Today we have autobiographical scrap written by the Columbia University professor of international economics, James Waterhouse Angell, a quarter of a century after being awarded his A.B. from Harvard in 1918. He notes that in the year 1923/24 he “acquired a charming wife, a Ph.D. degree, a hungry offspring, and a new job”. The previous posting provides transcriptions of Columbia University records concerning his initial appointment that also mention his “charming wife”. The dates of three European trips are noteworthy as are his brief remarks declaring himself a nondogmatic social and political liberal. I have added a link to the Pennsylvania report on bootleg mining that Angell refers to.
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JAMES WATERHOUSE ANGELL
Home address: 4926 Goodridge Ave., New York, N.Y.
Office address: Columbia University, New York, N.Y.
Present address: 4421 Hawthorne St., N.W., Washington, D.C.
Born: May 20, 1898, Chicago, Ill. Parents: James Rowland Angell, Marion Isabel Watrous.
Prepared at: University High School, Chicago, Ill.
Years in College: 1914-1918. Degrees: A.B. magna cum laude, 1918; A.M., 1921; Ph.D., 1924.
Married: Jane Norton Grew, Oct. 19, 1923, Wellesley, Mass. Children: James Grew, July 18, 1924; Edward Dexter, April 21, 1928.
Occupation: Professor of Economics, Columbia University, at present chief economic adviser, Office of Civilian Supply, War Production Board.
Military or naval record: Enlisted private Nov. 5, 1918; detailed to Field Artillery Central Officers’ Training School, Camp Zachary Taylor, Ky.; discharged Jan. 29, 1919, and commissioned 2d lieutenant Field Artillery Officers’ Reserve Corps.
Offices held: Vice-chairman, Pennsylvania Anthracite Coal Industry Commission, 1937; vice-president, American Economic Association, 1940.
Member of: American Economic Association; Council on Foreign Relations; Royal Economic Society; American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Century Association (New York); Harvard Club of Boston; Authors’ Club (London).
Publications: “Theory of International Prices,” 1926; “Recovery of Germany” 1929; “Financial Foreign Policy of the United States,” 1933; “Behavior of Money,” 1936; “Investment and Business Cycles,” 1941.
ANGELL does not pretend that the following is a literary essay:
“This is obviously the occasion for an imperishable literary essay, in which the blushing author combines poking fun at himself and his times with some remote approach to a recognizable picture of what he has really done with twenty-five years, the whole nicely larded with a few well-chosen and inspiring sentiments.
“I contain no such essay, and shall not pretend to. After emerging from under the hostile hooves of Field Artillery mules in 1919, I took graduate work in economics at Chicago and Harvard and taught at both places. In one rather hectic period of twelve months I acquired a charming wife, a Ph.D. degree, a hungry offspring, and a new job. Thereafter the tempo slowed down a bit. The job was at Columbia University, where I have been ever since except when on leave, and most of my subsequent activities have been of the standard sorts associated with those who profess at institutions of learning. I have written some books and articles, all on economic questions, took a crack at trying to find an answer to the bootleg mining problem in Pennsylvania (we thought we had the answer, but the Legislature defeated our bill by two votes), and spent parts of three years in Europe. One of these trips was in 1922-1923, in the worst of the post-war inflation and collapse in continental Europe. Another one was in 1928-1929, at the height of the boom, and the third in 1938, uncomfortably close to the outbreak of the present war. In retrospect, it was a little like watching gigantic breakers build up and destroy themselves on rocks.
“Since November, 1941, I have been in Washington with the War Production Board and the antecedent O.P.M. I am now chief economic adviser in the Office of Civilian Supply. I violate no official confidence in admitting that civilian supply, as seen by the recipients, ain’t what she used to be. We don’t propose to put anyone in the hospital for lack of enough food or a roof, but the anatomical and spiritual paunches are on their way out—or off. Objections may be addressed to Berlin and Tokyo.
“We have two boys, both of whom are very fine citizens, if I do say so as shouldn’t. One is finishing up at Admiral Farragut Academy, and hopes to go thence into the Navy. The younger one has just started at Exeter, with an ultimate eye on medicine and surgery.
“I cannot lay claim to genuine hobbies, in any consuming sense, but there are many things I like and like to do as circumstances permit. I enjoy mountain climbing (I have the scalp of one major Alp, but only one), squash, swimming, small-boat sailing (in which ignorance runs pleasure a close second), drinking almost any good Burgundy, and listening to almost any allegedly humorous story. I also enjoy trying, unsuccessfully, to identify more than five of the common eastern American birds.
“My social and political views are liberal, if that term means anything, but not, I think, dogmatic. The rising pressures of the last ten or fifteen years in this country have made it impossible for us ever to return to the institutions, practices, and attitudes of, say, the middle 1920’s. The emergency of war is teaching us how to plan our economic and social operations on a national scale, for the general good and benefit yet without harmful effects on individual freedom, independence, and initiative. When this war is won and the pieces picked up, I look forward to an unprecedented era in this country, both internally and in our relations with other peoples. If we use and keep our heads, we shall reach undreamed-of levels of individual welfare, cultural and spiritual development, and general happiness.”
Source: Harvard Class of 1918, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Report. Cambridge: 1943, pp. 24-26.
Image Source: Ibid.