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Exam Questions Harvard Suggested Reading Syllabus

Harvard. Undergraduate course on Money, Banking, and Crises, 1940-41

 

This course was one of the staples of the Harvard undergraduate economics experience. In this year that was to mark the official entry of the United States into the Second World War, we have complete course outlines, assigned readings and exam questions.

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Course Description

Economics 41. Money, Banking, and Commercial Crises. Mon., Wed., and (at the pleasure of the instructors) Fri., at 2. Professor Williams and Associate Professor Harris.

The course will be conducted by means of lectures and discussions and (in the second half-year) a thesis based on work in the library. Certain subjects, such as monetary and banking history of the United States, will be covered almost wholly by assigned reading.

Source: Harvard University, Division of History, Government, and Economics. Announcement for 1940-41. Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. XXVII, No. 51 (August 15, 1940), p. 56.

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Course Enrollment

[Economics] 41. Professor Williams and Associate Professor Harris. — Money Banking, and Commercial Crises.

Total 107: 3 Graduates, 18 Seniors, 58 Juniors, 27 Sophomores, 1 Other.

Source:  Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments for 1940-41,p. 58.

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Economics 41
[First semester]
1940-41

  1. The nature and function of banking
    1. Dunbar, Theory and History of Banking, Chs. 1,2,3,4, pp. 1-60.
    2. White, Money and Banking, Ch. 16, pp. 349-372.
  2. Creation of Deposits
    1. Phillips, Bank Credit, Ch. 3., pp. 32-77.
    2. Currie, Supply and Control of Money, Chs. 5, 6, 7, pp. pp. 46-83.
  3. Note Issue
    1. Dunbar, op. cit., Ch. 5, pp. 50-81.
    2. Currie, op. cit., Ch. 10, pp. 110-115.
  4. Commercial Loan Theory
    1. Robertson, Money, Ch. 5, pp. 92-117.
    2. Currie, op.  cit., Ch. 4, pp. 34-46.
  5. U.S. Banking history
    1. White, op. cit., Chs. 18-23, pp. 387-529.
  6. The Federal Reserve System
    1. Dunbar, op. cit., Ch. 6, pp. 81-139.
    2. Federal Reserve Bulletin, July 1935: “Supply and Use of Member Bank Reserve Funds,” pp. 419-428.
    3. Langum, “The Statement of Supply and Use of Member Bank Reserve Funds,” Review of Economic Statistics, August, 1939, pp. 110-115.
    4. Burgess, Federal Reserve Banks and the Money Market, pp. 1-327.
    5. Currie, op. cit., Chs. 8, 9, pp. 83-110.
  7. Recent Banking Changes
    1. White, op. cit., Chs. 29-30, pp. 670-738.
    2. Moulton, Financial Organization and the Economic System, Ch. 5 [or 6?].
  8. Foreign Banking Systems
    1. Dunbar, op. cit., pp. 139-235, Chs. 8, 9, 10.

Source: Harvard University Archives. HUC 8522.2.1. Box 2, Folder “Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1940-41”.

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Reading Period
Jan. 6-15, 1941
Economics 41

Read one of the following:

  1. Hardy, Federal Reserve Policy.
  2. Hawtrey, Art of Central Banking, pp. 116-303.
  3. Keynes, Treatise on Money, Vol. II, Book VII.
  4. Sprague, Crises under the National Banking System.

Source: Harvard University Archives. HUC 8522.2.1. Box 10, Folder “Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1940-41”.

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1940-41
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 41

MONEY, BANKING, AND COMMERCIAL CRISES

Please put the day and hour of your section meeting on the cover of your first blue book.

Part I

Answer questions 1 and 5 and one other.

  1. Supply and Use of Member Bank Reserve Funds.
    (Figures are net change for year, in millions of dollars.)
Bills discounted -4
Bills bought -1
U.S. government securities -305
Industrial advances -3
Other reserve bank credit +81
Monetary gold stock +4,310
Treasury currency +119
Money in circulation +1,154
Treasury cash and deposits -369
Non-member bank deposits and other Fed. Res. accounts +1,067
Member bank reserve balances ?
  1. State briefly how the above statement of supply and use of member bank reserves funds is derived.
  2. What is the meaning of each of the above items?
  3. Describe the process by which each of the items influences the volume of member bank reserve funds.
  4. By use of a balance sheet, calculate and explain the change in member bank reserve funds for the period in question.
  5. What does the statement suggest with respect to the condition of the money market, member bank policy, and Federal Reserve policy?
  6. To what year or years do you think the statement given might apply?
  1. Discuss the significance of the more important weapons of control of the central bank.
  2. What are the important factors determining the volume of bank deposits:
    1. When a ready market for loans exists and banks are always loaned up?
    2. When banks have excess reserves?
  3. Discuss the 100 per cent reserve plan:
    1. In its relation to the “commercial loan theory” controversy.
    2. In its relation to fluctuations in the volume of deposits.
  4. Reading period. Answer one of the following:
    1. Keynes or Hawtrey: From Keynes’ or Hawtrey’s analysis, would you say that English or American central banking practice provides the more effective monetary control? Support your opinion by reference to your reading.
    2. Hardy: Basing your opinion on Hardy’s discussion, would you say that the credit policies pursued by the Federal Reserve System from 1928 to 1931 were the best possible under the circumstances?
    3. Sprague: Do you find in Sprague’s analysis of crises under the National Banking System reasons for the abandonment of that system in favor of the Federal Reserve System in 1913?

 

Part II

Answer TWO questions.

  1. Discuss the problems of reserves of member banks and of reserve banks in the United States.
  2. Compare the American banking system as it existed under the first and second Bank of the United States with the National Banking System or with the present system. Which system do you think was better adapted to the problems with which it had to deal?
  3. In view of the large excess reserves in existence at the present time, and of other factors in the existing situation, would you favor a return to the currency provisions of the National Banking Act, and extension of similar reserve provisions to bank deposits?
  4. Outline the main revisions of the Federal Reserve Act from 1931 to 1936.
  5. What revisions of the existing banking law seem most essential in view of present and impending economic conditions?
  6. Describe the experiences of the Federal Reserve System in 1914-1921, or in 1922-1929.

Mid-Year. 1941.

 

Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archives. Wolfgang F. Stolper Papers, Box 22.

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ECONOMICS 41
Second Semester
1940-41

Outline of Lectures and Readings

Part I. International Aspects of Money (4 weeks)

Lecture

  1. Types of Monetary Standards
  2. Theory of the Gold Standard
  3. The Gold Standard in Practice.
  4. What is to Be Done about Gold?
  5. The Case for Variable exchanges.
  6. Prices under Variable Exchanges.
  7. Stabilisation Funds and Free Exchanges.
  8. Control of Exchanges.

Assignment:
Gayer, Monetary Policy and Economic Stabilisation, pp. 1-180.

Part II. Money in Relation to Prices and the Rate of Interest (4 weeks)

Lecture

  1. Definition of the Price Level.
  2. The Fisherian Approach.
  3. Velocity and Hoarding.
  4. Cambridge Approaches.
  5. Money and Forced Savings.
  6. Money and the Rate of Interest.
  7. Money and the Rate of Interest (cont.).
  8. The Significance of the Rate of Interest.

Assignment:
Chandler, Introduction to Monetary Theory, pp. 1-147.
Fisher, Purchasing Power of Money, pp. 8-73.
Keynes*, Treatise on Money, Vol. I, Chs. 2-5, 7, 14.
Mises*, Theory of Money and Credit, Part II, Ch. II.
Robertson, Money, chs. 1-3, 6-8.
Schumpeter*, Business Cycles, pp. 449-483.
Wicksell, Interest and Prices, Chs. 5-6, 7-9.

*Important but not assigned.

Part III. Money and the Economic System (4 weeks – 7 lectures)

Lecture

  1. Monetary and Non-Monetary Aspects of Economic Fluctuations.
  2. Objectives and Limitations of Monetary Control.
  3. Supplementary Instruments—Fiscal Policy.
  4. Supplementary Instruments—Fiscal Policy (cont.).
  5. Supplementary Policies—Wage, Price Policies, etc.
  6. The Monetary System under a War or Defense Economy.
  7. Various Proposals to Improve the Monetary System.

Assignment:
Chandler, Introduction to Monetary Theory, pp. 148-205.
Hayek, Profits, Interest and Investment, pp. 1-71.
Hawtrey*, Trade Depression and the Way Out.
Macfie*, Theories of the Trade Cycle, Chs. III-V.
Robbins, The Great Depression, Chs. I, II, III, VII, VIII.
Robertson, Essays on Monetary Theory, pp. 39-67, 98-113, 122-153.
Robinson, Introduction to the Theory of Employment.
Roll*, About Money, pp. 103-248.
Schumpeter, Business Cycles, pp. 109-23.

*Important but not assigned.

