Author: Irwin Collier

Columbia. Socialist speakers and undergraduate debates on socialism, 1910-11

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2019-03-20

In the current political times younger citizens see the pathology of centrally-planned, authoritarian socialism à la Stalin as being as distant as the pathology of authoritarian manifestations of capitalism. “Democratic socialism” has become again a rallying cry, a progressive, small-d “democratic” alternative to the mixed capitalist economy status quo. This is not unlike the debate about socialism on campus and at the ballot box in the years before the first world war. With this in mind, I thought it would be interesting to trawl through the Columbia Spectator for a few years (1910-11) to read articles in which the word “socialism” appears. These articles can be read below.

My own favorite item in this post is the description of an invited speaker, a graduate of Barnard College’s (first) class of 1893, the suffragette Jessica Garretson (later “Finch” and then “Cosgrave”), as “the woman of Carnegie Hall fame who is responsible for the statement that ‘Rich girls turn to Socialism as flowers to the sun'”–not quite an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez backstory but times have changed.

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SOCIALISM LECTURE FRIDAY INSTEAD

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIII, Number 141, 6 April 1910, p. 2.

Instead of lecturing yesterday as Spectator announced he would, Mr. Eugene V. Debs will talk Friday. As candidate of the Socialist Party for President in 1908, Mr. Debs is well fitted for his subject, Socialism. Seats in Earl Hall will be reserved until 4 o’clock, after which the public will be admitted.

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DEBS CHAMPIONS SOCIALISM
Twelve Hundred People Greet Famous Socialist at Lecture in Horace Mann Auditorium

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIII, Number 144, 9 April 1910, pp. 1,5.

Before the largest audience that has listened to a lecture at Columbia University since Professor James of Harvard delivered the first of his famous lectures on pragmatism and before the most enthusiastic audience that has crowded a Columbia lecture room in many a day, Eugene V. Debs three times candidate for President of the United States on the Socialist Ticket spoke yesterday for an hour and a half on the work to which he has dedicated his life —Socialism.

The lecture was scheduled to take place in Earl Hall, but long before 4 o’clock it became evident that the auditorium in that building would be altogether too small. It was crowded by half past three. At the last moment, therefore, the lecture was changed to the Horace Mann Auditorium which seats between one thousand and twelve hundred people. It was none too large. When Mr. Debs entered, promptly at 4 o’clock, there was scarcely a seat to be had. His entrance was greeted with an enthusiastic burst of applause that lasted several minutes, and which was renewed a moment later, when, after being introduced by G. T. Hersch ’10L, president of the Socialist Society, the speaker rose to begin his address. Mr. Debs presents a striking figure—tall with a large, narrow very bald head, keen eyes and long, bony arms and fingers which he uses with great effect. His simplicity and sincerity were apparent from the outset.

The speech itself was a memorable one, and one which those who heard it will not soon forget. Mr. Debs began, almost academically with an account of Industrial Era which succeeded the Age of Feudalism, but presently warming to his subject he swept on, carrying with him an audience that listened attentively to every word. Although the speech was essentially a serious one and reached at times depths of pathos hard to surpass, it was relieved ever and again by touches of a dry, quaint humour of which Mr. Debs is a master —a humour so keen that it not only caused the audience to laugh but provoked several times spontaneous bursts of applause.

“Socialism,” said Mr. Debs, “is a scientific analysis of present and past conditions, and a forecast of what, from those conditions, is bound to come. We are not endeavoring to foist Socialism on Society, and we are merely preparing it for its peaceful entrance.” The account of present day conditions was forceful without oratory. Debs told of having seen father carrying the dinner pail to the child who worked in the factory, because the present system of production demands cheap labor. Coming from a man who at thirteen was working on a railroad, and at sixteen was firing a freight engine, the facts seemed all the more forceful.

The Socialist leader related his experience with the “Four Hundred,” some of whom he once had occasion to address. “They wanted to see what kind of an animal I was,” he said. I had great notoriety at the time —and they had great curiosity. They were all attired in evening dress. The ladies wore what, for some mysterious reason, they called full dress. As I looked into their empty faces, I thought, ‘How artificial they seem.’ If you would have perfect social standing you must be useless.”

After a summary of the unfavorable conditions with which the workingman is now oppressed, including child labor, disinterestedness of the employer, and the prevalent desire for cheap labor, Mr. Debs outlined the hopes of Socialism. Under this system he declared that every man and woman would be given the opportunity to work for the common good. Education and cultivation of the arts would be taken up by every individual. This would be possible because by co-operation instead of competition, the child would not be forced to work, and the workingman not ground under the heel of the individual capitalist. The exploitation of the minority at the expense of the majority would thus give place, by a common awakening, to a state where co-operation, instead of competition would be an economic rule.

Most interesting was the speaker’s comparison of the Socialists of today with the men who led the agitation for the American Revolution. “Undesirable Citizens,” then, all of them—Samuel Adams, the arch incendiary—Tom Paine, vilified as a destroyer of Society —Jefferson, branded as a traitor. “I wonder,” said the speaker, “if the aristocratic Daughters of the Revolution could by some miracle come face to face with their revered forefathers as they were in their own time, whether they would not disown them. Those visionary agitators were disreputable then. They are only respectable now because they are dead, and because the world moved up to where they stood. John Brown and the other abolitionists he cited as a further example—as people with a vision of better things who stood up for their convictions and were despised in their generation. “When John Brown was hung they called him a monster, ten years later he was a fanatic, ten years more and he was misjudged, and now only recently the State bought the old John Brown homestead and the Governor, on the occasion of its dedication, said that ‘the spot where his dust reposes is the most sacred in this commonwealth.'”

“One word,” said Mr. Debs, “I want to leave with you young men and women. It is this, Nothing is more glorious than to stand up for convictions, when the world disagrees with you. If your last friend deserts you, you will be in better company than you were before.”

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DEBATING IN CLASSROOM
Novel System to be Inaugurated Under Auspices of Barnard Literary Association

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIII, Number 144, 9 April 1910, p. 1.

Barnard Literary Association in [col]laboration with Dr. Agger of the Economics Department has formulated a plan of compulsory participation in debating; this experiment to become immediately effective in certain economics classes. In conjunction with Drs. Agger and Mussey, the project has been evolved, including all members taking Economics 2. The system will work as follows: A subject for debate will be chosen, probably on some aspect of socialism. Then during class hours every member of the class will have to speak extemporaneously for five minutes on the subject selected. The individual men will not be told beforehand on what side they will talk, so the speeches will be entirely impromptu. These five minute talks will be so to speak, the preliminaries. All the members of the class will act as judges, and at the conclusion of the trials they will vote for the four best men to comprise the team.

This arrangement will be conducted in both, Dr. Aggers and Dr. Mussey’s classes and after each section has chosen its team, a formal debate will be held, probably in Earl Hall. The whole affair will be conducted under the auspices of Barnard Literary Association. A committee on arrangements has been appointed, consisting of C.J.W. Meisel ’11, R.R. Stewart ’11, R.C. Ingalls ’12, and E.W. Stone ’11, ex-officio. To further stimulate student interest, the society has made appropriations in order to present prizes to the winning team.

Dr. Agger is very enthusiastic about the new plan, and predicts great results for the future. It is a most happy circumstance that a debating society should take charge of this undertaking, and by the co-operation of faculty and the undergraduates, student interest in debating cannot fail to be evoked. A new era for debating is dawning. If this experiment proves as successful as it is expected to, it will undoubtedly be extended to other courses in economics and politics, and will become a permanent feature of the curriculum.

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INTERSECTION DEBATE SOON
Both Teams Selected Yesterday

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIII, Number 164, 3 May 1910, p. 1.

Arrangements for the intersection debate which is being conducted by the Barnard Literary Association, are rapidly progressing. The subject, as the poster on the society’s bulletin board in Hamilton Hall announces, is Socialism.

Yesterday, Dr. Agger’s morning and afternoon sections each selected a team. Ten men spoke before each class and five were chosen by vote of the class. The morning section picked the following men: L.K. Frank ’12, W.M. Delerick ’12, S.R. Gerstein ’11, C.J.W. Meisel ’11, W.W. Pettit (Pg), while the other section is to be represented by I.[?] J. Levinson ’12, W.A. Scott ’11, S.M. Strassburger ’11, W. MacRossie ’11, J. Levy ’11. All these men must meet in 205 West Hall at 11:55 today in order to choose sides for the semi-finals to be held tomorrow. The team that wins will debate the same subject with Professor Mussey’s section.

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DO WE WANT SOCIALISM?
Students in Economics 2 to Decide Question in Debate Held Under Auspices of Barnard Lit.

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIII, Number 168, 7 May 1910, p. 3.

Those who are interested in Economics will have an excellent opportunity of hearing a debate on Socialism next Monday at 3 p.m. in 301 Hamilton Hall. The question reads, “Resolved that the common ownership of all the means of production will promote social welfare.” The debaters are all members of the classes in Economics 2. As the course is a very popular one, it is given in three sections, two of which are conducted by Dr. Agger and the other by Professor Mussey. Last Monday Dr. Agger’s sections held their preliminaries and each selected a team. On Wednesday these two teams met, and the judges unanimously decided in favor of the negative team, which consisted of S. M. Strasburger ’11, G. W. Scott ’11, and S. J. Levinson ’12, of the afternoon section. The team representing the morning section was composed of the following men: L. K. Frank ’12, S. R. Gerstein ’11, W. W. Pettit (T. C.), and W. M. Dederick ’12. The decision was based upon the preparation shown, and skill in delivery. The judges also selected Strassburger, Pettit and Levinson as the best speakers, and these men will represent Dr. Agger’s sections against Professor Mussey’s next Monday. Professor Mussey’s section has also chosen a team consisting of S. I. Fried ’12, E. V. Broderick ’12, and W. S. Dakin (T. C.)

The debate next Monday promises to be one of the most interesting ever heard on the Campus. It is the first time that debate has ever been introduced into the class-room as part of the work. The planning, and the making of arrangements for this debate was done by Barnard Literary Association in collaboration with Professor Mussey and Dr. Agger. The members of the winning team are to receive appropriate prizes donated by the association. An invitation to be present has been extended to the students taking Economics 2, in Barnard College. The debate will be open to any one in the University.

Not only have the men on the teams shown unusual interest in the contest but all the men in the various sections are very enthusiastic as to the undertaking. Professor Beard of the Politics Department thinks the scheme is an admirable one, and is anxious to extend it to his field. It may also be possible to introduce class-room debate into the various courses in Philosophy.

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SOCIALISTS RESUSCITATED
Open Meetings Planned

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIV, Number 16, 15 October 1910, p. 6.

Earl Hall yesterday afternoon was the scene of the Socialist Club’s meeting.

The work for the present year was decided upon, and it was planned to hold a series of open meetings, similar to those of last year, which were addressed by such men as Charles Edward Russell, the present Socialist candidate for Governor, Lincoln Steffens and Eugene V. Debs. There will also be the regular club meetings, with speakers of equally independent ideas but of less wide reputation.

The study and discussion of the principles of Socialism necessary for the formation of an intelligent opinion upon this world-wide movement, will also be continued in the hope that the student body’s interest in public affairs may not only be stimulated, but also educated

The next meeting of the club will be on Wednesday, October 19, at 4:15 p m., in room A, Earl Hall. All those who are interested in the radical political thought of the present day are cordially invited to co-operate with the club, while those who are interested it the investigation of social problems are urged to become members.

Mrs. Florence Kelly, in all probability, will speak in the auditorium of Earl Hall on Thursday, November 10.

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INSTRUCTION IN SOCIALISM
Series of Essays Planned

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIV, Number 20, 20 October 1910, p. 1.

Something which is both novel and valuable was adopted by the Socialist Club at its meeting yesterday afternoon. This is a scheme for instructing the members in the fundamental principles of Socialism by having a graded series of essays read at the respective meetings.

Plans were also laid to have Mr. Russel, the Socialist Gubernatorial candidate make a campaign speech at the University sometime before election day and also to get Mrs. Finch up on the Campus. Mrs. Finch is the woman of Carnegie Hall fame who is responsible for the statement that “Rich girls turn to Socialism as flowers to the sun.”

On account of the unavoidable detention of N. Levey ’10L, who was to have read a paper entitled “The Original Intention of the Framers of the Constitution,” J. H. Henle ’12 spoke for a short time on the same topic with which he was thoroughly familiar. He pointed out that, while the Radicals in the colonies dictated the Declaration of Independence, it was the Conservatives who controlled the Constitutional Convention. He said in part: “Authentic reports show that behind closed doors, under a pledge of secrecy, they deliberately planned to protect the wealthy and those of higher understanding. Hamilton, in James-fashion, said in convention, that the constitution proposed would be almost impossible of amendment and, in the Federalist papers, that it was easy of amendment. The Supreme Court was effectively put in absolute control by an arbitory vetoing power and the entire government was made as indirect as it could possibly be—the House of Representatives being the only rope thrown out to the Radicals. The main point of interest is the striking contrast between the unpublished speeches of all the members in the convention with the stated views of the same men in the Federalist papers.”

An open discussion followed. The next meeting of the club will be in Earl Hall, room L, on Friday, October 28.

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About Jessica Garretson Finch

Source: Webpage History of Finch College

JESSICA GARRETSON earned her B.A. as one of the seven women in Barnard College’s first graduating class in 1893. Looking back on the four years she studied there, she said she considered them a waste of time, and observed that her college education had prepared her for one thing – to be a tutor in Greek! After marrying James Finch and receiving her law degree from New York University in the same month that she gave birth to a daughter, she decided to establish a post-secondary school for women that was “different,” and she did! The Finch School opened in 1900 with 13 students. Its curriculum was oriented toward the practical, with as many workshops, studios and practice rooms as classrooms. As enrollment grew, additional room was needed, and by 1904, with grants she had received and a hefty mortgage she arranged for the construction of the building on 78th Street known to many Finch women as the Academic Building. There, in addition to an academic faculty, most of whom were visiting professors from Columbia University, were actors from the New York stage, Seventh Avenue fashion designers, performing instrumentalists, singers, poets and politicians.

MEANWHILE, MRS. FINCH BECAME MRS. [John O’Hara Cosgrave in 1913] COSGRAVE. Her first marriage ended in divorce soon after the turn of the century. In 1913 she married the distinguished journalist, John O’Hare Cosgrave, who proposed to her during the intermission of a Carnegie Hall concert.

PREPARATION FOR THE “RECURRENT CAREER” was at the heart of Jessica Cosgrave’s educational philosophy, and along with her intense interest in “current events” (a term she coined), became the inspiration for the Finch curriculum. Women’s lives, she said, are unlike men’s lives; women’s lives have distinct phases. Therefore, a woman should be in school until she is 22; for the next three or four years she should launch into the first phase of her career; in her mid twenties she will marry, put aside her career and devote her energies to raising a family, four children was the ideal number. At about age 40, with her children in school, a woman should resume her career and, Mrs. Cosgrave advised, seriously consider entering politics.

IN ADDITION TO RUNNING WHAT WAS THEN TERMED “a fashionable school for girls,” Jessica Cosgrave worked energetically from 1900 on for two “causes”; Women’s Suffrage and Socialism. She was quoted in a NEW YORKER magazine “Profile” by Angelica Gibbons in 1946 as saying, “If there is any sensation more exquisite than walking up Fifth Avenue to music in a parade for an unpopular cause, I don’t know what it is.” She said that in one of the suffrage parades “People on the sidelines become impassioned to the point of throwing rotten vegetables and eggs at the ladies as they passed.” Angelica Gibbs goes on to note that this experience proved so invigorating to Jessica Cosgrave that after marching, most of the way up Fifth Avenue, she dropped out of line, took a cab back to the starting point, and “hoofed it all the way up again with another contingent.”

JESSICA COSGRAVE’S “SOCIALISM” may seem a bit incongruous considering how many of the young women from all parts of the United States, South America, Europe and Asia attending Finch came from wealthy families. In 1911, asked about her membership in the Socialist Party and the appearance as speakers at the Finch School of Upton Sinclair, Walter Lippman and other “radicals,” Mrs. Cosgrave said: “My chief object is to awaken Social Consciousness in the girls. I want my graduates to become powers in their communities, not idle fashionable women. I don’t teach these young girls actual Socialism, but Social Activism.” Thirty-five years later, in 1946, when a Finch student interviewed Mrs. Cosgrave, and asked about her politics, she said she stood “Just a bit left of center”!

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SOCIALISTIC LECTURE TODAY
Charles Edward Russell Socialist Candidate for Governor to Speak In Havemeyer

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIV, Number 35, 7 November 1910, p. 8.

Columbia men will have an unusual opportunity this afternoon to hear in interesting man talk about an interesting subject. Mr. Charles Edward Russell, the author and magazine writer who is running for Governor of this State on the Socialist ticket will talk to Columbia men about socialism as a remedy for the evils from which New York is suffering. The lecture will be delivered in 309 Havemeyer, at 4 o’clock and will be open to the public.

Mr. Russell did general reporting for a number of New York papers, including the Herald, and vas then sent all over the country on special articles for the Sunday papers. For a time he was managing editor of the Hearst newspapers in Chicago. Then he began writing for the magazines. His magazine writing has taken the form of vigorous protests against the sort of political corruption and economic injustice that he saw from the inside during his newspaper days. He has become a “muckraker,” and has recently said that he “intends to keep on raking muck until somebody removes the muck.”

Mr. Russell has written quite a number of books, including “Lawless Wealth,” [1908] “Soldiers of the Common Good,” [article series most of which revised and published in] “The Uprising of the Many,” [1907] “The Heart of the Railway Problem,” “A Life of Chatterton,” [1908] and “Why I am a Socialist,” [1910] and he is now busy on a life of Wendell Phillips [1914].

This is the first time he has run for political office as a Socialist. The renewed interest in socialism all over the country, and the recent Socialist victory in Milwaukee, made it probable that Mr. Russell will poll a large vote tomorrow.

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ECONOMISTS TO HEAR NOTED SOCIALIST

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIV, Number 106, 24 February 1911, p. 2.

Mr. John Spargo will deliver the address at the meeting of the Graduate Economics Club tonight. The subject of his talk is, “The Wider Aspects of Socialism.” Mr. Spargo is a well-known socialist. The meeting will be held in 510 Kent, at 8 tonight. All members and guests are requested to be on hand promptly. The club is made up of graduate students who are working for a Ph. D.

