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Harvard. Application for Admission to Economics Ph.D. Program. Edward H. Chamberlin, 1922

 

The archived student records of the Graduate School of Arts and Science at Harvard University provide us material needed to write a prequel to a Ph.D. economist’s professional biography. To illustrate the the richness of such material, I have transcribed Professor Edward Hasting Chamberlin’s application materials that he submitted to Harvard. Judging from a couple of issues of Iowa’s “The Hawkeye Yearbook”, it does appear that Edward Chamberlin was quite a Busy Man on Campus during his undergraduate years.

Pro-tip. More information about the faculties and courses of instruction during Chamberlin’s pre-Harvard  university days can be culled from the respective university catalogues archived at  hathitrust.org:

Catalogues of the State University of Iowa.
Catalogues of the University of Michigan.

Fun-fact: Edward H. Chamberlin played the role of Geoffrey Rawson in the production of Mrs. Bumpstead-Leigh performed May 12, 1920 at the Englert Theatre (joint production of the Erodelphian Literary Society and Irving Institute). The Hawkeye Yearbook, 1921.

_____________________________________

POLITICAL ECONOMY, SOCIOLOGY,
BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

532 Thompson St.
Ann Arbor, Mich.
April 11, 1922.

Mr. George W. Robinson, Secretary
The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences,
Harvard University,
Cambridge, Mass.

Dear Sir:

Enclosed with this letter are transcripts of my work at the State University of Iowa and at the University of Michigan and my application for admission to candidacy for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Economics at Harvard University. Under separate cover I am making marked copies of the University of Michigan and the State University of Iowa. In some cases the catalogues do not indicate the work taken on account of changes. In these instances I have tried to duplicate the needed information in the margins.

I am making my application early so that I may know in advance as much as possible about the work I must take for my degree I presume that individual courses are not settled upon until after a conference. I shall be glad if I may know this spring how much credit will be allowed me for previous work, how much additional coursework will be required, and in what general branches.

Very truly yours,
[signed]
Edward H. Chamberlin

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF
ARTS AND SCIENCES

APPLICATION FOR ADMISSION TO CANDIDACY FOR A DEGREE IN ARTS OR PHILOSOPHY

NAME:  E. H. Chamberlin

DATE   April 1922

DEGREE APPLIED FOR Ph.D.

SUBJECT Economics

COLLEGE State U. of Iowa and U. of Mich.

REMARKS

B, except for French

25 Apr. 1923: French O.K.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

Application for Admission to Candidacy for a Degree in Arts or Philosophy

[Note: Chamberlin’s responses in his application have been highlighted using boldface.]

Return this application, with certificates of other evidences of scholarship and character, to the Secretary of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, No. 24 University Hall, Cambridge, Mass.

Applications for the degree of Master of Arts or Doctor of Philosophy will be received as late as the fifteenth day of January of the academic year in which the degree is to be taken; but candidates are urged to file their applications at the beginning of the year or ealirer, so that they may receive timely advice with reference to the work that will be expected of them for the degree.

The application should be accompanied by a Recorder’s or Registrar’s certificate of the applicant’s college or university work, and also, if possible, by a college catalogue or catalogues in which the studies he has taken are clearly marked. Final admission to candidacy for a degree is always conditional upon satisfactory official certification of the facts stated in the application.

Applications for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy should be filed, if possible, at the beginning of a student’s Graduate work for the degree.

An applicant for the degree of Master of Arts, who wishes to take later the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, should state the fact in his application for the Master’s degree, which will then be considered with reference to both degrees.

  1. Full name. Edward Hastings Chamberlin
  2. Post-office address. (Give prompt notice to the Secretary of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of any change.). 532 Thompson St., Ann Arbor, Mich.
  3. Date and place of birth. La Conner, Wash. May 18, 1899.
  4. High schools or other preparatory schools attended, and periods of attendance. Iowa City (Iowa) High School. 4 years
  5. Colleges and universities attended and periods of attendance. What course did you take (classical, literary, scientific, etc.)? Univ. of Iowa. 1916-1920. Commerce; Univ. of Michigan. graduate. 1920-1922.
  6. If you are an undergraduate, state: (a) What degree you expect, and when. [left deliberately blank]. (b) Rank or average standing in class [left deliberately blank]
  7. If you have received a degree, state what degree, from what college, and when. B.S. in Commerce, Univ. of Iowa, June, 1920; M.A. University of Michigan, June, 1922.
  8. If you have been a Graduate student at any college or university, state where, when, and in what subjects. State University of Iowa, summer sessions 1920 and 1921. Income Tax. Pol. Science; Univ. of Michigan 1920-1921, 1921-1922, Economics, Philosophy.  and name your principal teachers in those subjects. Iowa. Prof. R. A. Stevenson [Associate Professor of Accounting, Russell Alger Stevenson, B.A. Michigan, 1913; M.A. Iowa, 1915; Ph.D. Michigan, 1918], Prof. Jacob Van der Zee [Assistant Professor of Political Science Jacob Van der Zee, B.A. Iowa, 1905; B.A. Oxford, 1908; M.A. 1913; LL.B. Iowa, 1913]; Michigan, Prof. F. M. Taylor [Professor of Political Economy and Finance Fred Manville Taylor, Ph.D.], Prof. I. L. Sharfman [Professor of Economics Isaiah Leo Sharfman, A.B., LL.B.], Dean Alfred H. Lloyd [Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the Graduate School Alfred Henry Lloyd, Ph.D.].
  9. Honors or other evidences of high scholarship awarded to you. Phi Beta Kappa. Beta Gamma Sigma.
  10. For what degree (or degrees) do you wish to be a candidate, and when? Doctor of Philosophy in Economics, September 1922.
  11. Of the following branches, underscore once those which you have studied in college, and [mark with an asterisk (*)] those in which you have done advanced work. This information should be supplemented by a carefully marked and annotated catalogue or calendar.
Hebrew Government Physics
Sanskrit *Economics Chemistry
Greek Sociology Botany
Latin *Philosophy Zoölogy
English Composition Education Geology
English Literature Fine Arts Physiography
German Architecture Mineralogy
French Music Mining
Italian Mathematics Anthropology
Spanish Astronomy Subjects not classified above.
History Engineering Psychology
Journalism
  1. (a) State which of the languages named below you have studied, and how long in each case. German 1 1/2 yrs. high school; 2 yrs. Univ.  French [deliberately blank], Greek [deliberately blank], Latin 2 years high school. Any modern foreign language other than German and French. Spanish.  (b) Do you know German and French well enough to be able to consult works on your subject in these languages? German-yes; French-no.
  2. In what subject do you wish to be considered as a candidate for a degree? State in detail your previous work in this subject.

Economics

Industrial History
4 sem. hrs.
Intro. to Econ. Theory
6 sem. hrs.
Research in Accounting
2 sem. hrs.
Commercial Geography
4 sem. hrs.
Cost Accounting
4 sem. hrs.
Railroads
3 sem. hrs.
Prin. of Economics
6 sem. hrs.
Public Utility Accounting
2 sem. hrs.
Essentials of Ec. Theory (continued)
2 sem. hrs.
Prin. of Accounting
6 sem. hrs.
Income Tax
2 sem. hrs.
 

*The course in Ec. statistics had nothing to do with statistics but dealt with the nature of income and sundry other subjects.

 

Business Efficiency
4 sem. hrs.
Essentials of Econ. Theory
2 sem. hrs.
Corporation Finance
4 sem. hrs.
Commercial Law
4 sem. hrs.
Banking
2.6 sem. hrs.
*Economic Statistics
4 sem. hrs.
Problems of Peace and Reconstruction
1.3 sem. hrs.
Studies in Econ. Theory
(History of Econ. Thought)
2 sem. hrs.
Industrial History
4 sem. hrs.
Intro. to Econ. Theory
6 sem. hrs.
  1. Present occupation. (State definitely.) Instructor in Economics, University of Michigan.
  2. If you are, or have been a teacher, what positions have you held? at what institutions? in what subjects? and during what periods of time? Instructor, University of Michigan (1920.-1921; 1921-1922) and University of Iowa (Summer Session 1921); Economics and Accounting—Sept. 1920 to June 1922.
  3. From whom can information as to your previous work be obtained? Prof. F. M. Taylor [Professor of Political Economy and Finance Fred Manville Taylor, Ph.D.], and Prof. I. L. Sharfman [Professor of Economics Isaiah Leo Sharfman, A.B., LL.B.], Ann Arbor, Mich.; Prof. F. H. Knight [Associate Professor of Economics Frank Hyneman Knight, B.S. Tennessee, 1913; A.M. 1913; Ph.D. Cornell, 1916], University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa.
  4. List of printed and written documents submitted with this application. Catalogue, University of Michigan—separate cover; Catalogue, University of Iowa—separate cover; Certified record of courses pursued from Iowa and Michigan

Signature. [signed] Edward H. Chamberlin
Place of writing this application. Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Date. April 11, 1922

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
IOWA CITY

TRANSCRIPT OF RECORD

of Edw. Hastings Chamberlin
College Liberal Arts

Secondary Credits Accepted from Iowa City, Iowa

Units

Latin

2

French
German

English

4

History—Gv.—Econ.

2

Algebra

P. & S. [Plane & Solid] Geometry

Science

2

Draw.

2

16

Entrance conditions: none

Degree B.S.C. Conferred [date] 6-15-20

This is a true statement of the credit earned by Edw. Hastings Chamberlin in the college of Liberal Arts of the State University of Iowa.

[signed] [?Signature illegible], Asst Registrar
Date 7/31/20

1916-17

Cat No

Subjects 1st Sem 2nd Sem
Hrs Gr Hrs

Gr

Drill

excused

½

B

Phy Training

excused

½

Cr

Fresh. Sect.

1

C

1, 2 Eng. (Rhet.)

2

A 2

B

13, 14 German (Interm.)

5

C 5

C

5 Math. (Trig. Alg.)

5

A

3 Econ (Ind.Hist.)

4

B

4 Econ. (Com. Geog.)

4

B

6 Math. (An. Geom.)

5

A

1917-18

Cat No

Subjects 1st Sem 2nd Sem
Hrs Gr Hrs

Gr

Drill

.5

Cr .5

Cr

1 Econ (Prin.)

1(2)

3

B 3

C

7 Econ. (Elem.Acc.) 7(8)

3

A 3

A

21 Eng. (Lit.) 21(22)

3

B 3

B

51 Spanish (Elem.)

51(52)

5

A 5

A

179 Eng. (Editing) 179

2

C

Phy. Tr.

.5

C

1918-19

Cat No

Subjects 1st Sem 2nd Sem
Hrs Gr Hrs

Gr

Psych. (Elem.)

1,2

2

B 2

B

Span. (2d yr.) 54,55

2

A 2

A

Econ. (Efficiency) 167,168

2

B 2

A

Econ. (Corp. Finance) 143,144

2

B 2

B

Econ. (Banking) 165,166

1.3

B 1.3

A

Econ. (Prob. Peace & Recon.)

50

1.3

C

Officers’ Training Course, Fort Sheridan, Ill. 6 s.h.
Service in the U.S. Army 7-18-18 to 1-15-19 10 s.h.
1238

1254

10-11-19

1919-20

Cat No Subjects Fall Winter Spring
Hrs Gr Gr Gr Hrs Gr
Com. (Intro. Econ. Theory) 135

2

A 2 A 2

A

Com. (Cost Account) 131

2

B 2 A

Com. (Com. Law) 189

1.3

B 1.3 B 1.3

A

Math. (2d yr. L.A. Math) 3

2.7

A 2.7 A 2.7

A

Com. (Pub. Ut. Acc’t) 132

2

A

 

Summer Session 1920

Cat No

Subjects July
Hrs

Gr

Econ VI

2

A

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Summer Session 1921

Cat No

Subjects August
Hrs

Gr

Pol Sci 11S

1.6

P

Pol Sci 117S

.4

P

[Summer Session 1921 from a card from the State University of Iowa, Iowa City. Registrar: H. C. Dorcass [University Examiner and Registrar Herbert Clifford Dorcas, B. Ph. Iowa, 1895; M.A. Columbia, 1903] 9/19/21]

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
ANN ARBOR

GRADUATE SCHOOL
OFFICE OF THE DEAN
[Transcript of courses taken
by Edward H. Chamberlin]

April 7, 1922.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

This is to certify that Mr. Edward H. Chamberlin, B.S. in Commerce, University of Iowa, was admitted to this Graduate School in the fall of 1920 as a candidate for the Master’s degree. During his residence in the School, Mr. Chamberlin has pursued the following courses:

First Semester, 1920-21

Course

No. Credit

Grade

Economics

8 2 hrs. B
Economics 13d 2 hrs.

A

Economics

17 1 hr. A

Second Semester, 1920-21

Economics

7 2 hrs. A
Economics 8a 2 hrs.

B

Economics

18 1 hr. A

First Semester, 1921-21

Philosophy

9a 3 hrs. A
Economics 6 3 hrs.

A

German

*9c —— B

Second Semester, 1921-22

Economics

8 2 hrs. Now taking.
Philosophy 9b 3 hrs.

Now taking.

German

*10c —— Now taking.