 

Reading Period. Read one of the following:

  1. Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Chs. 1-19, omit appendices.
  2. Hawtrey, Capital and Employment, all but Chs. 8, 9, 11.
  3. Hawtrey, Art of Central Banking, Chs. 1, 2, 4, 8.
  4. Durbin, The Problem of Credit Policy.
  5. Hansen, Full Recovery or Stagnation.
  6. Wicksell, Interest and Prices, and Keynes, Treatise, I, Chs. 2-5, 7, 14.
  7. Haberler, Prosperity and Depression (1939 ed.), Part I.
  8. Myers, Monetary Proposals for Social Reform.
  9. Wood, English Theories of Central Banking Control.
  10. Paper Pound of 1797-1821 (Cannan edition), and Heckscher, Sweden in the World War, Part III.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. HUC 8522.2.1. Box 2, Folder “Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1940-41”.

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1940-41
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 41

Answer ONE question in each part

Part I

  1. Outline and evaluate alternative solutions of the American gold problem.
  2. What are the relative merits of
    1. An international gold standard?
    2. Free exchanges?
    3. Managed currencies?

Part II

  1. Analyse the factors determining velocity of circulation of money.
  2. What are the main determinants of the general price level according to Fisher, Wicksell, Robertson, and Keynes? Are their approaches incompatible with one another? Which seems to you more valid or useful?

Part III

  1. Do you think the distinction between “monetary” and “non-monetary” theories of the trade cycle is justified, or useful? Illustrate from the literature.
  2. Apply the theories of Keynes or Robbins, or Robertson to the American Economy in one of the following periods:
    1. 1920’s
    2. 1930’s
    3. 1940’s
  3. Are we facing inflation? How can inflation be prevented or controlled?

Part IV (Reading Period)

  1. Show how the material you have covered in your reading period assignment can be applied to current economic problems.

Part V (First Semester)

  1. Discuss the 100% Reserve Plan in relation to the monetary theory of the trade cycle.
  2. Can you suggest any revisions of the Federal Reserve System which would simplify the problems of defense finance?
  3. Assuming borrowing to be a necessary part of our defense finance, analyse in detail the relative merits of borrowing from Federal Reserve Banks, member banks, the general public, and from abroad, at various stages in the defense program.

Final. 1941.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Final Examinations 1853-2001. Box 14. Papers Printed for Final Examinations: History, History of Religions…, Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science, May, 1947.

Image Source:  John Henry Williams and Seymour Edwin Harris in Harvard Album 1950.

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Berkeley Economists Yale

Berkeley and Yale. Short c.v. of William Fellner. Haberler’s remembrance, 1983

 

In earlier posts I provided the reading lists for courses that my Yale mentor, William John Fellner, offered at Harvard in 1950-51 (History of Economics, Advanced Economic Theory). The last time I spoke with Mr. Fellner was at lunch in the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., ca. 1976. He brought along his regular lunch companion, Gottfried Haberler. I had no idea at the time who Gottfried Haberler was, and Haberler wasted no words with me, but I did take away one impression. The man ate faster than any human that I had ever met before. There is a German proverb to the effect that you work the way you eat so I presumed Gottfried Haberler was a genuine Arbeitstier (work+animal). Anyhow today’s post offers transcriptions of two items about William Fellner from Gottfried Haberler having to do with my dear mentor William Fellner.

First, three other obituaries:

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November 1982

William Fellner

Born in Budapest, Hungary, May 31, 1905. Citizen of the United States since 1944. Studied at the University of Budapest; at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (Dipl. Ing. Chem. 1927); and at the University of Berlin (Ph.D., Econ., 1929). Partner in a family enterprise in the Hungarian manufacturing industries 1929-38; member of the Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley, 1939-52; Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1952-73 (Sterling Professor of Economics 1959-73; Emeritus since 1973). Member of President’s Council of Economic Advisers, 1973-75; at present Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C., also Project Director of and contributor to Contemporary Economic Problems (a volume of studies published yearly since 1976 by the American Enterprise Institute).

Past President (1969) of the American Economic Association; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; consultant of the Congressional Budget Office.

Honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa since 1952. Awarded Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the German Federal Republic, 1979. Awarded Bernhard-Harms Prize of the Institute of World Economics, University of Kiel (1982). Corresponding Member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

Publications include among others: Monetary Policies and Full Employment (1946), Competition Among the Few (1949), Trends and Cycles in Economic Activity (1955),Emergence and Content of Modern Economic Analysis (1960), Probability and Profit (1965), Towards a Reconstruction of Macroeconomics: Problems of Theory and Policy (1976).

In addition, articles in scientific journals and contributions to symposia. Some recent items among these are Correcting Taxes for Inflation (with Kenneth W. Clarkson and John H. Moore), American Enterprise Institute, June 1975; “Lessons from the Failure of Demand-Management Policies: A Look at the Theoretical Foundations”, Journal of Economic Literature, March 1976; “The Valid Core of Rationality Hypotheses in the Theory of Expectations”, Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, Supplement to November 1980 issue; and “The Bearing of Risk Aversion on Movement of Spot and Forward Exchange Relative to the Dollar”, Flexible Exchange Rates and the Balance of Payments: Essays in Memory of Egon Sohmen, edited by John S. Chipman and Charles P. Kindleberger (1980). “Economic Theory Amidst Political Currents: The Spreading Interest in Monetarism and in the Theory of Market Expectations” (Bernhard-Harms Award lecture, published also in Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, September 1982). Also “The High-Employment Budget and Potential Output” in Survey of Current Business, U. S. Department of Commerce, November 1982.

Source:  Hoover Institution Archives. Papers of Gottfried Haberler. Box 43, Folder: “Blue”

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Gottfried Haberler
October 1, 1983

Dear Valerie, Dear Friends, Ladies, and Gentlemen:

We are gathered here to pay tribute to the memory of a great man. William Fellner was a giant among economists. This is not the occasion to go deeply into Willy’s economic work, but a few highlights must be mentioned. His work covers a large area, ranging from problems of abstract theory to questions of current economic policy. He was a prolific writer and hard worker, active and alert to the very end. My memories go back almost fifty years to when I met Willy for the first time in the summer of 1934 in Stresa, Italy, at a conference that was attended by, among others, Friedrich A. von Hayek and by Luigi Einaudi, the Italian economist who after the war became the first president of Italy. I met Willy the next time and you, Valerie, for the first time four years later, when you came to the United States. We saw each other from time to time when Willy taught at the University of California and Yale University, and we were in daily contact after he came to Washington ten years ago until his death.

Recalling our first meeting, I am struck by how little he changed over these fifty years. The same impeccable manners, the same old-world courtliness, the same sharpness of mind, the same dignified appearance and demeanor, the same courteous and conciliatory tone, even in heated discussions—up to the day of his death.

Willy was an indefatigable worker. His bibliography lists seven books and more than fifty important papers in professional periodicals and books. His major field of interest was what is now called macroeconomics, including money, business cycles, inflation, and unemployment. His first writings appeared during the heyday of the Keynesian revolution. His second book, Monetary Policy and Full Employment (1946), shows the influence of Keynes. Willy admired Keynes but not uncritically. In fact, his criticism of Keynes anticipated or foreshadowed much of what has come to be known as the monetarist counterrevolution, as well as of the modern theory of rational expectations. In later writings he referred to these two schools extensively and gave them their due. But he was too modest to let his readers know that he himself had discussed those issues years before.

In recent years he concentrated on the problem of inflation. He was one of the first to recognize that there can be no permanent trade-off between inflation and unemployment. If inflation is not brought down to near zero, he argued, we will be condemned to continue the vicious pattern of stop and go, with the stops—recessions—becoming increasingly severe. The consequences would be ever-increasing government expenditures and deficits and more and more controls of wages and prices. As a convinced liberal in the classical nineteenth-century tradition, he was a staunch advocate of free enterprise, free markets, and free trade. He opposed government central planning and controls not only on grounds of economic efficiency but also because in the long run central planning and comprehensive controls are incompatible with a free, democratic society.

Like all great economists, Willy was more than an economist. He had a keen sense of history; he put current events and policies in historical perspective. Willy was a man of great culture, fluent in several languages, and well versed in Hungarian, English, and German literature.

Willy held strong views on many issues; he was a shrewd and often stern judge of people. But Willy was at the same time one of the most generous, kind, and considerate persons I have met. He had many friends, even among those with whom he strongly disagreed on important questions. His untimely death leaves a great void. But his scientific work will endure and will inspire future generations of economists.

Ladies and gentlemen, I know I speak for all of us when I thank you, Valerie, for all you have done to make Willy’s imposing lifework possible. Without your loving care and understanding, he could not have achieved as much as he did. Please accept this expression of our profound gratitude.

Source:  Hoover Institution Archives. Papers of J. Herbert Fürth. Box 5.

Image Source:  William Fellner’s Presidential portrait, American Economic Association.

Categories
M.I.T. Regulations

M.I.T. No general foreign language requirement in MIT Economics PhD program, 1969

 

While the general foreign language requirement for an economics PhD was officially abolished at M.I.T. in 1969, at least Charles Kindleberger (European Economic History) and Evsey Domar (Communist Economies) were free to require their thesis writers to demonstrate competency in a foreign language as needed for research.