Following are other lectures scheduled:

Friday, March 10: Henry George’s Theory of Land Rent and the Single Tax. Paper by Mr. I. S. Adlerblum.

Friday, March 24: A detailed description and criticism of the provisions of Senator Aldrich’s Plan for Banking Reform in the United States. Paper by Mr. Oswald Knauth.

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DISCUSSION OF SOCIALISM
Graduate Economics Club

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIV, Number 107, 25 February 1911, p. 1.

Mr. John Spargo the noted author and lecturer addressed the meeting of the Graduate Economics Club last evening in Kent Hall. About seventy-five members and guests were present. The lecture was followed by an informal discussion in which Mr. Spargo declared himself ready to answer any questions put to him.

The subject of Mr. Spargo’s lecture was in general socialism, but he confined himself for the most part to a consideration of the theories of Marx, Engel, and Riccardo. He said it was not from a man’s enemies but from his friends that the most was to be feared. In the case of these three economists their over enthusiastic followers had been responsible for much misrepresentation. A single bald statement, in a great many cases, had been made a slogan while all that qualified it had been forgotten.

From the statement of abstract theories Mr. Spargo went on to a consideration of the spread of socialism throughout the country and particularly in the West. “The State of Oklahoma,” he said, “has the greatest number of socialists in proportion to the population, of any state in the Union.” He accounted for this chiefly by the fact that those people who had emigrated to the West and had been persevering enough to face the hardships of pioneering were of a more liberal and unbiased turn of mind than the conservative Easterners. Socialism he said in part, offers them a theory of Social Progress, A Social Ideal, and not only that but an organized movement for the realization of that Ideal which appeals to their Western intellects.

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SOCIALISTS TO STUDY SOCIALISM

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator,Volume LIV, Number 108, 27 February 1911, p. 5.

The Socialist Club is planning to study socialism in a systematic way. Beginning with the next meeting, definite chapters in Mr. Edmund Kelly’s “Twentieth Century Socialism” will be assigned to the members for study. At succeeding meetings these will be discussed by the members and specially invited guests. President Trimble speaks very enthusiastically of the plan and considers this an excellent opportunity for everyone interested in socialism to increase their knowledge of the arguments for and against it.

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[Economics in the Rear-view Mirror attaches the following notes on Edmund Kelly:]

Kelly, Edmond (1851-1909). Educated at Columbia [Class of 1870?] and at Cambridge. “Lecturer on Municipal Government at Columbia University”. He had founded the City Club and the subsidiary Good Government Clubs. Political and professional activities in New York and in Paris.

Kelly, Edmond. Evolution and Effort and their Relation to Religion and Politics. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1895.

____________. Government or Human Evolution. Vol. I Justice. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1900.

____________. Government or Human Evolution.Vol. II Individualism and Collectivism. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1901.

____________. A Practical Programme for Working Men. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1906.

____________. The Unemployables. London: P.S. King & Son, 1907.

____________. The Elimination of the Tramp by the Introduction into America of the Labour Colony System already proved Effective in Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland, with the Modifications thereof Necessary to adapt this System to American Conditions. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908.

____________. Twentieth Century Socialism. What it is not; What it is; How it may come. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1911. [Forward by Franklin H. Giddings]

“Aware that he had not long to live, Mr. Kelly hastened to finish the first draft of the book [Twentieth Century Socialism], and indeed he survived that completion only two weeks. He knew that considerable editorial work was needed, and this he entrusted to Mrs. Florence Kelley, author of “Some Ethical Gains through Legislation” and translator of Marx’ “Discourse on Free Trade,” and of Friedrich Engels’s work on the “Condition of the Working Class in England.” She undertook and has fulfilled this trust, and has been aided throughout by the untiring labors of Shaun Kelly, the author’s son.” Pp. xiv and xv.

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STUDENTS OF SOCIALISM TO MEET TODAY

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIV, Number 110, 1 March 1911, p. 2.

In Earl Hall today, at 4:10, the Socialistic Club will hold an important meeting. The organization is taking up a systematic study of Socialism and today there will be discussion, at the meeting, of Edmond Kelley’s “Twentieth Century Socialism.” At the next meeting, March 8, the club will be addressed by some prominent Socialist, probably John Spargo. All students are invited to attend today’s meeting.

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SOCIALISTS ELECT OFFICERS
Trimble Chosen President

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIV, Number 110, 1 March 1911, p. 8.

Election of officers of the Socialist Society for the coming term was held yesterday afternoon with the following results: R.J. Trimble, president; and G.G. Bobbe, secretary and treasurer. It was decided that the club would read several chapters of Kelly’s “Twentieth Century Socialism” for each meeting and assign a member to prepare a paper upon them. The next meeting will be held on March 1.

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SOCIALISTS MAKE GIFT TO UNIVERSITY

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIV, Number 111, 2 March 1911, p. 3.

At the meeting of the Socialist club held yesterday afternoon, it was decided to present a copy of “Twentieth Century Socialism,” to the University. Mr. Fraenkel of the Law School gave an interesting explanation of the views expressed in the first few chapters of that book and a general discussion followed. The next meeting will be held the afternoon of Wednesday, March 3.

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SOCIALISTS ON 20TH CENTURY SOCIALISM

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator,Volume LIV, Number 117, 9 March 1911, p. 1.

At a meeting held yesterday afternoon in Earl Hall, the Socialist Club took up an interesting discussion on a paper read on Commissioner Edward [sic] Kelly’s “Twentieth Century Socialism” was also taken up, and resulted in a lively discussion about the respective merits of the evolutionary and revolutionary points of view on Socialism. The next meeting of the club will be held Wednesday, March 15 and if possible some prominent Socialist will be obtained to lead the discussion.

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“INCOME TAX” INTERESTS ECONOMISTS

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator,Volume LIV, Number 118, 10 March 1911, p. 1.

Next Wednesday the Undergraduate Economics Club will meet in 510 Kent at 8 p. m. The main subject for discussion will be “The Federal Income Tax,” E. V. Broderick, ’12 will give a history of the income tax and its actual working up to 1895. After an informal discussion of this, there will be reports and outlines for the coming work in the following committee; Socialism; Tariff, Railroads, Banking, Trusts, Conservation of Natural Resources and Labor Problems. Those members who were present at the last meeting have been assigned to committees. Members desiring to work on any special committee should inform the chairman of that committee

The plans for the remaining semester include trips to the Stock Exchange, Clearing House, Plant of Bush Terminal Cos., in addition to an address by Mr. G. A. McAneny, borough President of Manhattan and several other prominent men of the day.

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SOCIALIST SOCIETY MEETING
Mrs. Jessica Finch Speaks

Source: Barnard Bulletin (April 5, 1911), p. 3.

Mrs. Jessica Finch spoke on Wednesday, March 29, 1911, before the Barnard and Columbia Chapters of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. Her talk was extremely interesting. She spoke first on the need for getting rid of poverty in this world. Physical well-being is the basis for spiritual well-being. It is very easy for people who are materially well-off to point out people who live beautiful, inspiring lives under adverse conditions. But lack of the essentials of life, such as food, air, light and leisure, are bound to retard intellectual mental growth.

Poverty, moreover, is unnecessary in the world at present. Before the introduction of machinery, it is true that there was not enough of even the necessities of life to go around. But since the industrial revolution there is no need for any one to be without life’s necessities, for there is more than enough for all. To secure for all a fair share of the necessities of life, industry must be socialized. All unearned increments, that is, all profits not due to mental and physical labor, must go to society or equal distribution among those who spent themselves in the production thereof.

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TO DISCUSS MODERN SOCIALISM

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIV, Number 149, 20 April 1911, p. 8.

The Columbia Socialist Society will hold a regular meeting this afternoon at 4:10 o’clock in Earl Hall. The members will hold an open discussion on the third chapter of Kelly’s ““Twentieth Century Socialism.” All members of the University are invited to attend the meeting.

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SOCIALISTS TO GATHER TOMORROW

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LV, Number 14, 12 October 1911, p. 5.

As announced in yesterday’s issue, the year’s first meeting of the Socialist Society will be held in Earl Hall tomorrow afternoon at 3 o’clock. The society will be addressed by its president, S. S. Bobbe ’13, and an outline of the coming season’s work will be discussed. All members and students interested in Socialism should attend.

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NOTED SOCIALIST TO TALK
Meeting of Club Today

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LV, Number 25, 25 October 1911, p. 6.

Today at 4:00 P. M. the Socialist Club will hold its second meeting of the year in Room J, Earl Hall. The club will be addressed by the organizer of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, H.J. Laidler, Wesleyan ’07, who will explain the work he has been doing as organizer and what the Columbia chapter can do to help create an intelligent interest in Socialism at Columbia.

The Intercollegiate Socialist Society has lately increased its chapters to 30, an increase in the past year of over three hundred per cent. Mr. Laidler has been to a great extent responsible for this increase, and is, therefore, well qualified to give an interesting and encouraging talk to the society. He will also discuss with the club the matter of a course of lectures on radical subjects by prominent men. that is now being planned by the club. The Intercollegiate Society will aid the club in securing the speakers.

Besides Mr. Laidler, several of the members of the club will read papers on different aspects of Socialism. All those in the University interested in Socialism are invited to attend.

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LAIDLER ADDRESSES SOCIALIST CLUB

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator,Volume LV, Number 26, 26 October 1911, p. 2.

H. J. Laidler, the organizer of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society addressed the Columbia Socialist Club yesterday on the progress of Socialism in the United States during the past twenty and especially in the colleges. His work as organizer has brought him in touch with conditions all over the country, and he spoke of the grasp Socialism has taken on all forms of society.

“I have seen miners,” he said, “take up Karl Marx and study him into the night, and go from him to philosophy, to literature, art and science—all because of the new outlook they had received. If you really want to get the most out of life you should get the philosophy of Socialism; you should study it earnestly and with that sympathy that gives us insight. Socialism has been the means of moulding the lives of many. Further, we should compensate to society that which society has given to us.”

Following Mr. Laidler’s speech the club discussed the question of speakers on various live topics. These speeches are to be given by a number of prominent men and will form a series. They will not be confined to Socialism, but will take up all lines of radical thought. As soon as the speakers have all been secured, the club will publish the list with their various topics. The next meeting of the club will be held next Wednesday afternoon in Earl Hall.

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TRUST PROBLEM DISCUSSED
Seager Addresses Economists

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LV, Number 32, 2 November 1911, p. 8.

At the meeting of the Economics Club in Hamilton Hall yesterday afternoon Professor H. P. Seager gave a lecture on Trusts. A large audience was present when the president of the club introduced the speaker. Professor Seager began his lecture by giving a short history of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890. He praised the law very highly and said that better wording could hardly be framed to cover the situation so thoroughly. Until the term of Roosevelt, the law had not been properly enforced. Under McKinley, only three indictments were issued; under Roosevelt, however, there were twenty-five indictments against trusts and the same policy has been carried on under Taft, his record being eighteen, up to July 1, 1911.

The late decisions of the Supreme Court were next discussed by Professor Seager. He was not very sanguine about the probable efficacy of the court’s orders to the trusts to dissolve. The haze surrounding the court’s decisions must be cleared away in subsequent suits before the real meaning of the Anti-Trust Act is defined.

It was therefore the duty of the President to institute suit against the Steel Trust in order to clear up this vagueness. Industry must necessarily be dull until it is definitely settled whether business, as at present organized can exist or not.

He remarked in conclusion that the tendency seemed to be toward Socialism, but that he had grave doubts whether this tendency would go to that extent. It was his opinion that the present situation would produce a solution for the problems of today.

______________________

FOREIGN SOCIALISM STUDIED
Cooperation Discussed

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator,Volume LV, Number 49, 23 November 1911, p. 5.

At a study meeting held in Earl Hall yesterday, R.J. Trimble ’12, addressed the Socialist Club on the cooperative movement in Belgium. This movement has spread into almost all of the retail business of the country, and the working people buy nearly all their goods at these stores obtaining not only a saving in price, but free insurance against unemployment, sickness and accident.

The next meeting of the club will be held on Wednesday, November 29th, when one of the members will give a talk on Edward R. Bellamy and his works. On Friday, December 8, Mr. John Moody, of “Moodys Magazine,” will give a lecture under the auspices of the club on “The Problem of Railroads.”

______________________

ADDRESS ON CHILD LABOR
O. R. Lovejoy Gives Lecture

Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LV, Number 68, 19 December 1911, p. 3.

“Child Labor” was the topic of the third lecture in the series on “Modern Problems” held under the auspices of the Socialist Club given yesterday afternoon by Owen R. Lovejoy. Mr. Lovejoy drew largely from his own experience as secretary of the National Child Labor Committee. “As compared with the great problem itself, the effects of child labor on the child dwindle into insignificance. Really the most important aspect of the problem is its economic aspect. It means a menace to our economic interest from the standpoint of wages. Wherever child labor is employed the standard of wages in the community is lowered. Thus, in some New England towns men get only eight or nine dollars a week as a result of the competition from child labor.

“Child Labor” acts indirectly to destroy the family. No more faulty argument can be used against Socialism than to say it will destroy the family, it is already destroyed. The employment of children during the hours they should be under the influence of the home tends in this direction. But even worse, the lower standard of wages resultant on child labor makes it the duty of a man subject to those conditions not to attempt to raise a family.

“Legislation regulating this course has been secured in thirty-eight of the states, but the great fault is not that sufficient legislation has been had, but that there has not been sufficient enforcement of the legislation.”

“The main opposition to child labor regulation has come in the past from those most vitally interested —from the employers, from the parents of the children and even from the children themselves. It has actually been demonstrated by comparison of factories in New England where no child labor is employed and those of the South where it is employed that the employer suffers in economic loss by their employment—and yet the employers oppose us. The parents are against us either because they are ignorant or because they suffer the want of a larger income, whereas child labor itself acts to lower their own wages.

Image Source: 1912 U.S. presidential campaign poster for the Socialist Party ticket: Eugene V. Debs and Emil Seidel from Wikimedia Commons.

Tags Agger, Mussey

Curriculum Economics Programs Michigan

Michigan. Major Expansion of Economics Department, 1892

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2019-03-19

About a dozen years after the University of Michigan established its own department of political economy, a major expansion took place under the leadership of professor Henry Carter Adams in 1892. Below you will find the course offerings for the academic years 1891-92 and 1892-93 along with two U. of M. Daily reports about the department’s economics program.

Other links of interest regarding economics at the University of Michigan:

History of the University of Michigan economics department through 1940.

List of University of Michigan economics faculty up through 1980.

Memorial to Henry Carter Adams (1851-1921) in the Journal of Political Economy, 1922.

Pictures of Henry Carter Adams’ home (interior and exterior photographs)

_________________________

POLITICAL ECONOMY.
A Letter From Dr. Adams.
(January, 1891)

Eds. U. of M. Daily,

Gentlemen: It gives me pleasure to comply with your request, and state the nature of the work which will be Undertaken in Political Economy during the Second Semester. The usual courses will be offered, but with some slight modification. They are as follows:

First: “Unsettled questions in Political Economy.” This course will comprise three lectures a week. It will embrace a study of the money question, statistics in relation to Political economy, development of economic thought, commercial crises, the railroad problem and the problem of emigration [sic].

Students who elect this course will have the privilege of listening to the Hon. Carroll D. Wright, who will give six lectures upon Statistics in their relations to the economic and social problems. Mr. Wright was for years at the head of the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, of Massachusetts and is now at the head of the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington. His first lecture will be given on March 9^th.

Dr. E. R. A. Seligman, Professor of Political Economy, in Columbia college, New York City, will some time in the month of May deliver, as part of the same course, lectures [sic] on the History of Political Economy. Dr. Seligman is well known as one of foremost economists in this country and his lectures on this subject may be looked forward to with great interest.

Arrangements had been made with Dr. Edmund James, of the University of Pennsylvania, to deliver a few lectures in this general course, but a letter has just been received saying that his physician will not permit him to undertake any extra labor. The other topics in this course will be treated by myself.

Second: “Social and Industrial Reform.” This course of lectures will embrace the development of industrial classes, poor law legislation, labor problem and socialism will be given under my immediate direction.

Third: “Foreign Commercial Relations of the United States.” This course of lectures, which will be two hours a week, will be given by Dr. Frederick C. Hicks. Dr. Hicks has given a great deal of attention to this subject. He will treat in this course of the theories of foreign and domestic trade, of the industrial resources of the United States on which trade must rest, and of the possibilities of developing a foreign commerce for the United States. He will, also, speak of the principles of free trade and protection in connection with foreign trade. This course of lectures will be most interesting and instructive. The students who are prepared to elect it are earnestly recommended to do so.

Fourth: “Seminary in the Science of Finance.” This course will be limited to students who are prepared to take advanced work in the science of finance. The study undertaken will be either the Financial History of the United States or Taxing System in the United States. It will be conducted by myself, with some assistance from Mr. Hicks

I am, of course, very solicitous that the work in economics should not suffer on account of my partial absence during the year. I am sure it has not suffered at all under the proficient direction of Professor Taylor, and I think that the students will see from the above program that it is not likely to suffer during the second Semester.

Very respectfully,
HENRY C. ADAMS.

Source: The U. of M. Daily, Vol. I, No. 75 (January 20, 1891), pp. 1.

_________________________

Courses of Instruction
1891-92

POLITICAL ECONOMY.

FIRST SEMESTER.

Elements of Political Economy (short course). Text-book: Walker. M, W, F, Sec. I, 2-3; Sec. II, 3-4. Dr. HICKS.
Course I is designed for those who desire to obtain a general knowledge of Political Economy. It embraces, in addition to a statement of fundamental principles, brief studies on practical economic problems.

History of the Development of Industrial Society. Lectures and quiz. Lectures, Tu,Th, 11½—12½. Quiz, M, Sec. I, 11½—12½; W, Sec. II, 11½—12½. Professor ADAMS.
Course 3 is designed to be introductory to all Courses in Political Economy except Course 1. It is desirable that it should be preceded by Course 1 in History. Students who intend to take all the work offered in economics should elect Course 3 the first semester of their second year of residence.

