The course outline and readings for the two-semester graduate course on recent economic history taught at Harvard by Edwin Francis Gay were posted earlier. We can now add the questions from the final examination given at the end of the Spring term.
This is thus far the most recent examination I’ve seen that has matter-of-factly given a quotation in a foreign language. Exams for Young’s course on modern economic theories taught at Harvard in the mid-1920s sometimes had quotations in French and German.
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Final Examination
Recent Economic History
Professor Edwin Francis Gay
1934-35
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 23
Write an essay (not more than half your time) discussing one of the quotations or topics in this paper, and comment concisely on three others.
- “It is believed that, had it not been for the free-trade policy of Great Britain, the manufacturing system of America would at the present time have been much more extensive than it is.” (Ellison, 1858.)
“There is some truth in the view of the cynical British exporter who thanked God for the American tariff, but for which American manufacturers would have driven him out of the world markets.” (London “Economist,” 1912.)
“In my belief, both Free Trade of the laissez-faire type and Protection of the predatory type are policies of Empire, and both make for War.” (H. J. Mackinder, 1919.)
Do you find any confirmation for these views in your reading of American tariff history? Illustrate from the cotton or iron industry. - “On voit apparaître chaque jour davantage tout ce que l’Angleterre, depuis cent ans, devait à des circonstances que les contemporains avaient cru permanentes et qui n’étaient que passagères.
L’hégémonie économique anglaise coïncide dans l’histoire avec le règne de la machine à vapeur; la période victorienne, apogée de prospérité et de puissance, évolue tout entière sous le signe du charbon….C’est ainsi qu’a pu s’édifier, sur la base étroite d’un territoire plus que médiocre, cette paradoxale superstructure manufacturière, e parallèlement s’épanouir cette population aujourd’hui trop dense, si dangereusement dépendante, pour sa subsistance, des produits importés….
Dans ces conditions, le jeu parfaitement agencé de la doctrine libre-échangiste paraissait avoir été conçu tout exprès pour l’Angleterre, par les soins d’une Providence attentive et partiale.” (Siegfried, 1931.) - The National Banking system is “not only a perfectly safe system of banking, but it is one that is eminently adapted to our political institutions.” (Hugh McCulloch, 1863.)
“American banking has not yet distinguished between solvency after an interval, and readiness to meet demands at once and without question…. At present the characteristics of the American business man seem to fit him to do most things better than banking.” (Harley Withers, 1909.)
“Everybody will agree to-day that it would be difficult to imagine a banking system more cruel and inefficient that that prevailing in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century—a system which, instead of scientifically regulating the flow of credit and money so as to secure the greatest possible stability, was designed automatically to produce instability.” (Paul Warburg, 1930.) - “The technological revolution of the last hundred years furnishes the ultimate explanation of agricultural progress and of agrarian discontent both in Europe and America.” (ca. 1925)
“Though the mechanization of industrial processes is almost universal, the great majority of farmers throughout the world are content with the simple instruments used by their forefathers.” (“World Agriculture,” 1932.)
“The significant fact is that the periods of prosperity and the great depressions in agriculture have coincided with periods of monetary expansion and monetary contraction. Though other factors must not be ignored, the agricultural history of the last hundred years shows that favorable monetary conditions are essential to recovery.” (“World Agriculture,” 1932.) - “The Merchant Marine of the United States is not a burden upon the tax-payer’s back, but an economy of the first water, keeping millions in the country, giving employment to thousands of persons, aiding in the development of foreign markets and backing up the nation’s forces in any contingency that may arise.” (Senator Royal S. Copeland, 1934.)
“Our own vessels carry only about 40 per cent of our foreign trade. We are dependent on our competitors to carry 60 per cent of our trade to market. Of course, the result is that they help themselves and hamper us. Parity in merchant ships is only less important than parity in warships. We ought to make the necessary sacrifices to secure it.” (Calvin Coolidge, 1930.) - D. H. Robertson, writing in 1923, concerning the American Railroad Act of 1920 and the increased powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission, says:
“The home of free enterprise has furnished us with experiments in positive State control on a scale which finds no parallel outside Communist Russia.”
Louis D. Brandeis in 1912 wrote: “The success of the Interstate Commerce Commission has been invoked as an argument in favor of licensing and regulating monopoly.” This argument, he held, was not valid. Do you agree? Why or why not? - In a period when traditional standards have broken down and when the legal system is supported by laissez-faire theory, the movement toward industrial combination is “a remorseless sort of profit-seeking.” (M. W. Watkins, 1928.)
“The only argument that has been seriously advanced in favor of private monopoly is that competition involves waste, while the monopoly prevents waste and leads to efficiency. This argument is essentially unsound. The wastes of competition are negligible. The economies of monopoly are superficial and delusive. The efficiency of monopoly is at the best temporary.” (L. D. Brandeis, in Harper’s Weekly, 1913.)
“Our evidence goes to show that most of the Trusts and Cartels have been, in their origin at any rate, defensive movements.” (D. H. MacGregor, 1912.)
Industrial combinations must be recognized as “steps in the greater efficiency, the increased economy, and the better organization of industry.” (Minority Report of the Parliamentary Committee on Trusts, 1918.) - Write on the topic which, in your reading for this course, has most interested you.
Final. [May or June] 1935.
Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Examination Papers—Finals, 1935 (HUC 7000.28, 77 of 284).
Image Source: Edwin Francis Gay in Harvard Class Album 1934.