Category: Berkeley

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Berkeley Columbia Economists

Columbia Ph.D. and Berkeley Professor, Charles Adams Gulick

In his review essay on Alexander Gerschenkron’s Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective, Albert Fishlow wrote: “a decisive point in [Gerschenkron’s] career, was the invitation from Charles Gulick, a Berkeley professor whom he had earlier helped in his research in Austria, to come to the United States. His acceptance marked the real beginning of his academic career that subsequently was to flourish over the rest of his life.”

Besides being the scholar who brought Gerschenkron to the U.S., Charles Adams Gulick had a life-long research interest in labor policy from his 1924 Columbia Ph.D. dissertation to the international bibliography on labor movements linked below. His two-volume work Austria From Habsburg to Hitler (1948), into which flowed some 12 months of intensive research and writing input from Alexander Gerschenkron, was “the great achievement of his scholarly career” according to the memorial note reproduced below.

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If you find this posting interesting, here is the complete list of “artifacts” from the history of economics I have assembled. You can subscribe to Economics in the Rear-View Mirror below. There is also an opportunity for comment following each posting….

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History and Theories of Working-Class Movements: A Select Bibliography. Compiled by Charles A. Gulick, Roy A. Ockert and Raymond J. Wallace. Bureau of Business and Economic Research and Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California, Berkeley, 1955. 392 pages.

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Charles Adams Gulick, Economics: Berkeley
1896-1984
Professor Emeritus

Charles Gulick was born and raised in Texas and had all his schooling there through the M.A. degree. The Texas influence on his speech and certain mannerisms of expression remained with him all his life. Certainly at the University of Texas he acquired key elements of his life-long economic and social philosophy. It was the Progressive era and he became committed to central themes of that movement–that the great aggregations of power must be controlled and humanized and that a larger measure of social justice must be won for the less privileged members of society. Not surprisingly, his first monograph, published in 1920 when he was 24, was on the subject, Open Shop vs. Closed Shop.

Having majored in modern European history for the B.A. and M.A. degrees in Texas, he moved to Columbia University to major in economics for the Ph.D., awarded in 1924. At Columbia, he became strongly influenced by the ideas and interests of Professor Henry Seager, a leading academic writer on the widely debated issue of what to do about the power of the large, rapidly growing industrial and financial corporations commonly known as trusts. Combining his growing interest in labor subjects with his interest in trust problems, Gulick’s doctoral dissertation was published as Labor Policy of the U.S. Steel Corporation. While serving as an instructor in Economics at Columbia, he continued to work with Seager and later co-authored with him a large volume on Trust and Corporation Problems. He also edited a volume of Seager’s essays.

Gulick joined the faculty of the Berkeley Department of Economics in 1926, where he served until his retirement in 1963. It was in the course of a trip to Germany for research purposes in 1930 that he almost by accident paid a visit to Vienna and acquired the interest in Austria that led him eventually to the great achievement of his scholarly career, Austria From Habsburg to Hitler, published in 1948 in two volumes running to 1900 pages. The sub-titles that Gulick gave the two volumes, “Labor’s Workshop of Democracy” and “Fascism’s Subversion of Democracy,” are expressive of the book’s major themes and of his twin interests in the contributions labor movements can make to democratic society and in the anti-democratic forces that citizens of democracies must continuously fight against. The German translation of this work was published in Vienna in 1950 and immediately won a large readership and wide acclaim. In the same year, the city of Vienna awarded Gulick a prize for “distinguished achievement in moral sciences,” an honor not ordinarily accorded to non-Austrians. In the years since, the book has continued to be esteemed as one of the authoritative accounts of the first Austrian republic and in 1972 the President of Austria presented a gold medal to Gulick for “Services to the Republic.” A somewhat abbreviated German-language edition of the book was published in Austria in 1976 and a new printing of the original English edition was issued in 1980. In keeping with his long preoccupation with the fortunes of the labor movement and democracy in Austria, most of the articles he contributed to academic journals dealt with labor questions or political issues in that country.