Principles of the Science of Finance. Lectures and quiz. Lectures, M, W, F, 2-3. Quiz, Tu, Sec. I, 2-3; Th, Sec. II, 2-3. Professor ADAMS.
Course 5 must be preceded by Course 4.

Socialism and Communism. Recitations, with assigned readings. Text-books: Ely’s French and German Socialism; Adams’s Relation of the State to Industrial Action. Tu,Th, 11½—12½. Dr. HICKS.
Course 7 must be preceded by Course 2.

Theory of Statistics. Lectures, with practical work. Tu, Th, 4-5.
HICKS.

Industrial and Commercial Development of the United States. Lectures. Tu, Th, 3-4. Dr. HICKS.
Course 11 must be preceded by Courses 2 and 4.

Seminary in Economics. M, 4-6. Two-fifths Course. Professor ADAMS.
Course 13 must be preceded by Courses 2 and 4.

Current Economic Literature and Legislation. Once in two weeks, M, 7-9. One-fifth Course. Professor ADAMS and Dr. HICKS.
Course 15 is designed for candidates for advanced degrees, or for students especially proficient in Political Economy.

SECOND SEMESTER.

Elements of Political Economy. Text-book: Walker. M, W, F, Sec. I, 10½—11½; Sec. II, 11½—12½; Sec. III, 2-3. Dr. HICKS.

Unsettled Problems in Political Economy. Lectures and quiz. Lectures, M, W, F, 2-3. Quiz, Tu, Sec. I, 2-3; Th, Sec. II, 2-3; F, Sec. III, 2-3. Professor ADAMS.
Course 4 comprises lectures on commercial crises, immigration, free trade and protection, the labor question, and the monopoly question. It must be preceded by Course 2.

The Railroad Problem. Lectures. Tu, Th, 11½—12½. Professor ADAMS.
Course 6 must be preceded by Course 2.

History of the Tariff in the United States. Lectures and text-book. Tu, Th, 3-4. Dr. HICKS.
Course 8 must be preceded by Course 2; Course 11 is also desirable.

History of Financial Legislation in the United States. Lectures and readings. Tu, Th, 4-5. Dr. HICKS.
Course 10 must be preceded by Course 5.

Critical Analysis of Economic Theories. Lectures and readings. W, 3-4. Professor ADAMS.
Course 12 is intended for advanced students, who are making a special study of Political Economy.

Seminary in Finance. M, 3-5. Two-fifths Course. Professor ADAMS.
Course 14 must be preceded by Course 5.

Current Economic Literature and Legislation. Once in two weeks, W, 7-9. One-fifth Course. Professor ADAMS and Dr. HICKS.
Course 16 is designed for candidates for advanced degrees, or for students especially proficient in Political Economy.

Source: University of Michigan. General Register for 1891-92, pp. 62-64.

_________________________

WORK IN ECONOMICS.
(October 1892)

A Great Change Introduced into This Department.
A Daily Man Has a Talk With Prof. Adams. — Nine Men are After Advanced Degrees with Political Economy for a Major. — A Word About the New Instructors. — Both are Graduates of the University of Michigan.

A complete change has been brought about in the department of Political Economy. Its scope has been greatly enlarged, new courses have been added and many of the old ones have been revised. An assistant professorship has been created and two new instructors have been engaged. The course now offered is as complete as can be found in any American college. Prof. Henry C. Adams, when interviewed on the subject, said:

“Yes, the work in Political Economy has been entirely rearranged. Our primary object has been to adapt the courses as far as possible to the needs of all the various classes of students. We place in the first class those who desire to obtain a brief, general view of the subject, such as may be had in one semester’s work. The text-book course in Walker is designed to this end. In the next class come those students who wish to enter more fully into the work but still confine themselves to a general knowledge of the subject. For them the four lecture courses, known as the undergraduate work, are intended, viz: Industrial History Elements of Political Economy, Unsettled Problems and the Science of Finance. The third class consists of those undergraduates who wish to advance so far as to take those special studies known as the intermediate courses. The fourth class comprises the graduate students.”

“The changes in this department look toward the organization of a graduate school. It is my belief that when students have completed their third year in the University they are well prepared to enter upon a higher plane of work. That which is most valuable in an education can not be obtained in lecture and recitation courses. Above these, which are designed to give the mind breadth of grasp and general preparation, come the seminary courses in which specialization is sought. Text books are discarded and for them are substituted the general literature of Political Science, and statistics, the raw material of economics. From a wide range of reading the student is forced to construct for himself a clear and consistent idea of the subject in hand. The advantages of this system are two-fold. In the first place, the knowledge that the student gains is thorough, and he makes it his own as he could never do in a lecture or text-book course. Secondly, and what is of far greater importance, he gains an insight into methods of original research and becomes accustomed to the handling of unworked material.

“It will readily be seen that such results are not obtainable in large classes. Personal contact between the instructors and students are indispensable to the work. With this in view are given Courses 21 and 22 in which the graduate students and the four instructors meet one evening in two weeks for the discussion of current economic literature and legislation. To bridge over the chasm between professor and student it was determined to appoint two instructors on half time, who, as they are candidates for advanced degrees, belong in part to the student body, rather than appoint one full instructor. The changes in the course have proven eminently successful. There are already nine candidates for advanced degrees with Pol. Ec. for their major study. Five of them are for the degree of Ph. D. and the others for Master’s degrees.

“Every student should specialize before leaving college. Whether his subject be Political Economy or History or Literature or Philosophy or Languages, matters not. Let but his investigating powers be given exercise in the proper field and the benefit derived will be enormous.”

Assistant Professor Taylor is so well known to students of the U. of M. as scarcely to need an introduction. He is a graduate of Northwestern University, has studied at Johns Hopkins, and took the degree of Ph.D. at Michigan. Two years ago he took the place of Prof. Adams for one semester. Since then he has held the chair of History and Political Science at Albion College. His doctor’s thesis is a finished work and has received the highest commendation from the most eminent critics.

Mr. Cooley, a son of Judge Thomas Cooley, graduated from the U. of M. first as M.E., then as A.B. He has since studied in Germany and Italy. In the recent census he had charge of the statistics of street railways and published an exceedingly interesting monograph on the subject. He is a candidate for the degree of Ph.D.

Mr. Dixon is so recent a graduate of the U. of M. as to be well known to all readers of the Daily. He too is a candidate for the Ph.D. degree.

Source: The U. of M. Daily, Vol. III, No. 6 (October 7, 1892), pp. 1, 3.

_________________________

Courses of Instruction
1892-93

POLITICAL ECONOMY.

The Courses in Political Economy are classified as undergraduate, intermediate, and graduate Courses. The undergraduate Courses, viz: Courses 1, 2, 3, and 5, may be taken by any student, but are not accepted as counting for an advanced degree. The intermediate Courses, viz: Courses 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13, may also be taken by any student; in the case, however, of students who are pursuing their work on the University system, and of graduate students, special instruction of one hour a week is given in connection with each Course. This extra hour is devoted to a more careful analysis and a more extended discussion than is possible in the lectures. The graduate Courses, viz: Courses 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, and 22, are not open to undergraduate students who pursue their work on the credit system, but may be taken by those who are working on the University system.

FIRST SEMESTER.

Elements of Political Economy (short course). Text-book: Walker. M, W, F, Sec. I, at 2; Sec. II, at 3. Mr. C. H. COOLEY.
Course 1 is designed for those who desire to obtain a general knowledge of political economy. It embraces, in addition to a statement of fundamental principles, brief studies on practical economic problems. It is not accepted as a substitute for Course 2 unless supplemented by Course 3.

History of the Development of Industrial Society. Lectures and quiz. Lectures, Tu,Th, at 11½. Quiz, M, Sec. I, at 10½; Sec. II, at 11½; Tu, Sec. III, at 11½; W, Sec. IV, at 10½; Sec. V, at 11½. Professor ADAMS and Mr. DIXON.
Course 3 is designed to be introductory to all Courses in Political Economy except Course I. It is not, however, required for admission to such Courses. It embraces a history of English industrial society from the twelfth century to the present time, and is designed to show how modern industrial customs and rights came into existence. It is desirable that it be preceded by Course I in History. Students who intend to take all the work offered in economics should elect Course 3 the first semester of their second year of residence.

Problems in Political Economy. Lectures and quiz. Lectures, M, W, F, at 2. Quiz, Tu, Sec I, at 2; Th, Sec. II, at 2; F, III, at 3. Professor ADAMS and Assistant Professor F. M. TAYLOR.
Course 5 treats in a cursory manner current problems in political economy. The problems studied are the following: The Railway Problem; Industrial Crises; Free Trade and Protection; Industrial Reforms; Labor Legislation; Taxation. It is designed as the supplement of Course 2, by which it must be preceded; and as introductory to Courses 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13, although it is not required for those Courses.

History and Theory of Land Tenure and Agrarian Movements. M, W, at 4. Assistant Professor F. M. TAYLOR.

History and Principles of Currency and Banking. Tu, Th, at 4. Assistant Professor F. M. TAYLOR.

Industrial and Commercial Development of the United States. Tu, Th, at 11½. Assistant Professor F. M. TAYLOR.

Theory of Statistics. Th, at 5. Mr. C. H. COOLEY.
Courses 7, 9, 11, and 13 must be preceded by Course 2.

Critical Analysis of Economic Thought. M, at 8¼. Professor ADAMS.

Seminary in Finance. M, 9½—11½. Professor ADAMS.

Current Economic Legislation and Literature. Once in two weeks. W, 7-9, P.M. Professor ADAMS, Assistant Professor F. M. TAYLOR, Mr. C. H. COOLEY, and Mr. DIXON.

SECOND SEMESTER.

Elements of Political Economy. Lectures, M, W,F, at 3. Quiz; Tu, Sec. I, at 11½; Sec. II, at 3; Th, Sec. III, at 11½; Sec. IV, at 3. Assistant Professor F. M. TAYLOR.

Principles of the Science of Finance. Lectures, M, W,F, at 2. Quiz, M, Sec. I, at 3; W, Sec. II, at 3; F, Sec. III, at 3. Professor ADAMS and Mr. DIXON.

The Transportation Problem. Tu, Th, at 11½. Professor ADAMS.

History and Theory of Socialism and Communism. Tu, Th, at 4. Assistant Professor F. M. TAYLOR.

History of the Tariff in the United States. Text-book: Taussig. Tu, Th, at 10½. Mr. DIXON.

History of Political Economy. Text-book: Ingram. M,W, at 10. Mr. C. H. COOLEY.
Course 12, if taken by students who have passed Course 1, will be accepted as an equivalent for Course 2.
Courses 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 must be preceded by Course 2.

Critical Examination of the Labor Problem and of the Monopoly Problem. M, at 8¼. Professor ADAMS.

Seminary in Economics. M, 9½ to 11½. Professor ADAMS.

Social Philosophy, with especial reference to economic relations. Th, at 8¼. Assistant Professor F. M. TAYLOR.

Current Economic Legislation and Literature. Once in two weeks. W, 7-9, P. M. Professor ADAMS, Assistant Professor F. M. TAYLOR, Mr. C. H. COOLEY, and Mr. DIXON.

Source: University of Michigan. General Register for 1892-93, pp. 69-71.

Image Source: 1891 photograph of the Michigan Wolverines football team. By J. Jefferson Gibson, Ann Arbor, Michigan – Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Public Domain,

Tags AdamsHC, Cooley, Dixon, HicksFC, JamesEJ, Seligman, TaylorFM

Exam Questions Johns Hopkins Swarthmore Undergraduate

Swarthmore. Honors Examinations. Economic Theory and Social Economics, 1934.

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2019-03-18

It is not quite clear whether the following exams that had been prepared for Swarthmore College’s honors economics degree were simply misfiled with Johns Hopkins’ political economy department exams or whether those exams had been been recycled expressly for examining Johns Hopkins’ economics majors. In any event we can add Broadus Mitchell’s two exams for Swarthmore here to those of later external examiners Paul Samuelson (1943), Wolfgang Stolper (1944), and Richard Musgrave (1946). The Swarthmore department exam for 1931 was also posted earlier.

A 90 page transcript of an oral history interview with Broadus Mitchell from August 14 and 15, 1977 can be found in the Southern Oral History Program Collection at the website Documenting the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Selections from that oral history will be added later.

____________________

Abstract from the Oral History Interview with Broadus Mitchell
August 14 and 15, 1977

John Broadus Mitchell was born in Georgetown, Kentucky, in 1892 into a family with roots in religion and education. Mitchell describes his upbringing and the strong influence of both his parents. Mitchell discusses his father’s education and career as a professor of history, his parents’ liberal political leanings, and their community involvement. Mitchell also describes his perceptions of race while growing up in Kentucky, Virginia, and South Carolina. Mitchell became an economic historian; he describes in detail how the textile industry shifted its base of power from New England to the southern states in the late nineteenth century, and he talks at length about the impact of industrialization on southern communities. Mitchell became particularly interested in the politics of labor and race. He explains the purposes of labor education programs—notably the Summer School for Women Workers at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and the Southern Summer School for Women Workers in North Carolina—and his participation in those endeavors. In the 1920s, Mitchell moved to Baltimore to teach at Johns Hopkins University. In the 1930s, he came under the administration’s scrutiny when he publicly spoke out about a lynching in Salisbury, Maryland, advocated for the admittance of an African American graduate student to the university, and began to embrace socialist politics. He resigned in 1939. During the years of World War II, he worked briefly at Occidental College and New York University before finding a tenured position in the economics department at Rutgers University. Mitchell continued to be involved in leftist politics during the 1940s, and in the 1950s he participated in a movement at Rutgers to combat McCarthyism in academia. Throughout this interview, Mitchell emphasizes the influence of his upbringing on his political beliefs, and he relates his own experiences to those of his siblings who also were engaged in activism related to labor and race. Towards the end of the interview, Mitchell’s wife, Louise, joins the interview and discusses her career in teaching, her own community involvement, and her efforts to balance the demands of work and family.

____________________

Swarthmore College
DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
HONORS EXAMINATION: ECONOMIC THEORY
May 17, 1934 at 8:30

Examiner: Professor Broadus Mitchell, Johns Hopkins

Please answer any five.

What are the relative importances today of production, exchange, distribution, and consumption of wealth?
“The business cycle is inherent in the capitalist economic system.” Discuss this statement.
How do “pure profits” arise? Under what circumstances did the enterpriser, as a distinct functionary, enter economic life? What are some of the means of avoiding economic risk?
Under what economic circumstances was the differential or Ricardian theory of rent announced? Explain the use made of this theory by Henry George.
Discuss as many theories of interest as you can, indicating which seems to you to be the most reasonable.
Explain (with the use of schedules and diagrams if you choose) how market price is determined under conditions of perfect competition. Discuss briefly monopoly price and class price.
What was the Wage Fund Theory and why was it abandoned?
Discuss the relationship between the Malthusian theory of population and socialism.
Give your definition of money.
What are the main arguments for and against fiat money inflation?
How would you provide a cure for “technological unemployment”?
What are some of the limitations upon conscious economic planning within the capitalist system as these have appeared during the present depression?

Swarthmore College
DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
HONORS EXAMINATION: SOCIAL ECONOMICS
May 18, 1934

Examiner: Professor Broadus Mitchell, Johns Hopkins

Answer the questions marked with an asterisk and any four (4) others.

*What do you consider to be the chief economic desire of the mass of the people of the United States? Explain.
What would you say is the major thesis of the majority of text books in the principles of political economy? Is it accurate to say that these books are practically invalidated by the events of the past four or five years?
Make an argument for the continuance of capitalism.
Indicate the chief wastes of the competitive system.
What is R.H. Tawney’s criticism of an acquisitive society?
From the standpoint of probable future change, what have been the principal economic and political tendencies in the United States?
*Discuss the effect of the present business depression upon the problem of economic reform in the United States.
Give your judgment of the sufficiency of the single tax as a scheme of social reform.
*Distinguish between “utopian” and “scientific” socialism.
What are some of the relative advantages in compulsory unemployment insurance of the “company reserve” plan and the “pooled fund” plan?
In your opinion, is widespread organization of labor indispensable to radical social reorganization in this country?
If you consider that there is a theory of social reform running through the recovery measures of the present Administration, give your critical appraisal of it.
*What would you recommend as next steps in the “New Deal”.
In what respects can the experiment of Soviet Russia be taken as a guide for the United States? In what respects is it not a guide for us?
*What book in the College library, no matter what the character or subject, has interested you most? Why?

Source: Johns Hopkins University. The Ferdinand Hamburger, Jr. Archives. Department of Political Economy Records.Series 6, Curricular Materials and Exams, Box 2, Folder “Exams, 1930-35”.

Image Source: Broadus Mitchell in his office, ca. 1938. From the Johns Hopkins university graphic and pictorial collection.

Tags MitchellB

Economists Michigan Research Tip Teaching

Michigan. Henry Carter Adams and School of Applied Ethics, 1891. With Biography.

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2019-03-17

Scavenging in digitized archives is certainly no less important an activity than risking the dust in conventional archival folders found in boxes to seek paper receipts of history. Last night I stumbled into the wonderful digitized archives of the University of Michigan’s daily newspaper (see link below). Like a kid in the proverbial candy store, I was riding a sugar high for most of the evening. This morning after a couple of cups of coffee, I put together the following material: biographical/career information about Professor Henry Carter Adams and a report of an interdisciplinary summer school he helped to establish in applied ethics (in 1891!).

I was well aware of Adams’ reputation as an expert in public finance, but I hadn’t noticed that he had been fired from Cornell for a lecture he gave on the Great Southwest railroad strike of 1886. “This man must go, he is  sapping the foundations of our society.” We shouldn’t ever take our academic freedom for granted!

Other posts at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror dealing with the economist Henry Carter Adams:

Research Tips:

The online searchable archives of the University of Michigan newspaper, The U. of M. Daily.
The University of Michigan Faculty History Project

______________________

 HENRY CARTER ADAMS
(31st December, 1851—11th August, 1921)

The following memorial to the late  Professor Henry C. Adams was present ed to the University Senate at a recent  meeting. It was prepared by a commit tee of which R. M. Wenley; Professor of  Philosophy was the chairman. The other  members were S. Lawrence Bigelow,   Professor of Chemistry and I. Leo  Sharfman, Professor of Economics.

