Searching the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division for economist portraits, I came across the above picture of Bryn Mawr professor Marion Parris. Figuring there is always room at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror’s series “Get to know an economics Ph.D. alumna”, I did a quick day’s work surfing familiar and new internet beaches in search of any information about Marion Parris.
Her career path was fairly simple. She was a star economics student who graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1901 to go on to get her Ph.D. in economics there and later to join its faculty where her husband also taught–history professor William Roy Smith. Shortly following her husband’s death in 1938, she resigned her Bryn Mawr professorship.
She was awarded the Bryn Mawr European Fellowship that she used to attend the University of Vienna. “It is awarded annually to a member of the graduating class of Bryn Mawr College on the ground of excellence in scholarship. The fellowship is intended to defray the expenses of one year’s study and residence at some foreign university, English or Continental. The choice of a university may be determined by the holder’s own preference, subject to the approval of the Faculty.” [Bryn Mawr College Calendar. Undergraduate and Graduate Courses, 1909. Vol. II, Part 3, (May, 1909), p. 65.]
Vitals: Born Marion Nora Parris on 22 May 1897 in New York City. Died 20 December 1968 in Mount Vernon, New York. Married in New York, June 1912. No children.
The previous post lists the courses Marion Parris taught in 1909-10.
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Publications
Parris, Marion. Total Utility and the Economic Judgment Compared with Their Ethical Counterparts. Philadelphia: J. C. Winston Co., 1909. [Her Ph.D. dissertation]
__________. Review of “The Common Sense of Political Economy” by P. H. Wicksteed. American Academy of Political and Social Science, Annals Vol. 37 (January/June 1911), pp. 574-75.
__________. Review of Individualism by Warner Fite. Four Lectures on the Significance of Consciousness for Social Relations. New York: Longmans, Green and Company, 1911. American Economic Review (June 1911) pp. 312-314.
__________. Review of Valuation: its Nature and Laws by Wilbur Marshall Urban. London: Swan Sonnenschein and Company; New York, Macmillan Company, 1909. Political Science Quarterly, Vol. XXVI, No. 1 (March 1911), pp. 169-171.
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Newspaper Report from Australia (1934)
Distinguished American Woman
Professor Marion Parris Smith, of Bryn Mawr
Professor of economics at Bryn Mawr, the famous American women’s college in Pennsylvania, Professor Marion Parris Smith is visiting Melbourne at present with her husband, Professor William Roy Smith, who is professor of history at Bryn Mawr. Possessed of an exceptionally attractive personality and with a ready and sympathetic interest in all outside affairs, Professor Marion Parris Smith’s interest in economics has extended from her college work to national affairs. As economic adviser for Montgomery county she is in close touch with the progress of the National Recovery Act—N.R.A.—which she believes to be based on sound fundamental principles. “Conditions vary so much that I cannot generalize about its success,” she said. “I am entirely in sympathy, and I believe that its success will mean more scope for individual initiative. It will only be a question of playing the same game with different rules. One of the greatest difficulties has been in obtaining agreements between States to obtain uniform conditions. Last year the Minister for Labour (Miss Frances Perkins) was working on this problem of ‘bootleg labour.’” The term “bootleg,” she explained, was used now to describe anything illicit.
“The results of the N.R.A. will probably turn out to be uneven in their effect,” she said. “So much depends on individual conditions, but already the industrial east and the south are showing amazing improvements.”
Professor Smith is keenly interested in studying the manner in which other countries are meeting the depression, and 45[?] huge volumes are the result of a collection of clippings from foreign papers relating to depression which she began in 1929 when she and her husband were in Egypt. The clippings have been indexed under broad headings, such as tariffs and international trade, agricultural depression, and the consumer, and next year Professor Smith’s advance students will begin the task of editing them. It is possible that her research work will be published later in book form.
“I am convinced that the ‘domestic allotment system’ which has been established by the Bureau of Agriculture to cut down over-production is a great thing,” Professor Smith said. “The farmers have had no relief since 1920. Although we have had co-operative systems in distribution the same system has never been applied to production before. I like it because it will be done by the people on the spot, elected by the farmers themselves.”
Professor Marion Smith is herself a graduate of Bryn Mawr. She did her post-graduate course at the University of Vienna—the first foreign woman to take the course in economics there—prefacing it by a six months course in languages at the University of Jena.
Until the depression Professor Smith found it easy to obtain positions for all her post-graduate students, most of whom take up research work along specialized lines. One of her students is economic adviser to the tariff committee in Washington; another is economic secretary to the president of one of the largest banks in New York. The graduates—the alumnae—take an important part in the life of Bryn Mawr. They have raised three large endowments, and some of the finest buildings at the college stand to their credit. Many of America’s distinguished women are among the college graduates—Margaret Barnes, whose novel, “Years of Grace,” was awarded a Pulitzer Prize; Miriam O’Brien, who holds a woman’s record for rock climbing; and Katharine Hepburn, the film actress, among them.
Source: The Argus, 31 July 1934, p. 10.
Image Source: Marion Parris Smith ca. 1916 from the Bain Collection in Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.