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Dartmouth Pedagogy Popular Economics

Dartmouth A.M. John Gilbert Thompson. Long-lag for interest rate effect, 1929

The reasons for this post are the fact that “John G. Thompson” is not a unique identifier for economic authorship and my desire to distinguish John G. Thompson from John G. Thompson without using subscripts. Today we meet Mr. John Gilbert Thompson (1862-1940), an educational administrator turned business economist/forecaster. He spent over thirty years in the field of education, achieving some distinction as the first principal of the State Normal School in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. In the dozen or so years before his retirement in ca. 1932 he worked at the Simonds Saw and Steel Company in Fitchburg, where he was employed, according to press accounts, as “assistant to the treasurer”, “efficiency director”, “economist”, and finally “assistant to the president”.

Particularly worthy of note for Economics in the Rear-view Mirror is Thompson’s contribution to the panel “Appraisal of Economic Forecasts” chaired by Wesley C. Mitchell at the December 1929 meeting of the American Statistical Association ( see below ). His principal empirical finding was contained in a single chart ( included below ) showing the long lag between a change in the commercial paper rate and an inverse movement in the level of economic activity, as proxied by the Federal Reserve’s index of industrial production. It might come as something of a surprise to readers here that a former teaching-college principal turned economic forecaster [anyone out there ever heard of his financial newsletter Looking Ahead?] was seeing long-lags some thirty years before Milton Friedman was to make “long and variable lags” fashionable.

Of lesser interest is discovering a Simonds Saw and Steel Company’s essay competition in economics for high school and normal school students that later evolved into a prize competition for established academic and business economists. Here we encountered the name of Dr. John L. Tildsley, once a teacher of economics in the New York City High School of Commerce and then District Superintendent for High Schools in New York City. Like Thompson, Tildsley was a strong advocate for the inclusion of economics in the high school curriculum. Economics in the Rear-view Mirror is mildly proud to offer content regarding these two leaders in American education.

Note: The other John G. Thompson’s full name was John Giffin Thompson.  He was a University of Wisconsin Ph.D. (1907), career-long economic researcher, and the subject of an earlier post as well.

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Life, Career and Publications
of John Gilbert Thompson

1862. Born June 23 in New Bedford, MA.

1886. Dartmouth A.M., Phi Beta Kappa

1886. December 27. Married Helen Susan Titus (1863-1938) in Hancock N.H. She was a direct descendant of Peregrin White of the Mayflower. They had seven sons (from The Boston Globe, Nov. 6, 1940, p. 19), five were still alive at the time of his death in 1940.

1886-1893. Principal of schools in Winchester, N.H., Sandwich [Mass], Southboro [Mass]; Superintendent of schools in Northboro [Mass] and Leominster [Mass]. Fitchburg Sentinel, Nov. 1, 1940, p.9.

1894. Together with Thomas E. Thompson (a younger brother), Master of John R. Rollins School, Lawrence, Mass. Fables and Rhymes for Beginners. The First Two Hundred Words. Boston: Ginn & Company.

1895-1920. Principal of State Normal School (Fitchburg, Massachusetts)

1895. Together with Thomas E. Thompson, Superintendent of Schools, Leominster, Mass. Fairy Tale and Fable, Second Year: An Introduction to Literature and Art. New York: The Morse Company. (Revised Seventh edition, 1902)

1899. Together with Thomas E. Thompson, Superintendent of Schools, Leominster, Mass. For Childhood Days, First Year. New York: The Morse Company. (3rd ed. 1901)

1902. Together with Thomas E. Thompson, Superintendent of Schools, Leominster, Mass. New Century Readers: Nature, Myth and Story. Third Year. New York: Silver, Burdett and Company. (Second edition)

1916. Word from Word Readers: Book One. Boston: Silver, Burdett and Company.

1916. Word from Word Readers: Book Three. Boston: Silver, Burdett and Company.

1917. Together with Inez Bigwood, The Thompson Readers: Manual for Teachers. Boston: Silver, Burdett and Company.

1917. Together with Inez Bigwood, The Thompson Readers: Book One. Boston: Silver, Burdett and Company.

1917. Together with Inez Bigwood, The Thompson Readers: Book Two. Boston: Silver, Burdett and Company.

1917. Together with Inez Bigwood, The Thompson Readers: Book Four. Boston: Silver, Burdett and Company.

1918. Together with Inez Bigwood, The Thompson Readers: Word Building for Recitation and Seat Work. Boston: Silver, Burdett and Company.

1918. Together with Inez Bigwood, Lest We Forget: World War Stories. Boston: Silver, Burdett and Company.

1919. Together with Inez Bigwood, Winning a Cause: World War Stories. Boston: Silver, Burdett and Company.

1920. A Quarter of a Century of Years and Poems. Edition limited to one thousand copies, numbered and signed by the author. Includes photograph of John G. Thompson.