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Carbon copy of letter from E. Cary Brown to William F. Bottiglia

May 14, 1969

Professor William F. Bottiglia
Head of Department
Modern Language
14N-207

Dear Bill:

The following statement describes our new language requirement. As you see, we hope that your Department will police it when it is needed.

*   *  *   *   *  *   *   *

“The Department has no general foreign language requirements. When a foreign language is essential for full access to the literature in the field of the student’s major interest (e.g., European Economic History, Communist Economies) or to his thesis research, a language requirement will be imposed by the Department upon the recommendation of the Thesis Superviosr or the Graduate Registration Officer. Such a requirement will be administered by the Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics, and can be met by satisfactory course work at M.I.T., at other schools, or by examination.”

Sincerely yours,

E. Cary Brown, Head
Professor of Economics

ECB/mr

Source:  M.I.T. Archives. Department of Economics Records, Box 2, Folder “Grad Curriculum”.

Image Source: Technology Review, February 1914.

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Economists Gender Harvard Radcliffe

Harvard-Radcliffe. Economics Ph.D. alumna, Eleanor Dulles, c.v. early 1960s

 

This morning I stumbled across a c.v. for the Radcliffe M.A. and Ph.D. alumna, Eleanor Lansing Dulles,  that I found earlier in the papers of Herbert Fürth (Gottfried Haberler’s brother-in-law and Federal Reserve Board economist) at the Hoover Institution archives. While there is no date on the c.v., it would appear that it could have been prepared around 1961, though one item (International Board for construction in Berlin) is listed as running through 1964.

Her obituary in the New York Times (November 4, 1996). Best quote:

”[The State Department] is a real man’s world if ever there was one,” she said in 1958. ”It’s riddled with prejudices. If you are a woman in Government service you just have to work 10 times as hard — and even then it takes much skill to paddle around the various taboos. But it is fun to see how far you can get in spite of being a woman.”

Worth viewing are the few minutes taken from the National Portrait Gallery’s video interview of Eleanor Dulles (at age 93) conducted by Marc Pachter on November 28, 1988. She was 101 years old at the time of her death.

The major collection of her papers are at George Washington University. Papers are also to be found at the Eisenhower Presidential Library and at Princeton University.

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DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Radcliffe College

Eleanor Lansing Dulles, A.M.
Subject: Economics.
Special Field: International Finance.
Dissertation: “TheFrench Franc Since the War.”

Source: Radcliffe College, Report of the Dean 1925-26, p. 25.

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ELEANOR LANSING DULLES

Employment Record
(See also studies)
1917-1919 Refugee relief work—France
1920-1921 Employment Management—Steel Mill, etc.
1921-1922 London School of Economics—Investigation of English Industrial methods in 75 firms
1924-1936 Teaching 8 years

Simmons College
Bryn Mawr
University of Pennsylvania
Research 1925-26, 1928-1932
Study of Unemployment Insurance in England (for President Hoover) 1931
Economic advisor to investment counselor
New York City, 1932
Government
1936 Social Security Board

Director of Financial Research
(Tax, income, and investment studies)

Represented U.S. Government at Geneva Conference on Investment of Social Security Funds, 1938
1942-1961 Department of State

Postwar planning Germany, Austria, UNRRA, British balance of payments, etc.

Bretton Woods Banks (attended conference)

Vienna, Austria (1945-49) Financial Attaché

Berlin reconstruction, investment, (1952-1960)

Underdeveloped countries
(Studies of 60 Asian, African and Latin American countries, travelled in 42)
Detailed to National Production Board 1951-52

Representative on Petroleum Committee for Defense
Originator of Benjamin Franklin Foundation

International Board for construction in Berlin 1956-1964
Personal Rank of Minister—1960
Awards and Degrees
1934 Phi Beta Kappa, University of Pennsylvania
1950 LL.D., Wilson College
1955 Distinguished Service Medal, Radcliffe
1957 Dr. h. c. rerum, Political & Econ. Science, Free University of Berlin
1957 LL.D., Western College for Women, Oxford, Ohio
1957 Carl Schurz-Steuben Plaque for Distinguished Service in furthering German-American cultural relations, presented at Berlin
1959 Ernst Reuter Medallion for Service to Berlin
1960 Citation for Distinguished Service, Bryn Mawr College
Studies and Fellowships
1914-17 A.B. Bryn Mawr College
(First New England scholarship, 1914)
1919-20 M.A. Bryn Mawr College
(Fellow labor & industrial economics)
1921-22 London School of Economics
1922-26 M.A., Ph.D. Radcliffe and Harvard College
1925-27 Faculté de Droit, University of Paris
Other courses: Bonn, Germany; Geneva, Switzerland

Languages: French, German, Spanish
Public Relations
For many years I have been on the roster for public speaking for the Department of State.

I have given some 100 or more speeches mainly in this country and have appeared on television and radio.
Publications
The French Franc, 1914-1928.
MacMillan, New York, 1929, pp. 570

A study of inflation, public finance, speculation, and changing international financial relationships with consideration of political and economic factors.
The Bank for International Settlements at Work.
Macmillan, New York, 1932, pp. 631

The origins and early operations of the BIS, the hopes for a world bank, plans for international investment and clearance mechanism, bank policy in relation to the central banks of various nations.
The Dollar, the Franc, and Inflation.
MacMillan, New York, 1933, pp. 100

A short discussion of recurrent characteristics of inflation, the dangers to special groups, and to the economy as a whole.
Depression and Reconstruction—A Study of Causes and Controls.
University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1936, pp. 340

A review of alleged causes of the depression of 1929 and subsequent years, an appraisal of major national and international maladjustments and areas of disturbance and relationships changing in the development of a dynamic policy.
Financing the Social Security Act, 1936

Basic study of the tax and benefit laws and formuli.
Fiscal Capacity of States

Planned (1938) and supervised a five year study in Social Security Board of the income and capacity to pay taxes of the states & localities.

Among the several hundred articles published are for instance:
The Evolution of Reparation Ideas
The French Franc, 1928-1934
The Export-Import Bank—The First Ten Years, 1943
War and Investment Opportunity
Inflation
The Impact of the United States on Europe
The Arithmetic (financial) of Postwar Occupation
Africa—Hopes and Contradictions

Source:  Hoover Institution Archives, Papers of J. Herbert Furth, Box 4.

Image Source:. World Bank webpage: The Bretton Woods Institutions turn 60/Breaking the Mold.

Categories
Columbia

Columbia. Alvin S. Johnson recounts exams with Franklin Giddings, 1951

 

Perhaps I lived a blessed student life. I never felt that I had been particularly ill-treated in an examination, though I should add that I have fortunately been spared the trauma of an oral examination, except for matters involving my dental health. I once spoke with Kenneth Arrow, on the day before his 90th birthday, and was surprised to hear just how salient a memory was of an injustice that had been inflicted upon him by John Maurice Clark in an oral examination some seven decades earlier. Apparently Alvin Johnson nursed an analogous decades-long grudge as a result of his oral exam at the hands of the sociologist Franklin Giddings. In his letter to Joseph Dorfman transcribed in this post, we see that he was later able to leverage a poor exam performance of a Giddings’ student into a sweet payback of sorts. 

____________________

Letter from Alvin Johnson to Joseph Dorfman

THE NEW SCHOOL
66 West 12th St. New York 11
[Tel.] Oregon 5-2700

August 21, 1951

Dear Joe:

You haven’t answered my query as to whether it wouldn’t suit your purpose better to substitute for the piece I sent you on the School of Political Science my experience of the economics department proper.

I think my second minor was in Constitutional History under Burgess. At my doctor’s exam Burgess asked me three questions, but to be fair he elaborated them so much that he answered them himself, and I had only to nod assent.

Not so with Giddings. He was having a feud with Seligman and set about taking it out of my hide. I had attended a course with him on the English Poor Laws, a course that bored Giddings stiff. He came to my exam with a sheet of details he couldn’t have remembered himself.

“What was the Statute of Laborers? What year of what reign?
“What law was enacted in the third year of Edward VI?
“What was the ‘Speenhamland Act?’ What year of what reign?”

            About forty such questions. After I had retired for the Faculty to vote[,] Giddings, who after all was my friend, came out first, slapped me on the back and said:

“Well you passed. But by God, I made you sweat.”
“I’d have made you sweat yourself if I had had the written sheet and you hadn’t loaded up for me.”
“You bet.”

            I had my revenge a few months later, when one of Giddings’ protégés came up with a thesis on Puerto Rico. He was a theologue [sic], savagely Protestant, who ascribed all the woes of Puerto Rico to the Catholic Church. His book was full of fishy figures, the worst on the food situation. The Puerto Ricans were starved; they produced practically no food but lived on imported rice, the figures for which the thesis gave. I used my arithmetic and found that the figures gave fifty pounds of rice daily per capita.

“And you say they are underfed,” I added, not very humanely.

            When the candidate had retired Goodnow moved, first that the candidate be flunked; second that Giddings be censured for bringing such a fool before the Faculty; third that I be censured for making a Faculty member laugh right out in meeting. All three votes carried.

