Category: Economists

MIT. Popular exposition regarding productivity growth. Solow, 1961

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2026-09-03
No Comments on MIT. Popular exposition regarding productivity growth. Solow, 1961

While trawling through old issues of the MIT alumni magazine, Technology Review, I came across this vintage 1961 piece by Robert Solow that was distilled from a presentation he made to “principal officers of companies participating in M.I.T.’s Industrial Liaison Program.” It is worth rescuing from the obscurity of an alumni magazine to share with the students of today. Artificial intelligence is nice, but Solow’s natural intelligence is a sight to behold. So, behold!

___________________________

Education, Technology & the GNP

Two-fifths of the growth in our national product came mainly from what goes on in men’s heads

By Robert M. Solow

ROBERT M. SOLOW, received his doctorate from Harvard and has taught at M.I.T. since 1949. This article was part of a recent talk on “Productivity and National Performance” during a meeting of principal officers of companies participating in M.I.T.’s Industrial Liaison Program. Professor Solow’s wit, as well as his scholarship, has won him an enviable reputation at the Institute. He is now serving on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Businessmen think of productivity as increasing when they find a way of reducing the number of men it takes to operate a particular machine without any bad effects on its output, or a way of increasing the output of a machine without additional labor. In addition to such developments, we must include a lot of other things—some of them strange but all of them inevitable—to measure the productivity of the whole national economy.

Imagine the American economic system as having a blank wall around it, so you can’t see what really happens inside. All you can observe is that each year certain primary inputs are fed into this economy. These are goods and services which are not part of the economy’s current output; the main ones are labor services of different kinds and levels of skill, land and natural resources of various qualities, and pre-existing capital equipment—all kinds of new and old buildings, machines, and inventories which represent the cumulated past savings of the population. These things are fed into the economy each year and it grinds away and produces some final output.

The conventional classification of final output is into personal consumption (food, clothing, automobiles, haircuts, toys), private investment (the additions to capital equipment and inventories which will become the primary inputs of next year), and government expenditures on goods and services (items we choose to consume as a community rather than individually, such as Atlas rockets and the services of school teachers). The productivity of the national economy increases whenever this flow of final output grows larger without any corresponding increase in its cost in terms of primary inputs, or whenever final output grows faster than primary inputs.

This is not a simple notion. The final output is an assortment of widely different goods and services, ranging from jet aircraft to left-hand-hitting first base-men. To reduce such heterogeneous items to comparability, the economist has to attach values to them and the values he uses are market prices. A tangible commodity and an intangible service are supposed to be worth what they bring in the open market. The market value of the whole flow of final output is called the Gross National Product (GNP); and when the effects of pure inflation or deflation of the price level have been eliminated, the resulting measure is called the Real Gross National Product.

Millions of Decisions

Valuing things at market prices means that some items which you or I might consider worthless or worse are counted as contributions to GNP. I happen to believe, for instance, that the automatic choke was an invention of the devil. But if an automatic choke on a car enables it to be sold at a higher price, the GNP increases when cars are equipped with them.

Other items such as legislation and justice are not bought and sold on the open market (though there have been some notable exceptions to this), so no current price is quoted. The economist has to value the services of such governmental agencies as courts and legislatures at the wage and salary costs incurred in operating them: The contribution to GNP of the nine Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States is measured by their combined salaries; and the contribution to GNP of the Louisiana State Legislature, engaged largely in frustrating the decisions of the Supreme Court, is valued at its salary bill. Such perversities, fortunately, are the exception rather than the rule, and when the real GNP increases faster than primary input the chances are that the economic system has become more productive.

What we do with the annual flow of GNP depends on millions of private and public decisions. How much of it we consume sensibly or frivolously within families, how much we save and invest to create a higher GNP for our children, how much we spend collectively to provide schools, fire protection, national defense, foreign aid and snow removal—all this is determined by decisions made within families, by the boards of directors of corporations, and by voters and their elected representatives. It is no easy matter to understand why things have happened in the past the way they have, and even harder to predict how these things will turn out in the future. But whatever we want to do with goods and services, they can come only from our National Product. And our private and collective desires to do more in the future can be satisfied only out of growth of the National Product.

In principle, a rational and self-disciplined people could decide to satisfy its desire for more national defense and more private investment and more urban renewal by cutting back its own consumption. But it hardly even qualifies as cynical to suspect that the chances of getting more of those things are considerably improved if we can get them out of increases in National Product without putting pressure on consumption.

In any case it would seem important to try to find out how rapidly America’s real GNP has increased in the past and what the sources of that growth have been. We can hope in this way to make a guess about how much economic growth we can expect in the future even though we do nothing special about it, and some hints about how we might accelerate that growth.

The Sources of Growth

Since 1929, the real GNP has grown on the average at a rate just under 3 per cent per year. That growth was far from smooth—in 1939 our economy had only regained the absolute level of output of 1929 in its long climb out of the depression. But a quantity growing at an average rate of 3 per cent a year will double in size every 24 years, and our present real GNP is about two and a third times what it was in 1929. This generation has about twice as much as the generation before.

In 1929, however, between 70 and 75 per cent of the GNP was used for personal consumption, and that percentage has fallen now to 65 per cent. Private investment has about held its own in percentage terms, and there has been a shift in the use of GNP from personal consumption to collective consumption or governmental expenditures, primarily for defense.

If we are interested in the improvement of our potential standard of living, rather than in military potential or national grandeur or similar things, we should look at GNP per head of population. Since 1929 the population of the United States has grown about one and a fourth per cent per year. It follows that real GNP per head of population has increased by about 1.7 per cent per year, and is now about 60 per cent higher than it was in 1929. A quantity growing at 1.7 per cent per year takes about 42 years to double; by the year 2000, if present trends continue, real output per person may be about twice what it is now.

Even now the annual flow of goods and services available to serve our personal and collective needs could be substantially larger than it is without any economic growth taking place at all: Part of the civilian labor force is unemployed, more is on short time. The steel industry is using only a fraction of its capacity. We are, in short, in a recession and a lot of extra output could be had by improving the short-run state of affairs.

One of the best medicines for long-run growth is short-run prosperity. But leaving aside short-run slack, where can increased real output come from? Since national productivity as we have defined it is a ratio of final output to primary inputs, extra output can come either from increased primary inputs or from higher productivity. The line separating these two sources of growth is not a sharp one.

The Primary Inputs

Let’s consider the primary inputs first. In the absence of territorial changes, the supply of land and natural resources doesn’t change. (Although resources can be discovered and developed, this requires labor and capital.) But the input of labor can increase—and it has. The observed increase in the country’s input of labor has been the resultant of several tendencies, some demographic and some more directly social.

There is an increase in employment when the population grows and also (as has happened since 1929) when the fraction of the population engaged in production increases. But this increase in the labor input has been partially offset by a reduction in hours worked per year. Changes in the demographic composition of the population make a difference, too: The labor supply changes in quality and quantity as the age distribution of the population shifts and as the level of health and strength improves. Social institutions matter, too: The participation of women in the labor force affects its quality, and so does the efficiency with which the skills of women are utilized. And another very important contribution to economic growth lies squarely on the borderline between increases in input and in productivity: This is changes in the education of the labor force.

Shall we think of this as equivalent to an increase in the labor input, a high school graduate counting as contributing “more” labor than a worker who left school in the sixth grade? Or shall we think of a better-educated, better-trained labor force as one of the sources of higher productivity? It does not matter, as long as we keep it straight and recognize how important it is.

The other great primary input is reproducible capital equipment: buildings, machines, inventories, vehicles, and the rest. One important way of getting increased output is by equipping the labor force with more horsepower, more capital, more of the fruits of saving. But here, too, we must draw a hypothetical line between changes in the amount of capital used in industry and improvement in the quality of capital goods. The latter ought properly to be counted as a source of increased productivity; most new processes need to be embodied in a new type of capital equipment, and a high rate of investment increases the speed with which technological inventiveness gets built into production.

Factors in Productivity

Coming now to improved productivity as a source of economic growth, there are at least three general categories: One has already been mentioned—ordinary technological progress, new products, new methods, new ideas, the results of research and inspiration. Secondly, a gain or loss in productivity may stem from improved or worsened economic organization. I have in mind such things as monopolistic restrictions, certain kinds of union rules, barriers to the flow of goods, immobility of labor and resources, and practices imposed either privately or by government. A third possibility, known to Adam Smith, is that the sheer increase in the size of the economic system may yield economies of scale by permitting greater specialization and division of labor and allowing goods to be produced in plants of optimal size. If you believe that the “ultimate” source of productivity is the American Family, or the Democratic Way of Life, or the Republican Party, you may be right. But the ultimate causes must work through one of these proximate sources.

In what proportions has economic growth since 1929 come from each of these sources? This is no simple matter and a lot of guesswork and assumptions have gone into answering this question. I’ve tried my hand at it and so have many others. The figures | am going to give you come from a recent study by Herbert Stein and Edward Denison (both of the research staff, Committee for Economic Development), which is more complete than anything else done along these lines.

Remember that the real GNP has grown by about 3 per cent per year since 1929. About one-third of that growth, or one per cent per year, is attributable to increased employment. (Employment rose about 1.3 per cent per year but without accompanying investment, etc., could only increase output by one per cent per year.) Shorter hours canceled about one-fifth of this growth. So altogether, the increase in labor input was responsible for about eight-tenths of one per cent of the total growth rate of 3 per cent per year. Stein and Denison add to that a contribution of a tenth of one per cent from changes in age and sex composition and better utilization of women workers. Thus we account for growth of nine-tenths of one per cent per year, or 30 per cent of the observed growth rate of 3 per cent.