Library of Congress copy Number 12 was dedicated “To His Excellency Calvin Coolidge”.

1919-1932. “Assistant to the treasurer”, “efficiency director”, “economist”, “assistant to the president” at Simonds Saw and Steel Company.

1928. Together with Gifford K. Simonds, The American Way to Prosperity, 1928.

After retirement continued to publish the financial paper/newsletter Looking Ahead with Alvan T. Simonds.

1940. October 31. Died in Westborough, MA. Buried in Hancock, N.H.

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Adam Smith Essay for High School and Normal School Students
Sponsored by
Simonds Saw Mfg. Company, 1920

                  Very few high schools give any instructions to help pupils understand economic laws that affect their daily living, and very few normal schools in the United States give those who are to become teachers any instruction that will enable them to judge intelligently in regard to their own status, their own wages, or to talk over with their pupils the conditions of industry and business which are affecting their welfare and their lives. Even the junior high school pupil would be interested to know how prosperity and adversity move in waves and how one is brought about by prudence, thrift and industry and the other by carelessness, shiftlessness and extravagance. Any boy or girl twelve years or over can be made to see that everyone in the world is paying for the destruction caused by the World War and that “no one liveth to himself alone.” Much of the unrest among the working classes and of the misunderstanding between labor and capital is due to ignorance. It is a gross neglect, almost a criminal one, that those directing our public schools have failed to see the danger and to do something about remedying the lack. It is a sad comment when one can say that the children of working parents are given a careful study of the Punic Wars and never hear anything about economics in their high school course. It is even worse that those who are to become teachers are graduated as ready to teach without ever having studied the subject, either in high school or normal school.

                  Mr. Alvan T. Simonds, President of the Simonds Saw Manufacturing Company of Fitchburg; Mass., Chicago, Ill., Montreal, Que., Lockport, N. Y., a life-long student of economics and interested in bringing about a better understanding on the part of the laborer, the capitalist, and the public, realized this deficiency in our public school and normal school education. To discover to what an extent the subject of economics was studied, he offered in September, 1920, two prizes of $1,000 and $500 for the best two essays on an economic subject. The contest was open to pupils in high schools and normal schools in the United States and Canada and the prizes were made large enough to make the competition worth while to anyone who was fitted to enter it. The subject chosen was “Present Economic Conditions and the Teachings of Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations.” It was selected because it gave contestants a definite book to study and the opportunity to connect the study of that book with the life of which they were a part. It was not indefinite and distant from them, but definite and concerned today.

                  The contest was advertised in the Saturday Evening Post, in the Journal of Education, and the School Review and in many other publications. Personal letters were sent to state superintendents and principals of normal schools.

                  The results are what might have been expected by one who knew the status of economic teaching in the United States. It is left almost entirely for the college and even there it is elective. This is not true, however, in New York City, due to the foresight and the efforts of Dr. John L. Tildsley, formerly teacher of economics in the New York City High School of Commerce, and now District Superintendent for High Schools in New York City. The study of economics is required of all pupils in the senior year of the New York City high schools. Over 125 pupils entered the contest in the city of New York, but only twenty-five finished their essays and submitted them to the judges.

                  In Fitchburg, Massachusetts, at the State Normal School each member of the graduating class as a requirement for graduation has to submit a thesis and the supervision of the theses is divided among the different instructors. Those who worked under the direction of Miss Inez Bigwood were allowed to submit their essays both for the Simonds contest and as a graduating thesis. Beside one essay submitted by a convict in California, twenty-seven were received from normal pupils and sixty-five from high school pupils. Almost every section in the United States was represented, as well as Canada with essays from Vancouver and Montreal. There were few essays from the South, although Texas, Tennessee and South Carolina were represented. The Pacific Coast was represented by California, Oregon and Washington, while there were one or two from nearly every state in the Middle West.

                  The first prize of $1,000 was awarded to David Koch, High School of Commerce, New York City. The second prize of $500 was awarded to Aloysius Thiemann, Reedsburg High School, Reedsburg, Wis.

                  It is interesting to notice that both prizes were won by high school pupils, one from the largest city in the United States and one from a small town in Wisconsin.

                  The judges were Wallace B. Donham, Dean of the Harvard School of Business Administration, Cambridge, Mass., and John G. Thompson, Principal of the State Normal School (On leave), Fitchburg, Mass.

                  It is hoped that this contest and the lessons taught by it will awaken school officials to the necessity of requiring the study of economics in high schools and normal schools and of teachers who are to teach in junior high schools and grades above.

                  In order that those who are already saying that economics is a subject too difficult for high school pupils and certainly beyond the mental ability of junior high school pupils, let me add that the first prize of $1,000 was won by a boy only seventeen years of age, who began to be interested in economics when he was in the last year of the elementary school and read books upon the subject outside his regular school work. His essay was of such understanding and power that the judges, who worked independently, both questioned whether it could possibly be the work of a high school pupil. Investigation by Dr. Tildsley established beyond doubt that it was the boy’s own work and just about what his teacher of economics in the High School of Commerce declared could be expected from him.