A=Excellent, B=Good, C=No graduate credit,  *Undergraduate course

Mr. Chamberlin was granted credit towards the Master’s degree at this University for graduate work done at the State University of Iowa. Upon the satisfactory completion of the work now being pursued, the degree of Master of Arts will be conferred upon Mr. Chamberlin in June, 1922.

[signed] Alfred H. Lloyd
Dean, Graduate School.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Carbon Copy of Reply to Chamberlin’s Application of 11 April 1922

13 April 1922

My dear Sir:

Your application for admission to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences as a candidate for a higher degree has been received and examined. The obvious difficulty in your case is your deficiency in French. I accordingly advise you to devote as much time as possible to work in this language between now and next fall. In the meantime you will do well to look over the scheme of subjects from which selections are made, in preparation for the general or preliminary examination for the doctorate, and at the beginning of the year you should consult Professor Charles H. Haskins, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, as to the arrangement of your work. i see no specific deficiency in your preparation other than the French, and I see no reason to doubt that you can arrange a satisfactory plan of work for the doctorate in consultation with Dean Haskins and with the Department of Economics. It is impossible at present to make any very definite estimate of the length of time that your work would require. I should suppose that you ought to plan for two solid years at least, with the idea that if your work is not completed by the end of that time you may perhaps be able to finish up your thesis in absentia, and then to come back for your final examination. If a part of your time during either of the two years is devoted to work as assistant or instructor, at least a  third year in residence would presumably be necessary.

Very truly yours,
[Carbon copy unsigned]

Edward H. Chamberlin

Source: Harvard University Archives. GSAS student folders (UAV161.201.10), Box 117, Folder: E. H. Chamberlin.

Image: Edward Chamberlin. University of Iowa. The Hawkeye 1920, p. 37.

 

Categories
Agricultural Economics Chicago Iowa Minnesota Suggested Reading Syllabus

Minnesota. Course outline and reading for graduate macroeconomics. Brownlee, probably 1959

 

Based on a pamphlet in which he argued that “properly fortified margarine ‘compared favorably’ with butter in nutrition and palatability”, the economics Ph.D. student, Oswald Harvey Brownlee (1917-1985), brought the wrath of the Iowa Farm Bureau among others down upon himself and his economist seniors. After the President of Iowa State caved to the state’s dairy interests in the matter, Theodore  W. Schultz, D. Gale Johnson, and O. H. Brownlee were all to ultimately head off to the University of Chicago.

Oswald Harvey Brownlee. Putting dairying on a war footing, 64 page pamphlet published by Iowa State College Press, 1944.

See: Seim, David L. “The Butter-Margarine Controversy and “Two Cultures” at Iowa State
College.” The Annals of Iowa 67 (2008), 1-50.

Also mentioned in: Milton and Rose Friedman, Two Lucky People: Memoirs, p. 193.

Brownlee went on to teach at the University of Minnesota, where we found him teaching a graduate macroeconomics course. Clearly that was still time that the hatches separating microeconomics and macroeconomics were not so securely battened as today. “Public finance” was Brownlee’s major field so his broad fiscal policy interests make sense.

The course outline transcribed in this post comes from Martin Bronfenbrenner’s papers at the Economists’ Papers Archive at Duke University. Bronfenbrenner taught at the University of Minnesota from 1959-1962 and we can presume that the copy of Brownlee’s macroeconomics course outline with readings was for either 1958-59 or 1959-60.  A second, apparently later, version of the course outline for “Economics 176A” with “Brownlee” handwritten in the upper right corner is also found in the same folder. Three new readings from the second copy have been added and placed within square brackets below. The readings in Parts I and II, IX and X were not included in the second outline for “Economics 176A”.

_______________________

Handwritten note at top:
“Martin, Here is the outline for the Macro theory. Which part do you want to teach? [signed] Oz”

 

Economics 176A-B
Course Outline and Suggested Readings

This brief outline and reading list is intended to serve as a general summary of the materials to be considered during the course and as a guide to class discussion and to outside reading. The detail in the outline does not necessarily correspond to the detail in class discussion. The most significant readings are starred (*). The literature in this field has grown so rapidly during the past decade that this reading list cannot be considered as a complete bibliography of relevant writings.

It is hoped that during the quarter the student will gain an adequate understanding of how the equilibrium values of the relevant variables (gross national product, employment, the general level of prices and the rate of interest, for example) might be determined, and how changes in certain exogeneous variables (including various economic policy variables) might affect these equilibrium values. Although the primary emphasis of the course is on equilibrium levels of certain variables, an introduction to dynamic analysis (a description of the path of a variable over time) will be offered. This will provide the basis for subsequent discussion of business cycle theory and growth models.

  1. General Orientation of the Course
    1. Relationship of macro-static theories to other classes of economic theories
    2. Limitations of macro-static analysis as a basis for policy statements
  2. The firm’s Demand for Labor
    1. Importance for labor hired by business firms in the labor market as a whole
    2. Static theory of production with emphasis on the demand for labor.
      1. Nature of the firm’s production function
      2. Determinants of equilibrium level of employment within the firm
      3. Comparisons of equilibrium levels of employment under various resource market, product market and technological conditions
    3. Effects of Changes in Quantities of Other Resources Upon Demand for Labor

Readings:

1—K. E. Boulding, Economic Analysis, Chapter 31 (revised edition)

2—George Stigler, The Theory of Price, Chapters 6-11.

3—Paul A. Samuelson, Foundations of Economic Analysis, Chapter 3, pp. 21-33.

4—Joan Robinson, Economics of Imperfect Competition, Books VII and VIII.

  1. Equilibrium in the Labor Market for the Economy as a whole
    1. Aggregation of outputs, labor inputs, wage rates and prices
    2. Determination of various combinations of general level of prices and “real” output which will maintain equilibrium in the labor market—an “aggregate supply” function.
      1. With money wage rate autonomously determined: a wage “floor”, a wage “ceiling”, both a “floor” and a “ceiling”.
      2. With supply of labor dependent upon “real” wages.
      3. With supply of labor dependent upon “real” and money wages: the effects of asset holdings.
    3. Degree of Determinateness of relevant variables given only equilibrium in the labor market.
      1. Price level, real output and employment not uniquely determined
        1. Various combinations of price level and real output will maintain equilibrium in labor market, given the autonomously specified money wage or given fixed monetary debts and credits and flexible money wages.
        2. Employment is determined only upon the real wage, real output and employment are uniquely determined, but price level is not.

Readings:

1.*—Jacob Marschak, Income, Employment and the Price Level, Lectures 19 and 20.

2.—Sidney Weintraub, Income and Employment Analysis, Chapters 11 and 13.

3.—Francis M. Boddy, et al., Applied Economic Analysis, pp. 229-248.

4.—O. H. Brownlee, Economics of Public Finance, pp. 47-51.

5.—Don Patinkin, Money, Interest and Prices, IX-XII.

6.—Louis Hough, “An Asset Influence in the Labor Market”, Journal of Political Economy, June 1955.

7.—Robert Solow, “Technical Change and the Aggregate Production Function”, Review of Economics and Statistics, August 1957.

[8.*—Gershon Cooper, “Taxation and Incentive in Mobilization” in Readings in Taxation edited by Musgrave and Shoup.]

  1. Aggregate Demand for Goods and Services: The “Crude Classical Theory”
    1. The Quantity Identity
      1. The Demand for Money—a linear function of money income (expenditure)
      2. Assuming the supply of money (M) and the fraction of income which people with to hold as cash balances are independently determined, the equilibrium level of total money expenditure is determined.
      3. Effects of changes in money demand and money supply upon equilibrium level of money income or expenditure.
      4. Incorporation of assets as a variable influencing the demand for money
      5. Information obscured by the simple quantity identity (that omitting assets as a variable)
        (Note: further analysis of the quantity identity in terms of the kind of aggregate demand function for goods and services which it might imply will be made in subsequent sections).
    2. Equilibrium in the Labor, Money, and Commodity Markets under the assumption of the quantity identity.
      1. Quantity of labor supplied a function only of money wages
      2. Quantity of labor supplied a function only of “real” wages
      3. Division of “real” output between consumption and investment.

Readings:

1.*—J. M. Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, Chapters 2 and 19

2.—L. Klein, The Keynesian Revolution, Chapter 1 and the technical appendix, pp. 199-205

3.—Albert G. Hart, Money, Debt and Economic Activity, Chapters IV-VI and VIII

4.—Alvin Hansen, Monetary Theory and Fiscal Policy, Chapters 1-3

5.—Franco Modigliani, “Liquidity Preference and the Theory of Interest and Money”, Econometrica, 12: 45-88 (January, 1944)

6.—Seymour Harris, (editor) The New Economics, Part IX, Chapter XLI

7.—Francis M. Boddy, et al., Applied Economic Analysis, Chapter 12, 13 (pp. 222-229)

8.*—Jacob Marschak, Income, Employment and the Price Level, Lecture 2.

9.—Don Patinkin, Money, Interest and Prices, I-VIII

10.—Archibald and Lipsey, “Monetary and Value Theory,” Review of Economic Studies, October, 1958

11.*—Milton Friedman, Studies in the Quantity Theory of Money, Chapter I

12.—James Tobin, “The Interest-Elasticity of Transactions Demand for Cash”, Review of Economics and Statistics, August, 1956

13.—H. Rose, “Liquidity Preference and Loanable Funds,” Review of Economic Studies, XXIV (1956-57)

14.—Don Patinkin, Liquidity Preference and Loanable Funds, Economica, November, 1958

15.—Vera Lutz, “Multiplier and Velocity Analysis: A Marriage”, Economica, February, 1955

16.—G. C. Archibald, “Multiplier and Velocity Analysis: An Amendment”, Economica, August 1956

[17.—Ira O. Scott, “The Availability Doctrine: Theoretical Underpinnings”, Review of Economic Studies, XXV No. 1, 41-48]

  1. Aggregate Demand for Goods and Services: The “Keynesian Theory”
    1. Equilibrium in the “Commodity Market”
      1. Consumption (and Saving)
        1. Relationship to income
        2. Relationship to rate of interest
      2. Investment
        1. Relationship to the rate of interest
          1. The marginal efficiency of capital
          2. Uncertainty and the level of investment
        2. Relationship to current income
      3. The Equating of Savings and Investment (Aggregate Demand for Commodities = Aggregate Supply of Commodities)
      4. Determination of various combinations of the rate of interest and real income which will fulfill the condition for equilibrium in the commodity market (will make savings = investment)
    2. Equilibrium in the Money Market
      1. The Liquidity Preference Schedule (The Demand for Money)
      2. With money supply (M) autonomously determined, there will be various combinations of the rate of interest, real output and the price level which will provide for equilibrium in the money market.
        1. The general case
        2. The special “Keynesian” case
    3. Simultaneous Equilibrium in the Money and Commodity Markets: An Aggregate Demand Function
      1. Equilibrium rates of real output and price level which fulfill the conditions for equilibrium in both the money and commodity markets.

Readings:

1.*—Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

2.—The Keynesian Revolution (*particularly Chapter 3)

3.*—J.R. Hicks, “Mr. Keynes and the Classics”, Econometrica, 4: 147-159 (April, 1937); also included in Readings in Income Distribution, The Blakiston Co.

4.*—Franco Modigliani, “Liquidity Preference and the Theory of Interest and Money”, Econometrica, 12; 45-88 (January, 1944)

5.—Alvin Hansen, Monetary Theory and Fiscal Policy, Chapters 4-6

6.—Sidney Weintraub, Income and Employment Analysis, Part II

7.—K.E. Boulding, The Economics of Peace, Chapters 7-9

8.—Wassily Leontief, “Postulates; Keynes” General Theory and the Classicists”, included in The New Economics, Part 4, Chapter XIX

9.—The New Economics, Parts 3 and 9

10.—Abba P. Lerner, The Economics of Employment, Part II

11.*—Jacob Marschak, Income, Employment and the Price Level, Lectures 3-18

12.—O.H. Brownlee, “The Theory of Employment and Stabilization Policy” Journal of Political Economy, Oct. 1950, pp. 412-24.

13.—Ira O. Scott, Jr., “An Exposition of the Keynesian System”, The Review of Economic Studies, XIX, (1), pp. 12-18

14.—Joan Robinson, “The Generalization of the General Theory”, included in The Rate of Interest and Other Essays.

15.—Louis Hough, “The Price Level in Macroeconomic Models”, The American Economic Review, June, 1954, pp. 269-86.

16.—Milton Friedman and Gary S. Becker, “A Statistical illusion in Judging Keynesian Models”, Journal of Political Economy, February, 1957

17.—L. R. Klein, “The Friedman-Becker Illusion,” Journal of Political Economy, December, 1958; and Friedman & Becker, “Reply”, same issue.

18.—Martin J. Bailey, “Saving and the Rate of Interest”, Journal of Political Economy, August, 1957.

[19.—Hans Brems, Output, Employment, Capital and Growth, Part I.]