Investment was the source of growth at the rate of a bit over one-half of one per cent a year, accounting for about 19 per cent of the recorded growth. Hence, about half of the growth rate of real GNP in the last 30 years can be ascribed to increased primary inputs of labor and capital.

Had this been all, our national output would have grown at a rate closer to one and a half per cent per year, and we would be much poorer than we are. The other half of the actual growth rate is a consequence of improved national productivity.

When we look at this remainder closely, we see that about half of it is attributed to the historical increase in the education of the labor force. Real GNP, in more explicit terms, has increased about seven-tenths of one per cent a year since 1929—which is about a quarter of the total rate of growth—in consequence of the prosaic fact that each year’s labor force has been on the average better educated than the previous year’s.

This leaves about 27 per cent of the full growth rate, about eight-tenths of one per cent a year, to be accounted for. Stein and Denison concluded that there was a slight loss of output because of greater restrictions against optimal use of resources, but this didn’t amount to much. They attributed about one-third of one per cent a year to economies of scale. And they credited the rest, amounting to one-half of one per cent a year—a sixth of all the growth we’ve had—to advances in technical knowledge and improvements in actual production practices.

Together, education and improved technology accounted for about 40 per cent of the recorded growth of the last 30 years. Of the 3 per cent per year increase in real GNP, about 1.2 per cent has come mainly from what goes on in people’s heads. The national product per head has grown 1.7 per cent per year and it has grown 1.6 per cent per year per person employed. Of this latter rate of growth, no less than three-quarters is the result of increased education and increased knowledge. That’s something to think about.

On the Other Hand…

Such figures tempt one to leap ahead with predictions and policy prescriptions. But no one can guarantee that the next 30 years will reproduce the pattern. Our real product may not continue to grow at 3 per cent per year, and it may well be that whatever growth we get in the next quarter of a century will come from different wellsprings. In some ways, in fact, this seems likely.

According to Stein and Denison, we have earned a high yield from improving the educational level of the labor force. This process, however, may be subject to diminishing returns; giving everyone a high school education may have added more to the nation’s productivity than sending everybody to college would—hard as this may be for a college professor to swallow. There is, moreover, some limit to the possibility of lengthening the school year and adding to the number of years of schooling.

Eventually, the only way left to increase educational input will be to improve the quality of education. This is desirable in any case, but it will also be costly, and the net economic return to society may be less. If you believe, as I do, that more and better education would be a good thing even on wholly noneconomic grounds, and worth what it will cost in diversion of resources, then the economic benefits are just a bonus.

When we turn to policy-making, it is tempting to accentuate the positive and look only for places where conscious action promises a reward. But policy measures have costs. We must be sure we are prepared to pay the bill.

We do not in our society decide casually that people are spending too little on shoes or too much on hair tonic and commence legislation to set them right. Is there something special about education and research?

I think there is. Knowledge is one of the few things that tends to escape the market. Partly this is because knowledge is usually embedded in people and we do not permit property rights in people.

The public nature of knowledge is even clearer in the case of research. The more “basic” research is, the more the private yield is likely to fall short of the social yield. Under these conditions, even the most smoothly working market economy may tend to under-invest in education and research.

One hears often of technical progress being held up or dissipated now by featherbedding and other restrictive practices by labor organizations. There is little doubt that such practices impose a real burden on society by holding back potential output. But they stem largely from fear of technological unemployment, and this is a real thing, especially in the short run. A democratic society which wishes to eliminate featherbedding has, I think, the responsibility to do what is necessary to ease the transitional burden on displaced workers—by retraining programs, assistance in mobility, and (perhaps even more importantly) maintaining a high level of employment and a brisk labor market.

One of the side effects of the kind of emphasis we have been placing on the productivity side of the ledger is a tendency to underestimate the importance of capital formation in increasing output per head. Most methods for separating out the effects of technical progress and investment fail to allow for the strong interdependence between the two. Sheer replication of capital goods of the same type may indeed have only a weak effect on aggregate output, but increased knowledge in blueprints into hardware may be equally unproductive. If this is so, then for any given rate of acquisition of knowledge, society can within limits speed up its rate of growth by stimulating investment, shifting the age distribution of its stock of capital goods toward the young side, and converting obsolete capacity into the latest models.

One source of extra output available to us right now is to get back to full employment. A high level of economic activity can have long-run effects on productivity—because pressure on capacity stimulates investment, and because lively markets for labor and goods help to break down restrictive practices and resistance to change. It could hardly hurt!

Source: Technology Review, April 1961, pp. 17-19, 34, 36.

Image Source: Portrait of Robert M. Solow used in the Technology Review, April 1961 can be seen in the mitmuseum.mit.edu collection of faculty photographs.

Tags Solow

Bryn Mawr Economists Gender Illinois

Illinois. Economics PhD alumna. Janet Montgomery Hooks. 1960

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2026-08-09

For the post on the Rockefeller Foundation funded series: The Ethics and Economics of Society, I came across the name of Janet M. Hooks who collaborated with Elizabeth E. Hoyt, Margaret G. Reid, and Joseph L. McConnell, on the volume American Income and Its Use (1954). Because I found relatively little about her through my searches, I figured I ought to share those facts that I have been able to string together about Janet M. Hooks’ life and career.

________________________

Janet Montgomery Hooks (Bassie)
Her Biographical Timeline

Born April 25, 1912, in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Parents: David Munro Hooks and Maud E. Montgomery.

A.B., Mount Holyoke College, 1933 — major in Economics (Honor Work), minor in History.

A.M. Bryn Mawr College (1934).

1936. Federal Consumer Purchases Study at Toledo, Ohio.

Married Oct. 2, 1937 (Saturday), to V. Lewis Bassie of Chicago, in a private ceremony at the Hooks family home in West Englewood, N.J., performed by the Rev. William K. Russell of Christ Episcopal Church, West Englewood. Attendants were her sisters Vida and Maida Hooks; best man was Charles Coe of Washington, D.C. The couple honeymooned to Bermuda on the S.S. Monarch of Bermuda and settled in Washington, D.C.

Source: “Miss Hooks Married to V. L. Bassie,” The Record (Hackensack, N.J.), Oct. 4, 1937, p. 14.

Groom’s background per the same announcement: “Mr. Bassie is an alumnus of the University of Chicago and is with the Federal Reserve Board.” V. Lewis Bassie (1907/08–June 5, 1997) took his Ph.D. at Chicago in 1931, later becoming a well-known business-cycle forecaster, joining the University of Illinois economics faculty in 1948 as director of the Bureau of Economic and Business Research, and retiring in 1976. Illinois economics department’s historical profile of V. Lewis Bassie.

She was to publish professionally under her maiden name “Janet M. Hooks”.

1940 U.S. Census: listed as “Jr. economist,” Government — living in Arlington, Va., with her husband, economist V. Lewis Bassie. By the April 1940 census date she was already a federal government economist.

1940-48: Research Division, U.S. Department of Labor Women’s Bureau.

Source: Biographical Listing of Members of the American Economic Association. American Economic Review, December 1989), p. 221.

Catalog record: catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/003493587
Full view: babel.hathitrust.org (uiug.30112104139305)

1941: Employment of women in the Federal Government, 1923 to 1929 by Rachel Fesler Nyswander and Janet M. Hooks. U.S. Department of Labor, Bulletin of the Women’s Bureau, no. 182.

Catalog record: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/003493587
Full view: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112104139305

Feb. 2, 1942, p. 24 — Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) identified her as an active member on the Workers’ Education Committee that sponsored a party to raise funds for the American Labor Education Service. Others named in the article constitute a list of a Washington women’s who’s who of economic policy loc.gov (Feb. 2, 1942, p. 24)

1944: author, British Policies and Methods in Employing Women in Wartime, Women’s Bureau Bulletin No. 200 (Washington: GPO, 1944).

Catalog record: catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/003493702
Full view: babel.hathitrust.org (uiug.30112102049118)

1947: author, Women’s Occupations Through Seven Decades, Women’s Bureau Bulletin No. 218 (Washington: GPO, 1947). The bulletin’s own foreword states: “The analysis was made and the report written by Janet M. Hooks, of the Bureau’s Research Division.”

PDF: fraser.stlouisfed.org (Bulletin 218)
Full text: fraser.stlouisfed.org (fulltext)
FRASER author page: fraser.stlouisfed.org/author/hooks-janet-m

1948: Her husband V. Lewis Bassie joined the University of Illinois faculty.

1949–1950: co-author (with Mary E. Pidgeon), Women in the Federal Service, 1923–1947. U.S. Dept. of Labor, Women’s Bureau, 1949–1950), 2 vols. NOTE: vol. 2 was written without participation of Janet M. Hooks.

Catalog record: catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011397919
Full view Volume 1: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112102049753
Full view Volume 2: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112102049761

1950: U.S. Census. Family of V. Lewis Bassie (age 42, b. in Illinois) and Janet M. Bassie (age 37, b. in Massachusetts), daughter Carol M. (age 6, b. in Virginia) and son William C. (age 1, b. in Washington, DC) Father is listed as Professor of Economics, Director of Business research at the state university. Mother has no occupation listed.

1954: Co-author with Joseph L. McConnell of Part III The Changing Family and its Dependents in the volume American Income and Its Use (1954) by Elizabeth E. Hoyt, Margaret G. Reid, Joseph L. McConnell, and Janet Montgomery Hooks, published in the Rockefeller Foundation funded series: The Ethics and Economics of Society (Harper & Brothers). Note: Margaret Reid was at the University of Illinois 1948-51. Also Howard Bowen (a principal in the Rockefeller Foundation project was Dean at the University of Illinois, removed as dean in 1951).