Sincerely,
[signed]
Alvin Johnson

Dr. Joseph Dorfman
Columbia University
Faculty of Political Science
New York 27, N.Y.

aj:ar

 

Source:  Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections. Joseph Dorfman Collection, Box 13, Folder “C.U. Dept.al history”.

Image Source: From the cover of Alvin S. Johnson’s 1952 autobiography.

Categories
Columbia Economists Harvard

Harvard. Career of A.M. in economics alumnus, Arthur Morgan Day (1867-1942)

 

This post began as a simple transcription of two typed pages that Alvin S. Johnson sent to Joseph Dorfman, who at the time was collecting material on the history of economics at Columbia University. The Columbia economics instructor who was the subject of Johnson’s letter, Arthur Morgan Day, was new to me, and I presume something of an unknown even to Joseph Dorfman. My curiosity sparked a chase through a variety of genealogical sources accessible at Ancestry.com, then a search through yearbooks of Barnard College and Columbia University catalogues at archive.org, and eventually a discovery of the reports of the Harvard Class of 1892 (available at hathitrust.org) that taken together provide us a fairly good account of Day’s life and career through age 55.

I have located only a single source that gives the year of his death: “Arthur Morgan Day (1867-1942)” in the National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Vol. 31. New York: James T. White & Co., 1944.

_______________

Alvin Johnson’s recollection of Arthur Morgan Day at Columbia College

THE NEW SCHOOL
66 West 12th St. New York 11
[Tel.] Oregon 5-2700

July 17, 1951

Dear Joe Dorfman:

This is the best I can do on Day. If you don’t like it, throw it into the waste-basket.

Sincerely,
[signed]
Alvin Johnson

encl.

Dr. Joseph Dorfman
Faculty of Political Science
Columbia University
New York 27, N.Y.

[Handwritten addition by Johnson]

I’m trying to write
something on the
Faculty
AJ

* *  *  * *

Alvin Johnson’s attachment to his letter to Joseph Dorfman of July 17, 1951

When I presented myself to Dean Burgess for registration in November 1898 and announced that I wished to study economics, the Dean advised me to register for the Marshall course by Mayo-Smith, the course on History of Economics by E. R. A. Seligman, the course on theory by John Bates Clark. I confessed that my training had been in classics; that I had never attended a course, nor even a single lecture in economics. I asked whether I ought not to take the course in elementary economics, under an instructor, Arthur Morgan Day. No, said Dean Burgess, that course was only for undergraduate cubs, who had no desire to know economics. The Committee on College Requirements had seen fit to make a required course out of it; but a mature man would be wasting his time under Day.

I did not register for Day’s course. I’m sorry I did not. For Day was a true representative of the old, solid economics of Adam Smith and Malthus and Ricardo, of Senior and Cairnes and John Stuart Mill. He made shift to comprehend the marginal utilitarianism of Marshall, but it gave him no inspiration. He saw no advance in Clark’s theory and he regarded Seligman’s Historismus as merely a change of venue in economic reasoning.

Day detested me, for my ardent devotion to J. B. Clark, for my eager acceptance of Seligman’s wide explorations in all literatures. He pitied me for my destiny of going forth into the world equipped only with fluff and froth, with no sense of the grand old economists who looked facts in the face and wrote in language that the most unlicked cub of a business man could understand. When I was awarded a fellowship Day proposed that I should have the privilege of reading and grading all his examination papers, a privilege I was too immature to appreciate. The President of the University vetoed the proposal. I had my year of complete freedom, to follow my teachers, Clark and Seligman, with uncrippled ardor.

Yet I came to realize that Day was a better economist than we then assumed. It was not possible for him to follow the marginal utility calculus into a field of abstractions divorced from the comprehension of the ordinary citizen. Any man, however sodden in business thinking, could follow John Stuart Mill, agreeing, or most likely disagreeing. Only the intellectual elite could follow Menger and Wieser and Böhm[-]Bawerk, Marshall and Clark, Fisher and Fetter.

If Day were living he would find justification for his repugnance to the marginal utility theories. Keynes, an adept in marginal theory, shifted the emphasis from value to price.

Said Chesterfield, “In mixed company I always talk bawdy, for that is something in which all men can join.” Keynes always talked price. Day, prematurely, talked price, believed in talking price. There was no place for him in the marginal utility universe of talk, of those days. But I surmise, Day was a good deal of a man.

[signed]
Alvin Johnson

 

Source:  Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections. Joseph Dorfman Collection, Box 13, Folder “C.U. Dept.al history”.

_______________

From the Columbia College Catalogue, 1898-99

Economics A—Outlines of Economics—Recitations, lectures, and essays. 3 hours, second half-year. Professor Mayo-Smith and Mr. Day. [Economics A was required of juniors in the College, and open to sophomores who have taken economics I.]

Economics 1—Economic history of England America—Selected textbooks, recitations, essays, and lectures. 3 hours, first half-year. Professor Seligman and Mr. Day. [Economics I was open to juniors and qualified sophomores in the College.]

[Note: p. 11 under officers of instruction, Assistants. Address given as 128 West 103d Street.]

Source:  Columbia University in the City of New York. Catalogue 1898-99, p. 74.

_______________

1900 U.S. Census

Name: Arthur M Day
Age:    33
Birth Date:     Apr 1867
Birthplace:      Connecticut
Home in 1900:           Danbury, Fairfield, Connecticut
Ward of City: 2
Street: Westoria Avenue
House Number:          28
Race:   White
Gender:           Male
Relation to Head of House:   Son
Marital Status:           Single
Father’s name:            Josiah L Day
Father’s Birthplace:    New York
Mother’s name:          Ellen L Day
Mother’s Birthplace:  Connecticut
Occupation:    College Instructor
Months not employed:         0
Can Read:       Yes
Can Write:      Yes
Can Speak English:    Yes
Household Members:

Josiah L Day  60
Ellen L Day    58
Arthur M Day           33

_______________

From Mortarboard 1902
[Barnard College Yearbook]

Leisure Hours of Great Men
or
Intimate Glimpses of the World’s Workers at Play

Arthur Morgan Day

It is certainly pathetic
How he smothers the aesthetic
Under money, banking, trusts and corporations,
But he soothes his longing heart,
Studying dramatic art,
And high tragedy completes his aspirations.

Source: 1902 Mortarboard , p. 71.

_______________

From the Columbia Daily Spectator, 1902

Mr. Day Resigns

Mr. A. M. Day, Instructor in Economics, has resigned his position at Columbia to take a position on the new Tenement House Commission of New York City. He is to serve as one of two men to take charge of registration and compilation of statistics of tenement houses in the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Mr. Henry Raymond Mussey, Fellow in the Department, has taken Mr. Day’s position as instructor in Economics for the time being. Mr. Mussey has already acquired much popularity and confidence among the students in his classes.

*  *  *  *  *

Congratulations for Mr. Day.

The members of the Course Economics I have sent the following message of congratulation to their instructor, upon his appointment as chief of the Bureau of Statistics of the New York City Tenement House Commission. “We the undersigned members of the course, Economics I, of the current University year, having heard with pleasure of the great honor which has been conferred upon our former instructor Mr. Arthur Morgan Day, desire to extend to him our sincere congratulations and to assure him of our best wishes for a successful career in his new office.

 

Source:  Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume XLV, Number 42, 21 March 1902, page 1.

_______________

From Harvard College Class of 1892 Reports

Arthur Morgan Day (1892)

[Joined the Harvard Class of 1892 in the junior year, received A.B. together with the degree of A.M.]
Honorable Mention: English Composition; Political Economy; History.

 

Source:  Secretary’s Report Harvard College Class of 1892, Number I, (1893), pp. 6, 27, 29.

 

*  *  *  *  *

Arthur Morgan Day (1896)

“1892-93, graduate student in History and Economics, H.U.; 1893-94, graduate student in History and Economics and assistant in History, H.U.; 1894-95, assistant in Economics, School of Political Science, Columbia College; 1895-96, assistant and lecturer in Economics, School of Political Science, Columbia College, and lecturer in Economics, Barnard College.”

Published “Syllabus of six lectures on ‘Money’ for Extension Department of Rutgers College, 1895.”

Delivered “six lectures on ‘Money,’ Univ. Ex. course, New Brunswick, N.J., December-January, 1894-95; two lectures on ‘Monetary Literature in U.S.’ in course of ‘Free Lectures to the People,’ under direction of Board of Education, N.Y.”

Source:  Secretary’s Report Harvard College Class of 1892, Number II, (1896), pp. 30-31.

*  *  *  *  *

Arthur Morgan Day (1902)

From 1892 to 1894 was graduate student in History and Economics at Harvard; 1893-4, was assistant in History at Harvard; 1894-1902, was successively assistant lecturer, and instructor in Economics at Columbia and Barnard Colleges, and also assistant editor of “Political Science Quarterly” and “Columbia University Quarterly “; in March, 1902, resigned from Columbia to become Registrar of the Tenement House Department of New York City for Brooklyn, Queens, and Richmond.