  1. The Equilibrium Levels of Output, Employment, Prices and the Rate of Interest in the Keynesian System.
    1. Aggregate Supply and Aggregate Demand with Flexible Money Wages
    2. Aggregate Supply and Aggregate Demand with Labor Supply Perfectly Elastic at a Given Money Wage
    3. Effects of Changes in Autonomous Variables and Parameters
      1. The autonomous component of investment
        1. The multiplier
      2. Government expenditure for goods and services
      3. The export surplus
      4. Money wage rates
      5. Technology
      6. The degree of monopoly and employers’ market expectations
      7. Population and the labor supply
      8. The money supply
      9. Marginal propensities to consumer and invest
  2. An alternative Macro-Static System
    1. Some weaknesses in the Keynesian theory
      1. A change in the structure of the system required to explain U.S. postwar experience
      2. Increased savings: income ratio as income increases not empirically verified.
    2. Assets consumption as a variable affecting
      1. Real Assets
      2. Monetary assets (cash and government debt)
      3. Aggregate demand for goods and services when assets are included as a variable in the consumption function
        1. Comparison with quantity theory
        2. Comparison with Keynesian theory
    3. The Duesenberry-Modigliani Hypothesis
    4. Including assets in other Functions: Labor Supply and Demand for Money

Readings:

1.*—Don Patinkin, “Price Flexibility and Full Employment”, American Economic Review, 38: 543-64 (September, 1948).

1a.*—Don Patinkin, Money, Interest and Prices, XIII-XV and appropriate appendices.

2.—__________, “The Indeterminancy of Absolute Prices in Classical Economic Theory”, Econometrica, 17: 1-27

3.—__________, “Involuntary Unemployment and the Keynesian Labor Supply Function”, Economic Journal, LIX: 360-83

4.—Haavelmo, Hickman, Leontief and Phipps on Patinkin, Econometrica 18: 1-26 (January, 1950)

5.—James Tobin, “Money Wage Rates and Employment”, included in The New Economics, Part 8, Chapter XL.

6.—Arthur Smithies, “Effective Demand and Employment”, included in The New Economics, Part I, Chapter XXXIX.

7.—A. P. Lerner, “Mr. Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money”, Reprinted in The New Economics, Part 3, Chapter XI

8.*—Milton Friedman, “A Monetary and Fiscal Framework for Economic Stability”, American Economic Review, 38: 245-64 (June, 1948)

9.—A. C. Pigou, “Economic Progress in a Stable Environment”, Economica, 1947, pp. 180-90

10.—A. C. Pigou, “The Classical Stationary State”, Economic Journal, 53: 343-51 (1943)

11.*—James Duesenberry, “Income-Consumption Relations and Their Implications”, included in Income, Employment and Public Policy, Essay III in Part One, and as Chapter I in Income, Saving, and the Theory of Consumer Behavior.

[11a.—John H. Power, “Price Expectations, Money Illusion, and the Real-Balance Effect”, Journal of Political Economy, April, 1959, 1331-43.]

12.*—Franco Modigliani, “Fluctuations in the Saving-Income Ratio: A Problem in Economic Forecasting”, included in National Bureau of Economic Research, Studies in Wealth, Volume XI, pages 371-443.

13.—Paul A. Samuelson, “The Simple Mathematics of Income Determination”, included in Income Employment and Public Policy,” Essay VI in Part One.

14.—Oscar Lange, Price Flexibility and Employment, particularly Chapters I-V and IX-XI.

15.—Donald M. Fort, “A Theory of General Short-Run Equilibrium,” Econometrica, 13: 293-310 (October, 1945)

16.—Sidney Weintraub, Income and Employment Analysis, Part III

17.—G. L. Bach, “Monetary-Fiscal Policy Reconsidered”, Journal of Political Economy, LVII: 383-94 (October 1949)

18.—George Terborgh, The Bogey of Economic Maturity.

19.—A. P. Lerner, Economics of Employment, parts IV and V.

20.*—William Hamburger, “The Determinants of Aggregate Consumption”, Review of Economic Studies, XXII (1), pp. 23-34

21.*—Franco Modigliani and Richard Brumberg, “Utility Analysis and the Consumption Function”, included in Kenneth Kurihara, The Post Keynesian System—Essays in Honor of John Maynard Keynes.

22.—O. H. Brownlee, Economics of Public Finance, Chapters 3-6

23.—__________, “The Theory of Employment and Stabilization Policy”, Journal of Political Economy, October, 1950, pp. 412-24.

24.*—Milton Friedman, A Theory of the Consumption Function (particularly chapters 1-4.)

  1. Monetary-Fiscal Policy
    1. Effects of changes in government expenditures for goods and services, net tax collections, the tax structure and the supply of money on the demand for and supply of goods and services.
      1. In the Keynesian System
      2. In the Alternative System
    2. Built-In Flexibility vs. Ad. hominum [sic, “ad hoc”] changes.

Readings:

1.—Robert L. Bishop, “Alternative Expansionist Fiscal Policies: A Diagrammatic Analysis”, Lloyd A. Metzler, ed. Income, Employment and Public Policy.

2.—O. H. Brownlee, “Taxation and the Price Level in the Short Run”, The Journal of Political Economy, February, 1954, pp. 26-33.

3.—__________, The Economics of Public Finance, Chapter 6.

4.—Paul A. Samuelson, “Principles and Rules in Modern Fiscal Policy: A Neo-Classical Reformulation”, included in Money, Trade, and Economic Growth.

5.*—Milton Friedman, “the Effects of a Full-Employment Policy on Economic Stability: A Formal Analysis”, included in Essays in Positive Economics.

6.—E. Cary Brown, “The Static Theory of Automatic Fiscal Stabilization”, Journal of Political Economy, October 1955.

7.—Alfred Conrad, “The Multiplier Effects of Redistributive Public Budgets”, Review of Economics and Statistics, May, 1955.

8.—William A. Salant, “Taxes, Income Determination and the Balanced Budget Theorem”, Review of Economics and Statistics, May, 1957.

[9. Bent Hansen, The Economic Theory of Fiscal Policy.]

  1. Some Applications of Static Macroeconomic Analysis to Other Problems
    1. Disaggregated Systems
    2. Effects of Shifts in Expenditure and Income in One Sector upon Income in Other Sectors.

Readings:

1.—John S. Chipman, The Theory of Inter-Sectoral Money Flows and Income Formation.

2.—D. Gale Johnson and O. H. Brownlee, “Reducing Price Variability Confronting Primary Producers”, Journal of Farm Economics, May, 1950, 176-193.

  1. Macrodynamic Analysis
    1. The Nature of “Business Cycle” Theories.
    2. First-Order Difference Equations
      1. The Cobweb Theorem
      2. Lagging of Consumption or Investment by One Period
      3. Introduction of Disturbances
      4. A Dynamic “Keynesian” Model
    3. Models Involving Higher Order Difference Equations
      1. “Interactions between the ‘Multiplier’ and the ‘Acceleration Principle’”.
      2. Inventory decisions as related to changes in consumption or investment in Plant and Equipment.
    4. Problems of Prediction

Readings:

1.*—Paul A. Samuelson, “Interactions Between the Multiplier and the Principle of Acceleration”, included in Readings in Business Cycle Theory, 261-69.

2.—Mordecai Ezekiel, “The Cobweb Theorem”, included in Readings in Business Cycle Theory, 422-42.

3.—J. M. Clark, “Business Acceleration and the Law of Demand”, included in Readings in Business Cycle Theory.

4.—R. F. Harrod, The Trade Cycle, Chapter 2.

 

Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archive. Martin Bronfenbrenner Papers, Box 25, Folder “Macroeconomics, Problems & exercises. 1 of 2. 1961-70, n.d.”.

Image Source: Douglas Clement, “A Golden History” in Minnesota Economics (Fall 2006), p. 2.

Categories
Berkeley Columbia Dartmouth Economist Market Economists Germany Iowa Northwestern

Columbia. Economics Ph.D. alumnus who killed his Dean and self at Syracuse. Beckwith, 1913

 

Imagine what can possibly go wrong when a narcissist finds himself (herself) terminated from nine jobs over the course of a decade. The worst case scenario of murder-suicide as the culmination of professional decline and fall for the 1913 Columbia Ph.D. alumnus, Holmes Beckwith, is documented below using a few contemporary press accounts. His story was sensational and reported widely across the country.

For this post I have added a chronology along with a pair of genealogical tables to help readers distinguish among the members of the Beckwith and the Holmes families mentioned. Warning: I have encountered numerous errors in the contemporary newspaper accounts.

The final entry included in the post paints a much more sympathetic portrait of Holmes Beckwith, reminding us all of the tragedy of mental illness.

The annual reports of the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society served as a sort of “Alumni notes” with contact information as well as personal and professional news that were useful in keeping track of Holmes Beckwith’s movements over his brief professional career.

Useful genealogical information found at a roots.web Beckwith page.

Note: Holmes Beckwith does not appear to have been closely related (if at all) to William Erastus Beckwith, husband of 1925 Radcliffe Ph.D. Ethelwynn Rice).

_________________________

Chronology

1884. Born October 5 in Haiku, Maui of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Parents: Frank Armstrong Beckwith (1854-1885) and Ellen Warren Holmes.

1900. Lived with his mother (Ellen), sister (Ruth), and aunt (Mary G. Holmes) in Los Angeles.

Holmes went to high school in Los Angeles.

Attended Pacific Theological School at Berkeley, CA, completing about half the course, transferred to University of California.

1906. Address: 2231 Dana St., Berkeley, CA. (Source: Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society)

1907. Address: 2231 Dana St., Berkeley, CA. (Source: Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society)

1908. B.L. from University of California, Berkeley.

Address: 2223 Atherton St., Berkeley, CA. (Source: Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society)

1909. M.L. from University of California, Berkeley.

Address: 2223 Atherton St., Berkeley, CA. (Source: Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society)

1909. June 22. Marriage to Helen Frances Robinson in Berkeley, CA. (Source: Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society)

1910. Address: Columbia University, New York City. (Source: Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society)

1911. Address: Columbia University, New York City. (Source: Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society)

1911. Summer. Research trip to Germany for dissertation.

“To learn at first hand from German experiences, I spent the summer of 1911 investigating industrial education in Germany. The cities visited were selected with a view to their importance industrially and include a number of the chief industrial centers in various lines of manufacture. The following cities were visited: The city State of Hamburg; Leipzig, Dresden, Chemnitz, and Plauen in Saxony; Munich in Bavaria; Mannheim, in Baden; and Berlin, Magdeburg, Frankfort on Main, Coblenz, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Elberfeld, Barmen, Dortmund, Essen, Duisburg, Crefeld, Munchen-Gladbach, Rheydt, and Aachen, in Prussia.” From the Preface of his dissertation.

1911-12. Dartmouth College. Instructor in economics.

Entered Federal service, Children’s Bureau (the Bureau of Education published his dissertation). The Children’s Bureau was established April 9, 1912 by President William Howard Taft. Initially part of the Department of Commerce and Labor. After 1913 it became part of the Department of Labor.

1913. Ph.D. from Columbia University.

German Industrial Education and its Lessons for the United States. Printed in the U.S. Bureau of Education [Department of the Interior], Bulletin No. 19, 1913. [Professor Henry R. Seager acknowledged in the preface]

1913-14. University of California. Assistant in economics and political economy.

“The Rev. F. H. Robinson of 2809 Russell street, Berkeley, his former father-in-law, states that his severity toward the students at that time caused them to demand his resignation.” The San Francisco Examiner. 3 April 1921, p. 8.
“According to colleagues in the department of economics in the university, he was ‘very eccentric.’” Oakland Tribune, Apr. 2, 1921, p. 1.

1914. Address: 3008 Benvenue Ave., Berkeley, CA.  “Mr. Holmes Beckwith is a professor in the State University at Berkeley, Calif., and has recently received the degree of Ph.D.” (Source: Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society)

1914. August-December as bank examiner with the California State Banking Commission.

“Officials of the commission said the bankers complained he ‘lectured them like students’ on the theories of their own business instead of confining himself to the actual examination work”. New York Herald, April 3, 1921, p. 17.

1915. Address: Department of Labor, Washington, D.C. (Source: Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society)

1915-16. Officers’ training camp at Plattsburgh. [according to NYT: discharged for physical disability.] First Lieutenant of artillery (?), U.S. Army. [Note: I have not been able to confirm the reported military service claims yet.]

1916-17. Grinnell College.

“Several years ago a Holmes Beckwith was an assistant professor in the department of business administration at Grinnell college. He was here about a year and was never popular with the students. He left Grinnell about the middle of 1917.” The Gazette (Ceder Rapids, Iowa), April 2, 1921, p. 1.

1917. Address: Department of Labor, Washington, D.C. (Source: Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society)

1918. Address: Department of Labor, Washington, D.C.  (Source: Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society)

1919. Address: 1724 Chicago Ave., Evanston, Ill. (Source: Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society)

1918-19Northwestern University, Assistant Professor of Banking.

“…where he was described as being nervous and erratic.” New-York Tribune April 4, 1921, p. 5.

1919-20. Colorado College, College Springs, CO.

“He had a penchant for telling stories that were considered risqué for a Christian college.” New York Herald, April 3, 1921, p. 17.

1920. Address: 817 N. Tejon St., Colorado Springs, Col. (Source: Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society)

1920-21. Syracuse University, College of Business Administration. Instructor in Insurance.