1960: Awarded Ph.D. in economics per the Report of the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, meeting of June 14, 1960 (pp. 1333–35): under “In Economics” — “Janet Montgomery Hooks, A.B., Mount Holyoke College, 1933; A.M., Bryn Mawr, 1934.” Dissertation: The Contribution of Household Production to the National Income.

1963-1977. Eastern Illinois University. [Just over 50 years old, having completed her doctorate in Economics at Illinois in 1960 — 26 years after her Bryn Mawr A.M., about a decade after her husband V. Lewis Bassie joined the Illinois faculty (1948), and roughly a decade after her last confirmed Women’s Bureau byline (1949–50), she becomes a full fledged academic economist.]

Source: Biographical Listing of Members of the American Economic Association. American Economic Review, December 1989), p. 221.

1967: Assistant Professor of Economics, Eastern Illinois University (The Warbler, 1967, p. 67)

1977: Professor emeritus. Eastern Illinois University

Source: Biographical Listing of Members of the American Economic Association. American Economic Review, December 1989), p. 221.

Died April 4, 2002, in Urbana, Illinois.

Source: Obituary: “Janet Montgomery Hooks Bassie,” News and Record (Greensboro, N.C.), April 6, 2002, p. 19.

Image Sources: Yearbook of Eastern Illinois University, The Warbler, 1967

Tags Bassie, Hooks

Chicago Columbia Economist Market Economists

Columbia. Background inquiry regarding John Maurice Clark. Seligman, 1925

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2026-07-31

Apparently what happened in Chicago didn’t have to stay in Chicago, judging from the casual background check on John Maurice Clark seen in the letter sent to the chairman of the political science department there, Charles E. Meriam (Columbia PhD, 1900), by Edwin R.A. Seligman, the executive officer [chairman] of the department of economics at Columbia. It would be interesting to know whether or what the colleagues at Chicago answered. In any event John Maurice Clark was appointed professor of economics as of the academic year 1926-27. I must say November 1925 seems rather late in the game to be making such discrete inquiries. Was Seligman looking to cover his backside or was he looking for evidence to possibly block Clark’s appointment. Under either interpretation, the matter would have been delicate.

___________________________

Cast of Characters

The economists have been introduced in other posts here at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror:

John Maurice Clark. …graduated from Amherst in 1905 and received his Ph.D. at Columbia five years later. He taught at Colorado College, Amherst and the University of Chicago before joining the Columbia faculty in 1926. He retired in 1956.

Source: From his obituary in the New York Times (June 28, 1963).
Incidentally, the biographical notes for Clark have incorrect dates for his professorship, but for the sake of completeness I include the link to the finding guide to his papers. Columbia University Libraries, Rare Book & Manuscript Library. John Maurice Clark papers, 1920-1963. Collection Overview.

Image Source: John Maurice Clark. University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-0171. Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Edwin R. A. Seligman. Columbia A.B. 1879; A.M. 1884; L.L.B. 1884; Ph.D. 1885; L.L.D. 1904. Seligman served on the Columbia University faculty 1885-1931; the Tax Committee of New York City 1914-1916 and of New York State 1929-1931; the League of Nations committee on economics and finance 1922-1923; financial advisor to Cuba in 1931; editor of the Political Science Quarterly and the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, among many other roles.

Source: Columbia University Libraries, Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Edwin Anderson Seligman papers, 1750-1939. Collection Overview.

* * * * * * * * *

Ernst Freund, 1864-1932, was professor of law at the University of Chicago from 1902 to his death. Born in New York City during a brief visit by his German parents, Freund was raised in Dresden and Frankfurt-am-Main. He was educated at the Universities of Berlin and Heidelberg, receiving a Doctor of Law degree from the latter in 1884. Soon after, Freund immigrated to the United States where he practiced law in New York City. In 1892, he expanded his career by accepting a position as acting professor of administrative law at Columbia College. This position sparked an interest in teaching, which led Freund, in 1894, to abandon his law practice in order to accept a full-time appointment on the political science faculty at the University of Chicago as instructor of Roman law and jurisprudence. During his early years at Chicago, Freund pursued a part-time graduate career at Columbia, which awarded him a Ph.D. in political science in 1897.

Ernst Freund played a significant role in the founding of the University of Chicago Law School. William Rainey Harper’s original plan for legal education at Chicago was to integrate a research-oriented institute of jurisprudence into the graduate programs of the university proper. In spite of his interest in political science and jurisprudence, Freund urged Harper to develop instead a professional graduate law school whose standards would surpass those of Harvard and Columbia. It was Freund’s argument that legal research was already being conducted in the Departments of History, Political Science, Sociology, and Political Economy. If the new Law School attracted a quality faculty interested in the teaching of law, a research relationship would naturally develop. Freund’s idea of legal curriculum incorporated traditional methods with a new emphasis on the Law School’s responsibility to the University and community at large. In addition to standard courses, Freund advocated the teaching of constitutional and international law, administrative law, and various courses under the rubric of jurisprudence, which were then being taught in other departments of the University. This curriculum broke with the Harvard plan that stressed more strictly legal subjects which was then accepted as the model for American legal education. In spite of this concept of legal education, Freund turned to Harvard for leadership in organizing the new Law School. He recommended that Harper recruit Harvard’s Joseph H. Beale, one of the foremost legal scholars in the nation, on a two-year appointment to put the new school in order. Beale accepted Harper’s offer only after making it clear that Freund’s plan would have to be modified. The resulting curriculum is described by Frank Ellsworth in his Developments in American Legal Education at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (University of Chicago Ph.D. dissertation, 1976). Ellsworth writes:

By merging the traditional technical insight of Beale with the innovative ideals of Freund, a blend of the traditional and a farsighted curriculum occured and resulted in the first significant effort to liberalize the curriculum in legal education since Langdell’s work at Harvard.

Freund joined the faculty of the new Law School as Professor in 1902. He continued in that position until 1929 when he was appointed the first holder of the John P. Wilson Professorship in Law, a position he held until his death in 1932.

Freund’s career was composed of three basic parts: teacher, scholar, and advisor. In each of these areas, he integrated traditional legal scholarship, augmented by his experience in the German university, with a new emphasis on the interdisciplinary approach to legal education. Freund taught subjects which ranged from administrative law to social legislation and domestic relations. His scholarship rested on such significant contributions as The Police Power: Public Policy and Constitutional Rights (1904) and Standards of American Legislation (1917) for which he was awarded the James Barr Ames medal of the Harvard Law School. Along with these and other major works were numerous articles in the Social Science Review, Labor Legislation Review, and the Political Science Quarterly, which dealt with subjects that ranged from health insurance to illegitimacy. Freund played a major role as advisor to legislative agencies around the United States. He served as commissioner from Illinois to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. He drafted the act creating the Illinois State Immigrant’s Commission and served as president of the Immigrant’s Protective League. His devotion to these and other social welfare activities led Jane Addams to eulogize him as one who, “never once failed to be sensitive to injustice and preventable suffering.”

Source: Guide to the Ernst Freund Papers 1882-1934. University of Chicago Library, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center.

* * * * * * * * *

Charles E. Merriam was a Political scientist and politician. A.B., Lenox College, 1893; A.B., State University of Iowa, 1895. A.M., Columbia University, 1898; Ph.D., 1900. Docent in political science, University of Chicago, 1900-1902; associate, 1902-1903; instructor, 1903-1905; assistant professor, 1905-1907; associate professor, 1907-1911; professor, 1911-1940; chairman, Department of Political Science, 1923-1940; Morton D. Hull Distinguished Professor of Political Science. Chicago alderman, 1909-1911 and 1913-1917. Candidate for mayor of Chicago, 1911 and 1919. Founder, Social Science Research Council, 1924.

Source: Guide to the Charles E. Merriam Papers 1893-1957, p. 8. University of Chicago Library, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center.

___________________________

What’s John Maurice Clark really like?… asking for a friend?

[Copy of typed letter]

Also to Professor Ernst Freund

November 4, 1925

Professor Charles E. Merriam,
University of Chicago,
Chicago, Illinois.

My dear Merriam:

I am taking the liberty of writing to you on a very private and confidential matter and I hope that you will respond in an equally frank and confidential way. The point is this: we are thinking of adding to our corps of professors in the Faculty of Political Science (and we are on the lookout for the biggest man in the United States who is available). One of the two or three men that I have in mind is Maurice Clark, who of course I know very well as an old and excellent student. I want, however, to ascertain a little more about the following points:

1) Is it true, as is sometimes stated, that he is an exceptionally poor teacher and that he does not even interest the best graduate students, for the alleged reason that he is more of a closet philosopher who takes very little interest in human beings?

2) Is it true that he does not pull his oar in the ordinary departmental and faculty work and that he is of a rather non-cooperative disposition?

As to his brilliancy and creative power, I need no advice because those qualities are perfectly familiar to me, and while I am not at all sure that even if your answers to my questions were in the affirmative, those defects would outweigh his qualities, but I do count upon your giving me confidentially your opinion about these matters.

Of course it goes without saying that things are still in the embryo condition and that all I am trying to do now is to get a little more light on the situation so that I can bring it to the attention of my colleagues.

I am by no means sure that even if we should decide that Clark was the right man for us, he could be prevailed upon to leave the place where he is so happy as he is with you, — but all that is in the distant future.

With kind regards,

Faithfully yours,

P.S. Of course you will say nothing of this to anyone else.

Source: Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections. Seligman, Edwin Robert Anderson Collection, Box 37 (Box 100: Columbia 1924-1930).

