Tag: Wilcox

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Cornell Research Tip

Cornell. Economics in the Department of Political Science, 1900

 

 

Soon I’ll get back to the necessary work of transcribing exams to match remaining courses already entered into Economics in the Rear-View Mirror. While my core three departments (Harvard, Columbia and Chicago) constitute the source of the vast majority of the artifacts gathered thus far, regular visitors will have also noticed an occasional foray into other departments as have struck my fancy.

The next few postings are the result of my recent visit to the Library of Congress where I looked into the papers of the economic statistician Walter F. Willcox of Cornell. Following up, I checked out the digital repository of Cornell, eCommons that I can most highly recommend both to researchers (for historical material) as well as to university archivists (for its structure and user-friendliness).

Among other things I found (and immediately transcribed) the following “snap-shot” of Cornell’s department of political science in 1900 that was made up of three professors who were working on economic theory, policy and statistics. Modern eyes see there an economics department with an interdisciplinary social-scientific scope, not unsimilar to the early School of Political Science at Columbia.

Research Tip: The Cornell Register is an official Cornell University publication containing a record of the personnel and organization for the academic year.  PDF copies for 1882-1883 through 1931-32 at the digital repository of Cornell. Page views going back to 1869 from the hathitrust.org collection.

 

_____________________________

 

DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

The Development of the Work—
What is being Accomplished Today.

Political Science has always been considered important at Cornell. President White, in his inaugural address, laid down the principle that “There are two permeating ideas which must enter into the work of the University in all its parts. The first is the need of labor and sacrifice in developing the individual man in all his nature and in all his powers as a being intellectual, moral, and religious. The second of these permeating ideas is that of bringing the powers thus developed to bear upon society. We should provide ample instruction in history, in political and social science and in the modern literature….We would give ample opportunity for those classes of study which give breadth to the mind, and which directly fit the student for dealing with state problems and world problems. In this view, historical studies and studies in political and social science will hold an honored place; but these studies will not be pursued in the interest of any party. On points where honest and earnest men differ, I trust we may have courses of lectures presenting both sides.”

Instruction in this line consisted at first of a course of lectures in Political Economy given during one term of each year by Dr. William D. Wilson, professor of moral and intellectual philosophy. A few years later, Theodore Dwight began a series of lectures on constitutional law, and in 1875 this course was superseded by a series of lectures on the constitution of the United States and American jurisprudence.

The department was formally organized in 1881, when a four years’ course in History and Political Science was established. Graduates from this course received the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy in History and Political Science. Courses in systematic politics, public finance, and practical economic questions were added to the curriculum year by year, and in 1887 the departments of History were organized into the President White School of History and Political Science, and a fellowship in political and social science was established. While Professor Laughlin was in charge of the work in economics, in 1890, two fellowships in that field were founded.

In 1891, Professor Jeremiah W, Jenks was called to a chair of municipal, political, and social institutions. The next year, the departments of economics and finance and of political and social institutions were brought under one head. Professors Walter F. Willcox and Charles H. Hull were appointed, with Professor Jenks, to take charge of the work, which is being carried on as a unit, in so far as this is practicable.

Each professor, with his assistants, has charge of some special branch of the work. Professor Jenks gives his time chiefly to the work in politics, political science, and economic legislation; Professor Willcox to social science and statistics; and Professor Hull to political economy and finance. The assistants, Mr. Brooks and Mr. Weston, divide their time between advanced work in economic history and municipal government and the text-book work with the classes beginning the study of economics. In all branches the aim is to make the work of direct, practical value, while not neglecting economic and political theories. Andrew D. White’s idea of presenting both sides of questions is carried out as far as possible. The political questions of the day are treated fully, and students are taught to think impartially and independently. For the last two years the department has invited the most eminent men in business and politics to give lectures before the University. John W. Foster, ex-Secretary of State, has lectured on “Diplomacy;” Charlton T. Lewis, counsel for the Mutual Life Insurance Company, on “Insurance;” W. H. Baldwin, Jr., president of the Long Island Railroad, on “Railroad Management;” and Edward Rosewater, editor of the Omaha Bee, on “Journalism.” A course of lectures on the work of the State departments by prominent State officials has been provided for this year. The object of these lectures is to give the students more accurately the point of the business man and the politician.