An obvious drawback of academic life is  that titles tend to obscure persons: and when,  as with our colleague Henry Carter Adams,   the man dwarfs the title, liability to misjudge  or overlook becomes serious. Not till too  late, death prompting inquiry or reflection, do  we grow aware of the true reasons for the  magnitude of our gain and loss. Even so,   when we attempt a fit Memorial, the Odyssey  of the spirit is all too apt to evade our tardy  heed. The career of Professor Adams furn ishes a typical case in point.

Henry Carter Adams was born at Daven port, Iowa, December 31, 1851. He came of  old New England stock; his forebears had  made the great adventure oversea in 1623. His  mother, Elizabeth Douglass, and his father,   Ephraim Adams, were a like-minded pair,   representative of the soundest traditions of  New England character and nurture. Ephraim  Adams, one of a small band of missionaries  from Andover Theological Seminary who for sook everything for Christ’s sake, arrived on  the open prairies of Iowa in 1842—the goal  of three weeks’ hard journey from Albany, New York. Their mission it was to kindle  and tend the torch, not merely of religion, but  also of education, among the far-flung pioneers.   Consequently, it is impossible to understand  why Henry Adams was what he was, became  what he became, unless one can evoke sympa thetic appreciation of the temper, which de termined his upbringing. For example, it may  well astonish us to learn that his nineteenth  birthday was but a few months off ere he  received his first formal instruction. The  reasons thereof may astonish us even more.   The child had been sickly always, physicians  informing the parents that he could not survive the age of fourteen. The “open prairies”  proved his physical salvation. Given a cause  and a gun, the boy roamed free, passing from  missionary home to missionary home, some- times bearing parental messages to the scat tered preachers. In this way he outgrew  debility and, better still, acquired a love for  nature, and an intimacy with our average  citizenry, never lost. Meanwhile, the elder  Adams taught him Greek, Latin, and He brew  as occasion permitted. At length, in 1869, he   entered Denmark Academy whence, after a  single year, he was able to proceed to Iowa  College, Grinnell, where he graduated in 1874. During these five years, the man whom we  knew started to shape himself.

In the home and the wider circle of friends, the impressionable days of childhood had been  moulded by Puritanism. God’s providence,  the responsibility of man, the absolute distinc tion between right and wrong, with all result- ant duties and prohibitions, set the perspective.  Fortunately, the characteristic Yankee interest  in education—in intelligence rather than learn ing—contributed a vital element. An active  mind enlarged the atmosphere of the soul. De- spite its straight limitations as some reckon  them; here was a real culture, giving men in ner harmony with self-secure from disturbance  by the baser passions. As we are aware  now, disturbance came otherwise. To quote  Adams’ own words, he was “plagued by doc trines” from the time he went to the Academy.   The spiritual impress of the New England  home never left him; it had been etched upon  his very being. But, thus early, Calvinistic  dogma aroused misgivings, because its sheer  profundity bred high doubt. As a matter of  course, Ephraim Adams expected his son to  follow the Christian ministry, and Henry him self foresaw no other calling meantime. Hence, when scepticism assailed him, he was destined  to a terrible, heart-searching experience, the  worse that domestic affection drew him one  way, mental integrity another. His first years  at Grinnell were bootless; the prescribed stud ies held no attraction and, likely enough, sick ness had left certain lethargy. But, when  he came to history, philosophy, and social  questions, he felt a new appeal. His Junior  and Senior years, eager interest stimulating,  profited him much. Still dubious, he taught  for a year after graduation at Nashua, Iowa. Then, bowing to paternal prayer and maternal  hope, he entered Andover Theological Semi-nary, not to prepare for the ministry, however,   but “to try himself out”—to discover whether  preaching were possible for him. In the Spring  of 1876, he had decided irrevocably that it was  not. Adams’ “first” education—education by  the natal group—ended here. It had guaran teed him the grace which is the issue of  moral habit, had wedded him to the convic tion that justice is truth in action. For, al- though he abandoned certain theological for mulae, the footfall of spiritual things ever  echoed through hrs character. The union of  winsome gentleness with stern devotion to  humanitarian ideals, so distinctive of Professor Adams, rooted in the persistent influ ence of the New England conscience.

The Second Education

Turning to the “second” education, destined  to enroll our colleague among economic lead ers, it is necessary to recall once again conditions almost forgotten now. When, forty-five  years ago, an academy and college-bred lad,   destined for the ministry, found it necessary  to desist, he was indeed “all at sea.” For  facilities, offered on every hand today by the  Graduate Schools of the great universities,   did not exist. The youth might drift—into  journalism, teaching, or what not. But drift ing was not on Adams’ programme. He wrote  to his parents who, tragically enough, could  not understand him, “I must obtain another  cultural training.” His mind had dwelt already upon social, political, and economic prob lems: therefore, the “second” education must  be non-theological. Whither could he look? At this crisis his course was set by one of  those small accidents, which, strange to tell,   play a decisive part in many lives. By mere  chance, he came upon a catalogue of Johns  Hopkins University, so late in the day, more- over, that his application for a fellowship,   with an essay enclosed as evidence of fitness,  arrived just within time limits. Adams was  chosen one of ten Fellows from a list of more  than three hundred candidates, and to Balti more he went in the fall of 1876. His letters  attest that the new, ampler opportunities at tracted him strongly. He availed himself of  concerts, for music always moved him. Here  he heard the classics for the first time. Hither- to he had known only sacred music. Sometimes  he played in church and, as records show, he  sang in our Choral Union while a young pro fessor. We find, too, that he served as assistant in the Johns Hopkins library, not for  the extravagant salary, as he remarks humor ously, but on account of access to books—”I  am reading myself full.” His summers were  spent in his native State, working in the fields.   In 1878 he received the doctorate, the first  conferred by the young and unique university.

 Study in Europe

The day after graduation President Oilman  sent for him, and told him, “You must go to  Europe.” The reply was typical—”I can’t, I  haven’t a cent.” Oilman continued, ”I shall  see what can be done,” with the result that the benefactor to whom Adams dedicated his  first book found the requisite funds. Brief  stays at Oxford and Paris, lengthier at Berlin  and Heidelberg, filled the next fourteen  months. The journalistic bee still buzzing in  his head, Adams had visited Godkin before  leaving for Europe, to discuss the constructive  political journalism he had in mind. Godkin  received him kindly, but as Adams dryly re- marks, had a long way to travel ere he could  understand. In the summer of 1878, President  Andrew D. White, of Cornell, traveling in  Germany, summoned Adams, to discuss a  vacancy in this university. To Adams’ huge  diappointment, as the interview developed, it  became apparent that White, with a nonchalance some of us remember well, had mistaken H. C. Adams, the budding economist,   for H. B. Adams, the budding historian. The  vacancy was in history, not in political science  or economics. Expectation vanished in thin  air. But Adams was not done with. Return ing to his pension, he sat up all night to draft  the outline of a course of lectures which, as  he bluntly put it, “Cornell needed.” Next day  he sought President White again who, being  half persuaded by Adams’ verbal exposition,   kept the document, saying he would communicate with Cornell, requesting that a place be  made for the course if possible. Writing from  Saratoga, in September 1879, Adams tells his  mother that all is off at Cornell, that he must  abandon his career and buckle down to earn ing a livelihood. A lapse of ten days trans formed the scene. The Cornell appointment  had been arranged, and he went to Ithaca  forthwith. So meagre were the facilities then  offered in the general field of the social sci ences that Adams gave one semester, at Cornell and Johns Hopkins respectively, to these  subjects in the year 1879-80. The same ar rangement continued till 1886, Michigan be ing substituted for Johns Hopkins in 1881. As  older men recall, Dr. Angell taught economics,   in addition to international law, till the time  of his transfer to Pekin as Minister to China.   At this juncture, Adams joined us, forming a  life-long association. He himself says that he  “gave up three careers, —preaching, journalism,   and reform—to devote himself to teaching”  where he believed his mission lay.

Dismissal from Cornell

There is no better index to the enormous  change that has overtaken the usual approach  to social questions than the circumstances , which caused Adams’ expulsion from Cornell  University. The Scientific American Supple ment (p. 8861) of date August 21st, 1886, con tains the substance of an address, “The Labor  Problem.” We quote Adams’ comments, inscribed beside the clipping in his personal  scrapbook.

“This is the article that caused my dismissal  from Cornell. This article was given on the  spur of the moment. Professor Thurston had  invited a man from New York to address the  engineering students, but the lecturer failed  to come. I was asked to come in and say a  few words on the Gould Strike. It was said  to me that other members of the Faculty  would speak, and that I might present my  views as an advocate.

“The room was crowded for, besides the  engineering society, my own students, getting  word of it, came over to the Physical Laboratory room where the addresses of the society  were given. A more inspiring audience no  man could have, and I spoke with ease, with  pleasure and, from the way my words were  received, with effect. The New York papers  reported what I said and, three days after, Mr.  Henry Sage, than whom I know no more  honest hypocrite or unchristian a Christian,   came into the President’s office and, taking  the clipping from The New York Times out  of his pocket said, “This man must go, he is  sapping the foundations of our society.” It  was not until then that I thought of putting  what I said into print, but I then did it, fol lowing as nearly as possible what I said and  the way I said it.

“The effect of this episode upon myself was  to learn that what I said might possibly be of  some importance.

“Of course, there is a good deal of secret  history connected with the matter, but I am  not likely to forget that.”

This echo of old, far-off, unhappy things is  most suggestive, because more than any other  man, perhaps, Adams mediated the vast, silent  change marking these last thirty-five years.   As has been aptly said, “he had a most roman tic intellectual career.”

Appointment at Michigan

In 1887, he was appointed to the Michigan  chair, which he greatly graced till death. At  this time, too, on the urgent request of his  close friend, Judge Thomas M. Cooley, then  Chairman, he joined the Interstate Commerce  Commission, much against his own inclination.   When he founded the Statistical Department,   he had the assistance of a single clerk; when  he resigned, in 1911, the personnel numbered  two hundred and fifty. Mutatis mutandis, a  parallel expansion overtook our Department  of Economics under his leadership.

It must suffice merely to mention his services with the Eleventh Census, the Michigan  Tax Commission, and the Chinese Republic,   pointing out that such positions come only to  men of high distinction and proven authority.   More than a quarter of a century has elapsed  since his election to the Presidency of the  American Economic Association, which he  helped to found; nearly as long since he was  presiding officer of the American Statistical  Association. In short, he ranked among the  most important and influential leaders in his  chosen field. His Alma Mater honored her- self in honoring him with the degree of LL.D  twenty-three years ago; Wisconsin followed suit in 1903; Johns Hopkins in 1915. Needless  to say, he had many offers, some most tempt ing, to leave Michigan. But, entertaining pro found confidence in the State University, be lieving that it was destined to be instrumental  in the diffusion of those opportunities in high er education indispensable to a free democracy,  he refused to move. In attachment to this  University, like not a few men whom she has  imported, he outdid many alumni.

His Original Work

Naturally, Adams produced a mass of orig inal work. Upon two fields of economic investigation, particularly—public finance and  public control—he imposed a durable imprint.  His interest in public finance dated from his  doctoral dissertation, Taxation in the United  States, 1789-1816. In Public Debts, an Essay  in the Science of Finance, later translated into  Japanese, and in The Science of Finance, an  Investigation of Public Expenditures and Pub lic Revenues, he not only manifested wide  economic grasp and remarkable power of an alysis, but exhibited the principles of public  finance as a scientific unity, in their manifold  relations to social, political, and economic progress. His memorable essay, The Relation of the State to Industrial Action, marked his initial, and most significant, contribution in the  field of public control. He subjected the preva lent doctrine of laissez-faire to searching analysis, and, with profound appreciation of the  demands of a dynamic world, formulated basic  principles for the guidance of industrial leg islation. His emphasis on the function of the  State in moulding the plans of competitive ac tion, in realizing for society the benefits of  monopolistic control, and in restoring condi tions of social harmony to the economic order,   foreshadowed much of the theoretical dis cussion and practical reorganization of a later  day. His subsequent achievements in the de velopment of public control, especially over  railroad transportation, are incorporated in the  accounts and classifications which he slowly  evolved as statistician of the Interstate Com merce Commission. The universal acceptance  today of statuted accounting and statistical  practice as an indispensable instrument for the  effective regulation of railroads and public  utilities remains a lasting monument to the  intelligence and validity of his pioneering ef forts. It is a distinct loss to economic scholarship and to historical tradition that his Ameri can Railway Accounting published seven years  after his resignation from the Interstate Com merce Commission, was but a commentary on  these accounts and classifications rather than  that graphic picture of their origin and de velopment such as he alone was competent to  produce.

The Social Philosopher

Throughout life, Adams’ intellectual ap proach was that of a social philosopher rather  than of a technical economist. This is plain  throughout his published work. Intuitive yearn ing for social justice, prompted by a Puritan  conscience, stimulated by an analytical intel lect, colored all his writings. Human rela tions uniformly served as his point of depar ture, and humane amelioration was ever the  horizon toward which he moved. Such was  the spirit of his Relation of the State to In dustrial Action, and of his fundamental stud ies in public finance. His papers on the social  movements of our time, and on the social  ministry of wealth, contributed to The Inter national Journal of Ethics; his discussions, in  the economic journals, of economics and jur isprudence, publicity and corporate abuses, and  of many of the more technical aspects of rail- road taxation; of the developments of the  Trust movement, budget reform, and foreign  investments as a crucial element in international maladjustments, were moulded by a similar  insight into primary human relations, and by  a like desire to contribute to the realization of  human betterment.

Accordingly, it was the more remarkable  that Professor Adams proved himself so ef fective a public servant in the formulation of  practical and concrete machinery for the regulation of transportation agencies, in this  country and in China. The reason for this  success is to be found in his consistent adher ence to the conception of accounts and sta tistics as mere instruments of social control  rather than as fields of inquiry for their own  sake. From first to last, then, he remained the  social philosopher. His plans for the future  promised a return to the synthetic intellectual  activity of his early career. Death overtook  him with his labors unfinished, but the direc tion of his interests was clear and unmistak able.

In sum, then, remarkable as was the career,   formative as were its results, the personality  overtopped all else, mainly because Adams’  austere judgment of self, his nigh innocent  attitude toward his great attainments, won  upon others. Indeed, no one would have been  more surprised than he at the words we have  addressed to you this evening, —partly on ac- count of his innate modesty, partly thanks to  his very reticence, which prevented us from making known to him how we esteemed his  deep, pervasive glow.

S. LAWRENCE BIGELOW
 I. LEO SHARFMAN 
R. M. WENLEY, Chairman

Source: The Michigan Alumnus 520-524. Transcribed at the Henry Carter Adams page at the University of Michigan Faculty History Project.

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School of Applied Ethics, 1891.
First Dean, Henry C. Adams of the University of Michigan

In this article we give a brief sketch of the school of Applied Ethics and Prof. Henry C. Adams’ work in connection with it.

The following, taken from the secretary’s report, describes the origin and purposes of the institution:

“The School of Applied Ethics held its first session at Plymouth, Mass., from July 1 to August 12, 1891. This was an experimental undertaking, and the first step towards the carrying out of a large and important educational project, the founding of a fully-equipped School of Applied Ethics in connection with some large university. It is proposed, not to found another school similar to and is as a rival of any schools already existing, but to meet a real educational need by furnishing systematic instruction in a field of investigation not especially provided for in established institutions.

The experiment of last summer proved so successful that it has been decided to hold a similar session another year at the same time and place, and the managers hope that not only the summer school, but also the permanent school referred to will be successfully established, and occupy in time an important place among educational institutions.

The proposition to establish a School of Applied Ethics, either independently or in connection with some large university, has been under discussion for several years. Attention was first called to the need of such a school, in a public address in Boston, by Prof. Felix Adler, during the May anniversary week of 1879. The project was afterwards discussed in the Index and other papers; but the plans were still too indefinite and public interest was not sufficiently awakened to the importance of the undertaking.

The subject was next brought to public notice, and in a more definite shape at the third convention of the Ethical Societies, held in Philadelphia, January, 1889. It was the topic of a special public meeting, and addresses were made by Prof. Adler, Mr. Thomas Davidson, Professor Royce, Rev. Wm. J. Potter, and others. Numerous letters endorsing the proposed school were received from distinguished representatives of different professions in various parts of the country. At the next convention of the Ethical Societies, held in New York, December, 1890, the project was again brought forward and endorsed at a public meeting by President E. Benj. Andrews, Rev. Lyman Abbott, Professor Daniel G. Brinton, Rev. R. Heber Newton, Dr. A. S. Isaacs, and Professor Adler. Definite action towards the realization of the project was taken in the following resolution, passed by the convention:

Resolved, That the Executive Committee be empowered to raise $4000 to establish a Summer School of Ethics for one year, and to hand over its management to a committee of nine, three of whom shall be lecturers of the Ethical Societies.

In consequence of this resolution a committee was appointed, which met in New York, March 2, 1891. There were present Professor H. C. Adams, of the University of Michigan, Professor C. H. Toy, of Harvard University, Professor Felix Adler, of New York, President E. Benjamin Andrews, of Brown University, Professor Morris Jastrow, Jr.,of the University of Pennsylvania, and Mr. S. Burns Weston, of Philadelphia. The trust implied by the above resolution was accepted by the committee, and plans were presented and adopted for a summer session of six weeks with the three departments of Economics, History of Religions, and Ethics. Professor Henry C. Adams was made director of the department of Economics, Professor C.H. Toy, of History of Religions, and Professor Felix Adler, of Ethics proper. It was decided that the office of Dean should be filled in rotation by the heads of the departments in the order given, and Prof. Adams became Dean of the school for the first year.

The first session opened July 1, at Lyceum Hall, Plymouth, Mass., with public addresses by Professors Adams, Toy, and Adler on the work to be done in their respective branches. The regular daily lectures began Thursday, July 2, with a good attendance.