Tags ClarkJM, Seligman

Budgets Chicago Economist Market Economists

Chicago. Economics Department Budget Proposal for 1944-45 by Simeon Leland, Feb 1944

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-12-28

The 1944-45 budget file for the department of economics consists of a three page spreadsheet, is followed by fifteen pages of line item justifications for changes signed by the chairman of the department Simeon E. Leland and a one page budget memorandum by the assistant comptroller (Lincicome) to the Vice President (Filbey). This is an informationally rich document.

For this posting I have converted the item rows of the budget spreadsheet into individual columns for the items. The separate items have then been paired with the line item justifications.

An excerpt from a 1945 development plan by Chairman Leland for the department has been transcribed and posted.

___________________________________

Named in the Instructional Budget, 1944-45

Harbison, Frederick H.

McGuire, Christine H. (Mrs. Jules Masserman)

___________________________________

The University of Chicago
Budget and Appointment Recommendations
1944-45

Division of the Social Sciences
Department of Economics

February 21, 1944

Departmental Recommendations

In presenting the Budget for 1944-45, I am transmitting the recommendations of the Professors in the Department of Economics as decided upon at their meeting February 15, 1944. The specific recommendations, save as to dissents where their own welfare was involved, were unanimous. For convenience, the recommendations are presented in two divisions: (I) The college; (II) The Department. An attempt is also made to consider problems of the future development of the Department.

The College

Recommendations concerning those members of the College staff who have status in the Department will be appended hereto when they are received from Dean Faust. As in the past, the Department has no responsibility in connection with the College and hence does not assume responsibility for recommendations in the College. The Department is glad to incorporate in its budget or transmit through customary channels any recommendations Dean Faust desires to make.

The Department

The recommendations of the Professors in the Department can be classified under four convenient headings: (A) Advancements in Rank and Increases in Salaries Related Thereto; (B) Recommendations as to Changes in Salaries; (C) Appointments ;(D) Future Development of the Department; (E) Recommendations as to Service and Equipment.

Instructional Budget Account

Item No.			1-20
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)
Tenure
	Present Expira.
	New appointment
		From
		Yrs.
Service Basis
	Number of quarters
	If part-time, approx. %
Salary Level
	1943-44		$54,600)
	Proposed
		Chairman	$65,550)
		Dean
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level		[….]
	Amount 1944-45

___________________________________

Items requiring no change
in rank or salary

Professor Jacob Viner

Item No.			1
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			Viner, Jacob, Prof.
Tenure
	Present Expira.		Sept….
	New appointment
		From
		Yrs.
Service Basis
	Number of quarters		3
	If part-time, approx. %
Salary Level
	1943-44		$10,000
	Proposed
		Chairman	$10,000
		Dean
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level
	Amount 1944-45

___________________________________

Professor T. W. Schultz

Item No.			4
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			Schultz, T.W., Prof.
Tenure
	Present Expira.		Sept….
	New appointment
		From
		Yrs.
Service Basis
	Number of quarters		3
	If part-time, approx. %
Salary Level
	1943-44		$9,000
	Proposed
		Chairman	$9,000
		Dean
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level
	Amount 1944-45

___________________________________

Professor Jacob Marschak

Item No.			6
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			Marschak, Jacob, Prof. ([Paid by] Commission
Tenure
	Present Expira.		Dec….
	New appointment
		From
		Yrs.
Service Basis
	Number of quarters		3 [in Economics] 4 [in Cowles]
	If part-time, approx. %		50% [Economics] 50% [Cowles]
Salary Level
	1943-44		$7,500 Total From Economics $3,750 From Cowles $3,750
	Proposed
		Chairman	$7,500 Total From Economics $3,750 From Cowles, $3,750
		Dean
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level
	Amount 1944-45

___________________________________

Professor Paul H. Douglas

Item No.			7
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			Douglas, P.H., Prof. (On leave, 10/1/42—enlisted)
Tenure
	Present Expira.		Sept….
	New appointment
		From
		Yrs.
Service Basis
	Number of quarters		3
	If part-time, approx. %
Salary Level
	1943-44		($7,000)
	Proposed
		Chairman	($7,000)
		Dean
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level
	Amount 1944-45

___________________________________

Assistant Professor Frederick H. Harbison

Item No.			13
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			Harbison, F. H., Asst. Prof. (On leave [to 9/30/44] Government Service)
Tenure
	Present Expira.		Sept. 45
	New appointment
		From
		Yrs.
Service Basis
	Number of quarters		3
	If part-time, approx. %
Salary Level
	1943-44		($4,000)
	Proposed
		Chairman	$4,000
		Dean
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level		[4,000]
	Amount 1944-45

___________________________________

Advancements in Rank and Increases in Salaries Related Thereto

[Note: All departmental recommendations for an advancement in rank were rejected by the President’s Office.]

___________________________________

Associate Professor Lloyd W. Mints

[11] The Department recommends that the rank of Lloyd W. Mints be changed from Associate Professor to Professor of Economics. Mr. Mints has been a member of the staff since 1920, rising successively from Instructor to Assistant Professor to Associate Professor. He has earned the respect of students and colleagues for the thoroughness of his teaching and for his insight into economic and monetary theory. He has been a willing worker and has carried a heavy load of administrative routine for many years in connection with the advising of students. The Department has considered this recommendation on several occasions within the last few years and expected to make the recommendation at a time when Mints’ book on A History of Banking Theory would appear. Through no fault of his own the publication of this work — the fruition of several years’ research — has been delayed due to the war and the shortage of paper. Harper and Brothers have the manuscript in their possession and have agreed to publish it, but because of market difficulties plus rationing of paper stocks actual publication will probably be postponed for some time. It does not seem fair to delay this promotion in hope of finding a strategic occasion for its presentation. If one looks ahead to retirement and the possibility of accumulating a satisfactory annuity, the earlier this promotion is given the greater will be its worth to Mr. Mints. On the other hand, delay may tend to impair morale and produce discouragement, especially when the length of Mints’s service to the University is considered. It is recommended that Mr. Mints’s salary be increased $1,000.

Item No.			11
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			Mints, L. W., Prof. (Assoc. Prof.)
Tenure
	Present Expira.		Sept. 45
	New appointment
		From	10/1/44
		Yrs.	[Ind]
Service Basis
	Number of quarters		3
	If part-time, approx. %
Salary Level
	1943-44		$4,000
	Proposed
		Chairman	$5,000
		Dean	Ac. Prof.
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level		[$4,500]
	Amount 1944-45

___________________________________

Associate Professor Henry C. Simons

[10] The Department recommends the promotion of Henry C. Simons from Associate Professor to Professor of Economics. Simons has earned the reputation here and among his peers at other institutions of being a brilliant economist. His powers of theoretical analysis are equaled by few men: his scintillating suggestions as to public policy in the fields in which he has written have been widely recognized and favorably quoted; his writings have an originality and style which matches the subjective contributions of his works. Simons’ opinions on many economic subjects are eagerly sought. The Department recommends that his salary be increased $1,500. The recommendations as to advancement in rank and increase in salary will also be supported by the Law School, to which Simons devotes ono-third of his time.

See the Law School recommendations, Item 12. Since the present contract for the Civil Affairs Training Program does not extend throughout the year 1944-45, provision must be made in the regular budget for the salary if a new appointment is to be made from the budget.

Item No.			10
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			Simons, H.C., Prof. (Assoc. Prof)
Tenure
	Present Expira.		Sept….
	New appointment
		From	10/1/44
		Yrs.	[Ind]
Service Basis
	Number of quarters		3
	If part-time, approx. %		67 (Econ.) 33 (Law School)
Salary Level
	1943-44		$4,500 (Total) $3,000 (Econ.) $1,500 (Law School)
	Proposed
		Chairman	$6,000 $4,000 (Econ.) $2,000 (Law School)
		Dean	[Ac. Prof]
President’s Recommendation
	Rank		[Ac. Prof]
	Salary Level		[$5,000 (Total)] [$3,333 (Econ.)] [$1,667 (Law School])
	Amount 1944-45

___________________________________

Instructor H. Gregg Lewis

[14] The Department proposes that H. Gregg Lewis be promoted from Instructor to Assistant Professor and that his salary be increased $500, effective upon his return to the University at the close of the war. His work merits this recognition. By the time he returns, it is believed that Lewis will have received his Ph.D. His dissertation is in final stages of preparation.

The leave must be extended if the salary is not to be included in the budget totals.

Item No.			14
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			Lewis, H. G. Asst. Prof. (Instructor) (On leave, Govt. Serv. To 9-30-44 to be extended to 9/30/45)
Tenure
	Present Expira.		Sept. 44
	New appointment
		From	10/1/44
		Yrs.	3
Service Basis
	Number of quarters		3
	If part-time, approx. %
Salary Level
	1943-44		($3,500)
	Proposed
		Chairman	($4,000)
		Dean
President’s Recommendation
	Rank		[Instructor]
	Salary Level
	Amount 1944-45		[$4,000]

___________________________________

Lecturer Robert K. Burns

[15] The Department desires to recommend the appointment of Robert K. Burns as Assistant Professor, to serve the University on a half-time basis at a stipend of $2,000 per annum. Burns, who holds the title of Lecturer, has carried the bulk of the work of the Department in the field of labor during the past two years. Not only has he carried a heavy instructional load but he has supervised class research, and dissertations as well. Burns has been Regional Director of the War Labor Board in Chicago and has recently been transferred to the Washington office to direct certain new activities of the Board. This promotion came as a recognition of outstanding work. How soon Burns could assume increased responsibilities in the University is not known, but any time his services can be made available the Department is in a position to utilize them effectively. With Harbison and Douglas also in the field of labor, it is believed that a half-time appointment for Burns is all that is now required.