The work the professors are doing outside of the department shows that the practical nature of their work is widely recognized. Professor Jenks is now the expert agent of the United States Industrial Commission in their investigation of trusts and monopolies undertaken with the view of recommending legislation on the subject to Congress and the several states. He has had special charge of selecting and examining the witnesses for and against the trusts and of editing the testimony. In this connection, he has collected in one volume the laws of the United States and the different states which concert trusts, with a digest of all the decisions under these statues and leading common law decisions concerning trusts. A second volume will contain the testimony and the economic results of the study. He has, further, been assigned by the Commission the task of investigating the trusts of Europe during the coming summer. This investigation has also led Governor Roosevelt to call him into consultation several times this winter to aid in the preparation of his message and in proposing measures for state legislation concerning trusts and corporations.

The administration wished the national census department to come closely into touch with the universities of the country, and therefore appointed Professor Willcox one of the Chief Statisticians of the census. He is investigating “methods and results” and is planning the methods of taking the census and interpreting the results—the work which, more than any other, calls for breadth of statistical knowledge and soundness of judgment. To him has also been given the task, together with one of his colleagues on the Census, Mr. Gannett, of interpreting and writing up the results of our first Colonial Census, the one lately taken in Porto Rico and Cuba. His interest and experience in practical social questions is shown by his acting for years as a member of the local Board of Health, and by Governor Roosevelt’s appointing him a year ago a member of the State Board of Health. While Professor Willcox is in Washington, his work is ably carried on by Professor Powers, formerly of Leland Stanford University.

Professor Hull has just published one of the most scholarly books produced in this field for a long time. This book, a collection of the works of Sir William Petty, with an introduction and critical annotations, has been very favorably reviewed in all the principle countries of Europe. Beside his accurate scholarship and his remarkable critical acumen, Professor Hull is well known also for his sound judgment and business sense. These qualities have been long recognized by his colleagues in the faculty, of which he is Secretary. Upon earnest solicitation he has acted as President of the Cornell Coöperative Society from the beginning and is perhaps chiefly responsible for its success. For some years he has been Treasurer of the American Economic Association, and at its last meeting that body insisted on making him its Secretary also, thus putting practically all of its business—publishing included—into his hands. The joint committee of the Legislature on taxation submitted to him lately for criticism its new plan of taxation.

The department has been greatly aided in its work by having at its disposal excellent laboratory and library facilities. It has perhaps the best material in reports, apparatus, etc., for work in statistics possessed by any university in the country. It is unusually well equipped in periodical literature and rare books on the history of economics. The library of foreign statues is also large and growing rapidly.

The Seminary, for graduate students only, is carried on jointly by the three professors in the department. Each professor takes special charge of the work of those men whose theses are in his special field, and of the Seminary on days when reports on these theses are in order. Besides the regular thesis work, the Seminary usually has on hand some special subject. This year Colonial governments have been studied, the relations of our government to its dependencies is being considered, in the light of our own history, legal and political, and in that of the leading colonial powers.

The most prominent characteristic of the department throughout is that it has always tried to keep closely in touch with practical work in politics, in government, and in business, in order to prepare its students especially for practical work in life. This does not involve neglect of theory or neglect study of principles; but it does involve the effort to apply these principles to the solution of practical problems; while the experience of teachers in aiding our public men to solve non-partisan questions enables them to judge more soundly regarding what is really practical.

 

Source: Cornell Alumni News, Vol. II, No. 22 (March 7, 1900), pp. 143-144.

Image: (left to right) Jeremiah W. Jenks, Walter F. Willcox and Charles H. Hull taken from ibid.

Categories
Columbia Economists

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

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

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

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

_____________________________

[LUNCHEON INVITATION LETTER]

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

March 25, 1954

 

Dear Doctor _________________

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

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

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

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

Cordially yours,

[signed]
Carter Goodrich
Chairman of the Committee

*   *   *   *   *   *

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

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

(signed) ___________

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

_____________________________

[INVITATION TO SESSION FOLLOWING LUNCHEON]

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

May 6, 1954

 

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

 

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

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

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

Session paper.

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

Discussants:

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

 

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

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

_____________________________

[REMARKS BY PROFESSOR ARTHUR ROBERT BURNS]

Department of Economics Bicentennial Luncheon
May 29th, 1954

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[in pencil]
A.R. Burns

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

_____________________________

[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”.