of American character. I felt almost instinctively that the man to whom I should turn was Mr. Ruggles. On the evening of the fifth of April, 1880, I went by appointment to his house, then 24 Union Square, for an interview with him. I found two other men with him, his nephew Mr. Robert N. Toppan and Mr. Toppan’s bosom friend John Durand, the American translator of the works of the French author Taine. At first I thought that their presence would prevent me from saying anything to Mr. Ruggles on the subject which I had been for months revolving in mind. But to my surprise and delight I found that Mr. Ruggles had asked them to come in for the purpose of talking with me on points nearly related to my intended proposition. Toppan had taken great interest in my work in the Law School from the beginning and had founded and endowed an annual prize for the best work in public law and political science, and Durand had just returned from Paris and had been telling Toppan about a project in which some of their French friends were participants. Mr. Ruggles immediately opened the conversation and asked me how things were going in my department. I told him and his visitors very frankly of the obstacles in the way of developing these studies in manner and degree as I thought required in a great republic like ours.
They all listened with great attention and evident interest, and when I finally paused in my account of the situation, Mr. Ruggles spoke up quickly and, as was his habit, with apparent impatience, and said: “Well, I do not see but we shall have to found a school for the political sciences separate from both the School of Arts and the School of Law.” At this my heart leaped with gladness into my throat, and it was with a great effort that I restrained myself from saying, “That is the idea I have been for some time entertaining.” I was happily, however, able to modify this into the reply that this would presumably solve the question, but that I knew of no precedent, except perhaps the faculty of “Cameralwissenschaften,” as it was called, of the German Imperial University at Strasbourg very recently founded. At this Mr. Durand said that he had just returned from Paris and while there had by his friend Taine been introduced to one Émile Boutmy, who, with such publicists as Casimir-Périer and Ribot and several others had just founded in Paris the École libre des sciences politiques and had already put it into successful operation. Mr. Ruggles suggested that I draw up a plan for a separate faculty and school of political science in Columbia College and put it into his hands and go myself immediately to Paris, enter the École libre as a student and study carefully its scheme and methods. This suggestion was seconded by both Mr. Toppan and Mr. Durand.
To me it promised the fulfillment of the hope which had been my life’s guide for more than fifteen years. So soon as proper courtesy would allow, I took my leave and hastened home to begin the draft of the proposed new development and to prepare for my journey to Paris. I did not sleep any that night. I did not even retire to rest, but spent the entire night in my study formulating my project. The next morning I summoned Richmond Mayo-Smith to my house and related to him the results of the conference at Mr. Ruggles’s house on the evening before. He, also, was overjoyed at the turn things had so suddenly taken. We talked over the general outline of the plan which I had drawn up and made a few modifications in it, and he agreed to join me in Paris so soon as his duties at the college would allow. I handed the plan to Mr. Ruggles after a few days of reflection upon it, and he assumed the burden of laying it before the trustees and of securing leave of absence for both Professor Mayo-Smith and myself in order that we might have as full an opportunity as possible to investigate the organization and operation of the École libre in Paris….
…At the meeting of the trustees of the college on the first Monday in May, 1880, Mr. Ruggles secured leave of absence for me to go immediately to Paris for the purpose above mentioned, and for Professor Mayo-Smith to go at the end of the month, and laid the plan for the new faculty and School of Political Science before them. This plan was in outline as follows:
- A faculty of Political Science should be created, composed of all professors and adjunct and associate professors already giving instruction in history, economics, public law, and political science to the senior class in the School of Arts and the classes of the School of Law and of such other officers of these grades as might be called to chairs in the new faculty.
- The plan provided a program of studies in history, economics, public law, and political philosophy, extending over a period of three years, and for a degree of Ph.B. or A.B. to be conferred upon students completing successfully the curriculum of the first year and of Ph.D. to be conferred upon students completing successfully the curricula of the three years and presenting an approved thesis.
- The plan provided, further, that members of the senior class of the School of Arts of Columbia College might elect the curriculum of the first year in the School of Political Science and have it take the place of the senior curriculum in the School of Arts and that members of the School of Law who had advanced successfully to the end of the junior year in any college of equal standing with Columbia might enter the School of Political Science as fully qualified candidates for the degrees conferred by recommendation of the faculty of that school.
- It provided, finally, that all “persons, of the male sex, having successfully completed the curricula of the first three years of any American college having the same standing as the School of Arts of Columbia College, were qualified to enter the proposed School as candidates for the degrees conferred upon recommendation by the Faculty of the School.”
Such was, in brief, an outline of the project which Mr. Ruggles laid before the trustees of the college at their regular meeting on the first Monday of May, 1880. The trustees referred the proposition to a committee for examination, report, and recommendation at their meeting to be held on the first Monday of the following June, and also granted leave of absence to Professor Mayo-Smith and myself to go to Paris…
…[In Paris] on Tuesday morning after the first Monday of June, I was awakened by a loud knock on the door of my sleeping room about five o’clock. On going to the door, an American cablegram was handed me. It read: “Thank God, the university is born. Go ahead.” It was signed “Samuel B. Ruggles.” This meant that the trustees of Columbia College had, on the day before, adopted the plan for founding the School of Political Science in the college and had authorized me to invite Edmund Munroe Smith, then student in Berlin, and Clifford R. Bateman, then student in Heidelberg, to join Mayo-Smith and myself in forming the new faculty and putting the new school into operation at the beginning of the academic year 1880-81, in the following October.
Source: John W. Burgess, Reminiscences of an American Scholar (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934), pp. 150-153; 187-192; 194-195.
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Resolution of the Columbia College Trustees to Establish a School of Political Science
§. 4. SCHOOL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE.
June 7th, 1880.
Resolved, That there be established to go into operation at the opening of the academic year next ensuing, a school designed to prepare young men for the duties of public life to be entitled a School of Political Science, having a definitely prescribed curriculum of study extending over a period of three years and embracing the History of Philosophy, the History of the Literature of Political Sciences, the General Constitutional History of Europe, the Special Constitutional History of England and the United States, the Roman Law and the jurisprudence of existing codes derived therefrom, the Comparative Constitutional Law of European States and of the United States, the Comparative Constitutional Law of the different States of the American Union, the History of Diplomacy, International Law, Systems of Administrations, State and National, of the United States, Comparison of American, and European Systems of Administration, Political Economy and Statistics.
Resolved, That the qualifications required of the candidate for admission to this School, shall be that he shall have successfully pursued a course of undergraduate study in this College or in some other, maintaining an equivalent curriculum to the close of the Junior year.
Resolved, That the students of the School, who shall satisfactorily complete the studies of the first year, shall be entitled on examination and the recommendation of the Faculty to receive the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy, and those who complete the entire course of three years, shall on similar examination and recommendation, be entitled to receive the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Resolved, That the annual tuition fee required of students of this School shall be one hundred and fifty dollars ($150).
Resolved, That Edmund Munroe Smith be appointed Lecturer on Roman Law in the School of Political Science, to enter upon his duties on the first day of October next, and to hold office for one year, or during the pleasure of the Board, at a compensation of fifteen hundred dollars ($1,500) per annum.
Resolved, That Clifford Rush Bateman be appointed Lecturer on Administrative Law and Government in the School of Political Science, to enter upon duty on the first day of October, 1881, and to serve for the term of one year, or during the pleasure of the Board, at a salary of fifteen hundred dollars ($1,500) per annum.
Source: Columbia College. Resolutions of the Trustees, Volume VIII, 1880-85, pp. 140-141.
Image Source: Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, edited by James Grant Wilson and John Fiske, Vol. 5, Pickering-Sumter (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1888), p. 344.