Item No.			15
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			Burns, R. E., Asst Prof. (Lecturer, part time).
Tenure
	Present Expira.		June, 44
	New appointment
		From	7/1/44
		Yrs.	3
Service Basis
	Number of quarters		3
	If part-time, approx. %		50
Salary Level
	1943-44		$1,400
	Proposed
		Chairman	$2,000
		Dean
President’s Recommendation
	Rank		[Lect]
	Salary Level		[$2000]
	Amount 1944-45

___________________________________

Changes in Salaries

Professor Frank H. Knight

[2] The Department, over the protest of Frank H. Knight, recommends to the Division that Knight’s salary be increased $1,500 so as to place his compensation on the $10,000 level. If a Distinguished Professorship is available, Knight should receive it; if such a Professorship is unavailable, Knight should receive a stipend as though he were so honored. He is known throughout the world as one of its outstanding economists. His reputation and scholarship extend to the fields of philosophy, ethics, religion, and history, to name but a few. His fellow economists have honored him on many occasions; he has represented them for many years on learned societies. He has been tempted with offers from other institutions. He has been made a Professor of the Social Sciences in recognition of the breadth of his competence. Honor is bestowed on him everywhere; only the University can give him the freedom from financial ills he sorely needs and deserves. His present salary is an embarrassment to the Department, even though it is all charged against the Division.

Item No.			2
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			Knight, F. H., Prof. (also Soc.Sci.Div.Instr.
Tenure
	Present Expira.		June….
	New appointment
		From
		Yrs.
Service Basis
	Number of quarters		3
	If part-time, approx. %
Salary Level
	1943-44		$8,500 From Econ. …. From Soc.Sci.Div. $8,500
	Proposed
		Chairman	$10,000 From Econ. …. From Soc.Sci.Div. $10,000
		Dean
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level		From Soc.Sci.Div. [$9,000) 4]
	Amount 1944-45

___________________________________

Professor John U. Nef

[5] The Department would like to recommend an increase in salary of $1,000 for John U. Nef, but Nef says that he will not hear of it nor accept an increase in compensation. The Department believes that such an increase is well deserved and wants its recommendation to be recorded even if Mr. Nef declines to receive what is manifestly his due.

Item No.			5
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			Nef, J.H., Prof. (also History
Tenure
	Present Expira.		Sept….
	New appointment
		From	[10/1/44]
		Yrs.	[Ind]
Service Basis
	Number of quarters		3 [in Economics and History]
	If part-time, approx. %		50% [Economics] 50% [History]
Salary Level
	1943-44		$7,500 Total From Econ. $3,750 From Hist. $3,750
	Proposed
		Chairman	$8,500 Total From Econ. $4,750 From Hist., $3,750
		Dean
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level		[$8,000 Total] [From Econ. $4,250] [From Hist. $3,750 (4]
	Amount 1944-45

___________________________________

Professor Oscar Lange

[9] The Department recommends an increase in salary of $500 for Oscar Lange. When Lange returned to the University of Chicago after a year’s leave at Columbia, he did so at a distinct financial sacrifice. Any continuation of that disadvantage should be removed. It is the opinion of the Department, too, that Simons and Lange should be treated equally with respect to salary and rank. In view of the salary proposed for Mr. Simons, this increase is doubly appropriate.

Item No.			9
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			Lange, Oscar, Prof.
Tenure
	Present Expira.		June….
	New appointment
		From	[7/1/44]
		Yrs.	[Ind]
Service Basis
	Number of quarters		3
	If part-time, approx. %
Salary Level
	1943-44		$5,500
	Proposed
		Chairman	$6,000
		Dean
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level		[$6000]
	Amount 1944-45

___________________________________

Appointments

Professor Simeon E. Leland

The new appointment information should be inserted for the position of Chairman.

Item No.			3
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			Leland, S.E., Prof. and Chairman (also Political Sci.
Tenure
	Present Expira.		June…. [As Chairman Jun 44]
	New appointment
		From	[7-1-44] [As chairman 7-1-44]
		Yrs.	Ind [as Prof] 3 yrs [as chairman]
Service Basis
	Number of quarters		3 [in Economics and Pol. Sci.]
	If part-time, approx. %		50% [Economics] 50% [Political Sci.]
Salary Level
	1943-44		$8,000 Total From Econ. $4,000 From Pol.Sci. $4,000
	Proposed
		Chairman	$8,000 Total From Econ. $4,000 From Pol.Sci. $4,000
		Dean	$9,000 Total From Econ. $4,500 From Pol.Sci. $4,500
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level		[$9,000 Total] [From Econ. $4,500] [From Pol.Sci. $4,500 (4]
	Amount 1944-45

___________________________________

Professor Chester W. Wright

[8] At the end of the present year Chester W. Wright becomes Professor Emeritus. Up to the present time the Department has been unable to fill Professor Wright’s post. Outstanding scholars of American Economic History are few; promising young men are scarce. Professor Wright’s health and energy are unimpaired. He is at the peak of his career. His recently completed Economic History of the United States is an outstanding achievement. The Department believes that Professor Wright should be invited to remain at the University during the coming year on a half-time basis. The continuance of his work and his presence here will make easier the finding as well as the appointment of a successor. As long aa Professor Wright is in the city the University will be the beneficiary of his work on Library acquisitions. His painstaking labors in the Library over a period of years is reflected in the excellence of the collections of books in Economics and Social Sciences — collections which include rare books, historic volumes and current issues, making our Library one of the best of university libraries.

The desirability of the renewal of Professor Wright’s appointment is strengthened by the fact that Mr. Harold Innis of the University of Toronto, to whom a Professorship in the Department has been offered, has declined our offer for the duration due to his feeling of responsibility toward his own institution in the present emergency. Innis has indicated that when the war is over he will be glad to reconsider our offer. Due also to his great regard for Professor Wright, the renewal of Wright’s appointment for the duration (on a year-to-year basis, as may be required) will be an important factor in inducing Innis to come to the University of Chicago. Probably more than any one person, Wright may be able eventually to induce Innis to join the staff.

If Innis does come to the University of Chicago, he will doubtless wish to devote his attention to Canadian economic history and only gradually devote his energies to continental developments. It will be necessary, therefore, to bring in a young man to teach United States economic history. As has been indicated, promising candidates are hard to find and the Department is unable to recommend a person for appointment at this time. Both Professors Wright and Nef emphasize the difficulties of this task. And, if a recommendation is to be made, the candidate must enjoy the support of senior professors in this field. All of which strengthens the recommendation of the Department for the continuance of Professor Wright’s teaching.

Is the proposed salary to be in addition to the retiring allowance at $3,000 per year?

Item No.			8
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			Wright, C. W., Prof. Emer. (Prof.) [(also Retiring Allowance (Total Salary]
Tenure
	Present Expira.		Sept. 44
	New appointment
		From	[10/1/44]
		Yrs.	1
Service Basis
	Number of quarters		3
	If part-time, approx. %		50
Salary Level
	1943-44		$6,500
	Proposed
		Chairman	$3,250
		Dean
President’s Recommendation
	Rank		[Retire 10/1/44]
	Salary Level
	Amount 1944-45		[$1625]

___________________________________

Instructor Henry S. Bloch

[16] It is recommended that the appointment of Henry S. Bloch as instructor be renewed. Bloch at present is devoting his time exclusively to the CATS program, where his salary is charged. Should that training program be liquidated, Bloch’s services can be transferred immediately to Departmental teaching, research, and assistance in advising students. During the past year such needs have arisen, but because of the demands of the military program Bloch has not been able to assist the Department in its civilian program. Attention is called to the fact that Bloch’s salary is on a four-quarter basis.

Our payroll department states that the present appointment for Mr. Bloch at $2,200 per year is charged to the Economics budget and expires June 30, 1944. There is no record of the appointment chargeable to the Civil Affairs Specialists Training Program. Will you please check your records. Also, since the Training Program contract does not cover 1944-45, it is assumed that any salary for next year must be included in the department totals.

Item No.			16
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			Bloch, H. S., Inst. (also CATS).
Tenure
	Present Expira.		9/30/44
	New appointment
		From	10/1/44
		Yrs.	1
Service Basis
	Number of quarters		4
	If part-time, approx. %
Salary Level
	1943-44		$3,600 (CATS)
	Proposed
		Chairman	$3,600 (CATS)
		Dean
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level		[$3,600 (CATS)]
	Amount 1944-45

___________________________________

Visiting Professor D. H. Buchanan

[12] D. H. Buchanan of the University of North Carolina is a Visiting Professor assisting in the military training program of the University. It is our understanding that his appointment is for the duration or during the continuance of the military training program. Mr. Buchanan’s salary has been charged against the CATS budget and I presume his appointment will continue at the same rate and so long as this program continues. Buchanan is included in this budget only for the sake of completeness.

Item No.			12
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			Buchanan, D. H., Vis. Prof. (also CATS
Tenure
	Present Expira.		Aug. 44
	New appointment		9/1/44 (CATS)
		From	10/1/44
		Yrs.	1
Service Basis
	Number of quarters		4
	If part-time, approx. %
Salary Level
	1943-44		$8,000 (CATS)
	Proposed
		Chairman	$8,000 (CATS)
		Dean	[Do not appoint] [illegible word]
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level
	Amount 1944-45

___________________________________

Research Associate Gale Johnson

[18] The appointment of Gale Johnson as a Research Associate in Agricultural Economics at a four-quarter stipend of $3,700 was recommended during the current year to provide research assistance for Professor T. W. Schultz. Johnson’s appointment will commence as of April 1, 1944.