Has given numerous courses of lectures for the New York Board of Education; has lectured also in extension department of Rutgers College and in the Educational Alliance. Has published syllabi of lectures on “Money” and “Economic History”, signed reviews in the “Political Science Quarterly” and elsewhere, and editorials in a New York daily. Assisted in the preparation of Seligman’s “Essays in Taxation” and “Incidence of Taxation”, Giddings’ “Democracy and Empire “, Clark’s “Distribution of Wealth,” and the second edition (rewritten) of White’s “Money and Banking.”

Source:  Harvard College, Record of the Class of 1892. Secretary’s Report No. III for the Tenth Anniversary (1902),  pp. 46-47.

*  *  *  *  *

Arthur Morgan Day (1907)

Son of Josiah Lyon Day and Ellen Louisa (Baldwin) Day. Born at Danbury, Connecticut, April 12, 1867. Prepared for college at the Danbury High School.

Received A.M. in 1892. From 1892 to 1894 was a graduate student in History and Economics at Harvard; 1893-94, was Assistant in History at Harvard; 1894-1902, was successively Assistant, Lecturer, and Instructor in Economics at Columbia and Barnard Colleges; also Assistant Editor of Political Science Quarterly and Columbia University Quarterly; in March, 1902, resigned from Columbia to become Registrar of the Tenement House Department of New York City for Brooklyn, Queens, and Richmond. In May, 1902, resigned Registrarship to become Assistant to President of Manhattan Trust Co.; in July, 1903, was made Secretary and Treasurer of Casualty Company of America; in January, 1905, entered publicity business. Has published syllabi of lectures on “Money” and “Economic History,” signed reviews in the Political Science Quarterly and elsewhere, and editorials in a New York daily. Assisted in the preparation of Seligman’s “Essays in Taxation” and ” Incidence of Taxation,” Giddings’ “Democracy and Empire,” Clark’s “Distribution of Wealth,” and the second edition (rewritten) of White’s “Money and Banking.” Belongs to Harvard Club of New York.

Source:  Secretary’s Report for the Fifteenth Anniversary. Harvard College Class of 1892, Number IV, (1907), p.48.

*  *  *  *  *

Arthur Morgan Day (1912)

Son of Josiah Lyon Day and Ellen Louisa (Baldwin) Day. Born at Danbury, Connecticut, April 12, 1867. Prepared for college at the Danbury High School.

Attended Harvard 1888-92, A.B. and A.M.; Graduate School 1892-94.

1892 to 1894, graduate student in history and economics at Harvard; 1893-94, assistant in history at Harvard; 1894-1902, successively assistant, lecturer, and instructor in economics at Columbia and Barnard colleges; also assistant editor of Political Science Quarterly and Columbia University Quarterly; in March, 1902, resigned from Columbia to become registrar of the Tenement House Department of New York City for Brooklyn, Queens, and Richmond. In May, 1902, resigned registrarship to become assistant to president of Manhattan Trust Company; in July, 1903, was made secretary and treasurer of Casualty Company of America; in January, 1905, entered publicity business; in June, 1906, employed by United Gas Improvement Company of Philadelphia; in August, 1906, serious attack of typhoid caused long absence from business; in June, 1908, with Blair & Co., bankers, New York; in April, 1910, began independent work as financial agent for various clients; in January, 1912, entered bond department of Prudential Insurance Company at Newark. Has published syllabi of lectures on “Money” and “Economic History,” signed reviews in the Political Science Quarterly and elsewhere, and editorials in a New York daily. Assisted in the preparation of Seligman’s “Essays in Taxation” and “Incidence of Taxation,” Giddings’ “Democracy and Empire,” Clark’s “Distribution of Wealth,” and the second edition (rewritten) of White’s “Money and Banking.” Belongs to Harvard Club of New York.

Source:  Secretary’s Report for the Twentieth Anniversary. Harvard College Class of 1892, [Number V, (1912)], p.54.

*  *  *  *  *

Arthur Morgan Day (1917)

Born at Danbury, Conn., April 12, 1867. Son of Josiah Lyon and Ellen Louisa (Baldwin) Day. Prepared for College at Danbury High School, Danbury, Conn.

Attended Harvard:  1888-92; Graduate School, 1892-94.

Degrees: A.B. and A.M. 1892.

Occupation: Investments.

Address: (home) 28 Westville Ave., Danbury, Conn.; (business) 37 Wall St., New York, N.Y

FROM 1892 to 1894 I was a graduate student in history and economics at Harvard, and during 1893-94 I was assistant in history at Harvard. From 1894 to 1902 I was successively assistant, lecturer, and instructor in economics at Columbia and Barnard colleges; also assistant editor of the Political Science Quarterly and the Columbia University Quarterly. In March, 1902, I resigned from Columbia to become registrar of the Tenement House Department of New York City for Brooklyn, Queens, and Richmond. I held this position until May, 1903, when I resigned to become assistant to the president of the Manhattan Trust Company. In July, 1903, I was made secretary and treasurer of the Casualty Company of America; and in January, 1905, I entered publicity business. I was employed by the United Gas Improvement Company of Philadelphia in June, 1906, but a serious attack of typhoid fever in August of that year caused a long absence from business. In June, 1908, I was with Blair & Co., bankers, in New York, and in April, 1910, I began independent work as financial agent for various clients. In January, 1912, I entered the bond department of the Prudential Insurance Company at Newark, and since December 1, 1915, I have been with Wood, Struthers & Co., bankers, 37 Wall St., N. Y.

Publications: Syllabi of lectures on “Money” and “Economic History,” signed reviews in the Political Science Quarterly and elsewhere, and editorials in a New York daily. Assisted in the preparation of Seligman’s “Essays in Taxation” and “Incidence of Taxation,” Giddings’ “Democracy and Empire,” Clark’s “Distribution of Wealth,” and the second edition (rewritten) of White’s “Money and Banking.”

Clubs and Societies: Harvard Club of New York.

Source:  Secretary’s Report for the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary. Harvard College Class of 1892, Number VI, (1917), pp. 68-69. Includes Graduation picture.

*  *  *  *  *

Arthur Morgan Day (1922)

Born at Danbury, Conn., April 12, 1867. Son of Josiah Lyon and Ellen Louisa (Baldwin) Day. Prepared for College at Danbury High School, Danbury, Conn.

Attended Harvard: 1888-92; Graduate School, 1892-94.
Degrees: A.B. and A.M. 1892.

Occupation: Investments.
Address: (home) 152 Deer Hill Ave., Danbury, Conn.; (business) 5 Nassau St., New York, N.Y.

Since December 1, 1915, I have been with Wood, Struthers & Co., bankers, 5 Nassau Street, New York.

Clubs and Societies: Harvard Club of New York.

Source:  Harvard College Class of 1892, Thirtieth Anniversary Report, Number VIII, (1922), p. 70.
[note: Number IX, June 19-22, 1922 is the Supplementary Report of the Thirtieth Anniversary Celebration]

_______________

From the State of Connecticut, Military Census of 1917

State of Connecticut

By direction of an act of the Legislature of Connecticut, approved February 7th, 1917, I am required to procure certain information relative to the resources of the state. I therefore call upon you to answer the following questions.

MARCUS H. HOLCOMB, Governor.

TOWN or CITY: Danbury
DATE: March 4, 1917
POST OFFICE ADDRESS: 28 Westville Ave.

  1. What is your present Trade, Occupation or Profession ? Banking and Brokerage
  2. Have you experience in any other Trade, Occupation or Profession? College Professor
  3. What is your Age? 49
    Height? 5 ft 8 in
    Weight? 165
  4. Are your Married? Single? or Widower? Single
  5. How many persons are dependent on you for support? None wholly
  6. Are you a citizen of the United States? Yes
  7. If not a citizen of the United States have you taken out your first papers? [not applicable]
  8. If not a citizen of the United States, what is your nationality? [not applicable]
  9. Have you ever done any Military or Naval Service in this or any other Country? No
    Where? [not applicable]
    How Long? [not applicable]
    What Branch? [not applicable]
    Rank? [not applicable]
  10. Have you any serious physical disability? Yes
    If so, name it. Near sighted
  11. Can you do any of the following:
    Ride a horse? [No]
    Handle a team? [No]
    Drive an automobile? [No]
    Ride a motorcycle? [No]
    Understand telegraphy? [No]
    Operate a wireless? [No]
    Any experience with a steam engine? [No]
    Any experience with electrical machinery? [No]
    Handle a boat, power or sail? [No]
    Any experience in simple coastwise navigation? [No]
    Any experience with High Speed Marine Gasoline Engines? ? [No]
    Are you a good swimmer? [Yes]

I hereby certify that I have personally interviewed the above mentioned person and that the answers to the questions enumerated are as he gave them to me.

[signed]
Chas A Stallock[?]
Military Census Agent

Source: Connecticut Military Census of 1917. Hartford, Connecticut: Connecticut State Library. [available as database on-line at Ancestry.com]

 

Image Source: Class portrait and current portrait (ca 1917) of Arthur Morgan Day from Secretary’s Report for the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary. Harvard College Class of 1892, Number VI, (1917), pp. 68-69.