David Koch, who won the first prize of $1,000, is seventeen years of age. His father came from Russia to the United States in 1897. He is a button-hole maker by trade. Dr. John L. Tildsley, district superintendent of high schools in New York City, reports that David Koch began to study economics in the last year of the elementary school and has been interested in it ever since, that is for about four years. He was a student at the New York High School of Commerce and studied economics there. His economic teacher reports “He was head and shoulders above the other pupils in the economics class and knew more economics than some of the teachers.” Mr. Tildsley writes further as follows:—

“You will be interested to know that when Koch entered the high school he had the reputation of being quite radical but as the result of his school work and especially his study of economics he has lost most of his radicalism. I believe that a great stimulus has been given to the teaching of economics in this country through the offer of these prizes.”

Aloysius Thiemann, winner of the second prize, is sixteen years of age and graduates from the Reedsburg, Wisconsin, High School this year. Mr. A. B. Olson, superintendent of the Reedsburg public schools, writes as follows: —

“Aloysius Thiemann was promoted to high school from the seventh grade, he having proven through educational tests that it would be unnecessary, for him to do the eighth grade work. His work in high school has been uniformly strong. Last year Aloysius Thiemann won the State of Wisconsin Civil Service Essay Contest and the school was presented the State Loving Cup to be kept for one year. In regard To future plans, I find that Aloysius Thiemann plans to attend Notre Dame University and will probably take up the course in Journalism.”

 

John G. Thompson,
Assistant to the President,
Simonds Manufacturing Company

Source: Thompson, John G. “EDUCATIONAL FORUM.” The Journal of Education, vol. 93, no. 24 (2334), 16 June 1921, pp. 672–73.
JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42830956

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Award of 8th Simonds Prize (1930)

Walter Earl Spahr, a professor of New York university, was awarded the first prize of $1000 in the eighth annual Alvan T. Simonds annual economic contest last year. The subject was “The Federal Reserve System and the Control of Credit.”

Dr. Spahr is professor of economics and chairman of the department of economics, school of commerce, accounts and finance, New York university. Dr. Spahr received his A.B. from Tarlham college, Ind., in 1914; A.M. from the University of Wisconsin in 1917, and Ph.D. from Columbia university in 1925. He taught economics at Datmouth college and Columbia university before going to New York university in 1923.

He has published several notable magazine articles as well as the article in the New Encyclopedia Brittanica on “The Stockbroker in the United States.” He is joint author with R. J. Swenson of “Methods and Staus of Scientific Research with Particular Application to the Social Sciences.” His home address is 8 Michigan road, Bellerose, Long Island, N.Y.

The second prize of $500 was awarded to Ivan W. Elder, managing editor of the North Pacific Banker, Portland, Ore. He is a graduate of Reed College, Ore.

Honorable mention was awarde to Helen Elizabeth Ham, 333 E. 43d street, New York city.

The judges were Dr. Davis R. Dewey, professor of economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and John G. Thompson, assistant to the president, Simonds Saw & Steel Co.

The largest number of essays came from the United States, yet excellent ones were received from Hawaii, Japan, India, South Africa, England and Scotland, thus circling the world.

SourceThe Fitchburg Sentinel (August 26, 1930), p. 9.

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Long lag between changes in the interest rate and (inverse) changes in economic activity

Ninety-First Annual Meeting of the American Statistical Association Held at Hotel Washington, Washington, D. C. December 27-30, 1929.

Friday, December 27, 1929
2:30 P. M.

Appraisal of Economic Forecasts

Chairman:
Wesley C. Mitchell, Columbia University

Papers:

Garfield V. Cox, University of Chicago
Seymour L. Andrew and Harold M. Flinn, American Telephone and Telegraph Company

Discussion:

Donald Tucker, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Arthur W. Marget, University of Minnesota
J. G. Thompson, Simonds Saw and Steel Company

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John G. Thompson, Discussion
[emphasis added]

“Since 1919 I have been working with Alvan T. Simonds, President of the Simonds Saw and Steel Company, trying to convince business executives and others interested that major movements in money rates, reversed, forecast major swings in business…we have used the volume of manufacture, as reported by the Harvard Economic Society, or the volume of industrial production, as reported by the Federal Reserve Board. We have found that major movements in these are forecast by major swings of money rates, reversed. The particular series of money rates selected, however, must be as free as possible from the influences of speculation. Therefore we have selected commercial paper rates, New York. The accompanying chart shows that each major swing in commercial paper rates, reversed, is followed some months later by a major swing in industrial production. The major swings are represented as straight lines connecting the peaks and the valleys of the three-year cycle, which has been repeated now four times since the War. Minor swings, including seasonal swings, have been neglected, but in each case the extreme high point has been connected with the next extreme low point, or the extreme low point with the next extreme high point…The light dotted line beginning in the spring of 1929 and running down to the middle of 1930 is the estimated course of industrial production, as made in December, 1928. The chart represents the movements as falling in three-year cycles and shows each cycle separated from the others….