Item No.			18
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			Johnson, Gale, Res.Assoc. in Agri. Economics
Tenure
	Present Expira.		6/30/44
	New appointment
		From	7/1/44
		Yrs.	1
Service Basis
	Number of quarters		4
	If part-time, approx. %
Salary Level
	1943-44		$3,700
	Proposed
		Chairman	$3,700
		Dean
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level
	Amount 1944-45

___________________________________

Lecturer John K. Langum

[17] The Department recommends the appointment of John K. Langum, Vice President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago in charge of the Bank’s economic research and statistics, as Lecturer in Banking and Banking Policy. The Department would like to appoint Langum as a Lecturer, with the expectation that the arrangement would continue for many years to the mutual advantage of both institutions. A stipend of $500 is proposed, in return for which Langum would be invited during two Quarters of the academic year to give a seminar or series of evening lectures on current topics in banking and banking policy. These lectures should greatly strengthen the work of the University in the field of banking, a defect in our training and research of which we have long been cognizant. We are anxious to make the appointment at an early date, but will make the expenditure of funds contingent upon adequacy of registrations.

The Langum appointment should bring credit to the University. He is well and favorably known in economic and banking circles. He holds his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. He is the author of numerous articles in his field. Recently he has prepared a monograph which the Committee on Economic Development is to publish.

Item No.			17
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			Langum, J.K., Lecturer
Tenure
	Present Expira.
	New appointment
		From	1/1/45 (Winter and Spring Quarters)
		Yrs.
Service Basis
	Number of quarters		2
	If part-time, approx. %		Pt.
Salary Level
	1943-44
	Proposed
		Chairman	$500
		Dean
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level		[$500]
	Amount 1944-45

___________________________________

Items 12a, 13a, 15, 1, and 16a are inserted since the individuals have appointments extending beyond June 30, 1944.

Professor Maynard C. Krueger

Item No.			[12a]
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			[Krueger, M. C. As Prof. (also College]
Tenure
	Present Expira.		[Sept. 44]
	New appointment
		From
		Yrs.
Service Basis
	Number of quarters
	If part-time, approx. %
Salary Level
	1943-44		[$4,000]
	Proposed
		Chairman	[$4,000) 4]
		Dean
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level		[$4,000]
	Amount 1944-45

___________________________________

Assistant Prof. Gerhard E.O. Meyer

Item No.			[13a]
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			[Meyer, G.E.O. As. Prof. (also College]
Tenure
	Present Expira.		[Sept. 44]
	New appointment
		From
		Yrs.
Service Basis
	Number of quarters
	If part-time, approx. %
Salary Level
	1943-44		[$2,700]
	Proposed
		Chairman	[$3,500) 4]
		Dean
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level		[$4,000]
	Amount 1944-45

From the spreadsheet it is not clear about the breakdown of source of funding between the Department of Economics and the College.

___________________________________

Instructor/Dean of Students Christine McGuire Masserman

Note: items 15a and 16a refer to the same person. Christine H. McGuire (who married the psychiatrist Jules H. Masserman). Christine H. McGuire is listed in the U.S. National Register of Scientific and Technical Personnel, 1921-1970 as having received a master’s degree in 1938. She later moved from teaching economics to

Item No.			[15a]
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			[McGuire, Christine (Mrs. Jules H. Masserman), Inst. (also College and Dean of Students]
Tenure
	Present Expira.		[Sept 44]
	New appointment
		From
		Yrs.	1
Service Basis
	Number of quarters		4
	If part-time, approx. %
Salary Level
	1943-44		[$2,000
	Proposed
		Chairman
		Dean	[$2,000 Total College (?) $1,500 )4 Economics (?) $500)4]
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level		[$2,000 Total College (?) $1,500 )4 Economics (?) $500)4]
	Amount 1944-45

Instructor C. H. Masserman

Item No.			16a
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			[Masserman, H. H., Inst.]
Tenure
	Present Expira.		[Sept 44]
	New appointment
		From
		Yrs.
Service Basis
	Number of quarters
	If part-time, approx. %
Salary Level
	1943-44		[$2,000]
	Proposed
		Chairman
		Dean
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level
	Amount 1944-45

___________________________________

The Future Development of the Department

From time to time the Department has called attention to its future needs. It has appraised its deficiencies and has projected problems certain to arise with the retirement of its staff. Some of the problems are still unsolved; one has been solved with brilliance and good fortune.

1. Agriculture

During the past year one of the long standing weaknesses of the Department was cured with the appointment of T. W. Schultz as Professor of Agricultural Economics. With his coming, two important developments can be undertaken. First, a plan for joint degrees in Agricultural Economics cooperatively undertaken by a few selected land grant colleges can be developed. Already we are negotiating with Purdue University to see if we can agree on the details and administration of such a plan. Second, we hope to introduce Agricultural Economics as a field to be studied by undergraduates in the typical four-year college program. At the present time economics departments throughout the country do not call the attention of students to the problems of agriculture either in the so-called “applied economics” courses or in their general survey courses. This is partly due to the fact of specialization, in which work in agriculture and in agricultural economics has been developed almost exclusively in the land grant colleges. It is also due to the fact that few students as part of their graduate education have been exposed to courses In Agricultural Economics. The Department is offering courses in Agricultural Economics to students as part of a general educational program and as part of their training for advanced degrees. Eventually this should bring to the student in urban colleges of liberal arts, where our students are employed, a better understanding of the problems of agriculture. Sooner or later the general courses in economics should deal with agricultural questions just as they now give attention, for example, to the problems of labor, capital, transportation, taxation, or business organization. It is believed that our Department is pioneering in this field, thanks to the active support and encouragement of the University.

2. Transportation

In times past the Department has called attention to the need for strengthening the work offered in Railroads and Transportation. Chicago is the strategic place for the development of advanced training and research in these related fields. It is the railroad center of the United States; it is its central airport; it is a dominant market for railroad equipment and supplies, and during the war has become an important airplane parts manufacturing center. Motor bus and truck-line activities teem in and around Chicago. To meet this opportunity, the University boasts of but one professor whose interests are largely centered in railroad freight rates and who in recent years has typically been on leave. More emphasis in the future should be given to transportation by motor vehicles and airplanes. A major professorial appointment should be contemplated in the field of transportation.

3. Trusts and Monopolies

The retirement of Professor Wright raises the question as to what should be done with respect to teaching and research in the field of Trusts, Monopolies and Business Combinations. Once each year Professor Wright has given a course in Trusts which from the point of view of training of graduate students has been adequate. The decrease in student enrollment during the war has not made the problem critical. The renewal of Professor Wright’s appointment will solve the question for another year.

The field of Trusts alone is not one of sufficient importance, It is believed, to justify a full-time staff appointment. It could easily be combined with Public Utilities or the Control of Business, depending upon the interests of possible candidates for appointment, but some provision should be made to cover this field in the near future.

4. Public Utilities and Control of Business

The offerings of the Department in the field of Public Utilities has been scant, if courses and research over the years are listed. This is true even if the offerings of other Departments and Schools are taken into account. Prior to the depression, efforts were made to make a professorial appointment in this field. Unfortunately, the nominees of the Department could not be induced to join the faculty. Visiting professors were employed on several occasions but with the advent of the depression this practice had to be discontinued. It may be doubted whether Public Utilities is as important a field as it was over a decade ago. Emphasis now has shifted to the Control of Business, with the regulation of public utilities, the dissolution of trusts and the reduction of competition as phases of larger general problems. The control of business by government (and perhaps by other institutions) has long been of interest to economists and political scientists, as well as business men. It has likewise been the concern of lawyers.

The field is of increasing importance in the future. An outstanding professorial appointment would greatly strengthen the University as a whole.

5. Advanced Statistical Theory

In proposing a joint professorship with the Mathematics Department for Professor Abraham Wald, the Department gave expression to a long-felt desire to expand the work of the University in the field of advanced mathematical theory as applied to statistics. Such an appointment with mathematical advice and consultation available to the faculty on their own research and teaching problems would be invaluable. On the whole, the training of students is secondary to this need and service. By such an appointment our research could be strengthened greatly. It offers the opportunity, too, to develop graduate work in the field of statistics far beyond present limits. It is believed that this view and this conception is shared by the Mathematics Department.

As a matter of University policy a closer integration of courses, training and research in the field of statistics would seem to be desirable. The Institute of Statistics has made progress in this direction. More and more the foundations and advanced training in the field should center in the Mathematics Department, with applications being taught in other Departments and Schools. A major appointment such as the one proposed for Wald would strengthen and facilitate these developments.

Although Wald declined our offer, the Department hopes to join Mr. Bartky, Professor of Applied Mathematics, Associate Dean and Dean of Students in the Division of the Physical Sciences and Chairman of the Institute of Statistics, and Mr. Lane, Chairman of the Department of Mathematics, in presenting another recommendation for an outstanding appointment in this field. Such an appointment is a University need which the Department of Economics shares. The Department will help in any way it can to bring about a noteworthy appointment.

6. Joint Appointments with Other Departments

In suggesting appointments in the fields of Trusts and Monopolies, Railroads and Transportation, Public Utilities and the Control of Business, Advanced Mathematical and Statistical Theory, the Department is cognizant of the fact that University resources are limited and that at any time only the most urgent or most important things can be done. Other Departments and Schools, as well as our own, have problems and claims for financial support. Without attempting to weigh the importance of alternative claims or uses for funds, the recommendations of the Department have been made because we think they are important. They represent a portion of a program oriented toward the future.