 

Categories
Columbia Syllabus

Columbia. Course outline, Railroad Problems. Seligman, 1898-1904

 

The following course outline was found in the papers of the historian of American economic thought, Joseph Dorfman. It has neither date nor instructor listed but from the Columbia University catalogues and the Bulletins of the Faculty of Political Science we can conclusively determine that the second semester course with this name and number was taught by E.R.A. Seligman every other academic year beginning 1897-98 going through 1903-04. He also taught the course in earlier years (course number VIII) and later years (course number 108).

___________________

Course Description

Economics 7 — Railroad Problems; Economic, Social and Legal. — These lectures treat of railroads in the fourfold aspect of their relation to the investors, the employees, the public and the state respectively. A history of railways and railway policy in America and Europe forms the preliminary part of the course. The chief problems of railway management, so far as they are of economic importance, come up for discussion.

Among the subjects treated are: Financial methods, railway construction, speculation, profits, failures, accounts and reports, expenses, tariffs, principles of rates, classification and discrimination, competition and pooling, accidents, and employers’ liability. Especial attention is paid to the methods of regulation and legislation in the United States as compared with European methods, and the course closes with a general discussion of state versus private management. — Two hours a week, second half-year (1899-1900): Prof. [Edwin R. A.] Seligman.

Source: Columbia University, School of Political Science, Announcement, 1898-99, pp. 29-40.

___________________

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 7

OUTLINE OF LECTURES
ON
RAILROAD PROBLEMS:
ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND LEGAL

  1. The problems stated.
  2. Literature of the subject.

BOOK I. HISTORY OF RAILWAYS AND RAILWAY POLICY.

Chapter I. England.

  1. Turnpikes and canals.
  2. Genesis of the railway system and development to the investigation of 1844.
  3. Development to Cardwell’s Act of 1854.
  4. Development to Railway Commission of 1873.
  5. Commission of 1881-1882.
  6. Railway and Canal Traffic Act of 1888.
  7. Present conditions and outlook.

Chapter II. United States.

  1. Highroads and internal improvements.
  2. The Erie Canal and Mississippi River.
  3. Genesis and development of the railway system.
  4. The early charters.
  5. Railway consolidation.
  6. Sleeping car and express companies.
  7. Fast freight lines, co-operative and joint-stock.
  8. Pools and traffic associations to 1877.
    1. Chicago-Omaha Pool.
    2. Southern Railway and Steamship Association.
    3. Southwestern Rate Association.
  9. Trunk Line combinations to 1877.
    1. Saratoga Conference.
    2. Railway wars of 1874-1876.
    3. Live stock pool and evening system.
    4. Standard oil contract and petroleum pool.
    5. Anthracite coal pool.
  10. Trunk line pools 1877-1887.
    1. West bound pool.
    2. East bound pool
    3. Joint Executive Committee of 1879.
    4. Railway wars and Trunk Line organization of 1885.
  11. Railway co-operation 1887-1898.
    1. The Inter-state Commerce Act of 1887.
    2. The Anti-Trust Law of 1890.
  12. Present outlook

Chapter 3. Other Countries.

  1. Belgium. The mixed system.
  2. France. Division of the field.
    1. Development to the law of 1842.
    2. Development to the law of 1859.
    3. Development to the law of 1884.
    4. Present outlook.
  3. Germany. Government ownership.
  4. Italy. System of leases.
    1. The law of 1865.
    2. The agreements of 1885.
  5. Holland, Austria and other European countries.
  6. Australia and the British colonies.
  7. Comparison with the rest of the world.

BOOK II. THE RAILWAYS AND THE INVESTORS.

  1. The railway as a corporation.
  2. Financial methods.
    1. The financing of a railway.
    2. Conflict of interests between directors, stockholder and bondholders.
  3. Railway Construction.
    1. Cost of railways in America and Europe.
    2. Construction companies.
    3. Other subordinate corporations.
    4. Parallel roads.
  4. Railway speculation.
    1. Stock exchange speculation.
    2. Railways and commercial crises.
  5. Railway profits.
    1. Stock watering.
    2. Limitation of dividends.
  6. Railway failures and receiverships.
  7. Railway accounts and reports.

BOOK III. THE RAILWAYS AND THE PUBLIC

  1. Railway competition.
    1. The law of competition.
    2. Competition and combination.
    3. Competition for the field.
    4. Competition with waterways.
    5. Competition of carriers on the line.
    6. Separation between motor and carrier.
    7. Running powers or working arrangements.
  2. Railway expenses.
    —Fixed charges and operating expenses.
  1. Railway tariffs.
    1. Principle of railway rates.
    2. Cost of service principle.
    3. Value of service principle or charging what the traffic will bear.
    4. Relation between the two principles.
  2. Classification of Rates.
    1. Theory of classification.
    2. History and practice of classification in Europe and America.
  3. Personal discriminations.
    1. Allowance for quantity.
    2. Rebates and special rates.
  4. Local discriminations.
    1. History and practice of local discriminations.
    2. Just and unjust discriminations.
    3. Principle of profits vs. principle of tolls.
    4. Sliding scale or zone system.
    5. Pro-rata or equal mileage, and short-haul rates.
      —Other projected reforms.
    6. Differentials between cities and export trade.
  5. Pools.
    —Money pools vs. traffic pools.
  1. Extortion and reduction in rates.
    —Comparison of European and American rates.
  1. Passenger rates.
    —The Zone system in Austria-Hungary.
  1. Accidents.

BOOK IV. THE RAILWAYS AND THE EMPLOYEES

  1. Employers’ liability for accidents.
    —Comparison of European and American legislation.
  2. Railway strikes. Especially strikes of 1877 and 1886.
  3. Profit sharing and other schemes.
  4. Relief associations. Compulsory and private insurance.
    1. Insurance against sickness.
    2. Insurance against accidents.
    3. Insurance against dishonesty. Guarantee funds.

BOOK V. THE RAILWAYS AND THE STATE.

  1. Early State legislation.
  2. The Granger movement and its results.
  3. Maximum and minimum laws.
  4. Pro-rataand short-haul laws.
  5. Laws requiring improved facilities.
  6. General railroad acts.
  7. State and national aid to railroads. Land grants, etc.
  8. Railway taxation.
    1. Basis—Taxation of franchise, property, gross earnings, net income, etc.
    2. Double taxation. Inter-state complications.
  9. State railroad commissions.
    1. Compulsory commissions.
    2. Advisory commissions.
  10. National Legislation.
    1. Early attempts.
    2. The Reagan and Cullom bills.
    3. The Inter-state Commerce Law of 1887.
  11. The Inter-state Commerce Commission.
    1. Character of decisions.
    2. Powers and duties.
    3. Comparison with English commission.
    4. Projected amendments.
  12. Present outlook and prospects.
  13. General conclusion as to State vs. private ownership and management.
    1. Financial arguments.
    2. Political arguments.
    3. Socio-economic arguments.

 

Source:  Columbia University Libraries. Manuscript Collections. Joseph Dorfman Collection.Box 13. Folder “Economics History Project”.

Categories
Economists M.I.T.

Italy. Terror victim, economics professor Ezio Tarantelli (1941-1985)

 

While skimming the oral history interview of Berkeley economist Lloyd Ulman (Harvard PhD, 1950), I learned that he was in Rome the day that his Italian colleague, Professor Ezio Tarantelli, was assassinated by two members of the Red Brigades in a parking lot outside of the building where he had just lectured. 

I met Ezio during my first year of graduate school at M.I.T. in 1974-75 through my classmate Francesco Giavazzi. While I probably had discussed economics and politics with him only a few times and probably less than for a couple of hours, he impressed me with a combination of intelligence, warmth, and humility that I was to discover to be relatively rare, and not just in a university setting. 

When I read the news that this mild-mannered professor of political economy in Rome had been murdered by political terrorists, I was utterly dumbfounded. Clearly having a name and a face for the victim of an act of senseless political violence made all the difference. Today I decided to add this post, a minor tribute to the memory of a most decent man and fellow economist.

___________________

About Ezio Tarantelli

Red Brigades Kill Rome Economics Professor,  by Sari Gilbert. Washington Post, March 28, 1985.

Chapter 2, “Ezio Tarantelli: Sketches of an Intellectual Biography” in Giovanni Michelangoli, Ezio Tarantelli—Economic Theory and Industrial Relations. Springer, 2012.

Italian Documentary by Monica Repetto:  Ezio Tarantelli, La forza delle idee.

___________________

Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Lloyd Ullman

Uhlman: …I became heavily involved with Bob Flanagan and David Soskice, whom I had met in Oxford, on a Brookings project which ultimately materialized in Wage Restraint: A Study of Incomes Policies in Western Europe (1983). While working on this project, David Soskice and I were invited to give back-to-back talks to Ezio Tarantelli’s class in labor economics in Rome. My topic was the role played by collective bargaining as a second-best choice when employers were confronted by an existential threat to the capitalist order. It just so happened that Italy was experiencing considerable unrest and inflation at the time. Furthermore, Tarantelli, our host, was attracting a good deal of attention as an advocate of moderating the Scala Mobile, the national system of wage escalation which was regarded at the time by many as an important generator of inflation. Which made him a prime target of the Red Brigade on the far left.