1921. April 2. Suicide (+Murder). See below.

_________________________

Cast of relatives
[boldface denotes persons mentioned in the newspaper accounts]

Holmes Beckwith: Father’s side

(Grandparents)
Edward Griffin Beckwith (1826-1909)

(Granduncle)
George Ely Beckwith (1828-1898)
m. Harriet

(father)
Frank Armstrong Beckwith (1854-1885)

m. Ellen Warren Holmes in Montclair NJ

(Aunt)
Martha Warren Beckwith
(1871-1959)
(Aunt)
Mary E. Beckwith (1867-) teacher, artist
Holmes Beckwith
(1884-1921)
m. Helen Frances Robinson in 1909.
(sister)
Ruth Beckwith
(1882-1968)
m. Amasa Archibald Bullock

Note: (Professor) Aunt Martha Beckwith in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. had been a protégé of Columbia anthropologist Franz Boas. She became chair of the Vassar folklore department.

Holmes Beckwith: Mother’s side

(maternal grandparents)
Samuel Holmes (1824-1897) and Mary Howe Goodale (1829-1899)

(mother)
Ellen Warren Holmes (1857-1902) m. Frank Armstrong Beckwith in 1881
(uncle)
David Goodale Holmes (1865-1944) m. Elizabeth Ann Bates (1862-1940) in 1886
(aunt)
Mary Goodale Holmes (1862-1960)

(uncle)
George Day Holmes (1867-1953) m. Julia Georgiana Rogers Baird, (1868-1928) in 1896.

Note: Uncle David Goodale Holmes of East Orange, N.J. was President of the Utility Company, 636 West Forty-fourth Street, New York City according to the report of New York Times, April 4, 1921, p. 17. Uncle George Day Holmes lived with his wife Julia in Montclair, N.J. Since she died in 1928, we can presume she was the ill aunt (presumably Aunt “Hattie”) who was not to be told of Holmes’ death.

_________________________

Professor Slays Dean, and Himself
Former U.C. Instructor Ends His Life After Fatal Shooting At Syracuse University; Note Tells of Plans
Dr. Holmes Beckwith, Once Employed As Examiner for State Banking Commission, Well Known in Berkeley

Oakland Tribune
02 Apr 1921, Page 1

By Associated Press.

SYRACUSE, N. Y., April 2. — J. Herman Wharton, dean of the College of Business Administration, Syracuse University, was shot and killed by Holmes Beckwith, professor of financial and insurance subjects, in the college this morning. Beckwith then turned the gun on himself and committed suicide. The shooting occurred in. the office of the School of Administration, in the College of Agriculture building. Professor Beckwith had been unpopular with the students, it was said, and petitions had been circulated among the student body asking for his removal.

Note tells of plan to commit suicide

In a statement issued soon after the shooting, Chancellor Day declared that it was his belief that Dean Wharton died trying to prevent Professor Beckwith from committing suicide. [Later reports note this is incorrect.] This was indicated in a note left for Dean Wharton by Prof. Beckwith, the chancellor said, in which he intimated that he was going to kill himself and referred to alleged unjust treatment of himself based on the fact that he had been dismissed, the dismissal to take effect at the end of the year. Dean Wharton’s chair, a stout one, was broken. He evidently leaped from it when Beckwith tried to kill himself, the gun was turned on him and the dean was shot through the head. Beckwith was shot in the chest. He also stabbed himself to make death certain. [This is apparently incorrect, though he was found to have had knife with him.]

Suicide was once artillery lieutenant

Dr. Beckwith was a first lieutenant, field artillery, in the world war. He joined the Syracuse University Faculty last September [1920]. He was head of the department of finance and insurance. Dean Wharton was a graduate of Syracuse university and has been an instructor there for the last few years. Two years ago he conceived the idea of a college of business administration and he was appointed to carry out the plan.

San Francisco, April 2. — Dr. Holmes Beckwith was an examiner for the State Banking Commission from August to December, 1914, and was dismissed upon complaint of the banks that he was not a proper person for the position, according to the commission’s records. These records show that he obtained the highest marks of those who participated in the test for examiner.

Beckwith was well known on U. C. campus Berkeley, April 2. — Holmes Beckwith was well known in Berkeley. At the University of California, where he was both a student and an instructor, he bore a reputation for being somewhat peculiar. According to colleagues in the department of economics in the. university, he was very eccentric.

Beckwith was a graduate of the State University of the class of 1908 and took his master’s degree a year later. Going East to study, he was granted a doctor of philosophy degree in Columbia in 1913. After receiving the Columbia degree he came to the University of California from Los Angeles to occupy a place on the college faculty. For the college year 1913-14 he was an assistant in economics at the university. He was reappointed for the following year of 1914-15, but did not serve.

_________________________

The Philadelphia Inquirer
April 3, 1921, pp. 1, 10.

“Beckwith failed to attend a meeting of the college faculty yesterday afternoon [April 1] and instead sent a letter to Dean Wharton, intended to be read at the meeting. The letter was found on Professor Wharton’s desk today after the murder.”

_________________________

Fires Five Bullets into Victim’s Body; Commits Suicide
John Herman Wharton of Syracuse University Slain by Prof. Beckwith in Revenge for Dismissal of Latter — Apparently Crazed by An Obsession of Persecution, as He Had Written of Impending Tragedy.

The Buffalo Times
April 3, 1921 [pp. 21-2.]

By Associated Press.

SYRACUSE, N. Y., April 2. — Dr. Holmes Beckwith, a former United States army lieutenant and California bank examiner, shot and killed his superior, Dean John Herman Wharton at Syracuse University, this morning, before commiting suicide himself, was probably insane as a result of chagrin over losing his position here, according to statements made by the authorities and Chancellor James R. Day of the University late tonight.

That Beckwith had premeditated suicide had not been clearly established, the instructor having left several letters showing his intention in that respect.

At first it was believed that Dr. Wharton had been killed in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent Beckwith’s suicide but this theory has now been cast aside.

Shot After Quarrel.

Coroner C. Ellis Crane, District Attorney Frank Malpass and Chancellor James R. Day are all agreed in the belief that Dr. Wharton was shot following an argument when Beckwith presented a letter in answer to Wharton’s notification that the university would have no need of Beckwith’s services after the close of college in June.

Five bullets were found in Dr. Wharton’s body indicating that Beck with had made sure his superior was dead before he turned his revolver upon himself and committed suicide.

Dean Wharton was in his 32d year and had been an instructor at Syracuse University since his graduation from that institution eight years ago. He was made dean of the College of Business Administration two years ago and Beckwith was one of the instructors under him.

Beckwith had been the butt of several jokes by the college student body during the last year. He had established the practice of locking the doors of the class room at the exact minute passes were due to begin and he would not admit tardy pupils.

He was strict in discipline and in the matter of time devoted to his classes and he had some peculiarities which made him more or less of a victim for students’ pranks and he was decidedly unpopular with them. It is claimed they circulated a petition for his discharge last fall.

University authorities had convinced themselves that Beckwith was a liability rather than an asset and last Monday he received his notification to look elsewhere for a teaching assignment next fall.

He protested but his arguments were without avail.

“Cornered Rat Will Fight.”

Friday night, it has been established, he spent hours in his room writing letters, one of which was addressed to Dean Wharton. It was lengthy document saying among other things, a “cornered rat will fight.”

His uncle Holmes of Montclair, N. J., be notified and that his action be kept from an aunt who is ill.

He wrote two aunts, Dr. Martha Beckwith and Miss Mary Beckwith of No. 50 Market Street, Poughkeepsie. N. Y., and to “Aunt Hattie,” believed to reside in Montclair. The letters thanked the relatives for their love and care assuring them that he loved them.

That he had a rather turbulent career and regarded at least two persons, outside of Syracuse, who had figured in his troubles in the educational world, as being worthy subjects for murder is shown in the story of his life, written under date of March 30, and turned over, according to his written wishes, to Prof. John O. Simmons, a faculty member here.

Discussing his discharge at Colorado College, Dr. Beckwith speaks of a Mr. Howbert, a bank president, apparently one of the board of governors, and writes:

“Mr. Howbert’s anger knew no bounds, I have never met him. I think a man to take the action he did is so unjust he should be shot.”

In his written story of his life he discusses troubles he had at Grinnell College in Iowa, which evidently culminated while he was serving in the army. He wrote:

“I would have murdered Mr. Main who certainly deserves this end in having treacherously betrayed one in his country’s service. Then I would have shot my self.”

Born in Hawaii.

The story of Beckwith’s life shows he was born October 5, 1884, in Kaiku, Island of Maui, then one of the Hawaiian kingdom. His father and grandfather were Congregational ministers and his one sister, Ruth Beckwith Bullock, is a missionary in Siang-Tan, China. He attended the Pacific Theological School at Berkeley, Calif., but did not complete the course. In 1911 he was graduated from Columbia, to which university he transferred in 1908. He married Helen Frances Robinson in California before entering Columbia. They had separated some time ago.

After graduation he spent a short time in Germany and returned to America as a teacher at Dartmouth. He condemned Dartmouth “as the toughest college In America, all men, the dominant element of whom delights in toughness.” He had trouble there, blaming his trouble on Prof. George R. Wicker, of whom he says “this humane cur, Wicker, has since died.”

His story tells of engagements in California, Colorado and Iowa, finally reverting to Syracuse.

Dismissed as Bank Examiner.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., April 2. — Dr. Holmes Beckwith was an examiner for the State Banking Commission from August to December, 1914, and was dismissed upon complaint of the banks that he was not a proper person for the position, according to the commission’s records.

The records show that he obtained the highest marks of those who participated in the test for examiner but was unable to meet the standards of the position in the financial field. Officials of the commission said that the bankers complained that he “lectured them like students” on the theories of their own business instead of confining himself to the actual examination work. He went to the banking commission from the University of California, where he was an instructor in economics and political economy.

Letter Beckwith Wrote Shows He Resented Wharton’s Act

SYRACUSE, April 2. — The following letter, written to Dean Wharton by Professor Beckwith, was found on Dean Wharton’s desk. In it the professor claims that he was in difficulties with the students only because he refused to permit them to run his classes.

“My attitude toward the students is that of seeking their best good,” Professor Beckwith wrote, protesting against his dismissal.

His letter follows:

The School of Business Administration.
John Herman Wharton, Director.
Department of Banking and Finance.

Holmes Beckwith,
Early Childs.
April 1, 1921.

To Dean John Herman Wharton and to whom it may concern:

I received last Saturday morning a letter from you stating that you did not care for further services on this faculty after this year. This was a great surprise to me, despite several conferences we have had in which some friction with students was discussed. I thought the matter was solving itself. I visited you at your home on Monday afternoon, and we discussed the matter, and I protested to you against the injustice done me. This was in vain.

Your only statement of causes was that certain disciplinary troubles and friction had arisen in my classes, and that I was not popular with my students. Now popularity Is NOT always easy to explain, or the lack of it, but certainly a man’s right to his position should not be dependent on such a fickle force. I believe that it is evident in the present case that this unpopularity is due primarily to my maintenance of relatively high scholastic standings, and to my suppressing certain tendencies toward running of the class by students.

The chief trouble was in money and banking class in the first semester. There was a very large registration, yet the whole number only filtered into class days late. This delayed the process of dividing into sections and started a spirit of unrest. Then the students objected to assignments averaging about two hours’ preparation per hour of recitation or lecture, which is I believe a proper standard for bona fide institutions. They walked out in a body on the day of any important game. The net result was, in one direction, that their grades suffered severely, and I had, after very careful consideration, to mark 33 out of 50 as failed. Those who failed, or many of them, I am told, objected seriously to this, and called me unfair.

I deny the charge, and assert that I have tried to be entirely fair throughout, and believe I have been so. I have no motive to be otherwise; and justice means much to me, not only toward myself, but towards others. These facts stated above explain any opposition on the part of any students, I believe sufficiently.

The dean says that other instructors have not had similar trouble. I know positively that some others have had. Though not so much as I. He says “force has its limitations in controlling students, and personality” must be used. I recognize this, and neither used force nor authority exclusively, nor failed to use personality.

Here inconsistency is shown by his suggesting at one time greater strictness, at another time less. My attitude toward my students is that of always seeking their best good. But that best good is not to be sought by slipshodness and making things too easy. I may say, without pressing the point, that a number of the faculty on the hill are too lax in standards, both of scholarship and discipline, seeking and obtaining popularity in degree thereby. These men constitute unfair competition to those of us who try to bring the students to higher levels in these respects. I am not naturally strong as a disciplinarian but with any proper students and any proper administration or support do well.

My subjects are technical and my students find them hard. This explains some of their reasons. They are not as a group, willing to pay the price for this knowledge and ability. Among them, I am glad to say, are some, whose earnestness is excellent and a few quite capable students. The student attitude in my classes, and I believe toward me personally, has been bettering. Dean Wharton did not care to consider this. Syracuse University is notably low in scholarship and low in discipline, honesty and general student morale. These facts are notorious, every faculty man knows and deplores them; many students also.

The dean’s action follows the line of least resistance, and shows little or no principle. It is easier to suit a number of disaffected students than one professor; to do injustice to one and to support that one in maintaining or securing some one higher standard. And certainly as to scholarship, who knows better or as well what is a requisite standard than the specialist in charge?