While Gulick served conscientiously on a variety of Academic Senate and administrative committees, his primary campus interest was in teaching and working with students, and many generations of undergraduate and graduate students knew Gulick as a dedicated teacher and adviser and as a friend and supporter. He was generous of his time in meeting with individuals and with groups of students. He also felt a responsibility to help improve student writing. It was perhaps prophetic that his first academic appointment as a graduate student in Texas was as Tutor in English. He became widely known among his students for his practice of sprinkling the pages of their papers with notations or corrections concerning spelling, grammar, syntax, punctuation, and inaccurate quotations. He even enlisted his wife’s assistance in this work. He regularly held seminars in his home and he and his wife entertained students on many other occasions. It was appealing to students to find that Gulick shared many of their ideals for a good society and that he could voice in colorful language many of their criticisms of current social ills. An illustration of his outspokenness is his title for an article he wrote for a Vienna magazine after Ronald Reagan’s first election as governor of California, “The Political Landslide in California: Mass Lunacy, Fear and Hate.”

Charles Gulick died on August 27, 1984, leaving his wife, Esther, a daughter, two grandsons, and two great granddaughters.

Van Dusen Kennedy / Clark Kerr / Lloyd Ulman

 

Source: University of California History Digital Archives. University of California: In Memoriam, 1985, pp. 164-65.

Image Source: The Blue and Gold, 1922. University of California Yearbook.

 

 

Categories
Berkeley Economists

Berkeley. Ira B. Cross memoir, Portrait of an Economics Professor, 1967

When I tried to find an internet link to a copy of the book Domestic and Foreign Exchange: Theory and Practice by Ira B. Cross (1923) for Paul Douglas’ 1925 Amherst reading list, I came upon the following contribution to the oral history of the Berkeley Economics Department by Cross that includes his “review of the troops”.

Portrait of an Economics Professor.  An Interview Conducted by Joann Dietz Ariff (1967)

The transcript and 10 page appendix “Economics at the University of California, 1871-1942” (135 pages includes his “Bibliography on Chrysanthemums”, cf. Simkhovitch at Columbia who himself was an expert on delphiniums)

The actual recording (Two parts, 97 minutes)

I append here some biographical information on Cross who appears to have been quite a character (“gadfly of the Academic Senate”).

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Excerpt from University of California:
In Memoriam, September 1978

Ira Brown Cross, Economics: Berkeley
1880-1977
Flood Professor Emeritus

On April 2, 1953, Professor Cross sent an autobiographical statement to the information office, Berkeley campus. In an accompanying letter, he explained his purpose. “I know what difficulties are involved in obtaining data on a deceased member of the faculty…so I have prepared some `stuff’ for your files–which I hope you won’t have to use for years to come.” His hope was fulfilled; death occurred twenty-four years later on March 24, 1977 in his ninety-seventh year. The statement placed in the files reads as follows:

 

Ira Brown Cross was born at Decatur, Illinois, December 1, 1880, a descendant of Governor William Bradford and John and Priscilla Alden of Plymouth Colony. He was educated in the public schools of Decatur and Moline, Illinois, at the University of Wisconsin (A.B., 1905; M.A., 1906) and at Stanford University (Ph.D., 1909). In 1951, the University of Wisconsin conferred the honorary degree, Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) upon him in recognition of his contributions to the field of economics.

He served on the faculties of Stanford University, 1909-1914, and the University of California, 1914-1951, where he was Professor of Economics on the Flood Foundation from 1919 until the time of his retirement in June 1951. At various times he has been chairman of the Department of Economics and Acting Dean of the College of Commerce. While at Stanford University he served as chairman of the Probation Committee of the Juvenile Court of Santa Clara County. Because of his interest in criminology he became associated with Professor A.M. Kidd, Chief of Police August Vollmer, and Dr. Hoag of Pasadena in the establishment of the Berkeley Police School, which became internationally recognized, and for several years thereafter participated in its activities as a member of its staff.

Dr. Cross has served as a member of the faculties of the Stockton, Oakland, Fresno, and San Francisco chapters of the American Institute of Banking, which is the educational branch of the American Bankers Association, and from 1915 until 1960 [dates added] served as dean of the faculty of the San Francisco Chapter. In 1928 he prepared texts on “Economics” and “Money and Banking” for the national organization. In 1923 he declined appointment to the position of national educational director of the American Institute of Banking. He was one of the original board of regents of the Graduate School of Banking established at Rutgers College by the American Institute of Banking in 1935.

