Today we rejoin our series, “Get to Know an Economics PhD Alumna.”
Helen Meiklejohn née Everett (1891-1982) was the daughter of a Brown University philosophy professor, Walter Goodnow Everett. Helen received her A.B. from Bryn Mawr (1915), A.M. from Radcliffe (1918), and was among the first (!) PhDs awarded at Brookings (1924).
Helen Everett’s personal academic ambitions appear to have immediately taken a back seat to those of her husband, Alexander Meikeljohn, who had been a professor of philosophy and former colleague of Helen’s father at Brown. He actually knew her as a child. Before Helen and Alexander married in 1926, he had already served as Dean of Brown University (1901-1912) and as President of Amherst College (1912-1924). He was professor of philosophy at Wisconsin (1926-1938). He established the Experimental College of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1927-32). The Experimental College is considered “the forebearer of the Integrated Liberal Studies program at Wisconsin“. Alexander Meikeljohn had made a name for himself as a dynamic and passionate educational reformer and his picture was even on the cover of Time magazine (October 1, 1928). After Wisconsin’s Experimental College was closed in 1932 in no small part because of the fiscal austerity induced by the great depression, in 1938 Helen and Alexander switched full-time to his next big project for adult education, the San Francisco School of Social Studies that ended with WWII. Besides his legacy as an educational reformer, an even greater fame was achieved through his unconditional advocacy of free speech during the McCarthy era. He was selected for the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy–the award was presented by President Lyndon B. Johnson after Kennedy’s assassination.
Joseph Tussman (center) with Alec and Helen Meiklejohn, Berkeley 1961. Photo by David Tussman.
Since this is a post about Helen Everett, we move on to some details of her life and career. A casual newspaper search turned up numerous instances of Helen Meiklejohn speaking at a wide variety of progressive social and economic policy events after her marriage but the only post-marriage publication to have received any note was her chapter on pricing policy in the dress industry (see below).
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Born in Providence, R.I. on December 8, 1891 to Walter G. Everett and Harriet Mansfield Cleveland.
Died in Berkeley, CA on August 3, 1982.
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Education
1915. A.B., Bryn Mawr
1918. A. M. Radcliffe
1924. Ph.D. Robert Brookings Graduate School of Poitics and Economics
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Employment
- Vassar College. [1918/19(?)-1920] Instructor of Economics.
- American Association for Labor Legislation in New York.
- “Helen Everett left Vassar last June, worked a month as a factory worker in Cleveland in order to make reports to the Consumers’ League, and sailed in September for England, where she is studying at the London School of Economics.”
Source: Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin, 1921, p. 27. - Institute of Economics (Washington, D.C.) [ca. 1924-26]
- “Helen Everett Meiklejohn, wife of Alexander Meiklejohn of the University of Wisconsin, has been added to the staff of associate editors responsible for books on economics and political science, published by W. W. Norton & Co. “
Source: July 1, 1928. Wisconsin State Journal p. 1. - San Francisco School of Social Studies
“Tussman: … Now, Meiklejohn had started before the war, he had started the San Francisco school of social studies. He was a great believer in adult education. It was a free-wheeling enterprise which had classes for working people, mostly, not devoted to career stuff, just general social theory and philosophy. We read things like Veblen, a good deal. And at one point, although I was still a graduate student, he asked me to teach a couple of classes. So I would drive out with Helen, his wife, who was a PhD in economics, and very bright, and another two guys, to Santa Rosa, where once a week we taught a class in Santa Rosa, and then drove back here to Berkeley, and once a week I met a class in San Francisco. I was doing that until the war. During the war the enterprise came to an end, but it was a rather interesting quixotic venture.”
Source: Lisa Rubens, Interviews from 2004 conducted with Joseph Tussman: Philosopher, Professor, Educator. University of California. The Bancroft Library, Regional Oral History Office. Berkeley, 2012.
- Research Economist, Consumer Needs Unit, Office of Price Administration.
Source: The Boston Globe, 26 February 1945, p. 11.
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Foreign Travel
I.
Arrived from Plymouth on S.S. Nieuw Amsterdam in Port of New York City on November 17, 1920.
[Her passport application was dated August 24, 1920 to leave New York on the S.S. Olympic on September 18, 1920 for the purpose of study in Great Britain, France, and Italy.]
II.
[From passport application filed June 1, 1922 in Berlin, Germany]
England. July 1921 to December 1921.
France. December 1921 to May 1922.
Germany (Berlin). May 1922 to September 1922.