Koya: Was the Scala Mobile between the laborers or employers or was the state also involved?

Uhlman: Laborers and employers.

Koya: No state intervention here in Italy?

Uhlman: More of a neo-corporatist arrangement.
Ezio Tarantelli was a very accomplished and very intelligent, imaginative fellow. So he invited David and me to give twin seminars in a single meeting of his class one day. I spoke about the threat of radicalism as an employer inducement to bargain collectively. He regarded it as very provocative, as he put it. That evening he took Lassie and me out to dinner. David had something else to do. And so in the usual Italian style, we ate at about ten o’clock. The restaurant was quite empty. There was a couple across the room and Lassie noticed they were looking at us all the time. Later, Tarantelli said, “Look,” he said, “when I was a student, I was a guide, a tour guide, and I’m now going to drive you through Rome in the moonlight.” It was an enchanted, lovely ride. We said goodnight and spoke about getting together soon again.
The next morning I had a meeting with the head of the non-communist labor federation at the time, the CISL [Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori or Italian Confederation of Workers’ Trade Unions]. Someone broke into our discussion and then left. The CISL head said, “Excuse me, but a friend of mine has just died and I have to see some television people.” Then we learned that Tarantelli had been killed by members of the Red Brigade[s]. That morning when he came to class, somebody shouted, “Professor Tarantelli!” He turned around, and they shot him. That was the most horrendous episode in my life, I can say.

Koya: So the provocation?

Uhlman: What? The provocation was that he was on the wrong side. That’s the provocation. That evening a small group of us had a meeting. David’s friends in the academic community met at the home of Ida Regalia, a well-known labor economist. We all brought over some bottles of wine and we sat around talking all evening and that was that.
Everything has a comic side to it, I guess. The next morning I had to get a haircut. My previous barber was an Oxford product, of course. The Italian barber took a look at me, walked all around me, my head, and said, “Atsa a bad haircut.” Later I walked back and Lassie and I met with David. I said, “David, sit down. I must tell you something.” I told him the story. It was just a horrible thing.

 

Source: Lloyd Ulman: An Oral History. Riyad Koya interviewer (Audio File 16, Interview October 20, 2011) pp. 233-234. University of California, Berkeley. Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library.

Image Source: Screen shot from Monica Repetto’s  Ezio Tarantelli, La forza delle idee.

 

Categories
Economic History Exam Questions Harvard Suggested Reading Syllabus

Harvard. Readings and Examination Questions for Economic History Since 1860. Cole, 1936-37

 

The economic historian, Arthur Harrison Cole, is best known as having been the Librarian of the Business School’s Baker Library and also the executive director of the Research Center in Entrepreneurial History at the Business School. This post provides the reading list and examination questions for the undergraduate economic history course he taught at Harvard in the first semester of the 1936-37 academic year. The post begins with the biographical note provided at the Harvard Business School Archives where Arthur H. Cole’s papers are located.

Arthur Harrison Cole’s doctoral examination fields can be found at this post. His dissertation is included in this list of Harvard economics Ph.D.’s through 1926.

His obituary in the Harvard President’s annual report has also been previously posted.

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Arthur Harrison Cole (1889-1974)
Biographical Note

Arthur Harrison Cole was born November 21, 1889 in Haverhill, MA. He attended Governor Dummer Academy (1904-1907) and graduated from Bowdin College with a BA (1911). He received his MA (1913) and PhD (1916) in economics from Harvard University. After completing his dissertation, Cole tutored and taught economics at Harvard. He rose from instructor (1916-1917, 1920-1923) to assistant professor (1923-1928) to associate professor (1928-1933). In addition to his academic work, Professor Cole worked in the War Department and the U. S. Tariff Commission from 1917-1920. In 1933, he became Professor of Business Economics at Harvard Business School.

In 1929, Arthur Cole was appointed financial supervisor of the International Scientific Committee on Price History. Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, which supported the study of social and economic problems, the Committee researched commodity prices of leading European countries and the United States prior to 1861. The Rockefeller Foundation eventually spent $325,000 for this study and allowed Cole the administrative freedom to dispense the funds to Committee members.

Under the presidency of Sir [later Lord] William Beveridge, the Committee reached a consensus on methodology in 1931 after meeting in London (1930), Frankfort (1930), and Amsterdam (1931). Thereafter, economists on the Committee from England, Germany, France, Austria, Poland, Spain, and the United States proceeded to investigate prices in their respective countries. Meetings in Aix-en-Provence (1932), Vienna (1932) and Locarno (1933) allowed the members to gather periodically to discuss various problems of investigation and methods.

In addition to serving in an administrative capacity for the International Scientific Committee on Price History, Arthur Cole wrote one of the volumes of price history for the United States, Wholesale Commodity Prices in the United States, 1700-1860 (1938). The other two volumes of price history for the United States were Prices in Colonial Pennsylvania by Bezanson, Gray and Hussey (1935) and Wholesale Prices for 213 Years, 1720-1932 by Warren, Pearson and Stoker (1932). Publication of the price histories were suspended during World War II, but resumed after the end of hostilities.

Arthur Cole assumed the dual role of economic historian and library administrator throughout his long professional career. As Administrative Curator of Baker Library (1929-1932) and later, Librarian of Baker Library (1932-1956), Cole’s pioneering efforts in collecting and preserving historically significant business records led to the accumulation of one of the finest collections on the subject in the world. In addition, his influence as an economic historian continued long after he left the classroom. Cole remained an integral part of the scholarly community as Managing Editor of the Review of Economic Statistics (1935-1937), Chairman of Inter-University Research Commission on Economic History (1941-1958), Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic History (1943-1946), and Executive Director, Research Center in Entrepreneurial History (1948-1958). He retired to emeritus status from Harvard Business School in 1956.

Arthur Cole married the former Anne Steckel of Pennsylvania on August 5, 1913 and they had two children: Barbara and Jonathan. He died November 10, 1974.

 

Source: Arthur Harrison Cole Papers. Harvard Business School Archives. Baker Library Historical Collections. Harvard Business School. Accessed July 22, 2018.

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Course Enrollment

34 1hf. (formerly 2a). Professor A. H. Cole.—Economic History Since 1860.

Total, 20: 7  Seniors, 5 Juniors, 7 Sophomores, 1 Other.

 

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1936-37, p. 92.

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ECONOMICS 34
Reading Assignments—1936-37

Industrial Development

  1. Usher, A. P., Industrial History of England, pp. 1-23, 247-366.
  2. Clark, V. C., History of Manufactures in the United States, pp. 233-314, 335-63.
  3. Roe, J. W., English and American Tool Builders, pp. 109-72.

Transportation Improvement

  1. Kirkaldy, A. W., British Shipping: its History, Organization, and Importance, pp. 3-92, 151-73, 307-47.
  2. (a)

Usher, A. P., Industrial History of England, pp. 431-67.
Clapham, J. H., Economic History of Modern Britain, I, pp. 75-97, 381-412.
Clapham, J. H., Economic Development of France and Germany, pp. 104-13, 140-55, 339-54.

or

  1. (b)

Kirkland, E. C., History of American Economic Life, pp. 257-301, 370-419.
Schmidt, L. B. and E. D. Ross, Readings in the Economic History of American Agriculture, pp. 127-30, 173-270.

Commercial Policy

  1. (a)

Barnes, D. G., History of the English Corn Laws, pp. 239-84.
Ashley, P., Modern Tariff History, pp. 3-63, 323-87.

or

  1. (b)

Hill, W., First Stages of the Tariff Policy of the United States, pp. 38-93.
Taussig, F. W., Tariff History of the United States, pp. 68-154.

Banking and Credit

  1. (a)

Andreades, A., History of the Bank of England, pp. 248-94.
King, W.T.C., History of the London Discount Market, pp. 1-169.
Bagehot, W., Lombard Street, Chaps. VII and IX. (1910 ed., pp. 162-209, 283-302.)

or

  1. (b)

Conant, C. A., History of Modern Banks of Issue, pp. 334-95.
Myers, M.G., The New York Money Market, pp. 3-9, 43-209.

Source:  Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence & Papers 1902-1950, Box 23, Folder “Course Outlines 1935-37-38-42”.

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Reading Period (January 4-20, 1937) Assignment
Economics 34:

Read 200 pages in one of the following books:

Ernle, Lord, English Farming, Past and Present, Chs. 7-19 (inclusive).

Levy, H., Monopolies, Cartels, and Trusts in British Industry, Chs. 5-8, 9.

Webb, S. and B., History of Trade Unionism.

Phillips, U. B., American Negro Slavery, Chs. 8-19 (inclusive).

Hibbard, B. H., History of the Public Land Policies.

Seager, H. R., and Gulick, C. A., Jr., Trust and Corporation Problems, Chs. 5, 7-16, 24-26.

Sprague, O. M. W., Crises under the National Banking System.

Commons, J. R., and associates, History of Labour in the United States.

 

Source:  Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003(HUC 8522.2.1), Box 2, Folder “Economics, 1936-1937”.