In attempting to convince those interested that (as this chart shows) money rates, reversed, do forecast major swings in business, the chief difficulty seems to be the long lag between the corresponding movements. The general belief seems to have been, and to be, that when money rates ease off, business immediately or almost at once turns upward. As a matter of fact and as the chart shows, this upward turn does not begin until several months later.

Source: “Ninety-First Annual Meeting of the American Statistical Association Held at Hotel Washington, Washington, D. C. Friday, December 27, to Monday, December 30, 1929.” Journal of the American Statistical Association, vol. 25, no. 169, 1930, pp. 48-49. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2277188

Image Source: Fitchburg State University website. Home/About/History of Fitchburg State/Hall of Presidents/John G. Thompson (1895-1920).

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Columbia Economists Germany Popular Economics Princeton Teaching

New York City Schools. Essay on Economics and the High School Teacher of Economics. Tildsley, 1919

Every so often I make an effort to track down students whose names have been recorded in course lists. I do this in part to hone my genealogical skills but primarily to obtain a broader sense of the population obtaining advanced training in economics beyond the exclusive society of those who ultimately clear all the hurdles in order to be awarded the Ph.D. degree. This post began with a simple list of the participants in Professor Edwin R.A. Seligman’s seminar in political economy and finance at Columbia University in 1901-02 published in the annual presidential report for that year (p. 154).

 John L. Tildsley’s seminar topic was “Economic Aspects of Colonial Expansion.” I began to dig into finding out more about this Tildsley fellow, who was completely unknown to me other than for the distinction of having attended a graduate course in economics at Columbia but never having received an economics Ph.D. from the university.

It turns out that this B.A. and M.A. graduate from Princeton had indeed already been awarded a doctorate in economics from the Friedrichs Universität Halle-Wittenberg (Germany), renamed the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg in 1933, before he took any coursework at Columbia. A link to his German language doctoral dissertation on the Chartist movement is provided below.

I also found out that John Lee Tildsley went on to a distinguished if controversial career [e.g., he had no qualms about firing teachers for expressing radical opinions in the classroom] in the top tier of educational administration for the public high-schools in New York City. No less a critical writer than Upton Sinclair aimed his words at Tildsley.

For the purposes of Economics in the Rear-View Mirror John L. Tildsley is of particular interest as someone who had done much to introduce economics into the curriculum of New York City public schools.

Following data on his life culled from Who’s Who in America and New York Times articles on the occasions of his retirement and death, I have included his March 1919 essay dedicated to economics and the economics teacher in New York City high schools. 

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Life and Career
of John Lee Tildsley

from Who’s Who in America, 1934

John Lee Tildsley, educator

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Mar. 13, 1867;
Son of John and Elizabeth (Withington) Tidsley;
Married Bertha Alice Watters, of New York City, June 24, 1896;
Children—Jane, John Lee, Margaret, Kathleen (deceased).

B.A., Princeton, 1893 [Classmate of A. Piatt Andrew], M.A. 1894;
Boudinot fellow in history, Princeton, 1893-94;
Teacher Greek and history, Lawrenceville (New Jersey) School, 1894-96;
Studied Universities of Halle and Berlin, 1896-98, Ph.D., Halle, 1898;
Teacher of history, Morris High School, New York City, 1898-1902;
Studied economics, Columbia, 1902;
Head of dept. of economics, High School of Commerce, 1902-08;
Principal of DeWitt Clinton High School, 1908-14;
Principal of High School of Commerce, 1914-16;
Associate Superintendent, Oct. 1916-July 1920;
District Superintendent, July 1920, City of New York.

Member: Headmasters’ Assn., Phi Beta Kappa.
Democrat.
Episcopalian.

Formulated and introduced into public schools of New York City, courses in economics and civics for secondary grades. Speaker and writer on teaching and problems of school administration.

Club: Nipnichsen.
Home: [2741 Edgehill Ave.] Spuyten Duyvil, [Bronx] New York.

Source: Who’s Who in America 1934, p. 2356.

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Tildsley’s 1898 doctoral dissertation on the Chartist movement (in German)

Tildsley, John L. Die Entstehung und die ökonomischen Grundsätze der Chartistenbewegung, Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der philosophischen Doktorwürde der hohen philosophischen Fakultät der vereinigten Friedrichs-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. Halle a.S. 1898.

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New York Times, September 2, 1937

Dr. John L. Tildsley, Associate Superintendent of Schools, retired on Sept. 1, 1937.