Return September 23, 1922 Port of N.Y.C. [travelling with her parents]
“The Class Editor [1913] had news of Helen Everett indirectly the other day. She (the c.e.) sat next to two Vassar Seniors at luncheon, who, on finding that their neighbor was a Bryn Mawr alumna, immediately asked if she knew “Miss Everett.” On replying in the affirmative a most enthusiastic account of Helen’s career as an instructor at Vassar followed, ending with an expression of deep regret that she was no longer there. Helen is studying economics in London this winter, according to these same Vassar Seniors.”
Source: Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin, 1922, p. 27.
III.
Return from England (via Southampton to port of N.Y.C.) on October 23, 1925 S.S. Berengaria. [Alexander Meiklejohn travelled with her according to the ship manifest. They were married Wednesday, June 9, 1926 in Boston. (pre-honeymoon?)]
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Publications identified (to date)
Everett, Helen. 1924. The Reorganization of the British Coal Industry. Ph.D. thesis, Robert Brookings.
——. 1925. Book Review of “The Women’s Garment Workers: A History of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union.” American Economic Review 15(3) (September): 524–5.
——, with Isador Lubin [Lubin had been a student of Veblen’s at Missouri, had worked with Veblen at the wartime Food Administration, and with Mitchell in the Prices Section of the WIB.”]. The British Coal Dilemma. (New York, Macmillan, 1927).
——. Book Review of “A Theory of the Labor Movement” by Selig Perlman. New York: Macmillan, 1928. Social Service Review Vol. 3, No. 3 (Sept. 1929), pp. 523-525.
——. Book Review of “British Industry Today” by Ben M. Selekman and Sylvia Kopald Selekman. New York: Harper & Bros., 1929.
—— (Chapter on the dress industry), in Walton Hamilton (principal author, Gasoline industry.), Mark Adams (automobile industry), Albert Abrahamson (automobile tires), Irene Till, George Marshall (cottonseed industry) and Helen Meiklejohn. Price and Price Policies. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1938. Vol. 7 of Reports prepared for the President’s Cabinet Committee on Price Policy. [industries covered by other authors: whiskey and milk].
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Survived the Derailment of the Streamliner “City of San Francisco”
August 12, 1939 in Carlin, Nevada
…Mrs. Helen C. Meiklejohn, of 1525 LaLoma Avenue, Berkeley, told the same story as she smiled through bandages on her nose. Mrs. Meiklejohn, whose husband, Alexander, is connected with the University of Wisconsin, was in her berth but not asleep when the crash came.
She was thrown into the aisles, banging her nose and eyes, and then remained pinned for hours while volunteer workers tried to release her.
“I never was so glad to see anyone as I was the cowboy who finally climbed in and freed me. I had been bleeding all the while, though it wasn’t serious and I never was unconscious. The cowboys helped me climb out of the train and up to a girder to land.”
Source: Oakland Tribune, August 14, 1939, p. 3
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Helen Meiklejohn, Obituary
BERKELEY — A private family memorial service is pending for Helen Everett Meiklejohn, prominent professional economist and educator who had been a Berkeley resident since 1934.
A native of Providence R.I., Mrs. Meiklejohn died Aug. 3 [1982] in a Berkeley hospital. She was 89.
Mrs. Meiklejohn was the widow of Alexander Meiklejohn, noted educator and civil libertarian, and the youngest daughter of Walter Goodrow Everett, professor of philosophy at Brown University.
She graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1915 and held advanced degrees in Economics from Radcliffe and Washington University of St Louis [Note: the Brookings PhD program was originally part of the Washington University Program]. She taught at Vassar College and worked on the staff of the Brooking Institution in Washington D.C.
She was co-author, with Isador Lubin, of “The British Coal Dilemma” and published articles in a number of professional journals.
She married Mr. Meiklejohn in 1926 and lived in Madison, Wis., for a number of years before moving to Berkeley, where she and her husband founded and taught in the San Francisco School of Social Studies. She was a member of the Council on the National Institution of Mental Health and was for many years an active participant in Planned Parenthood.
She is survived by four stepchildren, Ann Stout, of Richmond, Kenneth Meiklejohn, of Alexandria, Va., Donald Meiklejohn, of Syracuse, N.Y., and Gordon Meiklejohn, of Denver Colo., a niece, Mrs. John Nason, of Keene, N.Y., and two nephews, George and Douglas Mercer.
Source: Obituary. Helen Meiklejohn. The Berkeley Gazette (August 11, 1982), p. 2.