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FINAL EXAMINATION, 1936-37
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 341

I
(About one hour)

  1. Write an essay upon some subject suggested by your reading-period assignment, or upon the changes in ocean shipping, 1760-1870.

 

II.
(About two hours)

Answer four questions

  1. “Those who would set apart certain decades in the economic development of a country as the period of that country’s ‘industrial revolution’ and who conceive the changes therein contained in terms of inventions, commit two grievous errors. The setting-apart of these periods is spurious, while, in so far as there were developments of note, those in industrial technique were not the decisive ones for segregation.” Do you agree? If so, why? If not, why not?
  2. Take one of the following:

(a) Trace the course of tariff change in England in the period 1815-60. What forces were chiefly responsible for the reformation of the tariff accomplished in these decades?

(b) Trace briefly the development of protectionist thought in the United States in the pre-Civil-War period.

  1. What phases of railroad development on the continent of Europe before 1880 contrast most sharply with the roughly contemporaneous experiences of England and the United States in the same field? Illustrate your points.
  2. What were the outstanding characteristics of the London or New York money market at approximately 1860? How do you account for the emergence of this city as the financial center of England or the United States? (Consider one country only.)
  3. Identify and indicate the significance in economic history of five of the following: (a) Eli Whitney; (b) Brunel; (c) Chevalier; (d) Friedrich List; (e) the Scholfields; (f) Sir Henry Bessemer; (g) Nicholas Biddle.
  4. “Economic independence did not accompany political independence for the United States. The one unifying thread in American economic history for the greater part of the nineteenth century—in commerce, finance, opening the continent, etc.—is action relative to Europe, especially England, and dependence upon these foreign areas.” Do you agree? Why or why not? If on the whole you agree, you should support your views by enlargement of the above contentions (though you may also indicate limitations to the validity of these statements, if you care to); while if on the whole you disagree, you may develop another “unifying thread”—although that course is not essential.

Final. 1937.

 

Source:Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Examination Papers, Finals (HUC 700028, vol. 79). Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Papers Printed for Final Examinations. History, History of Religions, …, Economics,…Military Science, Naval Science. January—June, 1937.

Image Source: Harvard Business School Yearbook 1930-1931, p. 39.

 

 

 

Categories
Agricultural Economics Gender Harvard

Harvard-Radcliffe. Economics Ph.D. alumna Barbara Benton Reagan, 1952

 

This post is another in the series “Meet an Economics Ph.D.” It offers several items about the life and career of Harvard economics Ph.D. (1952), Barbara Benton Reagan. A few years before she died, she was interviewed about the history of the economics department at Southern Methodist University. A link to the video is provided as the first item. A note in the University of Texas alumni magazine from 1966 is then followed by her 2002 obituary. Links (to jstor.org) for her work on women in economics are included at the end of the post.

Barbara Reagan was a founding member of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession.

Fun Fact:  Barbara Reagan’s daughter, Patricia, received a Ph.D. in economics from M.I.T. (1980) and went on to join the Department of Economics at Ohio State University. This is only the second mother-daughter  economist pair thus far at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror (the first was Nancy and Patricia Ruggles).

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Oral history of Southern Methodist University’s department of economics

Betty Maynard  interviews Barbara Reagan, Professor Emerita of Economics, on October 27, 2000. (57 minute interview)

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From the University of Texas Alumni Magazine

Lady home-farm economist

            The only woman on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Advisory Committee is Dr. Barbara Benton Reagan, BS in HE ’41 with honors, a professor at Texas Women’s University, Denton.
Dr. Reagan is also the only woman member of the advisory committee to the Agriculture Policy Institute, chairman of the research committee of the Texas Association of College Teachers, a member of the T.W.U. Graduate Council, and the author of many published analyses and studies.
The committee concerned with economic research is composed of 11 men and R. Reagan, and they recently reviewed more than $12,000,000 worth of research. The results of their surveys are used by nutritionists, marketing experts and others.
At T.W.U., she is professor of home management and family economics, as well as director of Ph.D. and M.A. theses programs.
A onetime Ferguson Fellow at Harvard, Dr. Reagan is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and is listed in Who’s Who of American Women, and the forthcoming Who’s Who in American Education.
Her husband, Dr. Sidney Reagan, BBA ’37 with honors, LL.B. ’41, is chairman of S.M.U.’s department of general business and has charge of the university’s real-estate program. They live in Dallas.

Source:  The Alcade (University of Texas Alumni Magazine), April, 1966, p. 37.

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Obituary for Barbara Benton Reagan

[31 May 1920 San Antonio TX—9 Dec 2002 Dallas TX]

REAGAN, BARBARA BENTON, was born May 31, 1920, in San Antonio to Colonel William Benton and Cora Martin Benton. She was reared by her beloved aunt, Phoebe Benton Ulrich, after the death of her mother during the 1928 polio epidemic. She received her early schooling through high school in San Antonio and won a scholarship to Mary Baldwin College 1937. The following year she transferred to the University of Texas in Austin, where she served as President of the campus YWCA and was a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. She met her husband, Sydney Reagan, at a YWCA Retreat in New Braunfels in 1939 when he was President of the Student Body. She received her BS degree with honors in 1941. Barbara and Sydney Reagan were married September 1, 1941, in Indianapolis. They moved to Washington, D.C., where she earned an MA in Statistics from American University in 1947. They both attended Harvard University, where she earned a PhD in Economics in 1952. Her dissertation advisor was the eminent agricultural economist John D. Black. During her years at Harvard, she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She was a noted scholar specializing in employment and labor market discrimination. Barbara and Sydney returned to Washington, where they both served as economists in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Their daughter, Patricia, was born in 1954. Their son, Sydney, was born in 1955. The family moved to Dallas in 1955, when Sydney took as a position as Professor of Economics at Southern Methodist University. Barbara returned to work in 1959 as a Professor of Home Economics at Texas Woman’s University. She was named Professor of Economics at Southern Methodist University in 1967, where she remained until her retirement in 1990. She served as Department Chair 1984-1990. During her tenure at SMU, she served as Assistant to the President for Student Academic Services with line responsibility for the Office of Admissions, Registrar, and Financial Aid (1975-76). She was President of the Faculty Senate 1981-1982. Barbara published numerous articles in academic journals, including the American Economic Review and Journal of Economic Literature. She published several books, including one prepared for The National Academy Press. She was a founding member of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession, an influential organization within the American Economics Association. She served as President of the Southwestern Social Sciences Association, 1978-79. An active and respected member of the Dallas community, Barbara was a member of the Dallas Economists Club and Town and Gown since 1975. She was a Director of the Federal Home Loan Bank, Region IX, 1981-85. She served on the Board of Directors of American Savings Bank 1990-97. She was also on the Board of Directors of The Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corporation from 1991-97, serving as Chair 1994-95. Barbara was very active in the women’s rights movement, serving as Founder and Board Member of Women for Change, Dallas, and the Women’s Center of Dallas Advisory Board, where she was President in both 1981 and 1994. Barbara received numerous awards, including the M Award for Service to SMU in 1972, Outstanding Teacher SMU 1972, and the Willis M. Tate for Outstanding Faculty Member 1982. She received the Dallas Outstanding Women-Helping-Women Award in 1980, and the American Association of University Women Laurel Award 1983. She is listed in Who’s Who in Economics, American Men and Women of Science, Who’s Who of American Women, Who’s Who in American Education, Outstanding Educators in America, and Who’s Who in America. Barbara is a third-generation member of PEO active since 1941. She is a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution as a descendant of Isaac Parker. Barbara is survived by her husband Sydney C. Reagan of Dallas, her son Sydney, daughter Patricia, and four grandchildren. Services with no viewing will be held at 11:00 A.M. Tuesday, December17, 2002 at Northhaven Methodist Church in Dallas. In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made to Northhaven United Methodist Church, 11211 Preston Road, Dallas, Texas 75230. These funds will be used in Barbara’s name to promote education among women….

Source: Dallas Morning News, December 14, 2002.

 

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Selected papers

Reagan, Barbara B., and Betty J. Maynard. “Sex Discrimination in Universities: An Approach through Internal Labor Market Analysis.” AAUP Bulletin 60, no. 1 (1974): 13-21.

Reagan, Barbara B. “Two Supply Curves for Economists? Implications of Mobility and Career Attachment of Women.” The American Economic Review 65, no. 2 (1975): 100-07.

Martha Blaxall; Barbara Benton Reagan (1976). Women and the Workplace: The Implications of Occupational Segregation. University of Chicago Press.

Blaxall, Martha, and Barbara B. Reagan. “Preface.” Signs 1, no. 3 (1976): Viii-Ix.

Reagan, Barbara B., and Martha Blaxall. “Introduction: Occupational Segregation in International Women’s Year.” Signs 1, no. 3 (1976): 1-5.

Strober, Myra H., and Barbara B. Reagan. “Sex Differences in Economists’ Fields of Specialization.” Signs 1, no. 3 (1976): 303-17.

Reagan, Barbara B. “Stocks and Flows of Academic Economists.” The American Economic Review 69, no. 2 (1979): 143-47.

 

Image Source:  Southern Methodist University yearbook, The Rotunda 1976, p. 80.