One of Dr. Tildsley’s pet ideas has been the formation of special schools for bright pupils. As a result of his efforts two such schools are to be established in this city, the first to be opened next February in Brooklyn.
‘This new school will develop independent habits of work on the part of the superior student,’ he has explained. ‘Special emphasis will be placed upon the development of social-mindedness.’

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New York Times, November 22, 1948

Dr. John L. Tildsley died November 21, 1948 in St. Luke’s Hospital, New York, N.Y.

In 1920, having fallen out of the graces of Mayor John F. Hylan because of a political speech, he was denied a second term as associate superintendent.
At the urging of many admirers, he was assigned to the position of assistant superintendent which he held until the Fusion Board of Education restored him to his former rank in the spring of 1937.
When Dr. Tildsley was demoted he refused to be silenced, constantly championing controversial causes. He attacked the ‘frontier thinkers’ of Teachers College, and charged that under the existing high school set up much waste resulted to the city and to the pupil.
He urged the development of ‘nonconformist’ pupils, and angered patriotic organizations by suggesting that patriotic songs and holidays have little value in the schools.
Born in Pittsburgh of British parents, Dr. Tildsley received his early education in schools in Lockport, N.Y., and at the Mount Hermon School. Instead of becoming a minister, as he originally had planned, he decided to study at Princeton University, where Woodrow Wilson was one of his instructors for three years.

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Tildsley became a target of Upton Sinclair’s critical pen for his campaign to regulate teachers’ opinions expressed in school

Upton Sinclair, The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools (1924). See Chapters XV (Honest Graft) and XVI (A Letter to Woodrow Wilson), XVII (An Arrangement of Little Bits).

Cf. Teachers’ Defense Fund. The Trial of the Three Suspended Teachers of the De Witt Clinton High School (1917).

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HISS TILDSLEY FOR PRAISE OF GERMANS
School Superintendent Aroused Criticism by Talk in Ascension Parish House.
LIKES TEUTON DISCIPLINE
When He Said Their Military Success Was a Credit to Them the Trouble Began.

The New York Times, December 10, 1917.

Dr. John L. Tildsley, Associate Superintendent of Schools in charge of high schools, whose investigation of the opinions of the teachers at the De Witt Clinton High School resulted in the suspension and trial of three of them and in the transfer of six others, was hissed last night in the parish house of the Church of the Ascension, Fifth Avenue and Eleventh Street, when he said that the success of the Germans in military affairs was a credit to them rather than a discredit, and that their “good qualities” ought not to be ignored even if “they happen to be our enemies.”

Dr. Tildsley was also denounced as a “Prussian by instinct and education,” because of his laudation of family life in Germany and because he asserted that it was desirable to have in this country more obedience instinctively to authority as exemplified by the obedience of the German child to its father. The denouncer was Adolph Benet, a lawyer, who said that Dr. Tildsley’s sojourn in Germany, where he studied at the University of Halle, caused him to misunderstand Germany.

“There is one thing that is bad in Germany,” declared Mr Benet. “That thing is unqualified and instinctive respect for authority. And Dr. Tildsley, after living in Germany and observing the country, would come here and try to introduce here the worst part of the whole German system. I say Dr. Tildsley is a Prussian by instinct and a Prussian by education. Why did he not say these things two months ago when many were denouncing a Judge who is now Mayor-elect?”

The stormy part of the evening took place in the parish house, where the audience repaired to ask questions after Dr. Tildsley delivered an address in the church on “Regulation of Opinion in the Schools.” The hissing of the speaker occurred during his explanation of his ideas on obedience. He explained the system of instinctive obedience to authority which marks all Germans, and then said: “German family life is magnificent, and we ought to emulate it.” Here the hissing began. A minute later it began again and grew in volume for about minute, when it stopped.

In reply to another question relating to his charges against teachers, Dr. Tildslev. said that teachers have too much protection in the schools, and that not a single high school teacher in nineteen years has been brought up on charges. In this connection he declared that when a teacher is brought up on charges the Board of Education is handicapped in the handling of the case because must accept such a lawyer as it gets from the Corporation Counsel while the teacher may get the cleverest lawyer that money can buy. This was taken by the high school teacher in the audience to mean that Dr. Tildsley was dissatisfied with handling of the trial against the three teachers by the Corporation Counsel.

In his formal address Dr. Tildsley said that the teachers who were tried and those who were transferred were not accused of disloyalty. Later. in the parish house. he said he believed they were all internationalists and doubted whether a teacher who had the spirit of internationalism had the spirit necessary to teach high school students.

He said the teachers he investigated held that unrestricted expression of opinion was the best means of developing good citizenship. With this point of view he said, he and others differed. He quoted one teacher as being a believer in Bertrand Russell and he read from one of Russell’s works a passage which said in substance that it did not matter what the teacher said but what he felt and that it was what he felt that reached the consciousness of the pupils. It was Dr. Tildsley’s belief that the opinions which the teachers hold are accepted by the pupils, even if they if they were unexpressed. Dr. Tildsley read the letter of Hyman Herman, the sixteen-year-old pupil whose composition was the basis for a charge against Samuel Schmalhauser one of the suspended teachers. In this letter President Wilson was denounced as a “murderer.” Dr. Tildsley said the teacher was in in no way responsible for the letter.