In making the suggestions enumerated, appointments to the Department of Economics are not being urged per se. Most of the problems also concern other Departments and Schools. In these fields joint appointments are in order. Thereby other parts of the University as well as our own Department would be strengthened. An appointment in Trusts and Monopolies concerns both the Law School and the Department of Political Science, as well as Economics; Railroads and Transportation also concerns the School of Business; Public Utilities and Control of Business should involve Law, Political Science, Business, and Economics; Urban Planning involves the Departments of Geography, Political Science, Economics and the Schools of Law and Business; Social Legislation affects Social Service Administration, Law and Economics. If the University is interested in furthering this suggested development, the Department is ready to take the initiative. Joint appointments will help us improve our Department, its research and teaching.

7. Visiting Professors

Whenever a need arises or a deficiency becomes evident, the easy solution is to suggest “an outstanding appointment.” This may also be the most costly solution even though it may temporarily increase the size, the number of course offerings or the ego of particular departments. It tends to increase the emphasis on less important aspects of particular branches of knowledge. It expends the applications, or the applied courses, rather than the basic elements of theory or science. The growth and strength of certain departments may be increased by concentrating on the development of the fundamental aspects of their subject matter by the regular full-time members of their faculty and by funds spent on increasing the eminence of this central group, the requisite diversification of teaching or research being secured by means of visiting professorships, continuously utilized to cover first one peripheral subject and then another. By bringing to the Department various men for one or two quarters a year, the best they have to offer both in instruction of students and stimulation of faculty colleagues can be secured at relatively low cost. As different men are brought to the Department the gains from this policy can be extended first to one field and then to another. If it is pursued regularly, it will soon become a tradition that new people with unique contributions to supplement those of the regular staff are always in residence in the Department of Economies at the University of Chicago. The Visiting Professorships should be chosen quite as much for their ability to stimulate and educate their faculty colleagues as to enrich the graduate program, though it is hard to see how one could take place without the other.

Next year may not be the time to inaugurate this policy due to difficulties connected with the war and the possible decrease in exceptional graduate students who would profit most from it, but it is urged that the plan be given a careful trial over a period of several years, within which the Department be allowed to experiment freely to see what could be accomplished. It is suggested that $5,000 per annum be placed at the disposal of the Department for 3 to 5 years to see what it can do for itself and the University in the execution of this policy. If it can not demonstrate the gains from this policy, it should be held to account for its failure.

8. Departmental Lectures

A similar line of thought prompts the Department to ask in addition for the sum of $600 per annum for expenditure on occasional lectures to be given by individuals doing new and unique things about which staff members and their best students would otherwise remain ignorant. Such lectures would have little popular appeal and would attract few outside of the Department, but they would give the faculty the benefit of discoveries, hypotheses an ideas before they become current in the profession. Such Iectures could find their way into print via the Journal of Political Economy, Econometrica, or otherwise, as might be determined. The $600 requested would probably provide only two or three such lectures a year due to the payment of expenses and honoraria.

9. A Special Fund for Student Assistance

The suggestion has been made that there be included among the worthy projects to be submitted to prospective donors proposals for the creation of Departmental Funds for the Assistance of Brilliant Students, such as the Littauer Fund now available at Harvard. This would not be a loan fund but a source of grants-in-aid to supplement fellowships, scholarships, loans and other assistance and would be administered by the respective departments which are close to students, and are, therefore, familiar with their needs. A study of the results attained by the Littauer Center might well justify the search for a similar fund.

Recommendations as to Service and Equipment

The Department is unanimous in recommending an increase in salary of at least $35.00 per month for Mrs. Margaret Finnamore who by vote of the faculty has been acting as Secretary of the Department. If it is possible to have this title confirmed and a new salary classification adopted so as to give effect to the work now being performed by Mrs. Finnamore, the wishes of the Department will be carried out. [“]In running the Department, Mrs. Finnamore is the most essential person.”

The Department feels that it is appropriate to increase the salary of Mrs. Marian Woodyard from $145 to $150 per month.

With the continued increase in members of the Department and the increase in their scholarly output, present clerical and stenographic facilities are inadequate. The situation was eased somewhat last year by the addition of $500 to our Equipment and Expense Account. This sum has been utilized to provide additional typing service for staff members but the need can only be met by the addition of one full-time clerk-stenographer. To provide this assistance and to take care of the salary changes recommended above an increase of $2,040 is needed in our Service Account. (I have reduced our Equipment and Expense Account by $500.)

Item No.			21
Account No.			2624 Service
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)
Tenure
	Present Expira.
	New appointment
		From
		Yrs.
Service Basis
	Number of quarters
	If part-time, approx. %
Salary Level
	1943-44		$3,960)
	Proposed
		Chairman	$6,000
		Dean
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level		[$6,000]
	Amount 1944-45

Equipment and Expense

Item No.			22
Account No.			2625 Equipment and Expense
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)
Tenure
	Present Expira.
	New appointment
		From
		Yrs.
Service Basis
	Number of quarters
	If part-time, approx. %
Salary Level
	1943-44		$1,360
	Proposed
		Chairman	$860
		Dean
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level
	Amount 1944-45

An independent check on the present volume of office and stenographic work, as well as its work-program for the future, would be welcomed to test the reasonableness of this recommendation.

Respectfully submitted,
[signed] Simeon E. Leland

___________________________________

Three items crossed out of economics departmental budget by President

Visiting Professors

Item No.			19
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			Visiting Professors
Tenure
	Present Expira.
	New appointment
		From
		Yrs.
Service Basis
	Number of quarters
	If part-time, approx. %
Salary Level
	1943-44
	Proposed
		Chairman	$600
		Dean
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level		[….]
	Amount 1944-45

Lecturers

Item No.			20
Account No.			2621 Instruction
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)			Lecturers
Tenure
	Present Expira.
	New appointment
		From
		Yrs.
Service Basis
	Number of quarters
	If part-time, approx. %
Salary Level
	1943-44
	Proposed
		Chairman	$5,000
		Dean
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level		[….]
	Amount 1944-45

Agricultural Economic Research & Development

Item No.			23
Account No.			2626 Agricultural Economic Research & Development
Name and Proposed Rank (Old rank in parenthesis if change recommended)
Tenure
	Present Expira.
	New appointment
		From
		Yrs.
Service Basis
	Number of quarters
	If part-time, approx. %
Salary Level
	1943-44		$5,000
	Proposed
		Chairman	$5,000
		Dean
President’s Recommendation
	Rank
	Salary Level
	Amount 1944-45		[In Division Budget]

___________________________________

Source: University of Chicago Library. Department of Special Collections. Office of the President. Hutchins Administration Records. Box 284, Folder “Economics, 1943-1947”.

Image Source: Portrait of Simeon E. Leland. University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-03716, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. Image colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Tags Bloch, BuchananDH, BurnsR, Douglas, Harbison, JohnsonDG, Knight, KruegerM, Lange, Leland, LewisHG, Marschak, McGuire, MeyerGEO, Mints, Nef, SchultzTW, Viner, WrightCW

Columbia Development Economic History Economists International Economics Socialism

Columbia. Memo of Musings Regarding Institutional Economics, Area Studies, and Economic History. Hart, 1973

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-11-26

A memorandum written in 1973 by 64-year old Albert G. Hart shares his laments concerning the path taken by the Columbia University department of economics to what he saw to be a grievous neglect of instruction and research into the institutional nuts-and-bolts, historical trajectories, and granular area studies of economics. A copy of the memorandum was found in the files of his colleague, historian of economics, Joseph Dorfman.

Chicago-style economics was explicitly disdained by Hart who actually wished good riddance to Gary Becker (“…he played dog-in-the-manger too much…” with a note of scorn for Milton Friedman (“… [he] ignores the risk that what passes for ‘general economic law’ may turn out to be a series of adhockeries concocted to be plausible for a very special and perhaps transitory state of society…”).

The memo closes with a question of what to do with the theoretical Wunderkinder of economics departments whose peak years have past with still another quarter century of tenure left in their respective academic life-cycles. Fortunately he stops considerably short of recommending senicide.

__________________________

Previously posted content related to Albert G. Hart

University of Chicago

Exams for Introduction to Money and Banking at Chicago, A. G. Hart, 1932-35

Course Outline for Introduction to Money and Banking at Chicago. A. G. Hart, 1933

Columbia University

Hiring Albert Gailord Hart as visiting professor, 1946

Core Economic Theory. Hart, 1946-47

First semester graduate economic analysis. First weeks’ notes. Hart, 1955

Reading list for Economic Analysis (less advanced level). Hart and Wonnacott, 1959

Hart Memo, Economics Faculty Salaries for 15 U.S. universities. April 1961

Personal Narrative of the Columbia Crisis. A.G. Hart, May 1968

__________________________

AGH 11 July 1973

RESPONSIBILITIES AND RESOURCES OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Response, addressed to:

Professor Donald Dewey, Chairman,
Professor Ronald Findlay, Director of Graduate Studies
Continuing and Incoming members of the Department

Dean George S. FRANKEL, Graduate School
Dean Harvey PICKER, School of International Affairs

Interested bystanders

to report of Committee of Instruction on the Department of Economics,
by Albert G. Hart, Professor of Economies.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Preliminary generalities

The COI [Committee of Instruction] report is one of those papers which an informed reader finds simultaneously to be almost-excellent and almost-horrible. I can endorse with only minor reservations its conclusions that recent senior-staff recruiting has been of excellent calibre; that the intensification of workshop-patterns is very healthy; that much stress should be placed on catching good men before their qualifications known to us have become so generally know as to create a bull market; that the graduate students are only moderately happy, and that to build on the quantitative theoretical work of Lancaster, Phelps, and now Dhrymes is a promising way to rebuild morale as well as to establish Columbia again as a major professional focus.