In the department of economics the main course consisted of a series of sixteen lectures by Professor Adams, on the History of Industrial Society and Economic Doctrine in England and America, in which special attention was given to the gradual rise of those practical problems in the labor world, which cause so much anxiety and discussion today. The subjects of the lectures in this course were as follows:

The Modern Social Movement, and the True Method of Study. The Manor considered as the Unit of Agricultural Industry in Feudal Times. The Town considered as the Unit of Manufacturing Industry in Feudal Times. The Black Death and Tyler’s Rebellion considered in their Industrial Consequences. The Times of Henry VIII and Elizabeth considered as foreshadowing Modern Ideas of Capital. The Spirit of Nationalism as expressed in Industrial Legislation of the 17th and 18th’s Centuries. Liberal Writers of the Eighteenth Century, considered with Especial Reference to the Industrial Liberalism of Adam Smith. Industrial and Social Results of the Development of Textile Machinery. Critical Analysis of the Effect of Machinery on Wages. Industrial and Social Results of the Development of Steam Navigation. Mill’s Political Economy, considered as the most Perfect Expression of the Industrial Ideas of the Middle Classes. Changes in Economic Ideas since Mill; (a) Fundamental Economic Conceptions, (b) Relation of Government to Industries. Trades-Unions considered as the Workingman’s Solution of the Labor Question. Public Commissions considered as a Conservative Solution of the Monopoly Question. An Interpretation of the Social Movement of Our Time.”

The following, clipped from the article by Rev. W. H. Johnson in the Christian Register, shows that Prof. Adams sustained his well-merited reputation as a political economist of the first rank:

“The chief interest of the school seems to have centered in the Department of Economics, testifying to the growing appreciation of the profoundly vital manner in which the great social topics of the times touch us all. Here were numbers of people gathered together who had become tired of the cure-alls offered by narrow-minded enthusiasts, not less than heartsick of the social wrongs and miseries which bring this class into existence, and intensely anxious for some teaching which would point out clear landmarks. Only the existence of this feeling of earnest longing for some measure of authoritative exposition can account for the enthusiasm which has attended the economic course. In Prof. Adams, this department has had for its director and chief expositor a mastermind. Apart from the interest of the subject, it would be impossible to listen without keen satisfaction to his rigid analysis and lucid explanations of a subject which is, for the most of us, wrapped in “chaos and perpetual night.” Prof. Adams’ final lecture, summing up the economic teaching of the school during the six weeks’ course, was one of rare merit. He was at once overwhelmed with requests for its publication, to which he has consented.”

Source: The U. of M. Daily.Vol. II, No. 51 (December 3, 1891), p. 1.

Image Source: From the Henry Carter Adams page at the University of Michigan Faculty History Project.

Tags AdamsHenryC, Sharfman

Exam Questions Johns Hopkins Undergraduate

Johns Hopkins. Comprehensive Exams on Reading List for Economics Majors, 1933-40

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2019-03-16

The exam questions transcribed below come from two folders of economics examinations at Johns Hopkins University from the 1930s in the Ferdinand Hamburger, Jr. Archives at the university. The folders are mostly filled with individual course final examinations at mid-year (Jan/Feb) and end-year (May), but the following exams are not associated with any particular course and, considering the breadth of the topics addressed, we may presume that these exams had the function of serving as comprehensive tests (see the May 11, 1935 exam below).

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EXAMINATION ON READING LIST FOR A.B. MAJORS IN BUSINESS ECONOMICS
May 24, 1933

Discuss the more important abuses in corporation management in recent years.
Indicate some of the more important departures from the laissez-faire doctrine in recent years in the United States.
What were the ideas of Adam Smith as to the desirability of state interference in economic activity and as to the proper sphere of state activity.
Distinguish between Socialism and philosophical Anarchism.
What is meant by a planned economic system? Discuss its feasibility.
Distinguish between the statistical method, the historical method, and the theoretical method in the study of business cycles.
What has been the policy of the United States as regards the protection of American investments abroad?

[Examination on the reading list in political economy (May 1934) was not in folder]

COMPREHENSIVE EXAMINATION FOR MAJORS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
May 11, 1935

Contrast, as to structure and methods, the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor.
Contrast “Utopian” and “Scientific” Socialism.
How would G. D. H. Cole make the transition from Capitalist to Cooperative Society?
Describe in brief outline the mechanics of setting up a “code of fair competition”.
Contrast the position of the journeyman under the Guild System and the average American wage-earner today.
What does Mr. George Soule mean by saying that we are now passing through an economic and social revolution?
“Economic behavior” constitutes an attempt to work out an institutional approach to the study of economics. Discuss this statement.
What are the effects of the corporate system on fundamental economic concepts?
Who were the leading members of the Austrian School of economists? What in general was the contribution of this group?
What has been the contribution of the statistical method upon the study of business cycles?
What is meant by the open door as an international economic policy? What has been the policy of the United States in this respect?

EXAMINATION FOR MR. HOWELL ON READING FOR MAJOR IN POLITICAL ECONOMY
October 5, 1935

What have been the main policies of the American Federation of Labor?
What where the chief contentions of Karl Marx?
How would Mr. G. D. H. Cole use social control of credit to bring about a cooperative commonwealth?
Describe the organization of rural life in England in, say, the 12th and 13th centuries.
What are the economic consequences of “the Power Age”?
What is an institution? Illustrate. What is the institutional approach to economics?
What is Ricardo’s place in the history of Economic thought?
Discuss the dispersion of stock ownership.
Professor Wesley Mitchell says: “We do not say that a business economy has developed in any community until most of its economic activities have taken on the form of making and spending money.” What is the meaning of this statement? What is its significance in the theory of business cycles?
What is the meaning and purpose of the “most favored nation” clause in commercial treaties? What has been the history of the American interpretation of this clause?

Source: Johns Hopkins University. Ferdinand Hamburger, Jr. Archives. Department of Political Economy Records, Series 6. Curricular Materials; Exams, 1924-29; Exams, 1951-55. Box 2, Folder “Exams, 1930-1935”.

__________________

[Examination on the reading list in political economy (May 1936) was not in folder]

EXAMINATION ON THE READING LIST IN POLITICAL ECONOMY
May 17, 1937

What can you say of the relationship between trade restrictions in the world depression?
What where the similarities of the Statute of Apprentices, 1563, and the NRA?
Contrast the general character of the economic doctrine of John Stuart Mill with that of Karl Marx.
Characterize briefly the factory acts movement, Chartist, cooperative, labor union, and Socialist movements of 19th century England.
Discuss administrative prices.
What is meant by quasi-rent?
Discuss Lutz’s requisites for a sound tax system.
What is the “most-favored-nation clause”? What are its consequences? What has been the American policy with respect to this clause?
Give an explanation of what seems to you the most reasonable theory of business cycles.
What does Veblen mean by Business Enterprise? What economic consequences does he ascribe to a system of business enterprise?

EXAMINATION ON THE READING LIST IN POLITICAL ECONOMY
May 2, 1938

What does G. D. H. Cole say as to the causes and consequences of present-day protectionism in the world?
Give some account of the Factory Acts Movement in England in the 19th century.
“Modern industry has produced a set of conditions radically different from those in which laissez-faire principles apply. It has introduced new types of industrial and business organization whose operations impede or distort the process of automatic adjustment.” Discuss.
Should tax-exempt securities be abolished in the United States?
Comment upon the various methods of commercial diplomacy that have been employed by the United States in order to promote the export business of the country.
Discuss the theory that the explanation of the business cycle is to be found in the capitalistic process of production.
What are Veblen’s ideas concerning the causes of the business cycle? His suggested remedies?
What does Marshall mean by the phrase “the representative firm”? How does he employ the concept?
Contrast the doctrines of Friedrich List and Adam Smith.
Given the following figures concerning the cost and the demand for the output of a single firm operating under the conditions of “Imperfect” competition, determine the price. Explain and discuss briefly your answer. Construct the demand schedule for the product of this firm under the condition of “perfect” competition, using as one figure in the schedule a price of 19 for an output of 11. What would be the price under “perfect” competition and how many articles would be sold? (Remember that the demand schedule for the product of a single firm is different from the general demand schedule for all firms operating under perfect competition.”

Output	Total cost at given output	Demand price for given output
9	183	21
10	188	20
11	195	19
12	205	18
13	220	17
14	239	16
15	263	15

[Examination on the reading list in political economy (May 1939) was not in folder]

EXAMINATION ON THE READING LIST IN POLITICAL ECONOMY
May 10, 1940

To what extent does the present Federal corporation income tax conform to the requisites of a sound tax system set forth by Lutz?
What lines of government policy seem to you most likely to succeed in reducing unemployment? Explain why.
What are the principal methods used by producers to stabilize the prices of their products? Discuss the probable economic consequences of private price fixing.
Explain clearly and fully Professor Marshall’s concept of the “representative firm”. What place does this concept have in Marshall’s exposition of the process of price-determination? Do you think that the concept is useful as an instrument in the elaboration of value-theory under modern conditions of industrial organization? Why or why not?
Explain the relationship between money and the business cycle. In what ways can monetary control affect the business cycle?
What is meant by the “open-door” and the “closed-door” in international economic relations? Explain the policies which the United States has pursued as respects these doctrines.
In respect to the theory of economic development, compare David Ricardo and Karl Marx. In your answer take note of (a) theory of value, (b) theory of distribution, (c) relation of state to industry, (d) method of analysis, (e) degree of realism of each (give your opinion as to the validity of their doctrines).
Contrast the English reform movement before 1860 with that after 1860. (In your answer indicate the motives that prompted the reforms; mention also what in your opinion were the two most important reforms in each period.)

Source: Gilman Hall, Johns Hopkins University. Hullabaloo 1924.

Economists Gender Harvard Transcript

Harvard/Radcliffe. Economics PhD alumna and Wharton professor, Anne C. Bezanson, 1929

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2019-03-15

The materials in this post are presented in the opposite order that they were actually assembled. I began with three pieces of correspondence and a transcript of economics courses for a Radcliffe graduate who was ABD (= “all but dissertation”) and still interested in submitting a thesis more than a decade after her last course work at Harvard. The economics department chairman, Harold H. Burbank, made no fuss and we can see from the record that Annie Catherine Bezanson was indeed awarded an economics Ph.D. in 1929.

After I filled in the course titles and professors for her transcript, I then proceeded to gather biographical/career information for Bezanson. It of course did not take very long to discover that shortly after being awarded her Ph.D. she was promoted to a professorship with tenure, the first woman to have cleared that professional hurdle at the University of Pennsylvania. What turned out to be more challenging was to find any photo whatsoever. Fortunately I stumbled upon a genealogical site that posted a picture of Anne Catherine Bezanson along with the obituary that begins the content portion of the post…

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Obituary from Bezansons of Nova Scotia

Died, Feb. 4, 1980, Dr. Anne Bezanson bur. Riverside Cemetery, Upper Stewiacke. Professor Emeritus, Wharton School of Finance & Commerce, U. of Pennsylvania, d… Hanover, Mass.

Born Mt. Dalhousie, N.S. daughter of the late John and Sarah (Creighton) Bezanson. Dr. Bezanson went to the United States in 1901, where she received her A.B. degree, A.M. & PhD. from Radcliffe…member of the Phi Beta Kappa…awarded an honourary doctor of science degree from University of British Columbia and from the University of Pennsylvania…served as Director of the Industrial Research Dept., Wharton School of Finance and Commerce; was professor at the Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania…served on the staff of the U.S. Coal Commission..member of Conference of Price Research, advisor to the Social Services Research Project, Rockefeller Foundation…wrote numerous articles in various professional economic journals …member American Economic Associationn; Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Economic History Association., serving as President from 1946-1948; American Statistical Association; Econometrics Society; Vice-President Delta Chapter Phi Beta Kappa, University of Pennsylvania.

Source: From the Website: Bezansons in North America

_______________________

PIONEER IN ACADEMIC BUSINESS RESEARCH
ANNE BEZANSON, PROFESSOR

ANNE BEZANSON had not yet completed her PhD in economic history in 1921, yet she was about to make history herself. At Wharton, the young Canadian helped establish the first business school research center, the Industrial Research Unit (later known as Industrial Research Department or IRD), with Professor Joseph Willits. The founding marked Wharton’s shift toward becoming an academic business research hub — defining a new role for business schools that continues today.

Bezanson’s 1921 article on promotion practices became the first product of the IRD. Bezanson continued her practical research in the early 1920s, writing a series on personnel issues, focusing on turnover, worker amenities, and accident prevention.

Willits and Bezanson designed an ambitious research program to explore and help civilize industrial working conditions, with the goal of social change. In 1922, Bezanson and Willits spent a year studying the earnings of coal miners at the U.S. Coal Commission. Employer associations, government agencies, and international organizations continued to look to the IRD for timely and practical knowledge.

In 1929, Bezanson finished her Harvard PhD and became the first female faculty member of Penn’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Under her leadership as co-director (which continued until 1945), the IRD had many women on its team and pursued research into the economic status of workers, revealing for the first time hard proof of the disparities in salaries and promotions for women and minorities across many industries.

Bezanson became the first woman to get full tenure at Penn, and in the 1930s sat on the National Bureau of Economic Research Price Conference. From 1939 to 1950 Bezanson was a part-time consultant at the Rockefeller Foundation, where she organized the first-ever roundtable on economic history in 1940. As a result of this involvement, Bezanson played a crucial role in the creation of the Economic History Association in the early 1940s, serving as president between 1946–1947. She died in 1980.

Source: University of Pennsylvania. The Wharton School.Wharton Alumni Magazine, 125^thAnniversary Issue (Spring 2007).

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Harvard/Radcliffe Academic Record

A.B. magna cum laude in economics.

Source: Report of the President of Radcliffe College for 1914-1915, pp. 10,13.

A.M. Annie Bezanson….Southvale, N.S. [Nova Scotia]

Source: Report of the President of Radcliffe College for 1915-1916, p. 12.

June 1929 Doctor of Philosophy

Annie Catherine Bezanson, A.B. (Radcliffe College), 1915; A.M. (ibid.), 1916. Subject, Economics. Special Field, Labor Problems. Dissertation, Earnings and Working Opportunity in the Upholstery Weavers’ Trade.

Source: Report of the President of Radcliffe College 1928-29, p. 321.

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Economics Coursework

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
(Inter-Departmental Correspondence Sheet)

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Miss Anne Bezanson, A.B., Radcliffe 1915; A.M., 1916.

1911-12

Ec 1….B [Principles of Economics, Prof. Taussig et al.]
Ec 5….B, A- [Economics of Transportation, half course. Prof. Ripley]

1912-13

Ec 23….A- [Economic History of Europe to the Middle of the Eighteenth Century. Dr. Gray]

1913-14

Ec 11….B [Economic Theory. Prof. Taussig]
Ec 24….A [Topics in the Economic History of the Nineteenth Century. Prof. Gay]

1914-15

Ec 7….. [Theories of Distribution. Prof. Carver, Excused for Generals.]

1914-15

Ec 13….A [Statistics: Theory, Method and Practice. Asst. Prof. Day]
Ec 34….A [Problems of Labor. Prof. Ripley]
Ec 12….B+ [Scope and Methods of Economic Investigation. Half-course. Prof. Carver]
Ec 33….B [International Trade and Tariff Problems in the United States. Half-course. Prof. Taussig]
Ec 20….A- [Course of Research. Probably Economic History with Prof. Gay]
Ec 14….A [History and Literature of Economics to the year 1848. Prof. Bullock]

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics. Correspondence & Papers 1902-1950. Box 3.

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Handwritten letter from Bezanson to Burbank

January 2, 1928 [sic]

My Dear Prof. Burbank:

A long time ago, I talked with Professor Young, as well as Professors Carver and Gay about submitting one of my studies in part fulfillment of the requirement for a doctor’s thesis. This request is the result of the difficulty of leaving my present work to complete the study upon which I was at work from 1915 to 1918 on the Industrial Revolution in France. This month when I completed the first analysis of the Earnings of Tapestry Weavers, I sent it to Professor Gay with the hope that it would be, or could be, made acceptable to the Department of Economics.

All this discussion has been informal and, of course, unofficial. I am now writing to you for advice about the official steps: should I apply to the Dean of the Graduate School for permission to change the thesis subject? or should this request go from you? Do you advise such a request and if so can it be made without changing my field of concentration?

Briefly my difficulty is that though I passed the General Examination in October, 1916, I have since not completed the thesis and final examination requirements. A degree seems to have some value in promotion here. Yet, I am engaged on studies which I cannot drop and go back to a subject as remote as French conditions. Dean Gay has been in touch with the progress of Tapestry Earnings and I am acting upon his suggestion in asking for an opinion upon the possibility of offering that study as a thesis.

Very sincerely yours
[signed]
Anne Bezanson

Industrial Research Department
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pa.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics. Correspondence & Papers 1902-1950. Box 3.

_______________________

Copies of responses by H.H. Burbank to Bezanson

January 7, 1929

Miss Anne Bezanson,
Index Research Department,
University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, Pa.

Dear Miss Bezanson:

I see no reason why the program which you have offered for the Ph.D. cannot be changed to allow you to present your study on “Earnings in the Upholstery Weavers Trade”.

There will be some red tape about it. I expect I shall have to secure the consent of the Dean of the Graduate School and of the Department, but I foresee no difficulties in either direction.

I will write you as soon as there is a definite decision.

One question that is certain to be raised is whether or not the research is entirely your own work or whether it was carried on by an organization. I should like to have your reply to this as soon as possible. Your preface throws some light on this. I note that you say: “All analysis and interpretation of material has been made by the Index Research Department”. Does this mean that your own work was strictly limited to the writing of the report in the preparation of the material on which the investigation was based?

Very sincerely,
[H.H. Burbank]

* * * * * * * * * * *

January 9, 1929

Miss Anne Bezanson,
Index Research Department,
University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, Pa.

Dear Miss Bezanson:

This is more or less a continuation of the note I sent to you yesterday. Last evening I talked to the members of the Department regarding your request. I think something can be worked out for you without very much trouble.

For your General Examination you presented Theory, Statistics, International Trade, Labor, and American History, reserving Economic History as your special field. It is my guess that you have done very little indeed with the literature of the field of Economic History during the last ten years, and that to prepare this field for a special examination would involve an inordinate amount of work. Further, it would require quite a stretch of the imagination to include your study of “The Upholstery Weavers” as Economic History.

Would it not be more within your general field of interest to present Labor problems as the subject for intensive examination. In spite of the fact that you presented this subject in your General Examinations it could be included as a special field. By a stroke of good fortune the Department put into effect this fall a ruling whereby candidates for the PhD may present an honor grade in an approved course in lieu of an oral examination in a subject. Ordinarily you would be required to stand for examination in Economic History as well as in Labor Problems, but under this new ruling we are able to accept the grade of A in Economics 24 taken in 1915.