While the speaker said that the teachers loyal he investigated were not disloyal and declared their convictions were honest, he also said that though the nation had gone to war they were unable to subscribe to the decision of the majority. He divided the radical group among the teachers into three classes, those who believe in absolute and unrestrained expression by the students, those who are opposed to the war and do not believe in it, and a third class, born in Germany, , who cannot be blamed for feeling as they do about Germany. The last mentioned he declared, must not allow any of their feelings to escape into their teaching. He gave a clean bill oi health as to loyalty to all the teachers in the De Witt Clinton High School.

“A teacher is not an ordinary citizen who has the right to express his opinions freely,” continued Dr. Tildsley. “Every teacher always teaches himself, and if he has not the right ideas toward the Government he has no right to accept payment from the taxpayers. We make no claim that any of these teachers were consciously disloyal, but if because of this belief in unrestricted utterance they spread disloyalty they are not persons to be intrusted with the teaching of citizenship to students.”

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From the New York Times, November 5, 1918:

…the dismissal of Thomas Mufson, A. Henry Schneer, and Samuel D. Schmalhausen in the De Witt Clinton High School was upheld by Acting New York Commissioner of Education E. Thomas Finegan.

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ECONOMICS AND THE TEACHER OF ECONOMICS IN THE NEW YORK CITY HIGH SCHOOLS

John L. Tildsley,
Associate Superintendent in Charge of High Schools.
[March 1919]

Every student graduated in June, 1920 and thereafter from the general course of the high schools of New York City, must have had a course in economics of not less than five periods a week for one-half year. This requirement, recently adopted by the Board of Superintendents, is one of the changes which may be charged directly to the clearer vision of our educational needs which the war has brought us. Many of us have long believed that economics is an essential element in the curriculum of the public high school, whose fundamental aim is to train the young to play their part in an environment whose ruling forces are preeminently industrial and commercial. But it has required the revelation of the dangers inherent in our untrained citizenship to cause us to force a place for the upwelcome intruder among the college preparatory subjects whose vested rights are based on immemorial possession of the field of secondary education.

One of the chief aims of the Board of Superintendents in establishing this new requirement is, without doubt, to give high school students a specialized training which shall bring to them some understanding of the forces economic and political which so largely determine their happiness and general well being, to the end that these students shall discharge more intelligently their duties as citizens in a democracy, and shall develop their productive capacity to the increase of their own well being and to the resulting advancement of the common good. A further reason for introducing economics is the belief that the boys and girls who have had this training will be better able to analyze the various remedies proposed for the evils of our social organization and to detect the iallacies which are so often put forth as measures of reform. These students should find in such training an antidote to the movements which have as their aim the over throw of institutions which the experience of our race has evolved through the centuries.

Because of this realization that economics deals not only with the conduct of business enterprises but also with political institutions and with movements for social amelioration, it is apt to enroll among its teachers the enthusiastic social reformer whose sympathies are all-embracing, who readily becomes a propagandist for his or her pet project of reform, and who finds it impossible to resist the temptation to enroll converts among the trusting students of his or her classes. It is because of this conception of the nature of economics teaching in our educational program that the new subject has been some what despised by the teachers of the sterner disciplinary subjects.

With full sympathy with the vocational aim of economics, I would offer as its chief claim for a place in our high school curriculum, that it is essentially a disciplinary subject, that it can be taught and should be taught so as to yield a training of the highest order, somewhat different in its processes, but no less searching in its demands upon the students, than mathematics or physical science.

It is a subject, therefore, to be taught by the man with the keenly analytical mind, by the man who can detect the untruth and train pupils to detect the untruth in the major premise, by the man who from tested premises can proceed to a valid conclusion. Economics is essentially applied logic rather than a confused program of social reform, as too many of its advocates have led the layman to believe.

Economics in the past has been for the most part a college and university subject. Consequently the well-trained student of economics has found his work in the college, in government service, on newspaper or magazine, and, in ever-increasing numbers, in bank ing and finance. Practically none has sought to find a career for himself in secondary work.

With full knowledge of this fact, we have added economics to the high school curriculum in the hope that ultimately the demand will create a supply of teachers thoroughly trained in economic theory before they begin their teaching. Meanwhile, we confidently expect that men thoroughly trained in other subjects which require a high degree of analysis and synthesis, will come to the rescue as they see the need. Applying the knowledge of scientific method which they possess to the new subject matter, these teachers may speedily acquire that mastery of principles which is necessary for the effective teaching of economics.