In 1921 the San Francisco Building Trades Council conferred honorary membership upon him because of briefs which he had prepared at various times for local unions engaged in arbitration proceedings. In 1934 he was chairman of the Fact Finding Committee appointed by the late Governor Rolph, which brought to a satisfactory conclusion the violent cotton pickers’ strike in the lower San Joaquin Valley.

During the First World War and under the auspices of the War Industries Board, Dr. Cross gave a course in employment management to a group of personnel relations men and women who were at that time supervising the labor relations of twenty-eight industries engaged in war work in western states. It was the second course of its kind in the United States, the first having been given at Harvard University. He was also active in the formation of the California State Employment Managers Association in 1918, the first in the nation, and for some years thereafter served as its economist and adviser. He also pioneered in labor education by arranging a series of lectures by University professors before the San Francisco Labor Council and by establishing the first labor school on the Pacific Coast.

Dr. Cross wrote numerous articles on economic subjects and the following volumes: A History of the Labor Movement of California (1935); History of Banking in California (two volumes) (1927); Essentials of Socialism (1911); Collective Bargaining in San Francisco (1917); Cooperative Stores in the United States (1906); Economics (1931); Money and Banking (1931); Domestic and Foreign Exchange (1923); and editor of Frank Roney, Irish Rebel and California Labor Leader (1931). He was on the staff of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin as associate book reviewer during 1907-1913, and was editorial writer on the Coast Banker (San Francisco) during 1914-1916.

He was a recognized grower and hybridizer of iris and chrysanthemums, and was the first president of the East Bay Chrysanthemum Study Club.

 

“The Doc,” as he was called affectionately by associates, his former teaching fellows, and many hundreds of students, portrayed himself in the traditional format of academic biography; but he did not, and no doubt, could not interpret his finest contribution to the University of California. He was undoubtedly one of the greatest teachers on the Berkeley campus during his career. Quantitatively, it is estimated that more than 60,000 students sat below his rostrum in his classes in elementary economics and in money and banking. In addition, many thousands more were enrolled in his courses in the American Institute of Banking and in his popular public lectures. One of his former students, now an Emeritus Professor at UCLA, informed the chairman of this committee that “The Doc” was “extraordinarily influential as a teacher, probably had more impact on more students than any other professor at the Berkeley campus.” He took clean-cut positions in economic and social issues, was thoroughly iconoclastic with respect to some social mores, and above all, was a stern disciplinarian in handling his large lecture classes. There are literally dozens of stories, often by now with considerable embellishment, about episodes in his classes. An important reason for his enormous impact was his basic desire to shake the students (as well as his colleagues) out of their complacency. He was considered the gadfly of the Academic Senate.

One of his former students, Richard G. Gettell, characterized The Doc’s teaching method as “education by sting.” President Robert Gordon Sproul, in conferring the honorary LL.D. degree in 1957, characterized him as “a teacher blessed in the memory of generations of students as a skillful disturber of complacency and a begetter of inquiring minds, seeking always to lead youth from illusion to reality, through a world of panaceas and proverbs.”

The Doc was not only a great teacher, he was also a trainer of teachers. The teaching fellows working with him became members of an extraordinarily well-organized and supervised educational program. He kept in touch with his former assistants up to the very end. His son, Ira B., Junior, has compiled a list of 228 such persons from his records, many of whom have predeceased him. His former assistants took the initiative in founding the Ira B. Cross room in Barrows Hall with its portrait by Peter Blos.

Ira B. Cross truly enjoyed three careers–one in the field of labor and social reform–another in finance and banking–and finally, after academic retirement, as a practicing botanist. In each of these fields he won outstanding recognition.

In 1911, he was married to Blanche Mobley. They had two sons, Ira B., Jr., and Carleton Parker. His wife and second son both predeceased him. Professor Cross is survived by his son Ira B. Cross, Jr. and his wife and four grandsons, and two great-grandchildren.

E.T. Grether M.M. Davisson R.A. Gordon F.L. Kidner

 

Source: University of California: In Memoriam, September 1978. A publication of the Academic Senate, UC Berkeley.

Image Source: Blue and Gold 1922. (University of California yearbook)