Briefly then, it is my suggestion that your special field be Labor Problems, within which the dissertation which you are now presenting naturally would fall.

Please let me know if this meets with your approval.

Very sincerely,
H. H. Burbank.

HHB:BR

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics. Correspondence & Papers 1902-1950. Box 3.

Image Source: Website Bezansons in North America.

Tags Bezanson, Bullock, Burbank, Carver, Day, Gay, Gray, Ripley, Taussig

Columbia Economist Market Salaries Teaching

Columbia. Due to exploding graduate economics enrollments, Stigler hired as visiting professor, 1946

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2019-03-15

The graduate economics courses at Columbia University were swamped by registrations one year after the end of the Second World War. Over 160 students were registered for the two graduate economic theory courses offered by A.G. Hart and William S. Vickrey. The executive officer of the economics department, Carter Goodrich, requested the central university allow the department to hire a visitor to ease the burden on Hart and Vickrey. That victory won with the visiting appointment for George Stigler (then a professor at Brown), Goodrich next pushed for an increase in the general budget for teaching assistants as well as for hiring Dorothy Fox assist him in his U.S. economic history class.

______________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Faculty of Political Science

September 30, 1946

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

Dear Mr. President:

The extremely heavy enrollment for the graduate work in economics raises serious questions for the future staffing of the Economics Department. I should very much appreciate the opportunity to discuss these with you when the final figures are in, and when we can assess the situation more fully.

Meanwhile, however, there is one question on which emergency action at once seems essential. We advise the great majority of our students to take a general, systematic course in economic theory or economic analysis. We offer this year two such courses: Economics 153-4, given by Prof. A.G. Hart; and Economics 159-60, given by Mr. William S. Vickrey. Prof. Hart and Mr. Vickrey have between them over one hundred and sixty students registered. The work in these courses cannot be given on a mass lecture basis in a way that would meet the standards of any first-rate institution. It would not serve the purpose for which the Department intends it if there were not at least some degree of individual instruction.

I wish, therefore, to request an additional man to take one section of this basic course. I should like authority to approach Prof. Arthur Smithies, who taught Economic Theory at the University of Michigan, but who is at present in the Bureau of the Budget, at Washington. The proposal would be that the class should meet for two hours one day a week. I suggest $2500 for the year as the appropriate compensation. If preferred, $500 of this might properly be described as traveling expenses.

The money is available in the present budget, partly from the salary allotted for the professor of international economics on which only a half-time appointment was made for the present year, and from the money available for the unfilled position on economic history. Both these salaries, I should add, will be needed next year.

I should be most grateful if you would give me a decision on this at once, since the step must be taken immediately if it is to bring effective relief.

Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Carter Goodrich

CG:jg

______________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Faculty of Political Science

October 14, 1946

Dr. Frank D. Fackenthal
213 Low Memorial Library.

Dear Mr. President:

This time the report is not wholly negative. Following our conversation of Thursday afternoon, I invited Prof. George J. Stigler, of Brown University, to come to help us in the emergency situation in Economic Theory. Prof. Stigler has agreed to come for the first semester, but is not as yet prepared to commit himself for the entire year. I am therefore enclosing a form for his appointment for the Winter Session on the terms agreed. The salary for the first semester is available from the unused portion of the salary of Professor A.F. Burns.

I hope that we may be able to persuade Prof. Stigler to continue the work throughout the year. If not, there is a possibility that Prof. Smithies may be able to come for the second semester.

Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Carter Goodrich

______________________

[Carbon Copy]

October 18, 1946

Professor Carter Goodrich
Fayerweather

Dear Professor Goodrich

I have your letter of October 14 in regard to the appointment of Stigler as Visiting Professor and will see that the appointment goes through the next meeting of the Trustees.

Maybe I had better point out that there is no money available in Prof. Burns’ position. In addition to his own half pay, the salaries of Vickrey ($2000) and Alexander ($1700) have already charged against that. However, we will make the appointment against the balance remaining in the vacant professorship.

Very truly yours

Frank D. Fackenthal
Acting President

______________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Faculty of Political Science

October 22, 1946

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

Dear Mr. President:

I very much appreciate your action on the Stigler appointment.

The second paragraph of your letter of October 18 puzzled me, since I had never heard of Alexander. We have tracked the matter down and it appears to be an appointment in Contemporary Civilization, chargeable to a budget of Dean Carman’s. It should not be a charge on the Department of Economics.

Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Carter Goodrich
Executive Officer, Department of Economics.

______________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Faculty of Political Science

October 24, 1946

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

Dear Mr. President:

In my letter of September 30th I spoke of the problems raised for the Economics Department by the extremely heavy enrollment in the graduate school. Now that the final enrollment is in, I wish to recommend two further measures, in addition to the emergency adjustment in Theory which you have been good enough to authorize. The total registration in the graduate courses borne on the budget of the Department of Economics for this session is double that for the Spring Session of 1946, which in turn was very much larger than that for the Winter Session of 1945. In 22 courses last spring there were 788 registrations; in 24 courses this session there are 1578. 7 of these courses have enrollments of more than 100 students (Angell, 112; A. R. Burns, 127, 153; Bergson, 142; Goodrich, 141; Nurkse, 130; Wolman, 140.)

To meet this situation I request, first, that the appropriation for Assistance be raised from $1,000-$1,500. Prof. Taylor estimates the needs of the College department, which has in the past used the greater part of the Assistance fund, as $500. Professors Angell, Bergson, A.R. Burns, Nurkse, and Wolman have all asked this year for reading assistance and will certainly need it in these courses.

Second, I request the appointment of Mrs. Dorothy G. Fox as an assistant in Economics to aid in my own course Economic history of the United States, so that a part of the time may be given to discussion in sections of a reasonable size. Mrs. Fox is at present an instructor in Economic principles in University Extension. I propose a salary of $700 for the academic year.

Money for these adjustments may be taken, if necessary, from what remains in the salary allotted to the vacant professorship. I should add, however, that these adjustments are made necessary solely by the extraordinary enrollment and that making them would not in any way diminish the long-run needs of the Department.

Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Carter Goodrich
Executive Officer of the Department of Economics.

______________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Faculty of Political Science

January 15, 1947

Dr. Frank D. Fackenthal, Acting President,
Columbia University

Dear Mr. President:

I beg to request the appointment of Dr. Moses Abramovitz as Visiting Lecturer in Economics for the Spring Session, at a compensation of $1,000. This is a further adjustment to meet the emergency situation in economic theory. As indicated in my letter of October 14^th, 1946, Professor Stigler, of Brown University, agreed to come for the first semester, but was not prepared to commit himself for the entire year. He has informed us, much to our regret, that he cannot continue and I am therefore proposing a substitute. Dr. Abramovitz is one of the very best of the recent Ph.D.’s in this Department and holds a responsible research position with the National Bureau of Economic Research. He taught the same course in this Department during 1940-1941 and 1941-1942.

The total compensation for Professor Stigler, as you recall, was $1,250, of which $250 was counted as traveling expenses. The $1,000 requested for Dr. Abramovitz is available, $500 from the unused portion of the salary of Professor Arthur F. Burns and $500 from the funds for the vacant professorship.

I am enclosing the form for Dr. Abramovitz’ appointment and I very much hope you will be able to make it.

Respectfully yours,
[signed]
Carter Goodrich
Executive Officer, Department of Economics.

Source: Columbia University Archives. Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Central Files 1890-. Box 406, Folder “Goodrich, Carter. 1/1”.

Image Source: Low Memorial Library, Columbia University from the Tichnor Brothers Collection, New York Postcards, at the Boston Public Library, Print Department.

Tags Abramovitz, Angell, Bergson, BurnsAR, Fox, Goodrich, Nurkse, Smithies, Stigler, Wolman

Harvard. Syllabus and assigned readings for interdisciplinary course, Social Sciences 2, 1970-71.

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2019-03-14

Regular followers of this blog will have noticed a recurring theme of economics education within a broader historical/social scientific curriculum. This post looks at a long-time staple of Harvard’s undergraduate General Education course offerings, Social Sciences 2 “Western Thought and Institutions” that was conceived and taught by government professor Samuel H. Beer over three decades assisted by a changing stable of “section men”[sic! Theda Skocpol was a section leader in 1970-71].

I am a firm believer in the virtues of building a broad interdisciplinary foundation before allowing (compelling?) economics majors and graduate students to turn their attention to the technical methods of the discipline. The former promotes the capacity to pose interesting questions and the latter creates a capacity to seek solutions to those questions.

Following the two Harvard Crimson articles on Professor Beer and his course, Economics in the Rear-View Mirror is delighted to provide the course syllabus with its reading assignments from the academic year 1970-71. Students had to write three papers each term and according to the source for this syllabus (see below), he spend “as much work for SocSci 2 as [he] did for the other three courses combined”.

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Beer’s Soc Sci 2 Comes to A Close With Last Lecture
by Jaleh Poorooshasb
The Harvard Crimson, May 5, 1978

A chapter of Harvard history ended yesterday as Samuel H. Beer, Eaton Professor of the Science of Government, delivered his last Harvard lecture before retiring.

Beer spoke before a packed hall of about 300 students, admirers and colleagues, some of whom had come as far as a thousand miles to hear the grand finale of Social Sciences 2, “Western Thought and Institutions.”

Although Beer will take advantage of retirement regulations that allow him to teach on a half-time basis, Soc Sci 2, which Beer has taught for 30 years, will be gone from Harvard forever.

“In this case, the man made the course and we would not presume to replace him,” John H. Harvey, assistant director of General Education, said yesterday.

In the lecture, which received thunderous applause and a standing ovation, Beer discussed Nazi Germany and ended with a quote from a prison camp survivor saying good and bad people exist everywhere.

Then, before the audience realized the lecture was over, and began clapping and cheering, Beer bounded out the door. He was halfway down Divinity Ave. before Michael Walzer, professor of Government and a former sectionman for Soc Sci 2, caught up with him and invited him to the Faculty Club, where more than 20 former sectionmen attended a luncheon in Beer’s honor.

The list of former sectionmen in Soc Sci 2 includes such notables as Henry A. Kissinger ’50 and James R. Schlesinger ’50.

Old Soldiers?

“Good courses never die,” Walzer said yesterday, adding that Beer’s influence will continue through his former students.

Beer, who is best known for his work in British politics and federalism in America, will continue to study and write books in both fields, Beer said yesterday.

He will teach two government courses at Harvard next fall and will repeat them during the winter quarter at Dartmouth, he added. One course is entitled “American Federalism” and the other “Modern British Politics and Policy.”

One of a Kind

Beer, former chairman of the Government Department at Harvard and author of several major works, “is a rich scholar of the type that is not created any more,” in a world geared toward specialization,” Sidney Verba ’53, chairman of the Government Department, said yesterday.

Beer said he is “quite content to terminate Soc. Sci. 2.”

“My father took it when he was here but I didn’t sign up because he told me it’s too hard,” one freshman, who wished to remain anonymous, said yesterday.

Beer made no personal observations during the lecture. He began by saying, “I really have changed my lectures over the years. I’ve even changed the jokes. But this lecture I haven’t changed. There’s such an air of finality about it.”

Beer has long been considered one of the foremost American experts on the theory of federalism. His writings include “The Modernization of American Federalism.”

Sam Beer, Legendary Gov Prof, Dies at 97
By Huma N. Shah
The Harvard Crimson, April 14, 2009

Last year, when the Harvard government department organized a meeting for alumni, current professors were asked to give a presentation on their projects and research. One participant was former professor and department chair Samuel H. Beer, who gave a short statement about the nuances of political science during his tenure at Harvard from 1946 to 1982.

“He completely stole the show,” said government professor Stanley Hoffmann, a former student of Beer’s. “[The current professors] were all preempted by the master, who spoke without notes, remembering everyone and everything. No one believed the man was 96 years old at the time.”

Beer, a noted scholar of British and American politics, passed away on April 7, at the age of 97.

“He was a spectacularly good teacher because his classes were all in the form of questions he addressed to himself and his students, for which he had all sorts of arguments before coming to his own conclusion,” said Hoffman. “It was very different from the typical top-down sort of lecturing. It was as if he was struggling with his own opinions.”

Beer, the chair of the Harvard government department from 1954 to 1958, served as the Eaton Professor of the Science of Government for years before moving to Boston College in 1982 to be a professor of American politics.

Receiving his B.A. from the University of Michigan, Beer went to England on a Rhodes Scholarship before receiving his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard in 1943. He was later granted an honorary doctorate from the University in 1997 in recognition of “his scholarship and [the] enormous impact his teaching had on undergraduates for over three decades,” said Peter A. Hall, Beer’s former student, who is currently a European studies professor at Harvard.

Beer was most famous for his self-designed course Social Studies 2: “Western Thought and Institutions,” which he taught for 30 years. Students studied six key moments in the development of Western Civilization, and “used theoretical lenses to understand the historical process,” said former teaching fellow Judith E. Vichniac, the current director of the fellowship program at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

“Everywhere he went he was stopped on the streets by people who have taken that course,” Hall said. “It was one that inspired thousands of Harvard students.”

The teaching fellows who worked with Beer often went on to careers as academics or public service officials. Some of his famous students included Henry A. Kissinger ’50, Michael Walzer, and Charles H. Tilly ’50.

Before studying at Harvard, Beer was a staff member of the Democratic National Committee, and occasionally wrote speeches for former President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 and 1936.

Active in American politics, Beer was chairman of Americans for Democratic Action during his tenure at Harvard from 1959 to 1962. He also actively opposed student rebellions at Harvard during the late sixties.

Beer was elected president of the American Political Science Association in 1977, and was also appointed as a fellow of the British Academy in 2000.

After earning his Ph.D., Beer earned a Bronze Star fighting with the U.S. Army in Normandy. During his time at Oxford in the 1930s, he travelled to Germany, where he saw Hitlerism first hand, according to Government professor Harvey C. Mansfield ’53, another of Beer’s former students.

“He wanted to know how Germany could have fallen so far to embrace these vicious totalitarian ideas,” Mansfield said. “His courses were often directed to that subject.” Beer described the influence of these travels on his graduate work at Harvard in the Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions.

“By the time I came to Harvard in the fall of 1938, I was a fierce anti-communist, a fervent New Dealer, a devotee of Emerson, and ready to try to put it all together….[in] a defense of liberalism against the totalitarian threat,” Beer wrote. Many of his former students praised Beer’s engaging personality and dedication to teaching.

“He had a very good eye for the most important questions in politics and was intensely engaged with the thinkers over the ages who had worked with those questions,” Hall said. “When you talked to Sam Beer you were engaging in a dialogue with Marx, Weber, or Augustine. He had read an enormous amount, and he thought deeply about the big social and political questions throughout his life.”

“He would come to class wearing his military outfit and pump his fist, and tell us what to think about,” Mansfield said.

__________________

SOCIAL SCIENCES 2
READING LIST
Fall Term 1970-71

The work of the Fall Term consists of three essays, one for each topic, and the mid-year examination. Section men will make specific assignments and suggest additional reading for these essays.

Books for Purchase

Students should own the following books, available at the Harvard Coop, or elsewhere as announced:

Bunyan, John, THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS
Paperback: New American Library: Signet Classics
DOCUMENTS FOR CLASS USE (Assize of Clarendon, Writs from the treatis called “Glanville” Magna Carta, and the Constitutions of Clarendon). Pamphlet: University Printing Office. On sale in General Education office, 1737 Cambridge St., Rm. 602.
Hill, Christopher, THE CENTURY OF REVOLUTION 1603-1714
Paperback: W. W. Norton
Marx and Engels, BASIC WRITINGS ON POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY
Edited by Lewis S. Feuer. Paperback: Doubleday (Anchor)
Marx and Engels, COMMUNIST MANIFESTO
Edited by Samuel H. Beer. Paperback: Appleton-Century-Crofts (Crofts Classics)
SOCIAL CONTRACT: ESSAYS BY LOCKE, HUME, AND ROUSSEAU
Introduction by Ernest Barker. Paperback: Oxford (Galaxy Books)
Tierney, Brian, THE CRISIS OF CHURCH AND STATE 1050-1300
Paperback: Prentice-Hall (Spectrum)
Weber, Max, THEORY OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION, translated by A. Herderson and T. Parsons.
Paperback: MacMillan Free Press.
Walzer, Michael, THE REVOLUTION OF THE SAINTS
Paperback: Atheneum

Attention of members of the course is directed to the new book written by former section men in Social Sciences too, Melvin Richter (Ed.), Essays in Theory and History: An Approach to Social Sciences (Harvard University Press 1970)

Assigned Reading

Everything on the following list is on “closed reserve” in Lamont and Hilles Libraries. The date suggested here will vary during the semester; lectures and section discussions should be your guides.

TOPIC 1: TRADITIONALISM AND THE MEDIEVAL POLITY

Week of September 28: THE SOCIOLOGY OF AUTHORITY
Weber, Max, THE THEORY OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION, pp. 324-392.
Weeks of October 5, 12, and 19: FEUDAL MONARCHY IN ENGLAND
Bloch, Marc, FEUDAL SOCIETY, pp. 59-92, 103-120, 270-274.
Poole, Austin Lane, FROM DOMESDAY BOOK TO MAGNA CARTA 1087-1216, chaps, I, II, V, X-XIV.
Jolliffe, J.E.A., THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL ENGLAND, pp. 139-263.
John of Salisbury, THE STATEMAN’ S BOOK (from the POLICRATICUS), translated by John Dickinson, Introduction, Text: IV:1, 2, 3, (pp. 9-10), 4, 11; V:1, 2, 5; VI:18, 20, 21, 24; VII:17-19; VIII:17 (pp. 335-9), 18, 20, 23, (pp. 398-9; 405-10)
DOCUMENTS FOR CLASS USE: Assize of Clarendon, Writs from the Treatis called “Glanvill,” Magna Carta.

Optional: ENGLISH HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS 1042-1189 (Vol. II of series) edited by David C. Douglas and George W. Greenaway. Nos. 1 (years 1135-154), 10, 12, (pp. 322-4, 331-3, 335-8), 16, 19, 58-9, 268.