In my own experience, as I sought for economics teachers in the High School of Commerce, I found them among the teachers of mathematics and of biology. Certain of these teachers, who had an interest in business and public affairs and who were masters of scientific methods, became in the course of a single term expert teachers of economics. They even preferred the new subject to the old, because of the greater interest manifested by the students in this subject which never fails to enlist the enthusiastic interest of students when properly taught.

I trust, therefore, that some of our teachers who enjoy close, accurate thinking will take up some economic text, such as Taussig, Seligman, Seager, Carver, or Marshall, and, having read this, will follow it up with other texts on the specific fields of economics to which they find themselves attracted. Very soon, I believe, such teachers, in view of the urgent need for teachers of economics, will realize the very great service they can render our schools by utilizing their knowledge of boys and girls, their mastery of method, their awakened interest in economics and social phenomena, in training these boys and girls in this most vital subject.

As a text book for classroom use, I recommend a systematic book, such as Bullock’s Introduction to [the Study of] Economics, which lays the emphasis on principles rather than on descriptions of industrial processes or on the operation of social agencies. There are several books which are more interestingly written, but in the hands of most teachers they will lead to a descriptive treatment of industry and social institutions, to discussions for which the students are not qualified because of their ignorance of and want of drill in economic principles.

Our students need to be trained in economic theory before they attempt to discuss measures of social reform. They need to grasp the meaning of utility, value, price, before they take up the study of industrial processes. It is because of hazy conception of these primary elements that we fall so readily into error. The key to economic thinking lies in a clear understanding of the terms margin and marginal. The boy who has digested the concept “marginal utility” is already on the way to becoming a student of economics. Until he has arrived at an understanding of the nature of value, he is hardly ready to discuss socialism, wage theories, the single tax or other like themes.

The temptation for the untrained or inexperienced teacher is to begin with the study of actual business, partly as a means of interesting the student by causing him to feel that he is dealing with practical life, partly because he conceives business as a laboratory and desires as a scientist to employ the inductive method. The study of the factory or store takes the place of the study of the crayfish. The analogy does not hold. Induction in economics is the method of discovery, it is not the method of teaching, especially of secondary teaching. The method is deductive. The teacher must assume that certain great principles have been shown to be valid. He should drill on these principles and their application till the pupil has mastered them.

Let no one believe that this means a dull grind. Even such a subject as marginal utility can be made interesting to every student. It is altogether a matter of method. The concept must be presented from a dozen different angles. There must be no lecturing, no mere hearing of recitations. The pupil must not be assigned a few pages or paragraphs in the book and then left to work out his salvation. The real teaching must be done in the recitation period, with the teacher at the blackboard with a piece of chalk in his hand, ready to answer all questions and with a dozen illustrations at his command with which to drive home the principle, illustrations with which the pupils are thoroughly familiar because taken from the daily occurrences about them. For example, to explain the principle that the value of any commodity is determined by its marginal utility and that its marginal utility is the lowest use to which any commodity must be put in order to exhaust its supply, take the teacher’s desk as the illustration. Elicit from the pupils the different uses to which that desk may be put, and write the list as it is given on the blackboard. Some boy will remark that the desk could be used for firewood and will ask why the value of the desk is not determined by its utility as firewood; then comes the query, will not the supply of desks be exhausted before it is necessary to use them as firewood? As a result of this give and take process, the boys, in one recitation, may grasp this principle which is the very keystone of our modern economics.

John Bates Clark, our foremost theorist, once said to me that there is no principle in economics so difficult that it cannot be understood by a ten year old child if it is properly taught. But how often it is not properly taught! Teaching economics is like kneading bread. The teacher must turn over these principles again and again until they are kneaded into the boy so thoroughly that they have become a part of his mind stuff. When he has once had kneaded into him the concepts of the margin, marginal utility, the marginal producer, the marginal land, the marginal unit of capital, the marginal laborer, he can move fearlessly forward to the conquest of the most involved propositions of actual business. In business, in government, in all the multitudinous activities of life, we come to grief because our concepts are not clearly defined. Because of deficient analysis, we accept wrong premises and because of muddy reasoning, we allow factors to enter into the conclusion which were not in the premises. If economics be taught with the same degree of analysis of conditions, with the same accuracy in checking the reasoning as in geometry, the teacher will find himself surprised by the ability of the students to solve a most difficult problem in the incidence of taxation or one in the operations of foreign exchange. As a means of testing whether the student has gained a clear concept, problem questions should be assigned at the close of every discussion, to be answered at home in writing by the pupil, and written tests should be given at least once a week. Purely oral work makes possible much confusion of thought on the part of the pupil without the knowledge of the teacher. The slovenly thinking which may thus become a habit will produce a wrongly-trained citizen more dangerous than one who has had no training in economics at all. The problems which this training fits the student to solve are precisely the kind of problems that every businessman is called upon to face every day of his life. For example, the man who keeps the country store at Marlborough or Milton on the Hudson will soon need to decide how large a stock of goods he will order for the fall trade. This may seem to be a simple problem and yet he needs all his experience to enable him to analyze the problem of demand for his goods. This involves the effect of the mild weather on the vines and peach trees, the possibility of his customers again securing boys and girls from New York to pick the crops, the matter of freight rates on fruit, the buying capacity of the people of New York which, in turn, involves a knowledge of conditions in many industries. After he has considered all of these elements, he has come to a conclusion as to demand for his goods, but he has not yet touched the question whether the cost of his goods is to be higher or lower before September next. Do we wonder that failures are so common when we realize that few of our people, even our college graduates, are trained in accurate observation, keen analysis, rigid reasoning? The development of these powers in his pupils should be the fundamental aim of every teacher of economics this coming year. If this aim should be realized for every high school pupil in this country, we should not need to fear for the future of our city, our state, our nation. Inefficient government is due chiefly to the failure of our people to realize the connection between incompetent or dishonest officials and the well-being of the individual. Dangerous movements like the I. W. W. and Bolshevism are due to slovenly thinking, poor analysis of conditions by both the members of these organizations and those responsible for the conditions which breed these dangerous movements. Marxian socialism is based on premises which will not bear analysis, namely, the Marxian theory of value, which is not evolved from experience, the resulting expropriation theory, which depends upon this false theory of value, and the inevitable class struggle and the ultimate triumph of the proletariat, an unwarranted conclusion from invalid premises.