Such treatment is not new to me. This may seem to excuse the treatment but does not, I leave this point to ethical students. My rights are independent of the misconduct of others, as in the present instance, students or certain students. Unfortunately, by consent of the general student body, or of all in a class, the tone is often given more by the poorer or less desirable student than by the better element. It is the psychology of the mob in a degree. This matter at present is slowly improving in the college, due to student co-operation action.

I have a right to earn my living, to serve and be served. The world owes me a living — provided I can earn it. This right, is independent of whether I am given an opportunity to earn it or not. I am entitled to that opportunity in proportion to my ability. My physical qualifications are admittedly high and there is no criticism, expressed or implied as to them, or as to my technical conduct of teaching, or ability to impart. My recommendations on file in the dean’s office bear sufficient testimony to my ability.

[New York Herald,  Apr 3, 1921, p. 17 reported the previous paragraph followed by the following two paragraphs.]

Even a cornered rat will fight. With others primarily, as I believe, at fault, should I alone bear the burden? I have written a general statement of my earlier experiences, which will aid in interpreting me for any who so desires.”

(This paragraph reported in other accounts as the end of Beckwith’s longer, autobiographical letter) “I shall cease to exist. My consciousness, a function or product, in some sense of my whole organic life, will cease and will remain a memory only. I trust I have bettered the world rather than the reverse. Om mane padne om! (The dew droops slips into the shining sea).”]

What did I mean by claiming right? The cynic denies that there is such a thing. The political scientist sometimes says there are no rights in society, organized as a State, has not formally granted by law.

Unfortunately the right to earn a living is not one of those thus far recognized by law. I believe it is a right notwithstanding. I am not embracing the so-called rights fallacy — or not the fallacious part of it. This fallacy consists in thinking that there are any rights, always and anywhere valid, not dependent on circumstances. Yet the heart of the doctrine is true that right exist, whether men recognize them or not. I consider that rights in the best sense, that is expedient or rational rights, are claims which are within accord with social or public expediency — mine for continuous employment in accord with my abilities and recognition of such abilities? Social interest in this case requires, I believe, administrative support, continuous support, and pressure, to raise the student standard, rather than the ousting of me. I have only asked reasonable standards of them and even compromised to the extent of raising every student 10 per cent, in most classes, who would thereby pass.

The present situation is intolerable to me, in the strict sense. This isn’t largely due to the repetition here of similar treatment elsewhere received. Despite similar injunctions I have arisen, by inherent ability and hard work. I have had so many changes of location, also so many different courses, and developed them so much, by mimeographed notes and otherwise, that I have not had time to write for publication yet. My rise has been due to my ability; the obstacles and injustices due to conditions not primarily my fault.

I have been bruised for others’ iniquities.

I informed the dean that he had made the situation intolerable to me and presented my case, asking for justice. He refused, and said his action was final. I cannot continue thus — subject to lack of confidence of those in authority, worry, depression often-times as now marked, lack of incentive and of hope. Some students and others simply do not like my type of man, or the standards which I represent; though I think and many friends think (I believe) that the type is a high one, of much potentialities of good for the world.

Dean Wharton and some others in authority have given way to this pressure, taking “the easiest way” for them, and in doing so repeatedly confirmed my suspicions that the world, as a whole, as indicated by the attitude of those who control the situation, is unfriendly to me. I cannot be hardly accused of ingratitude if I do not accept this opinion and consider that the world has not even given me a semblance of justice. The dean is fully responsible, as he accepted this proposition. He could support me, and should but refuses. Collectively the students who oppose me (I am glad that that does not include all my students, and I believe the dean underestimates the extent of their loyalty to me) have the main responsibility.

[New York Times, p. 14 includes the following:
“They started this and are about to see their handiwork come to fruition. Perhaps they may earn something from this that will benefit themselves and others. The tyranny of the mob over the individual is here very evident, and the individual is not strong enough to permanently stand against the mob.
I do not believe I have been appreciated. I have not done injustice to anyone. I have fought the good fight and my conscience is clear. I am too idealistical ethically, not philosophically, for my own good. I realize that principle means too much to me. Even a cornered rat will fight. With others, I believe, primarily at fault, should I alone bear the burden.
The law was established to settle quarrels, not to establish justice, which is incidental only. I quote from a prominent New York attorney. Since the world has so greatly failed to give me justice, why would not I, as fully as my power permits, attempt to secure a modicum of justice?
If society would have it otherwise, let them establish it.”]

** ** ** ** ** ** **

Beckwith Butt Of Jokes from First Class Day

SYRACUSE, N. Y., April 2. — Professor Beckwith was the butt of jokes by the students from the first day that he took a class. When he was registering a class in banking and finance, some jokester wrote a fake registration in the name of “Makiswash Blivitz” and turned it in. The professor failed to realize that the name was false, and he put it in his registration book, and never failed to call it out when taking the attendance or calling the roll.

The name of “Blivitz” always drew a laugh from the students. To make their joke more certain, they occasionally imported a law school student, a stranger to Professor Beckwith, who answered to the call of “Blivitz.”

The joke was too good to be retained within the student body. The faculty heard of it, and of course, some of the professors laughed about it, too. Then it reached the ears of Chancellor Day, and he instructed Professor Beckwith to take the name of Blivitz from his lists.

Professor Beckwith refused to do this, however, thinking that some day he would catch the student who sometimes answered to the name and make an object lesson of him. One result was that the newspapers heard of it, and one printed a series of “Blivitz” stories, which annoyed the professor tremendously.

Another thing for which the professor became noted was that he operated his classes under lock and key. As soon as the bell rang for a class he locked the door, and if a student came late he was admitted by the professor himself.

It was also noticed by the students that if Professor Beckwith’s class concluded its work a few minutes ahead of time he always held them in the class room until the exact minute scheduled for closing of classes.

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Murder and Suicide Verdict Given in Syracuse Tragedy
Dr. Wharton, Victim of Radical Professor’s Bullet,
Was About to Marry a Rich Woman, Friends Say

New York Tribune
April 4, 1921 [p. 5]

SYRACUSE, N. Y., April 3. “Murder and suicide” was the coroner’s verdict to-day in the double tragedy at Syracuse University yesterday when Professor Holmes Beckwith shot and killed Dean John Herman Wharton, of the College of Business Administration, and then, reloading the gun, fired two bullets into his own body, killing himself.

Beckwith fired five bullets into the body of the dean as it lay on the floor turned the revolver on himself and fell ten feet away.

Professor Wharton’s body was removed to his home in Clarendon Street where funeral services will be held. Beckwith’s body has been claimed by David G. Holmes, of East Orange, N.J., an uncle.

Authorities are still delving into the mass of letters, papers, essays and other documents left by the murderer in his home and sent, to various friends and college associates, most of them; written after he had been asked to resign from the Syracuse faculty at the end of the college year. It was learned to-day that Dr. Wharton was about to be married. So far as can be learned he had not given out the name of his prospective bride even among his intimate friends. The woman is understood to have been of independent means. Beckwith’s last literary effort, his life story, given to the public by Professor J. O. Simmons, reveals the entire philosophy of the assassin, American-born in Hawaii, intellectual apostate Christian, athletic dilettante, reader of strange tongues, sociologist, egoist, professed lover of humanity, army officer, dabbler in Far East religions, radical, atheist, murderer and self-slayer.

Among his effects was found a snap-shot photograph of his father and former President Taft as classmates at Yale, where they wore contestants for the presidency of the class.

That the crime was premeditated shown by Beckwith’s own writings. Desperate because of repeated failures to hold a place in the teaching profession, having been dismissed in disgrace from all of the nine places he had he since graduation from the University of California ten years ago, he determined to leave a world in which could not succeed and to take the man he held responsible for his latest failure along with him.

On several other occasions, when he had been dismissed from college faculties, he had planned murder, sometimes suicide in addition. Once was at Northwestern University at Evanston, Ill., where he was described as being nervous and erratic.

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Suicide and Deathwished in Biography
Slayer in Syracuse Tragedy Was Obsessed With Belief of Persecution at Hands of University Executives
Had Murder of His Employees [sic] in Mind Frequently and Brooded Over Trouble With Wife, His Writings Reveal

Oakland Tribune (California). April 3, 1921, p. 33.

By Universal Service. Leased Wire to Tribune.

Syracuse, N.Y., April 2. —

That death and suicide ran continuously through the mind of Dr. Holmes Beckwith of the college of business administration of Syracuse University, who today shot and killed Dean John Herman Wharton, and then committed suicide, is shown in his farewell biography.

That document shows:

First, that Dr. Beckwith had in his mind the murder of President John Hanson Thomas Main of Grinell College.

Second, that Dr. Beckwith thought that President Irving Howbert, of the First National Bank of Colorado Springs “should be shot.”

Third, that Dr. Beckwith considered the late Dr. George Ray Wicker, his superior at Dartmouth, a “human cur” and a man “who would stab his best friend in the back if he saw an advantage in it.”

Suicide Obsessed by Idea of Persecution

Dr. Beckwith finally was crazed by the obsession that he was the target for persecution at nearly every college where he taught, and this was aggravated by mourning for his wife, who had divorced him and whom, he believed, had married again.

Dr. Wharton had advised Dr. Beckwith that his services would be no longer required at Syracuse after June.

Dr. Beckwith, a native of the Hawaiian Islands, was a former bank examiner in California and expert in finance and statistics. Before coming to Syracuse Dr. Beckwith was professor of similar subjects at Colorado college, Colorado springs. Also he was formerly with Iowa State University [sic, Grinell college] and the school of commerce at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. He had degrees of bachelor of law and master of law at the University of California and doctor of philosophy from, Columbia University.

In his farewell biography Dr. Beckwith says:

“In 1909, before going to Columbia I had married Helen Frances Robinson of Berkeley a fellow philosophical student. We also went to Germany together. On return from Germany we settled at Hanover, N.H., where I had a position as instructor in economics in Dartmouth college.

“The start here was extremely unfortunate, as Dartmouth is the toughest college in the country. I had some disciplinary trouble with my students. Another element was the personality of the professor in charge of the beginning course, in which all my work lay. He, Professor George Ray Wicker, is a bright man, an idealist in the abstract, but as my office mate stated, he would “stab his best friend in the back if he saw an advantage in it. He sought my discharge and evidently demanding it from his chief, I was left to shift for myself.”

Wife Finances Him When Out of Work

Later, the Beckwiths landed in New York, “broke.” Beckwith details:

“Karl and his wife, Sadie Robinson, my wife’s first cousin, took us in and got Helen a position as his secretary in a war relief organization. She financed us in the main, all that year, aided by the proceeds or sale of my share and by realty dividends. My wife deserves all credit for this aid, aptly given to a hard-pressed husband.

“In August, 1916, I went to Plattsburgh officers’ training camp at infantry. I then left to take a position as assistant professor of business administration in Grinnell college, Grinnell, Iowa. An affair had developed between Karl Robinson and my wife. She later ceased to love me and the upshot prolonged over a number of heart-rending years (for we had been for years very well and thoroughly married) was that my former wife is now Mrs. Karl Davis Robinson of New York City; the former Mrs. Robinson is now alone with two children; and I am alone. In this matter I may say that the guilty pair have, I believe, the sympathy of no one who knows the case, though their families can not fail to regard them as still blood relations and friends. I am, I am glad to say, still enrapport with my wife’s family and especially, good friends with her mother.”

Then came a period of military service. Discharged for disability, Beckwith went back to Grinnell. The instructor was met with a refusal of his old berth on the faculty. Beckwith held President Main responsible.

“I would have murdered Mr. Main, who certainly deserves this end in thus treacherously betraying one in his country’s service,” he writes.

Colorado College Afford Trouble

Next came his connection with Colorado college. He styles President Diniway as “a weak, unscrupulous man, the tool of the trustees.” He claims President Irving Hawbert, of the Colorado Springs First National bank, demanded his discharge because Beckwith used another bank than his.

An atheistical religious lecture also was involved in the controversy, Beckwith says: “Mr, Judson M. Bemis, self millionaire and founder of the department in which I taught, learned of the religious lecture, took violent opposition thereto and had his private detectives look up all the incumbents of the department chair.”

In conclusion, Beckwith says:

“The world as a whole has not given me justice, or anything like justice. I am comforted in a measure by the loyalty and appreciation of some friends. But it seems that the employing class, the executives who hold my fate in their hands, have been notably unfriendly as a class. Injustice rankles; it cuts like a knife. The worry, the fears, the uncertainty, the depression due to the injustice and lack of appreciation, the constant moves, the lack of incentive to good work, are not permanently endurable. They must end—in some way.”

_________________________

Beckwith Leaves Estate To Aunt; Gives Sister Only $10

Buffalo Courier, April 9, 1921 p. 2

Syracuse, April 8. – Prof. Holmes Beckwith, who shot and killed Dean Wharton and himself at Syracuse university last Saturday, leaves practically his entire estate, valued at $4,500, to an aunt, Mrs. Mary G. Holmes of Los Angeles. The will was filed for probate by David G. Holmes of East Orange, N. J., an uncle, today. A sister, Ruth B. Bullock, doing missionary work in China, is cut off with $10 because, “in my years of severe trouble she, unsister-like, gave me no economic aid and only scant sympathy.”