TOPIC II: DYNAMICS OF MEDIEVAL DEVELOPMENT

Week of October 26: THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
Weber, Max, FROM MAX WEBER: ESSAYS IN SOCIOLOGY, edited by H. Gerth and C. W. Mills, “THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF WORLD RELIGIONS,” pp. 267-301.
Weber, Max, THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION, edited by Talcott Parsons, chaps. VIII, XI, XIII.
Weeks of November 2: THEORIES OF SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL POWER.
Lovejoy, Arthur O., THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING, A STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF AN IDEA, pp. 24-77.
Tierney, Brian, THE CRISIS OF CHURCH AND STATE 1050-1300, pp. 1-95, 127-138.
Brooke, Z. N., LAY INVESTITURE AND ITS RELATION TO THE CONFLICT OF EMPIRE AND PAPACY (article listed separately in the libraries)
Tellenbach, Gerd, CHURCH, STATE, AND CHRISTIAN SOCIETY IN THE TIME OF THE INVESTITURE CONTEST, Introduction, chap. 1 (sections 1 and 3), chap. 2, chap. 5 (section 3) and Epilogue.
Week of November 9: THE GREGORIAN REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND
Duggan, Charles, “From the Conquest to the Death of John,” THE ENGLISH CHURCH AND THE PAPACY IN THE MIDDLE AGEs, edited by C. H. Lawrence, pp. 65-115.
Poole, A. L., FROM DOMESDAY BOOK TO MAGNA CARTA, chaps. VI, VII.
DOCUMENTS FOR CLASS USE: Assize of Clarendon.
Knowles, David, THE EPISCOPAL COLLEAGUES OF ARCHBISHOP THOMAS BECKET, chap. V.

TOPIC III: RELIGIOUS REVOLT AND POLITICAL MODERNIZATION

Weeks of November 16 and 23: Analytical Perspectives
Marx and Engels, Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, edited by Louis S. Feuer, pp. 1-67, 82-111.
Marx, Karl, CAPITAL, Modern Library edition, pp. 784-837 (chaps. 26-32). In some editions this is chap. 24, entitled, “Primary Accumulation.”
Beer, Samuel H., Introduction to Marx and Engels, COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, pp. VII-XXIX,.
Weber, Max, THE PROTESTANT ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM, translated by Talcott Parsons, pp. 35-c. 62, 79-128, 144-183.
Weeks of November 30, and December 7, 14: THE PURITAN REVOLUTION
Hill, Christopher, THE CENTURY OF REVOLUTION 1603-1714, chaps. 1-11.
Bunyan, John, THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS, portions of the First Part: in Signet edition, pp. 17-30, 66-110, 131-148.
Hexter, J.H., “Storm Over the Gentry,” in Hexter’s REAPPRAISALS IN HISTORY.
Walzer, Michael, THE REVOLUTION OF THE SAINTS, chaps. I, II, IV, V (pp. 148-171), and IX.
Walzer, Michael, “The revolutionary uses of repression,” in Richter (Ed.), ESSAYS IN THEORY AND HISTORY.
Locke, John, AN ESSAY CONCERNING…… CIVIL GOVERNMENT, chaps. 1-9, 19. Available in SOCIAL CONTRACT: ESSAYS BY LOCKE, HUME AND ROUSSEAU.

SOCIAL SCIENCES 2
READING LIST
SPRING TERM 1971

Students are asked to buy the following books, which are available at the Harvard Coop, or, in the one case, at the General Education Office.

BRIGGS, Asa, The Making of Modern England
Paperback: Harper Torch books. Hardcover title: The Age of Improvement.
BURKE, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France
Paperback: Bobbs-Merrill: The Library of Liberal Arts
HOBBES, Thomas, Leviathan
Paperback: Penguin
MILL, John Stuart, On Liberty
Paperback: Appleton-Century-Crofts: Crofts Classic
NIETZSCHE, Friedrich, The Genealogy of Morals
Paperback: Vintage
RUDÉ, George, Revolutionary Europe, 1783-1815
Paperback: Harper Torchbook
de TOCQUEVILLE, Alexis, The Old Regime and the French Revolution
Paperback: Anchor Books

Everything on the following list is on “closed reserve” in Lamont and Hilles Libraries. The date suggested here will vary during the semester; lectures and sections should be your guides.

TOPIC IV: IDEOLOGY AND REVOLUTION

Weeks of February 8 & 15

HOBBES, Thomas, Leviathan, esp. Intro., Chaps. 11, 13-15, 17-21, 26, 29-30, and Review and Conclusion.
ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques, The Social Contract, especially Book I; Book II; Book III, chaps. 1-4, 12-18; and Book IV, chaps. 1-2, 7-8 (in the Galaxy paperback edition used for Locke’s SECOND TREATISE in the Fall Term).
BEER, Samuel, “The Development of the Modern Polity,” chap. 3 (Typescript on reserve).

Weeks of February 22 & March 1

RUDÉ, George, Revolutionary Europe, pp. 65-241
de TOCQUEVILLE, Alexis, The Old Regime and the French Revolution, Forward, pp. 1-211.
RICHTER, Melvin, “The uses of theory: Tocqueville’s adaptation of Montesquieu” in Richter, Essays in Theory and History, pp. 94-102.
TILLY, Charles, The Vendee, chaps. 1, 2, 4, 9, 13.

TOPIC V: MODERNIZATION WITHOUT REVOLUTION

Week of March 8:

BURKE, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France, especially 3-4, 18-129, 138-144, 169-200, 233-266, and 286-291 (Page citations to the Library of Liberal Arts paperback edition).

Weeks of March 15, 22, & 29:

BRIGGS, Asa, The Making of Modern England (Hardcover title, The Age of Improvement), chaps. I, II (sections, 2-3), III (section 5), IV-VI, VIII (sections 1-3, through p. 416), and IX (section 3).
DICEY, A. The Lectures on the Relations Between Law and Opinion in England During the 19th century, Lectures 4, 6, 9, 12 (pt. 1).
BEER, Samuel H., British Politics in the Collectivist Age, Introduction, Chaps. I-II, Epilogue (391-409).
MILL, John Stuart, On Liberty, chaps. 1-2, 4

TOPIC VI: THE CRISIS OF MODERNITY

Week of April 12:

NIETZSCHE, Friedrich, The Genealogy of Morals (trans. W. Kaufmann; Vintage paperback).

Weeks of April 19, 26, & May 3:

PINSON, Koppel S., Modern Germany: Its History and Civilization, chaps. 15-21 (First or Second Edition).
EPSTEIN, Klaus, “Three Types of Conservatism” in Richter, Essays in Theory and History, pp. 103-121.
BULLOCK, Alan, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, chaps. 1-4, 7.
REICHSTAG, Election Statistics, 1919-1933, Mimeographed. To be distributed.
PARSONS, Talcott, “Certain Primary Sources and Patterns of Aggression in the Social Structure of the Western World”, Mimeographed. (This essay also appears in Parsons, Essays in Sociological Theory).
VIERECK, Peter, Metapolitics: From the Romantics to Hitler (Capricorn paperback subtitle: The Roots of the Nazi Mind), Prefatory Note (or, in paperback, “New Survey,” sections 3-4, & chaps. 1-2, 5-7, 11-13).
ERIKSON, Erik H., “The Legend of Hitler’s Childhood” in Childhood and Society, chap. 9.
ECKSTEIN, Harry, A Theory of Stable Democracy.

Reading Period Extra: Nazi Films
Wednesday, May 12, at 7 p.m., Lowell Lecture Hall

FINAL EXAMINATION June 4

Source: Personal copy of course syllabus shared for transcription at Economics in the Rear-View Mirror by one my longest, dearest economics and personal chums, Robert Dohner (Harvard, 1974; M.I.T., 1980).

Image Source: Samuel H. Beer, 1953 Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. J.S. Mill’s Principles of Political Economy. Laughlin and Taussig, 1882-83

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2019-03-13

James Laurence Laughlin and Frank William Taussig were both appointed at the rank of “Instructor in Political Economy” for 1882-83. The final exams for the first and second terms of the course come from Taussig’s personal scrapbook that he kept of his printed final examinations at Harvard. Reading assignments for the course almost certainly came from the following three books in one form or other.

Here is an earlier post that describes the content of Political Economy 1 taught in the 1884-85 academic year.

____________________

Published texts where Course Readings Can Probably Be Found

Principles of Political Economy by John Stuart Mill, abridged and edited by J. Laurence Laughlin. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1884.

Charles F. Dunbar (ed.) Extracts from the Laws of the United States Relating to Currency and Finance. Cambridge: 1875.

Charles F. Dunbar. Chapters on Banking. Cambridge: 1885. [First four chapters as bases of a short course of lectures on banking, written 1882, given annually to classes in the elements of political economy.]

____________________

Course Announcement

Political Economy.

Mill’s Principles of Political Economy.—Lectures on Banking and the Financial Legislation of the United States. Mon.,Wed., Fri., at 9. Mr. Taussig and Dr. Laughlin.

Source: The Harvard University Catalogue 1882-83, p. 89.

____________________

Course Enrollment

Elective Studies
Political Economy

Instructors	Course of Instruction	Hours per week.	Students
Dr. Laughlin and Mr. Taussig	1. Mill’s Principles of Political Economy.—Lectures	3	Total 155: 1 Graduate, 22 Seniors, 113 Juniors, 13 Sophomores, 6 Other.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1882-83, p. 66.

____________________

Course Examinations

POLITICAL ECONOMY 1.
Mid-year. Feb. 9, 1883.

I.
(Answer briefly all of the following.)

What distinction does Mill draw between productive and unproductive labor? Discuss the value of this distinction. Distinguish between productive and unproductive consumption.
What is the distinction between fixed and circulating capital? Is money part of the fixed or of the circulating capital of a country? Why?
What are the classes among whom the produce is divided? Are these classes necessarily or usually represented in as many different acts of persons? How could you classify the peasant proprietor?
Of what commodities are the values governed by the law of cost of production? Explain the process by which that law operates.
“Rent does not enter into the cost of production of agricultural produce.” Explain.
What regulates the value of an inconvertible paper currency? What causes it to depreciate? Discuss briefly the results of depreciation.
Arrange the following items on the proper sides of the account:—

Circulation	315.0
Due to Banks	259.9
Legal Tender Notes	63.2
Loans	1,243.2
Bond for circulation	357.6
Due from Banks	198.9
Deposits	1,134.9
Specie	102.9

Compute just how much circulation is permitted by our laws; and give in figures both the (1) reserve required at 25%, and the (2) difference between the actual and required reserve, on the basis of the above account.

Compare the plans of our National Bank system with those of the Bank of England and the Imperial Bank of Germany in regard to the security of note-issues.

II.
(Answer more fully three of the following.)

What are the constituent elements of what Mill calls “profits”? Explain what is meant in common language by the word “profits,” and discuss the nature of profits in this sense.
“The laws of the production of wealth partake of the nature of physical truths….It is not so with the distribution of wealth. That is a matter of human institution solely.” Explain the distinction, and show its connection with the subjects of communism and socialism.
Mention the methods by which it is attempted to keep gold and silver concurrently in circulation. Explain why “a double standard is alternately a single standard.” Does this tend to be the case now in the United States?
Distinguish between real and proportional wages, and illustrate the distinction. In what sense is the word wages used when it is said that the profits depend on wages, rising as wages fall, and falling as wages rise?
It is not a difference in the absolute cost of production which determines the international cost of exchange, but a difference in the comparative cost.” Explain this proposition, and apply it to the trade between the United States and European countries. Is the trade between tropical and temperate countries based, in the main, on a difference of absolute or of comparative cost?
____________________

POLITICAL ECONOMY 1.
Final examination. June 15, 1883.

I.
(Take all of this group.)

Explain what is meant by a bill of exchange. What causes bills on a foreign country to be at a premium or discount? Show in what way the premium (or discount) is prevented from going beyond a certain point.
Is there any connection between the rate of interest and the abundance or scarcity of money? Explain and illustrate the following: “The rate of interest determine[s] the price of land and of securities.”
Describe the three different kinds of cooperation, and say something of the success attained by each. What are the two classes of distributive coöperation, and wherein do they differ?
Show under what circumstances the increase of capital brings about the tendency of profits to fall. What influences counteract this tendency?
Explain what is meant by the rapidity of circulation of money. What is the effect of great rapidity of circulation on prices and on the value of money? What is the effect of the use of credit? Mention the more important methods in which credit is used as a substitute for money.

II.
(Omit one of this group.)

Discuss the effect of the introduction of a new article of export from a given country on the course of the foreign exchanges in that country, on the flow of specie, and on the terms of international trade (i.e. on international values).
What are the causes which enable one country to undersell another? Do low wages, or a low cost of labor, form one of those causes?
Discuss the immediate and the ultimate effects on rents of the introduction of agricultural improvements. Do those ultimate effects which Mill describes necessarily take place?
What is the immediate and what the ultimate incidence of a tax on houses? Show in what manner the incidence of a tax on building-ground differs, according as the tax is specific (so much on the unit of surface), or rate (so much on the value).

III.
(Omit one of this group.)

Describe the situation which caused the banks in the United States to suspend specie payments in 1861.
What is the difference between bonds and Treasury notes? Name and explain the different kinds of bonds issued during the war.
Explain the causes which made possible the great sales of five-twenty bonds in 1863.
What arguments were advanced for the continuance of the National Bank System in 1882?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination Papers in Economics 1882-1935. Prof. Frank W.Taussig Scrapbook, pp. 2-3.

Image Sources: J. Laurence Laughlin (left) from Marion Talbot. More Than Lore: Reminiscences of Marion Talbot, Dean of Women, The University of Chicago, 1892-1925. Chicago: University of Chicago (1936). Frank W. Taussig (right) from E. H. Jackson and R. W. Hunter, Portraits of the Harvard Faculty (1892).

Tags Laughlin, Taussig

Exam Questions Fields Harvard Undergraduate

Harvard. Three Undergraduate Economic Field Exams, 1942

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2019-03-12

The Harvard undergraduate economics departmental exam and the essay topics for 1942 were transcribed for the previous post. Below we have three field exams for money & finance, market organization & control, and labor economics & social reform from the same year. In the Randall Hinshaw papers at Duke I did not find field exams for statistics & accounting or economic history that I suspect would have also been offered (judging from Part II of the economics departmental exam).

________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS
Department of Economics
May 6, 1942

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
Money and Finance
(Three hours)

PART I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on ONE of the following topics:
1. monetary conditions of full employment equilibrium,
2. the functions and importance of the Federal Reserve System in the 1920’s, the 1930’s, and today,
3. investment banking by commercial banks – theory and practice in the past and future,
4. international monetary problems after the last war, and after this war,
5. modern improvements on the classical theory of international trade,
6. ideas for post-war liberation and control of international trade – conditions of progress in respect of justice to all nations and prosperity for all,
7. modern federal taxation in peace and war times – functions, and types of taxes and tax programs required,
8. ways of mitigating the undesirable future consequences of our mounting national debt,
9. effects of the war on financial problems of state governments,
10. the background of the modern vogue of monetary management and deficit finance, in fundamental economic changes over recent decades,
11. prospective war-time and immediate post-war changes in America, in demand and supply conditions for investment funds and real capital,
12. post-war problems and prospects in Anglo-American economic relations.

PART II
(About one hour)

All students must answer TWO questions. If you are a candidate for honors, at least ONE of these two must be a starred question.

(*) “The spectre of ‘secular stagnation’, which threatened the capitalist world of the 1930’s, is being exorcised by this war and will probably not return after it, at least for some decades.”
(*) Outline succinctly, and explain and discuss as fully as your time allows, what you regard as the best analysis – either one writer’s or your own compilation – of the fundamental causes of the business cycle.
Explain, and discuss critically, several different concepts of “velocity” and “hoarding” found in the modern literature of monetary theory.
“Just as banking policy was unable, in the 1930’s, to play any important part in producing recovery, it is now unable, for opposite and parallel reasons, to play any important part in combating war inflation.”
(*) Discuss the economic and other causes of the world-wide growth of new nationalistic restrictions on international trade, in the interval between the last war and the present war.
(*) “As a stabilizer of the monetary basis of international trade, nothing short of one world currency under the management of a central, international authority, can be an effective substitute for the 19 century’s international gold standard.”
Discuss the effects which the “lend-lease” arrangements through which this country is aiding its allies in the war, are likely to have on our foreign trade, economic relations with the outer world, and economic position in the post-war period.
“If country A has strong labor unions which force up and hold up wage-costs in all its industries, while country B enjoys cheap labor together with industries as modern and well mechanized as those of A, progressive depreciation by A of the external value of its currency is its only means of maintaining competition with B in world markets.”
(*) Discuss the relative merits of compulsory savings plans, a further lowering of exemptions from the personal income tax, and a general sales tax, as methods of diverting a larger share of war-time wages from consumption expenditure to investment in the war effort.
(*) “Federal expenditures on welfare projects, or benefaction’s to the under-privileged, are a national luxury which must be sacrificed to the war effort.”
“No; on the contrary, the war increases our obligation to all we can for the well-being of our poorest citizens; for in relation to the war effort, their morale is more important than are all economies, which would benefit only the over-privileged – whose patriotism, we hope, will stand the strain.”
Discuss the merits of the view that in wartime the income tax should be supplemented by a special, progressive tax on all increases of individual incomes above the average levels of the same incomes in a group of pre-war years.
“The chief danger in severe taxation of business profits in wartime is that of causing under maintenance of industrial plant, to the extent of making the country pay for the war to largely by consuming its capital.”