I have indicated that the primary aim of the Board of Superintendents in making economics a required subject was vocational in character. Through the medium of this subject it seeks to train good citizens. I trust I have made clear that this vocational aim can be best realized by making all aims subsidiary to the disciplinary aim; that we should, therefore, make the recitation periods in this subject exercises in exact analysis and rigid reasoning. If our schools can produce a generation of students with trained intelligence, students who can see straight, and think straight on economic data, we need not fear the attacks on our cherished institutions of the newcomers from lands where they have not been permitted to be trained and where the nursing of grievances has so stimulated the emotional nature as to render the dispassionate analysis of industrial movements and civil activities almost an impossibility.

Effective teaching in economics brings to the teacher an immediate reward, for the efficient teacher of economics must keep in touch not only with the changes in economic theory but with the movements in industry and finance, with problems of labor, problems of administration, local and national, with the vast field of legislation, and these not only in America, but in Asia, Australia, South America and Europe as well. Every newspaper, every periodical yields him material for his classroom. Almost every man he meets may be made to contribute to his work. The boundaries of his subject are ever widening. There is, moreover, no need of the stultifying repetition of subject matter, for there is no end to the material for the elucidation of economic principles. Nor is the teacher of economics in the high school compelled to create in his pupils an interest in the subject. for every New York boy is an economist in embryo. Questions of cost, price, wages, profits, labor, capital, are already the subjects of daily discussion.

The complaint so often heard that the teacher is academic, that he is removed from the world of practical affairs, and has little touch with the man in the street, cannot be made of the teachers of economics, who is vitally interested in his teaching. The more he studies his subject, the more he becomes a citizen of the world with an ever-deepening interest in all kinds of men and in all that pertains to man, the broader becomes his sympathies, the wider his vision.

The New York high schools offer great opportunities for men and women who, whether trained students of economics or not, are students of life. Here they may serve the state as effectively as the soldier in the field. Here they may train the young for lasting usefulness to themselves and to the city, while at the same time they are broadening their interests, expanding their vision and growing in intellectual vigor under, the compulsion of keeping pace with the demands of a subject which reflects as a mirror the changing needs and desires of men. The teaching of economics in high schools demands our strongest teachers. There is no place for the man who has finished his growth, who cannot change to meet changed conditions; nor is there place for the man who loves change just because it is change. The teacher of economics in the New York City high schools should be a co-worker with all those who seek to preserve and to develop those institutions, economic and civic, which have stood the test and gained the approval of the wise among us through the years. He should be a man who is fundamentally an optimist, constructive in his outlook on life, not destructive. If his motto be, “All’s wrong with the world,” there should be no place for him as a teacher of economics in a high school in New York City or in any other American city.

Economics is closely allied with the study of civics or government. In every school where there is not a full program in economics, the teacher of economics should also teach the civics. With the great increase in our civics work, there should be established in each school a department of economics and civics. For each of these subjects a license is being issued and separate examinations are being held. For the new department first assistants may be appointed and will be appointed.

May we not, therefore, confidently expect that some of our strongest teachers shall prepare themselves for this most interesting and vital work which will be given in every high school beginning September next?

Source: Bulletin of the High Points in the Work of the High Schools of New York City, Vol. I, No 3 (March 1919), pp. 3-7.

Image Source: Photo of Dr. John L. Tildsley in “Modern Girls Not All Wild; Here is Proof” [Construction of a new building to house Girls’ Commercial High on Classon Avenue, near Union Street] Sunday News,Brooklyn Section, p. B-15.