_________________________

Report from the Hawaiian Children’s Society, 1922

Holmes Beckwith.–The tragic circumstances attending the death of Holmes Beckwith may lead those who did not personally know him to misunderstand his life and character. It was perhaps to the completely feminine control under which he grew up that he owed a sensitiveness almost woman-like. His exacting Puritan ancestry gave him his habit of introspection and his dependence upon an absolute justice which never allowed him the relief of compromise. Intellectually he was as honest and open as the sun. He loved to be out of doors, had disciplined his body to long tramps and his mind to the love of solitude in the open. Yet he was the most social of beings. He was a quick and accurate observer; as a boy of eleven he knew the rigging of every craft in New York harbor. His habit of systematic thinking made him able, without practical experience, to grasp difficult technical subjects with astonishing readiness and clearness and to delight in such acquisition. He collected and sorted knowledge as other men collect objects of value. He was gentle with women. Children adored him. A fellow-boarder who knew him during his last year at Syracuse writes of “his fidelity to intellectual honesty and industry, with an eye single to the welfare of humanity which was his guide and passion in all he said and did,” of “his character sound to the core, the high aspirations, the honesty, simplicity and courage, together with a warm heart, zeal for service and brilliant intellect.” She says, “He cared more for religion even in these last years, than for anything else in the world.”

A friend and fellow-student in his university days writes, “No man held in reverence a higher standard of right in private and in public. He was not like other men, nor did he know men well enough to make allowances for their weaknesses. He applied to them the same rigid exactness he did to himself. His fine strong life and adherence at all costs to what he felt right and true will leave a lasting impression on all students he has studied with. He was always so genuinely interested in every detail of life, and without a cantakerous feeling in the world, was so frank and open and free, I shall always be his debtor. I can see him now as he swung along fast, yet firm down a street, every nerve and both eyes intent on his present plan I can hear his hearty greeting: ‘Hello, Arch, how do you function in your philosophic soul?’ He never lost one whit of his direct boyish appeal and immediate contact with everyone. He took every one straight into his thought just as he tried to get straight into theirs.” Those who knew and appreciated his brilliant capacities and un swerving honesty of life and purpose, and who watched his brave struggle with those inherent difficulties of temperament which blocked his progress among men, can say with confidence that his life was at no moment an unworthy one; and the tragedy of his death was such that those who best knew the circumstances and who suffered most directly from them, have attached to him no blame.

Source: The Seventieth Annual Report of the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society, 1922, pp. 68-69.

_________________________

Image Source: Pittsburgh Press (April 6, 1921), p. 36.

Categories
Columbia Economists Iowa Statistics

Columbia. Economics Ph.D. alumnus. BLS Commissioner, Royal Meeker, 1906

 

Having myself been an economics index number junkie for the better part of my career, I could naturally not resist creating this post for our Meet an Economics Ph.D. alumna(us) series. I first “met” Royal Meeker, the third Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics while identifying students who attended the advanced economics seminars conducted by John Bates Clark and Edwin R.A. Seligman at Columbia in 1900/01 and 1902/03. As you can see from his picture, he also provides a dapper addition to the Economists Wearing Bowties Collection.

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Royal Meeker
Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics
August 1913–June 1920
Appointed by: Woodrow Wilson

Royal Meeker was born in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania in 1873. He attended college at Iowa State College, Columbia University, Seligman, and the University of Leipzig before becoming a professor of history, political science, and economics at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania. A year after publishing his dissertation in 1905, Meeker earned his Ph.D. from Columbia. When Meeker applied for and gained a position at Princeton in 1905, he made his first connection with Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton.

Wilson was elected President in 1912, and shortly afterward, Meeker offered to help by performing a survey of the economic community on the banking reform issue. Wilson found the information “most useful,” and, in June 1913, when Secretary of Labor Wilson recommended Meeker fill the position of Commissioner of Labor Statistics, President Wilson urged the Senate to accept. Meeker was sworn in on August 11.

A staunch believer in stressing the human factor in business, Meeker wanted, among other things, a nationwide system of public employment offices; workmen’s compensation; child labor restrictions combined with strong, State-controlled schools; and government action to protect workers. Meeker also sought to eliminate duplication of work by Government agencies, singling out six agencies competing with the Bureau.

During Meeker’s first years as Commissioner, he revised the index numbers of retail and wholesale prices, updated wage studies data collections, and began cost-of-living studies for the District of Columbia. In his concern for unemployment, Meeker ordered studies in 16 East and Middle West cities and 12 Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast cities. The Bureau published the results in 1916 in the publication Unemployment in the United States. At the same time, the Bureau began a monthly series, “Amount of employment in certain industries,” which was the start of the Bureau’s establishment series on employment and total payrolls. In trying to reduce labor turnover by promoting improved working conditions in businesses, the Bureau surveyed corporate welfare plans from 430 employers.

In 1915, Meeker began supplementing the Bureau’s irregularly published bulletins with a new, monthly journal – the Monthly Review, now called the Monthly Labor Review. The journal expanded greatly, publicizing the first results of new Bureau surveys on cost of living, the new budget studies, and information on conditions in other countries. The Review later carried articles on the effect of war on wages, hours, working conditions, and prices in European countries.

Meeker also believed in creating national health insurance and safety programs. In 1916, he succeeded in convincing Congress to create a Board to administer the workmen’s compensation program, which had been under the Bureau’s responsibility since 1908. Working with a committee of the International Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions, Meeker helped develop standard methods and definitions for reporting accidents. The Bureau offered to tabulate and publish State accident statistics, and in 1917, published Causes of Death by Occupation.

Meeker’s second term brought new challenges with the United States entering World War I. With the Government trying to adjust wages to rising costs of living, Meeker was permitted to create a comprehensive consumer expenditure survey. The Bureau began work by surveying the cost of living of families in shipbuilding, the results of which the Shipbuilding Board used to set uniform national wage rates for skilled shipyard trades.

Soon, the Bureau was allocated $300,000 to collect nationwide data on the cost of living. Conducted in 1918–19, the survey covered 12,000 families in 92 cities in 42 States. The results were published in the Monthly Labor Review in May 1919. Shortly thereafter, the Bureau issued its first comprehensive set of cost-of-living indexes for the Nation and for major industrial and shipbuilding centers. This marked the beginning of semiannual cost-of-living indexes for the Nation as a whole and for 31 cities.

To reflect wartime conditions and help resolve disputes, the Bureau was allotted $300,000 for an integrated study of occupational hours and earnings. The results, presented in May 1920, covered wages and hours during 1918 and 1919 for 780 occupations in 28 industries.

Meeker resigned in 1920 to head up the Scientific Division of the International Labor Office (ILO), a major office in the League of Nations. Secretary of Labor Wilson called Meeker “an exceptionally efficient administrator of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.” Secretary Wilson went on to describe Meeker’s three greatest accomplishments: coordinating the Bureau’s work with work performed by States and standardizing industrial terminology and methods; reorganizing the cost-of-living work on a family budget or market basket basis; and studying wartime wages and living costs that were accepted by all the wage boards.

After working for the ILO from 1920 to 1923, Meeker served as Secretary of Labor and Industry for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania from 1923 to 1924. In 1924, he went to China as a member of the Commission on Social Research, and 1926–27, he taught economics at Carleton College in Minnesota. Meeker served as president of the Index Number Institute in New Haven from 1930 to 1936, and in 1941, he was named Administrative Assistant and Director of Research and Statistics of the Connecticut Department. He retired in 1946 and died in New Haven in 1953.

Source: United States. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Webpage: BLS History/Commissioners/Royal Meeker.

Image Source: Prof. Royal Meeker, U.S. Commissioner of Labor Statistics, 1914. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

Categories
Chicago Economists Gender Iowa

Iowa State. Economics PhD alumna, Alison Comish Thorne, 1939

 

This post is the result of some rummaging in the Iowa State University economics department website, hoping to find material on Albert Gailord Hart for the previous post. While it appears that Hart came and went with hardly a footprint in the Iowa State (web-)sand, I did discover a very nice historical timeline for the Iowa State economics department. Moseying down that timeline, I made the acquaintance of the first economics Ph.D. at Iowa State College, Alison Comish Thorne. Obviously she has meet the membership requirement to be included in our series “Meet an economics Ph.D. alumna”, so I left the Iowa State economics website to search for more about Alison Comish Thorne’s life and career.

Of particular interest for Economics in the Rear-view Mirror is the account of her graduate student experience, especially pp. 24-42 of her autobiography (jstor access required) Leave the Dishes in the Sink (2002). A copy of Alison Comish Thorne’s c.v. is available at a special Utah State University library webpage memorializing her contributions.

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Selected Early and Late Publications

Thorne, Alison Comish. Capacity to Consume, American Economic Review vol. 26, no. 2 (June, 1936), pp. 292-5.

__________________. Evaluations of Consumption in Modern Thought. Economics Ph.D. thesis, Iowa State College, 1938.

__________________. Evaluations of Consumption in Scale-of-Living Studies, Social Forces vol. 19, no. 4 (May, 1941), 510-518.

__________________. Women mentoring women in economics in the 1930s, in Mary Ann Dimand, Robert W. Dimand, and Evelyn L. Forget, eds. Women of Value: Feminist Essays in the History of Women in Economics (Brookfield: Edward Elgar, 1995), pp. 60-70.

__________________. Leave the Dishes in the Sink—Adventures of an Activist in Conservative Utah. (University Press of Colorado and Utah State University Press, 2002).

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From the Economics Department Timeline, Iowa State University

Alison Comish Thorne received first PhD

The Doctor of Philosophy in general economics was first offered in 1937; the first PhD was granted to Alison Comish Thorne in 1939. She was the first woman student in the Iowa State economics department to attempt a PhD.

Thorne’s dissertation entitled “Evaluations of Consumption in Modern Thought” was written under Elizabeth Hoyt and Margaret Reid. In the process of working on her PhD, Thorne had an interim year at the University of Chicago, where she studied under Hazel Kyrk.

Thorne’s father, himself an economics PhD, authored a pioneer book in consumer economics and had been a doctoral candidate with Theodore Schultz at the University of Wisconsin.

Alison Comish had married Wynne Thorne in 1937. After earning her PhD at Iowa State, her academic career was delayed not only by the arrival of their five children, but also by anti-nepotism rules at Utah State University, where her husband had become head of agronomy and then director of the ag experiment station and vice president for university research. In addition to being a full-time wife and mother of five, she held state and local elected and appointed positions, served on the Governor’s Committee on the Status of Women, and wrote on employment of women and on poverty. These contributions have been recognized by distinguished service awards from several of these boards and councils and from Utah State University, the American Association of University Women, Business and Professional Women, and Soroptomists. She also received the Governor’s Award for Community Service.

Because administrators’ spouses were not allowed on the faculty, she did not join the USU faculty until 1965, aided in part by the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. She began teaching after an invitation from a professor in the College of Family Life.

After playing a key role in organizing the newly created federal war on poverty programs in Utah, Thorne was invited to teach classes in the USU Sociology Department, as well. Thus, she became a lecturer in sociology, home economics, and consumer education at Utah State University at age 51, 28 years after earning her PhD. She was ineligible for tenure because she insisted on keeping her teaching just under half time in order to give time to her family and to community work.

After joining the staff of USU, she helped initiate the Status of Women Committee and the introductory course in women’s studies, which she taught for more than ten years. She organized and became the first coordinator of Women in International Development (WID).

She continued teaching and doing community work and in 1985, after a university-wide blue-ribbon committee reviewed her credentials, she was promoted to full professor. Because of her age she became “professor emeritus.” With a twinkle in her eye she remarked that she is the only person in the history of Utah State University to leap from lecturer to full professor in one fell swoop.

Of her five children, none became economists, although three became professors. Two of these professors are mothers with husbands in academia, something that would have been impossible in the 1930s.

Source:  Iowa State University, Department of Economics. Compiled by D. Gruca from official university publications and departmental files as well as

I. W. Arthur, “Development of the Field of Economics at Iowa State.”
Nancy Wolff and Jim Hayward, “The Historical Development of the Department of Economics at Iowa State, 1929 to 1985.”
G. Shepherd,“History of Economics at ISU.”

[Also Note: Jim Hayward and Nancy Wolff. The Historical Development of the Department at Iowa State University, 1869-1928.]

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Women of Caliber, Women of Cache Valley: Alison Comish Thorne

A Woman of Quality

Alison Comish Thorne challenged established perceptions of “womanhood” in order to instigate social change, and admonished other women of her generation to do the same. In a speech she gave in 1949, Alison encouraged women to “let the dishes wait.” She did not want women to lose their sense of personal identity as they fulfilled their roles as wives and mothers. She argued that women should not judge themselves or other women based on the tidiness of their homes. Alison demonstrated for women of Cache Valley that achieving an education and pursuing a career while being a wife and mother could be a reality. She balanced her professional responsibilities with her family duties and received personal fulfilment from both.

Alison was a trailblazer in the world of female higher education. Her pursuit for higher education began at a young age. In 1930, at sixteen years old, Alison attended Brigham Young University. In 1934, she graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Education. Then, in 1935, she earned a Master’s degree in Consumption Economics from Iowa State University. In 1938, Alison became the first woman to receive a Ph. D. in Consumption Economics from Iowa State University.