PART III
(About one hour)

(Answer TWO questions)

“Future alternations of prosperity and depression are unlikely to occur with the nearly exact regularity or periodicity, which has made the term ‘business cycle’ appropriate in the past. The ‘cycle’ in that sense was one of the regularities peculiar to a quasi–automatic, laissez-faire capitalism.”
“Money and finance are of no importance in modern war; only physical resources and production count. The Axis countries are already bankrupt, but it makes no difference. And we, in order to win the war, will have to give our physical production experts – not our monetary and fiscal experts – a free hand.”
“America is sure to have, before the war ends, an inflation that will largely wipe out the real incomes and wealth of all its professional people and small savers – the backbone of the middle-class – and divide the spoils between rich speculators and skilled, industrial wage-earners. And that will make impossible the future maintenance of the country’s conservative-liberal, political tradition.”
“The effort to knit the Latin American economies into ours, and make the Western Hemisphere a largely unified and self-sufficient, regional economy, cannot succeed in any large and lasting way. Our principal, natural economic ties are with Europe, and so are those of the Latin American countries; and these old, natural tendencies will reassert themselves after the war.”
“By ending the imperialism of the white race in the Orient, the war is ending what have been essential factors in the prosperity of England, Holland, and America – exploitation of cheap Oriental labor and rich natural resources acquired at little cost, and a market for ‘dumping’ industrial surpluses, so as to make something near to full employment in the Western countries compatible there with excessive prices for the same industrial products.”
“The spread of industrialism throughout the world does not merely alter the incidence everywhere of ‘comparative advantage’, and the international division of labor; it increases the diversity of productive powers and the self-sufficiency of every country, and thus radically diminishes the total importance of international trade.”
“Financial, or monetary and fiscal manipulations cannot save capitalism. They could, if the right manipulators could work freely and not be defeated by a ‘strike’ on the part of Capital. But every attempt, in a time of depression, to redistribute money income and thus restore consumption and employment, always will be defeated by the further decline of investment due to the fears of the capitalists, who fear what immediately attacks their positions more than they fear the eventual, socialist revolution that is certain to result in time from an unrelieved, severe depression.”
“In opposition to the nineteenth century orthodox explanation and defense of interest as a payment necessary to induce, through saving, enough creation of real capital, Keynes in effect revives the basic idea and resulting attitude of Aristotle and the medieval writers against ‘usury’. Like them, he sees in the demand for interest only the reluctance of the rich to part with their money hoards, and thus makes it the villain of the economic drama.”
“In the economic world, the ‘real’ in contrast with the ‘monetary’ factors do indeed determine, as the older economists thought, what everyone must do in order to reach true equilibrium. Where they went wrong was in supposing that everyone always does fairly soon reach true equilibrium, that is, adjustment to realities; that deceptive, monetary changes have only very brief, transitional, or ‘short run’ consequences. Money is much more important than they thought it was, because the truth is that activities supported only by illusions, of monetary origin, prolong and aggravate those illusions and themselves in a cumulative fashion until unreality, or non-adjustment to reality, becomes so drastic that it collapses violently and then gives way, only, to a like, prolonged departure from reality in the opposite direction.”

________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS
Department of Economics
May 6, 1942

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
Market Organization and Control
(Three hours)

PART I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on ONE of the following topics:
1. corporate profits,
2. the problem of converting plants to war production,
3. some recent developments in the study of costs of production,
4. the war and American agriculture,
5. why farmers are poor,
6. the “parity” concept in agricultural policy,
7. a wartime plan for the railroads,
8. the future of private and public ownership in the public utility field,
9. public utility rate-making: science or art?
10. the relation of price control and rationing to fiscal policy,
11. bureaucracy in industry and government,
12. the Supreme Court and the regulation of economic life.

PART II
(About one hour)

All students must answer TWO questions. If you are a candidate for honors, at least ONE of these two must be a starred question.

(*) Select any two American industries and compare their respective pricing methods and policies. Which seems to you more desirable from a public standpoint? Explain.
Suppose you were put in charge of a trust fund with the duty of investing funds in corporate stock. What factors would you take into account in deciding which stocks to buy? Why?
(*) Explain the relation, if any, between industrial price policies and the size of the national income.
“The recent downward trend in the stock market is an utter absurdity from an economic point of view.” What facts and theories underlie this statement? Do you agree with it? Explain.
(*) “We are now experiencing an agricultural revolution no less profound than the industrial revolution of 150 years ago.” Do you agree? Why or why not?
(*) Discuss the chief problems of public policy connected with the growing and marketing of cotton.
Discuss critically the recent agricultural policy of one foreign country.
What are the principal changes that have been introduced in the methods and living conditions of American farmers by the internal combustion engine?
(*) “Whenever you tried to define a public utility you will always come down finally to one and only one factor: discriminating monopoly.” What is a discriminating monopoly and what conditions favor its existence? Do you agree that discriminating monopoly is the distinguishing characteristic of public utilities? Explain.
(*) What justification, if any, can be offered for the principle of railroad rate-making which attempts to equalize the competitive position of producers over a wide area?
What conditions in the field of public utilities led to the passage of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935?
Discuss the relative merits of water-power and steam-power in the generation of electricity. Should it be public policy to favor one against the other (a) as a war measure, (b) in the post-war period? Explain.

PART III
(About one hour)

Answer TWO questions

“It is an odd circumstance that capital fought for the right to incorporate, while labor fights against the compulsion to incorporate.” Discuss.
“From an economic standpoint there is little to be said for excess profits taxation. As a method of controlling inflation it is obviously quite inadequate. Hence the only important consequence is an undermining of the financial position of precisely those corporations which are most essential in war production.” Discuss.
Discuss the methods which have been employed in financing plant expansion requirements necessitated by the defense and war efforts. Why were these methods adopted? What is their significance for the post-war period?
“The technical and managerial classes are slated to succeed the owners in the sequence of ruling classes.” Discuss.
Some experts believe there is likely to be a great increase in the number and importance of corporate farms in the relatively near future. What are the reasons for this belief? Explain why you agree or disagree.
Do you think direct control over wages is necessary to effective price control? Why or why not?
Sketch the traditional policy of our government toward participation by American businessmen in international cartels and combines. Discuss the reasons for this policy and its results.
“From the standpoint of economic organization, the Nazi economy represents the uninterrupted continuation of trends in German society which reach back at least to the 1870’s.” Discuss.

________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS
Department of Economics
May 6, 1942

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
Labor Economics and Social Reform
(Three hours)

PART I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on ONE of the following topics:
1. wages and war inflation,
2. the closed shop,
3. should the 40-hour week be abolished during the war?
4. the problem of migratory labor,
5. an ideal system of unemployment insurance,
6. a population policy for America,
7. class struggle – reality or propaganda slogan?
8. the probable effect of the war on American movements of social reform,
9. can socialism be achieved by a gradual process of reform?
10. labor and the anti-trust laws,
11. trade unions and political action,
12. labor in World War I.

PART II
(About one hour)

All students must answer TWO questions. If you are a candidate for honors, at least ONE of these two must be a starred question.

(*) Discuss the benefits which one important C.I.O. union has won for its members, and the methods and policies by which it has won them.
(*) Assume that a new industrial union enrolls all the workers in a particular industry, and succeeds in raising their wages. Make, and stayed clearly, your assumptions about all the main economic conditions (supply and demand conditions in the various markets) relevant to this problem; and on your assumptions, analyze the determination of the shares of the cost of paying for this wage-increase, which will be born in the end respectably by (1) the employers in the industry, (2) the consumers of the product, and (3) groups connected with other industries as workers, employers, or consumers.
Discuss the history, methods, and achievements of union-management coöperation in one American industry where it has become established.
What principles, as to policy and procedure, would you advise the federal war labor Board to adopt as its guiding principles in dealing with industrial disputes during the war period? Explain your reasons for each principal you propose.
(*) Is the Malthusian theory of population wrong? If so, in what respects and why? If not, what is the evidence to support it?
(*) Explain and evaluate the theory of non-competing groups.
Can fascism (including Nazism) be called the “revolution of the middle class”? Explain.
What, in your opinion, would be the chief economic effects of a cessation in population growth? Why?
(*) Discuss critically Marx’s theory of capitalist crises.
(*) What kind of a “new order” from an economic standpoint do the Nazis want to create?
Discuss the main characteristics and results of economic planning in the Soviet Union.
According to a number of economists, the price policy of a socialist society should be based on one single principle: equate price to marginal cost. Explain the meaning of this rule and argue for or against its general validity.

PART III
(About one hour)

Answer TWO questions

Discuss the relative advantages and disadvantages, from the workingman’s standpoint, of the sales tax and a tax on wages deducted at the source as methods of closing the gap between outstanding purchasing power in the quantity of consumer goods available in the war economy.
“Whether profit-sharing be but a slight modification of the ordinary capitalist system or contained within itself the germs of a true coöperative system need hardly be discussed in view of the fact that its history has been a record of repeated failure. The cause of failure in almost every case has been the apparent incompatibility of profit-sharing with trade unionism.” Discuss.
What is to be said for stabilization of money wages as a goal of monetary policy?
“Can even the most ardent free-trader doubt that in the post-war world American labor will continue to demand and deserve protection from cheap foreign labor?” Discuss.
Discuss the economic problems of the construction industry, placing the kind of unionism which prevails there in its proper setting.
Discuss the structure, problems and policies of the labor movement in backward or colonial countries.
“There is no mistaking the economic foundations of race prejudice in the contemporary world.” Discuss.
“Historically the connection between freedom of enterprise and freedom in other fields of thought and action is obvious. Must we not, then, assume that the destruction of free enterprise would likewise deprive us all our cherished liberties?” Discuss.

Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archive. Papers of Randall Hinshaw. Box 1, Folder “Schoolwork, 1940s”.

Image Source: Harvard Square from the Tichnor Brothers Collection of postcards. Boston Public Library, Print Department.

SOCIALISM LECTURE FRIDAY INSTEAD

DEBS CHAMPIONS SOCIALISM Twelve Hundred People Greet Famous Socialist at Lecture in Horace Mann Auditorium

DEBATING IN CLASSROOM Novel System to be Inaugurated Under Auspices of Barnard Literary Association

INTERSECTION DEBATE SOON Both Teams Selected Yesterday

DO WE WANT SOCIALISM? Students in Economics 2 to Decide Question in Debate Held Under Auspices of Barnard Lit.

SOCIALISTS RESUSCITATED Open Meetings Planned

INSTRUCTION IN SOCIALISM Series of Essays Planned

About Jessica Garretson Finch

SOCIALISTIC LECTURE TODAY Charles Edward Russell Socialist Candidate for Governor to Speak In Havemeyer

ECONOMISTS TO HEAR NOTED SOCIALIST

DISCUSSION OF SOCIALISM Graduate Economics Club

SOCIALISTS TO STUDY SOCIALISM

[Economics in the Rear-view Mirror attaches the following notes on Edmund Kelly:]

STUDENTS OF SOCIALISM TO MEET TODAY

SOCIALISTS ELECT OFFICERS Trimble Chosen President

SOCIALISTS MAKE GIFT TO UNIVERSITY

SOCIALISTS ON 20TH CENTURY SOCIALISM

“INCOME TAX” INTERESTS ECONOMISTS

SOCIALIST SOCIETY MEETING Mrs. Jessica Finch Speaks

TO DISCUSS MODERN SOCIALISM

SOCIALISTS TO GATHER TOMORROW

NOTED SOCIALIST TO TALK Meeting of Club Today

LAIDLER ADDRESSES SOCIALIST CLUB

TRUST PROBLEM DISCUSSED Seager Addresses Economists

FOREIGN SOCIALISM STUDIED Cooperation Discussed

ADDRESS ON CHILD LABOR O. R. Lovejoy Gives Lecture

POLITICAL ECONOMY. A Letter From Dr. Adams. (January, 1891)

Courses of Instruction 1891-92

POLITICAL ECONOMY.

FIRST SEMESTER.

SECOND SEMESTER.

WORK IN ECONOMICS. (October 1892)

A Great Change Introduced into This Department. A Daily Man Has a Talk With Prof. Adams. — Nine Men are After Advanced Degrees with Political Economy for a Major. — A Word About the New Instructors. — Both are Graduates of the University of Michigan.

Courses of Instruction 1892-93

POLITICAL ECONOMY.

FIRST SEMESTER.

SECOND SEMESTER.

Abstract from the Oral History Interview with Broadus Mitchell August 14 and 15, 1977

Swarthmore College DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES HONORS EXAMINATION: ECONOMIC THEORY May 17, 1934 at 8:30

Examiner: Professor Broadus Mitchell, Johns Hopkins

Swarthmore College DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES HONORS EXAMINATION: SOCIAL ECONOMICS May 18, 1934

Examiner: Professor Broadus Mitchell, Johns Hopkins

HENRY CARTER ADAMS (31st December, 1851—11th August, 1921)

The Second Education

Study in Europe

Dismissal from Cornell

Appointment at Michigan

His Original Work

The Social Philosopher

School of Applied Ethics, 1891. First Dean, Henry C. Adams of the University of Michigan

__________________

EXAMINATION ON READING LIST FOR A.B. MAJORS IN BUSINESS ECONOMICS May 24, 1933

[Examination on the reading list in political economy (May 1934) was not in folder]

COMPREHENSIVE EXAMINATION FOR MAJORS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES May 11, 1935

EXAMINATION FOR MR. HOWELL ON READING FOR MAJOR IN POLITICAL ECONOMY October 5, 1935

__________________

[Examination on the reading list in political economy (May 1936) was not in folder]

EXAMINATION ON THE READING LIST IN POLITICAL ECONOMY May 17, 1937

EXAMINATION ON THE READING LIST IN POLITICAL ECONOMY May 2, 1938

[Examination on the reading list in political economy (May 1939) was not in folder]

EXAMINATION ON THE READING LIST IN POLITICAL ECONOMY May 10, 1940

Obituary from Bezansons of Nova Scotia

PIONEER IN ACADEMIC BUSINESS RESEARCH ANNE BEZANSON, PROFESSOR

Harvard/Radcliffe Academic Record

A.B. magna cum laude in economics.

A.M. Annie Bezanson….Southvale, N.S. [Nova Scotia]

June 1929 Doctor of Philosophy

Economics Coursework

HARVARD UNIVERSITY (Inter-Departmental Correspondence Sheet)

Miss Anne Bezanson, A.B., Radcliffe 1915; A.M., 1916.

Handwritten letter from Bezanson to Burbank

Copies of responses by H.H. Burbank to Bezanson

Columbia University in the City of New York (New York 27, N.Y.)

Faculty of Political Science

Columbia University in the City of New York (New York 27, N.Y.)

Faculty of Political Science

[Carbon Copy]

Columbia University in the City of New York (New York 27, N.Y.)

Faculty of Political Science

Columbia University in the City of New York (New York 27, N.Y.)

DEBS CHAMPIONS SOCIALISM
Twelve Hundred People Greet Famous Socialist at Lecture in Horace Mann Auditorium

DEBATING IN CLASSROOM
Novel System to be Inaugurated Under Auspices of Barnard Literary Association

INTERSECTION DEBATE SOON
Both Teams Selected Yesterday

DO WE WANT SOCIALISM?
Students in Economics 2 to Decide Question in Debate Held Under Auspices of Barnard Lit.

SOCIALISTS RESUSCITATED
Open Meetings Planned

INSTRUCTION IN SOCIALISM
Series of Essays Planned

SOCIALISTIC LECTURE TODAY
Charles Edward Russell Socialist Candidate for Governor to Speak In Havemeyer

DISCUSSION OF SOCIALISM
Graduate Economics Club

SOCIALISTS ELECT OFFICERS
Trimble Chosen President

SOCIALIST SOCIETY MEETING
Mrs. Jessica Finch Speaks

NOTED SOCIALIST TO TALK
Meeting of Club Today

TRUST PROBLEM DISCUSSED
Seager Addresses Economists

FOREIGN SOCIALISM STUDIED
Cooperation Discussed

ADDRESS ON CHILD LABOR
O. R. Lovejoy Gives Lecture

POLITICAL ECONOMY.
A Letter From Dr. Adams.
(January, 1891)

Courses of Instruction
1891-92

WORK IN ECONOMICS.
(October 1892)

A Great Change Introduced into This Department.
A Daily Man Has a Talk With Prof. Adams. — Nine Men are After Advanced Degrees with Political Economy for a Major. — A Word About the New Instructors. — Both are Graduates of the University of Michigan.

Courses of Instruction
1892-93

Abstract from the Oral History Interview with Broadus Mitchell
August 14 and 15, 1977

Swarthmore College
DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
HONORS EXAMINATION: ECONOMIC THEORY
May 17, 1934 at 8:30

Swarthmore College
DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
HONORS EXAMINATION: SOCIAL ECONOMICS
May 18, 1934

 HENRY CARTER ADAMS
(31st December, 1851—11th August, 1921)

 Study in Europe

School of Applied Ethics, 1891.
First Dean, Henry C. Adams of the University of Michigan

EXAMINATION ON READING LIST FOR A.B. MAJORS IN BUSINESS ECONOMICS
May 24, 1933

COMPREHENSIVE EXAMINATION FOR MAJORS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
May 11, 1935

EXAMINATION FOR MR. HOWELL ON READING FOR MAJOR IN POLITICAL ECONOMY
October 5, 1935

EXAMINATION ON THE READING LIST IN POLITICAL ECONOMY
May 17, 1937

EXAMINATION ON THE READING LIST IN POLITICAL ECONOMY
May 2, 1938

EXAMINATION ON THE READING LIST IN POLITICAL ECONOMY
May 10, 1940

PIONEER IN ACADEMIC BUSINESS RESEARCH
ANNE BEZANSON, PROFESSOR

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
(Inter-Departmental Correspondence Sheet)

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Beer’s Soc Sci 2 Comes to A Close With Last Lecture
by Jaleh Poorooshasb
The Harvard Crimson, May 5, 1978

Sam Beer, Legendary Gov Prof, Dies at 97
By Huma N. Shah
The Harvard Crimson, April 14, 2009

SOCIAL SCIENCES 2
READING LIST
Fall Term 1970-71

SOCIAL SCIENCES 2
READING LIST
SPRING TERM 1971

Elective Studies
Political Economy

POLITICAL ECONOMY 1.
Mid-year. Feb. 9, 1883.

POLITICAL ECONOMY 1.
Final examination. June 15, 1883.

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS
Department of Economics
May 6, 1942

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
Money and Finance
(Three hours)

PART I
(About one hour)

PART II
(About one hour)

PART III
(About one hour)

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS
Department of Economics
May 6, 1942

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
Market Organization and Control
(Three hours)

PART I
(About one hour)

PART II
(About one hour)

PART III
(About one hour)

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS
Department of Economics
May 6, 1942

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
Labor Economics and Social Reform
(Three hours)

PART I
(About one hour)

PART II
(About one hour)

PART III
(About one hour)