Second Wave Feminism and the Equal Rights Amendment

Ahead of her time, Alison brought second wave feminism to Cache Valley. Along with many other women during the mid-twentieth century, Alison took upon herself the legacy of Alice Paul, an early-twentieth century suffragette and author of the original Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). When first introduced in 1923, the original ERA championed for both men’s and women’s rights, but took into consideration “women’s distinct needs.” The amendment’s objective was to establish men and women as equal under the law and focused on the right of women to compete equally with men in “all aspects of social and economic life.” Alice Paul opposed “protective legislation”—gender based laws written with the intention of “protecting” women from exploitation that, in reality, prevented women from pursuing work in particular professions, limited the number of hours they were allowed to work, and restricted pay rates. Despite Alice Paul’s valiant effort, the amendment did not pass.[1]

“Equality does not mean sameness.”

The ERA Alison promoted offered an updated version of Paul’s original amendment. Alison’s version of the ERA raised the issues of access to higher education, participation in the draft, and sexual discrimination within the Social Security program. In a draft for a pamphlet designed to promote the ERA in Utah to ratify, Alison explained, “The Amendment supports the constitutional equality for women and the extension of legal rights, privileges, and responsibilities regardless of sex.”

Similar to the movement in the Progressive Era, the ERA movement of the 1970s faced fierce competition from conservative groups such as “Humanitarians Opposed to Degrading Our Girls” (HOTDOG), “International Women’s Year” (IWY), and “Women for Maintaining the Difference between the Sexes and Against the Equal Rights Amendment.” In a pamphlet for the 1977 IWY Convention, the association announced that it opposed the ERA because the amendment “would provide undefined limits of governmental power over the lives of its citizens.” The IWY supported the idea that a government should have limited power over its citizens. The LDS church also aggressively campaigned against the ERA, a stance that divided LDS women. By opposing the ERA, many LDS women “outwardly revealed to each other their internal acceptance of the church’s teaching about proper gender roles.” Those who supported the ERA seemingly questioned church doctrine and ignored the counsel of church leadership.[2] Alison tried diligently to reassure members of the church that their religious rights would not be impinged. Equality did not mean that men and women became “the same.” From Alison’s point of view, the ERA provided women equality under the law, protected “traditional” roles of women, and simultaneously offered women more way to navigate life as established definitions of “womanhood” were being challenged.

[1] Amy E. Butler, Two Paths to Equality: Alice Paul and Ethel M. Smith in the ERA Debate, 1921-1929 (New York: University of New York Press, 2002), 1-2.

[2] Neil J. Young, “’The ERA Is a Moral Issue’: The Mormon Church, LDS Women, and the Defeat of the Equal Rights Movement,” American Quarterly 59, 3 (September 2007): 625; O. Kendall White, Jr., “Mormonism and the Equal Rights Amendment,” Journal of Church and State 31.2 J (1989): 249-268.

Source: Utah State University, University Libraries. Digital Exhibit, Women of Caliber, Women of Cache Valley: Alison Comish Thorne.

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Biographical Note from Archives

Alison Comish Thorne was born May 9, 1914 in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Newel H. and Louise Larson Comish. Her scholarly pursuits began at the age of sixteen when she entered Brigham Young University where she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Education in 1934. Thorne received a Master’s degree in Consumption Economics at Iowa State University in 1935. She then pursued doctoral studies at the University of Chicago during 1935-36, before receiving her Ph.D. in 1938 from Iowa State University in the field of Consumption Economics. Her mentors, Elizabeth Ellis Hoyt and Margaret G. Reid, worked with Thorne to help her become the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in this field from ISU. Thorne married D. Wynne Thorne on August 3, 1937 in Salt Lake City.

After the completion of her graduate work, Thorne filled various instructor positions at Colorado State University, Iowa State University, and finally Utah State University. At USU she was given the title of lecturer from 1964 through the 1980s by both USU’s Department of Sociology and the Department of Home Economics and Consumer Education. Due to anti-nepotism laws, Thorne was not allowed to secure a faculty position since her husband was already a faculty member. (Wynne Thorne served as USU’s Head of Agronomy, Director of the Agricultural Experiment Station, and the Vice President of University Research.) This setback did not keep Thorne from establishing a solid reputation as a scholar. Thorne played a key role in the founding of the Women’s Studies Program at USU and served as a chair in the Women’s Studies Committee from 1977-1989. In addition, Thorne’s devotion to increasing the opportunity for women can be seen in her involvement in the Women’s Center, the Committee on the Status of Women, as well as the Women and International Development committee.

Moreover, Thorne gave many early feminist speeches, including “Let the Dishes Wait” (1949) and “Leave the Dishes in the Sink” (1973). These speeches encouraged women to focus more on personal hobbies, interests, education, and family rather than maintaining a “perfect” home. As result of her influential work, Thorne has been the recipient of many awards, such as Utah State University’s Distinguished Service Award (1982), Woman of the Year for the Utah Chapter of the American Association of University Women (1967), and Utah Governor’s Award for Volunteer Service (1980). She was also the author of numerous articles and books, including Women in the History of Utah’s Land-grant College (1985), Visible and Invisible Women in Land-grant Colleges (1986), Vision and Rhetoric in Shakespeare: Looking Through Language (2000), Leave the Dishes in the Sink: Adventures of an Activist in Conservative Utah (2002), and Shakespeare’s Romances (2003).

Thorne was active in many organizations during her retirement, such as the Utah State Historical Society, the Utah State Women’s History Association, and the National Women’s Studies Association. Thorne died in 2005 in Logan, Utah.

Source: See Archives West: Utah State University, Papers of Alison Comish Thorne, 1925-2003.

Image Source: Detail from the cover of Alison Comish Thorne’s Leave the Dishes in the Sink (2002).

Categories
Columbia Economist Market Economists Iowa Salaries

Columbia. Hiring Albert Gailord Hart as visiting professor. Bureaucracy light, 1946

 

Up through the academic year 1945-46, Arthur F. Burns offered the first core economic theory course, Economic Analysis (Economics 153-154), in the Columbia graduate program. The following year, 1946-47, the course was taught by the visiting professor of economics (who would be offered and accepted a regular appointment that same year), Albert G. Hart.

Materials from Hart’s core economic courses in his first year at Columbia have been posted earlier.

This post provides a few brief items regarding Albert G. Hart’s initial Columbia appointment. What I was most struck with is the relative brevity of the documentation expected (demanded) by university administrators for a visiting professor appointment.

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From the budget proposals for 1946-47,
Columbia’s salary structure for economics professors

Actual professorial salary appropriations at Columbia for 1945-46
and proposed for 1946-47

Professors:

Robert M. Haig, Leo Wolman, John Maurice Clark, Harold Hotelling:  $9,000

James Waterhouse Angell, Carter Goodrich, Horace Taylor, Arthur F. Burns, Abraham Wald: $7,500

Associate Professors ranged from $4,500 to $7,500.

Assistant Professors ranged from $3, 500 to $4,000

A vacant professorship: for Hart ($7,500) and a slot proposed for a visiting professor of international economics, also budgeted at $7,500.

________________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York

[New York 27, N.Y.]

FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

March 25, 1946

Dr. Frank D. Fackenthal, Acting President,
Columbia University,
213 Low Memorial Library.

Dear Mr. President:

I am writing to advise you that Dr. Albert Gailord Hart, formerly of Iowa State College, has accepted the invitation of the Department of Economics to serve as Visiting Professor of Economics during the academic year 1946-47. Dr. Hart’s salary for the period will be $7,500, chargeable to the vacant professorship in Economics carried in our budget for the year 1946-47.

I am requesting Professor Evans, chairman of the Committee on Instruction of the faculty of Political Science, to take what steps may be necessary in order that Dr. Hart may have a seat on the Faculty of Political Science during the period of his residence.

A brief statement on Dr. Hart’s education and scholarly background is enclosed.

Sincerely,
[signed] Frederick C. Mills

________________________

ALBERT GAILORD HART

Born in 1909.

A.B., Harvard, 1930; Ph.D., Chicago, 1936.

Sheldon Traveling Fellow, 1930-31.

Spent 1934-35 in London.

Title of Doctoral dissertation: Anticipations, business planning, and the cycle.

Full professor, Iowa State College, Department of Economics, 1944-45.

At present on research staff, Committee on Economic Development.

Major interests: Economic theory, public finance, consumption, business fluctuations.

Publications:

Debts and recovery (Twentieth Century Fund, 1938)
Paying for defense (with E. D. Allen and others). 1941.
The social framework of the American economy. (with J. R. Hicks). 1945.

Lectured in California, 1936, and served at one time as Economic Analyst with the United States Department of the Treasury.

Source:  Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Archives. Central Files 1890-. Box 396, Folder “Mills, Frederick Cecil”.

Image Source:  Columbia University Record, vol. 23, no. 5 (Oct. 3, 1997).

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U.S. Bureau of Education. Contributions to American Educational History, Herbert B. Adams (ed.), 1887-1903

 

I stumbled across this series while I was preparing the previous post on the political economy questions for the Harvard Examination for Women (1874). I figured it would be handy for me to keep a list of links to the monographs on the history of higher education in 35 of the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. Maybe this collection will help you too.

Contributions to American Educational History, edited by Herbert B. Adams

  1. The College of William and Mary. Herbert B. Adams (1887)
  2. Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia. Herbert B. Adams (1888)
  3. History of Education in North Carolina. Charles L. Smith (1888)
  4. History of Higher Education in South Carolina. C. Meriwether (1889)
  5. Education in Georgia. Charles Edgeworth Jones (1889)
  6. Education in Florida. George Gary Bush (1889)
  7. Higher Education in Wisconsin. William F. Allen and David E. Spencer (1889)
  8. History of Education in Alabama. Willis G. Clark (1890).
  9. History of Federal and State Aid to Higher Education. Frank W. Blackmar (1890)
  10. Higher Education in Indiana. James Albert Woodburn (1891).
  11. Higher Education in Michigan. Andrew C. McLaughlin. (1891)
  12. History of Higher Education in Ohio. George W. Knight and John R. Commons (1891)
  13. History of Higher Education in Massachusetts. George Gary Bush (1891)
  14. The History of Education in Connecticut. Bernard C. Steiner (1893)
  15. The History of Education in Delaware. Lyman P. Powell (1893)
  16. Higher Education in Tennessee. Lucius Salisbury Merriam (1893)
  17. Higher Education in Iowa. Leonard F. Parker (1893)
  18. History of Higher Education in Rhode Island. William Howe Tolman (1894)
  19. History of Education in Maryland. Bernard C. Steiner (1894).
  20. History of Education in Lousiana. Edwin Whitfield Fay (1898).
  21. Higher Education in Missouri. Marshall S. Snow (1898)
  22. History of Education in New Hampshire. George Gary Bush (1898)
  23. History of Education in New Jersey. David Murray (1899).
  24. History of Education in Mississippi. Edward Mayes (1899)
  25. History of Higher Education in Kentucky. Alvin Fayette Lewis (1899)
  26. History of Education in Arkansas. Josiah H. Shinn (1900)
  27. Higher Education in Kansas. Frank W. Blackmar (1900)
  28. The University of the State of New York. History of Higher Education in the State of New York. Sidney Sherwood (1900)
  29. History of Education in Vermont. George Gary Bush (1900)
  30. History of Education in West Virginia. A. R. Whitehill (1902)
  31. The History of Education in Minnesota. John N. Greer (1902)
  32. Education in Nebraska. Howard W. Caldwell (1902)
  33. A History of Higher Education in Pennsylvania. Charles H. Haskins and William I. Hull (1902)
  34. History of Higher Education in Colorado. James Edward Le Rossignol (1903)
  35. History of Higher Education in Texas. J. J. Lane (1903)
  36. History of Higher Education in Maine. Edward W. Hall (1903)

Image Source: Cropped from portrait of Herbert Baxter Adams ca. 1890s. Johns Hopkins University graphic and pictorial collection.

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Economics Departments and University Rankings by Chairmen. Hughes (1925) and Keniston (1957)

 

The rankings of universities and departments of economics for 1920 and 1957 that are found below were based on the pooling of contemporary expert opinions. Because the ultimate question for both the Hughes and Keniston studies was the relative aggregate university standing with respect to graduate education, “The list did not include technical schools, like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology, nor state colleges, like Iowa State, Michigan State or Penn State, since the purpose was to compare institutions which offered the doctorate in a wide variety of fields.” Hence, historians of economics will be frustrated by the conspicuous absence of M.I.T. and Carnegie Tech in the 1957 column except for the understated footnote “According to some of the chairmen there are strong departments at Carnegie Tech. and M.I.T.; also at Vanderbilt”.

The average perceived rank of a particular economics department relative to that of its university might be of use in assessing the negotiating position of department chairs with their respective university administrations. The observed movement within the perception league tables over the course of roughly a human generation might suggest other questions worth pursuing. 

Anyhow without further apology…

______________________

About the Image: There is no face associated with rankings so I have chosen the legendary comedians Bud Abbott and Lou Costello for their “Who’s on First?” sketch.  YouTube TV version; Radio version: Who’s on First? starts at 22:15

______________________

From Keniston’s Appendix (1959)

Standing of
American Graduate Departments
in the Arts and Sciences

The present study was undertaken as part of a survey of the Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania in an effort to discover the present reputation of the various departments which offer programs leading to the doctorate.

A letter was addressed to the chairmen of departments in each of twenty-five leading universities of the country. The list was compiled on the basis of (1) membership in the Association of American Universities, (2) number of Ph.D.’s awarded in recent years, (3) geographical distribution. The list did not include technical schools, like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology, nor state colleges, like Iowa State, Michigan State or Penn State, since the purpose was to compare institutions which offered the doctorate in a wide variety of fields.

Each chairman was asked to rate, on an accompanying sheet, the strongest departments in his field, arranged roughly as the first five, the second five and, if possible, the third five, on the basis of the quality of their Ph.D. work and the quality of the faculty as scholars. About 80% of the chairmen returned a rating. Since many of them reported the composite judgment of their staff, the total number of ratings is well over 500.

On each rating sheet, the individual institutions were given a score. If they were rated in order of rank, they were assigned numbers from 15 (Rank 1) to 1 (Rank 15). If they were rated in groups of five, each group alphabetically arranged, those in the top five were given a score of 13, in the second five a score of 8, and in the third five a score of 3. When all the ratings sheets were returned, the scores of each institution were tabulated and compiled and the institutions arranged in order, in accordance with the total score for each department.

To determine areas of strength or weakness, the departmental scores were combined to determine [four] divisional scores. [Divisions (Departments): Biological Sciences (2), Humanities (11), Physical Sciences (6), Social Sciences (5)]….

… Finally, the scores of each institution given in the divisional rankings were combined to provide an over-all rating of the graduate standing of the major universities.

From a similar poll of opinion, made by R. M. Hughes, A Study of the Graduate Schools of America, and published in 1925, it was possible to compile the scores for each of eighteen departments as they were ranked at that time and also to secure divisional and over-all rankings. These are presented here for the purpose of showing what changes have taken place in the course of a generation.

The limitations of such a study are obvious; the ranks reported do not reveal the actual merit of the individual departments. They depend on highly subjective impressions; they reflect old and new loyalties; they are subject to lag, and the halo of past prestige. But they do report the judgment of the men whose opinion is most likely to have weight. For chairmen, by virtue of their office, are the men who must know what is going on at other institutions. They are called upon to recommend schools where students in their field may profitably study; they must seek new appointments from the staff and graduates of other schools; their own graduates tum to them for advice in choosing between alternative possibilities for appointment. The sum of their opinions is, therefore, a fairly close approximation to what informed people think about the standing of the departments in each of the fields.

 

OVER-ALL STANDING
(Total Scores)

1925

1957

1.

Chicago

1543

1.

Harvard

5403

2.

Harvard

1535

2.

California

4750

3.

Columbia 1316 3. Columbia 4183
4. Wisconsin 886 4. Yale

4094

5.

Yale 885 5. Michigan 3603
6. Princeton 805 5. Chicago

3495

7.

Johns Hopkins 746 7. Princeton 2770
8. Michigan 720 8. Wisconsin

2453

9.

California 712 9. Cornell 2239
10. Cornell 694 10. Illinois

1934

11.

Illinois 561 11. Pennsylvania 1784
12. Pennsylvania 459 12. Minnesota

1442

13.

Minnesota 430 13. Stanford 1439
14. Stanford 365 14. U.C.L.A.

1366

15.

Ohio State 294 15. Indiana 1329
16. Iowa 215 16. Johns Hopkins

1249

17.

Northwestern 143 17. Northwestern 934
18. North Carolina 57 18. Ohio State

874

19.

Indiana 45 19. N.Y.U. 801
20. Washington

759

 

ECONOMICS

1925

1957

1. Harvard 92 1. Harvard

298

2.

Columbia 75 2. Chicago 262
3. Chicago 65 3. Yale

241

4.

Wisconsin 63 4. Columbia 210
5. Yale 42 5. California

196

6.

Johns Hopkins 39 5. Stanford 196
7. Michigan 31 7. Princeton

184

8.

Pennsylvania 29 8. Johns Hopkins 178
9. Illinois 27 9. Michigan

174

10.

Cornell 25 10. Minnesota 96
11. Princeton 23 11. Northwestern

70

12.

California 22 12. Duke 69
13. Minnesota 20 13. Wisconsin

66

14.

Northwestern 18 14. Pennsylvania 45
15. Stanford 17 15. Cornell

32

16.

Ohio State 15 16. U.C.L.A.

31

According to some of the chairmen there are strong departments at Carnegie Tech. and M.I.T.; also at Vanderbilt.

 

Source:  Hayward Keniston. Graduate Study and Research in the Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania (January 1959), pp. 115-119,129.

 

 

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Chicago Curriculum Iowa Statistics

Chicago. Henry Simons argues for an undergraduate sequence of mathematics/statistics for economists, 1937

 

 

The letter below written by Henry Simons to Henry Schultz in 1937 is evidently a typed copy of what was originally a letter on official University of Chicago stationary. The typed header matches the printed header of University of Chicago stationary and there is no signature at the end.

Simons appears to be seeking Schultz’s support for the introduction of a “Mathematics for Economists” course into the undergraduate economics curriculum as well as for providing different courses for students who intend to go on to more advanced economics training versus the sort of survey courses that would constitute the entirety of the life-time economics education of non-econ-majors. An interesting aside: Simons problematized the lack of analytical preparation displayed by the students coming from Social Services Administration that he saw reducing the standards in the economics courses that they were required by their program to attend.

_____________________________

The University of Chicago
The Department of Economics

Memorandum to Members of the Department from Henry Schultz. July 8, 1937

The attached letter from Mr. Henry C. Simons might very well serve as a basis of discussion. It may be necessary to call a meeting to discuss this question before the quarter is over.

*  * *  *  *  *

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
Department of Economics

June 4, 1937

Dear Mr. Schultz:

Out at Ames last week I heard about some plans of their economics department which made me very envious. They are getting ready to offer next year a sequence of three courses combining elementary mathematics and statistics; and they expect afterwards to make these courses prerequisites to their advanced (divisional) courses in economics. Moreover, they seem to be facing squarely the task (1) of providing a significant amount of training in the calculus, (2) of eliminating or cutting down those parts of the usual freshman mathematics which are of little use for their students, and (3) of mixing in with the formal mathematics perhaps as much statistics as is covered in a one-Quarter course.

If they carry out these plans, their students will soon be better prepared for substantial economics training than are even those few students here who complete Math. 104, 105, and 106—not to mention those who meet only our minimum requirement of one course in college mathematics. Meantime, nothing is being done to improve our situation here. Mrs. Logdon’s courses were a slight improvement over the old elementary mathematics; but they represent only a small beginning toward what might be done. The 104 course has its merits; but the two following courses, I gather, largely compensate for any departures from tradition which the first course involves. We still have not faced the fact that the traditional freshman mathematics, however suitable for students who will specialize in mathematics or physics, is very ill-suited to the needs of students going into other divisions or of those concluding their formal education at the college level.

I feel that we should face now the responsibility of providing a suitable minimum of training in mathematics, formal and applied, for all students in the College. Nothing can more easily be defended as a part of general education or as intellectual preparation for serious work in the Divisions. The need here might well be met by a three-course sequence of the kind which they are planning at Ames—although I am not competent to prescribe, or disposed to quarrel, about details. There are obvious advantages in mixing a certain amount of applied mathematics with the more formal training; and the fundamentals of statistics can be taught to best advantage only as mathematics and in the atmosphere of mathematics courses. As regards these fundamentals, there is no need for differentiation of courses according to divisions or departments—except possibly in the case of the physical sciences. With appropriate work in the College, divisional statistics courses in the various departments might then achieve their proper emphasis upon special applications in the special fields.

Our own Division probably could not now be induced to impose such a requirement for admission. Some departments would doubtless oppose it vigorously. This situation, however, does not argue against developing in the College the sequence of courses which would be most useful. If the proper courses were available, we could make them prerequisite for divisional work in economics; and, at the least, we could urge the advisers in the College to explain that students coming to us without such preparation would be somewhat handicapped on that account. Some other departments and divisions might go along with us. The Division of Biology certainly should do so; the School of Business and the Law School would probably cooperate eventually; and the School of Social Services Administration needs this sort of thing badly, both to protect their own standards and to guard us against the demoralization of standards which a large influx of their ill-prepared students can produce in the economics courses which they require.

It remains to point out that an important step could be taken now by our own department. Our announcements indicate that “Social Science II or equivalent” is prerequisite for divisional courses in economics. The policy here involved is, I believe, grossly mistaken. Instead of requiring this sequence, we should recommend against it in the case of students preparing for divisional work with us, or, at least, indicate clearly that the existing mathematics sequence is distinctly preferable as preparation. The typical student now gets a survey of social science in the first year, another in the second year, and still another (the five 201 courses) in the first two quarters of the third year. This represents an outrageous squandering of the student’s time, considering the alternatives actually sacrificed. Social Science II has perhaps a proper function; but it is not that of preparing students for divisional work. It may be appropriate to offer such a sequence for students who will enter other divisions and who will have no further work in social science fields. Our own students, however, should be getting more fundamental education—should be taking courses involving the more rigorous intellectual discipline in which their subsequent training will be somewhat  deficient.

If there be disagreement on some of these suggestions, there should be little opposition to my minimum proposal, namely, that Math. 106 be indicated in our announcements as a prerequisite alternative to Social Science II. Frankly, this is what it is in fact now, when I am acting as departmental counselor.

In passing, I will mention another suggestion which I have urged repeatedly in meetings and in memoranda. Something should be done to stop this concentrating of the 201 courses in the first two quarters of the student’s divisional work. These courses should not constitute merely another hurdle which students must get over before they are permitted to concentrate upon departmental courses. They should be spread throughout the last two years, as a continuing correction against narrow departmental specialization in outlook and interest—not studied hastily in a lump and forgotten.

The advisers in the College have finally discovered that Math. 104 is useful for students going into economics. They should all be told now to recommend105 and 106 as well and to suggest that good and serious students should be prepared to take at least some calculus after they leave the College (if not before). It is surprising how many of our seniors now complain bitterly because their College advisers failed to offer such suggestions.

I trust that some of these suggestions will seem to merit discussion.

Sincerely,

Henry C. Simons

 

Source: The University of Chicago Archives. Department of Economics. Records. Box 41, Folder 12.

Image Source: Henry Calvert Simons portrait at the University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-07613, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.
Henry Schultz from “[Photograph]: Henry Schultz 1893-1938.” Econometrica 7, no. 2 (1939).

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Economics Faculty Salaries for 15 U.S. universities. Hart Memo, April 1961

 

Here we have a memo written by member of the Columbia University economics department executive committee, Albert G. Hart, that presents the results of what appears to be his informal polling of the chairpersons of 21 departments. Fifteen of the departments provided the salary ranges at four different ranks. No further details are provided, this one page memo was simply filed away in a folder marked “memoranda”. Maybe there is more to be found in Hart’s papers at Columbia University. Up to now I have only sampled Hart’s papers for teaching materials and perhaps next time, I’ll need to look into his papers dealing with departmental administrative affairs.

For a glance at salaries about a half-century earlier:  Professors and instructors’ salaries ca. 1907

________________

AGH [Albert Gailord Hart] 4/21/61

CONFIDENTIAL information on economic salaries, 1960-61, from chairmen of departments

Institution

Professors Associate professors Assistant professors

Instructors

Harvard

$12,000-22,000

$9,000-12,000 $7,500-8,700

$6,500

Princeton

$12,000-…?…

$9,000-11,500 $7,000-8,750

$6,000-6,750

California

$11,700-21,000

$8,940-10,344 $7,008-8,112

$5,916-6,360

MIT

$11,000-20,000

$8,000-11,000 $6,500-9,000

$5,500-5,750

Minnesota

$11,000-18,000

$8,500-11,000 $6,800-8,400

?

COLUMBIA

$11,000-20,000

$8,500-10,000 $6,500-7,500

$5,500-5,750

Northwestern

$11,000-…?…

$8,000-11,000 $6,800-7,500

?

Duke

$11,400-16,000

$8,200-10,000 $7,200-8,200

$5,800-6,500

Illinois

$11,000-15,000

$7,500-10,000 $6,900-8,600

$6,500-7,100

Cornell

$10,000-15,000

$8,000-10,000 $6,500-7,500

$5,500-6,500

Indiana

$10,000-14,800

$8,300-10,000 $6,500-7,500

?

Michigan

$10,000-…?…

$8,700-..9,500 $6,600-8,000

$5,000

Virginia

$..9,800-15,000

$7,800-..9,800 $6,600-7,800

?

Wisconsin

$..9,240-16,150

$8,000-..9,000 $6,550-8,460

$5,250-5,450

Iowa State (Ames)

$..8,500-13,000

$7,500-..8,500 $6,700-8,000

$4,700-6,600

[…]

Note: The following institutions for which data were not included in the source materials are believed to pay their economists at scales at or above the Columbia level:

Carnegie Tech
Chicago
Johns Hopkins
Stanford
Yale
UCLA

[…]

 

Source:  Columbia University Archives. Columbia University, Department of Economics Collection. Carl Shoup Materials: Box 11, Folder: “Economics—Memoranda”.