Yet the report is so lop-sided that its net effect is likely not to be constructive. It overlooks entirely two major sides of economics in which Columbia has been, is, and ought to be prominent, and which are of major concern to students. And its lack of historical perspective and of a realistic view of the professional life-cycle may seriously distort its proposals and the reaction to the Department of the central leadership of the University. So I do not see how I can silently let this report stand as expressing real wisdom about the Department and its futures hence this “reaction”.

Some historical correctives

To clear the ground, let me disabuse the reader of the notion that the Department is only now beginning to work on the problems central to the COI report. In the first place, the fact that the workshop pattern of faculty-student interaction (taking in professional visitors) is central to the learning process in economics has been well understood for a long time. At the moment when I became chairman (in 1958), the Department was granted $250,000 by the Ford Foundation specifically to make a major shift toward workshop groupings. The deservedly-praised labor workshop (which non-accidentally had a Becker/Mincer leadership with experience in workshop endeavors at the University of Chicago) was one; we launched also an “Industrial Countries Workshop” (led by Carter Goodrich and Goran Ohlin) which developed a very useful line of publications, a Public Finance Workshop led by Carl Shoup and W. S. Vickrey, and an Expectational Economics workshop under my leadership which was clearly the least successful of the cluster, for reasons I won’t bother the reader with, but for all that far from useless). Presently we had a very lively and constructive International Economics workshop (led by Peter Kenen), which continued under Ronald Findlay; and for a number of years we have had a good-if-not-superlative Monetary Economics workshop (managed by Philip Cagan with partnership of Hart and Barger). In 1972/73 we tried a “Development/Regional” shop, which has been floundering somewhat — partly because it is hard to find a real focus with so many students not in the habit of working together, partly because of its natural leaders, Findlay had to put his main energy into the international field and Wellisz was absent on leave.

What is new in the workshop situation is in the first place the effort (led by Findlay, with enthusiastic support of most of the rest of the Department) to make it work for virtually everybody in the Department, faculty or student — and in the second place serious recognition by the Administration that this is an appropriate-if-expensive way to work, deserving serious backing even if no more Ford funds can be had.

A second consequential historical point (hinted at but not spelled out in the COI report) is that the Department has been working for years at the kind of staffing the COI report now indicates as appropriate. When I was chairman, for example, we had a deal arranged to recruit Svi [sic] Griliches — which was frustrated by what I am bound to call sabotage at the ad hoc committee stage. In Carl Shoup’s chairmanship, we successfully recruited at the assistant professor level two key men who beautifully exemplify the application of quantitative theory and econometric research techniques to economics — Peter Kenen and Gary Becker, both of whom were full professors very young, and were regarded as stars in the profession. In my chairmanship and afterwards, much of the work of the chairman went into nursing these two men’s careers and working conditions. Kenen contributed among other things a distinguished job as departmental leader — first Informally leading a curricular reform, then taking over as chairman for a term-and-a-fraction; had the 1968 not disrupted his strategy, he’d have brought us out as one of the two or three leading departments of economics. Becker, with all his virtues, was unlivable and not available as Departmental leader — being too much centered in his own work, too much inclined to insist that the only desirable recruits were quasi-Beckers, too narrow in his views of the profession’s responsibilities (despite his astounding record of success in applying his own apparently-narrow approach to an unexpectedly wide range of problems). Frankly, I felt it unburdened the Department when he moved to Chicago, because much as we must regret the loss of his lively influence on campus, he played dog-in-the-manger too much and helped foster the impression that economics was devoted to “apologetics for the system” rather than to a search for ways to guide constructive social policies.

Agreeing with the COI that we should recruit young and staff the tenure levels largely from local people, I would point out that we have been working at this with a remarkable lack of effective cooperation from outside the Department. As I just mentioned we did acquire Kenen and Becker as assistant professors; but we had no luck in persuading the Administration and ad hoc committees to let us repeat this success. In my time as chairman, we caught a star by converting Albert Hirschman (who accidentally was here without tenure as one-year replacement for Nurkse, on leave), and who was not at the time widely-enough appreciated in the profession. We were unable to hold David Landes on economic history. Two people who in the end proved to be very highly valued outside though when we acquired them they were rank outsiders are Alexander Erlich and Charles Issawi (both of whom were given tenure in my time as chairman). We should remember also that Vickrey (and earlier Barger and Shoup) started at Columbia in Junior ranks. Dewey, Hart, Cagan, Mincer (who however had filled in earlier), Lancaster, Findlay, Phelps, and now Dhrymes, represent recruiting-with-tenure.

What lends poignancy to the question of recruiting-young is that we now have a very distinguished collection of assistant professors — I think the best we’ve had simultaneously in my time at Columbia. But our uniform lack of success with ad hoc committees on promotions of such men (I think Nakamura has been our only promotion to tenure at all recently) creates a situation where we must tell them frankly that we have little hope of keeping them. Such anomalies as two successive years of leave for young Heckman (with serious problems of continuity for students, and loss of the experiential value of a disastrous first-try at reforming the econometrics curriculum) is an extreme example of the kind of handicap for the Department created by the fact that we are morally bound to help our assistant professors make the kind of showing that will get them goods jobs elsewhere — Columbia being unwilling to back us in getting deserved promotions.

Major areas disregarded

Two major areas of professional responsibility in which Columbia has had and must maintain great distinction are simply not mentioned in the COI report. These are the areas of “institutional economics” and of international/regional/developmental economics.

Traditionally, economics in the United States was split into two main camps —those of theoretical and those of “institutionalist” orientation — which maintained an uneasy partnership in the American Economic Association and in many departments. While the titular headquarters of institutionalism was at Wisconsin, its leading center was actually Columbia; and before the sudden recruitment at the end of World War II of a cluster of theoretically-oriented men (Vickrey, Stigler and myself) there was almost a vacuum in Columbia research and instruction on the theoretical side. J. M. Clark (a most distinguished mind whose personals shyness prevented him from being a major influence in face-to-face contact) was a distinguished theoretical thinker, but regarded himself as an institutionalist and had little curricular influence. Hotelling, who was just leaving at the time I came in 1946, was the nearest thing to an active theorist.

A merger of the theoretical and institutionalist schools began to shape up during the 1930’s and was to a considerable extent accomplished during and just after World War II. The terms of merger were much like those for the two meetings of Quakers in New York City, who obviated what might have been an awkward problem of merging properties by having each member of one meeting become a member also of the other! In the 1940’s and 1950’s, it began to look as if nobody could make a career as theorist without also doubling in some other area, and nobody could make a career as institutionalist without also paying serious attention to the theoretical aspects of his problem. But in the end the merger turned out to be slanted in favor of the theorists: it is again possible to make a career by pursuing problems that are trivial variations on theoretical themes; and large elements of the institutional side of economics are allowed to die out. Students doing quantitative work with data have no tradition of asking what their numbers mean in the context of wider social processes and problems.

At Columbia, the tradition that study of law-cases is one important way to understand the economic subject-matter is preserved chiefly by the fortunate fact that we have Dewey teaching “industrial organization”. Economic history was allowed to die out; and while at present we have in assistant professors Edelstein and Passell two excellent specimens of economic historians who are also competent theorists and econometricians, we have no assurances that economic history will not again be blanked out. Some institutional aspects of “economics of human resources” are very much alive in the labor workshop; but large parts of that tradition (including the tradition of trying to understand trade unions and more generally economic organizations other than business firms) seem to have evaporated. History of thought as an approach to economics is now represented almost entirely by Alexander Erlich (who is also our only member who is expert in Marxist economics and in the functioning of European communist economies). While in terms of professional fashions the lack of “institutionalist” instruction will not cause us to lose face in the profession, we should ask whether in bringing up a new generation of economists we should be willing to see the positive aspects of the institutionalist tradition simply evaporate.

The other major aspect of economics which is disregarded in the COI report — though in fact it absorbs much of our staff manpower and is of fundamental importance for many of our students, especially from overseas — is concern with the world outside the United States. We are seriously understaffed in the pivotal area of formal economics of international-trade-and-finance, where Ronald Findlay is saddled with both the responsibilities handled by Kenen and those which were handled by Hirschman. The problems of economic development (or its lack) in the world’s poor countries need and get a lot of attention. [Incidentally, since USA is rapidly evolving “backwards” into a state of underdevelopment, the insights one gets in studying Latin America or Asia become disconcertingly applicable at home!]

The presence at Columbia of a cluster of “regional institutes” has had an important impact on our work in economics. On the whole, the Department has resisted successfully pressures to recruit people who were expert on some “region” but lacked general professional competence. [Before Riskin fortunately turned up, we were under pressure to recruit an economist who combined Chinese language and willingness to function largely as librarian a combination of qualifications which didn’t seem to coexist with all-round professional competence. Bergson, who for years was our “Soviet specialist” was also a distinguished welfare-theorist. Erlich was originally recruited on “soft money” to be an East-Central-Europe specialist; when Bergson left, there was a closing-of-ranks operation which gave him the Russian field — and it has turned out that his knowledge of Marxist economics and of economic thought, and the fact that he is regularly sought out by East European visitors in USA make him a major factor of general departmental strength. At present the nearest equivalents of “mere” area specialists are Issawi (who also handles general instruction in economics in the School of International Affairs, and a good deal of development-and-history work at the dissertation stage), Nakamura and Riskin — all men of great general usefulness. The roles of European and Latin American “regional specialists” are filled by two of our senior general economists — Barger and myself.

While one could imagine a budgetary situation such that one must recommend reducing to a token scale a University’s involvement in this area (except for basic international-trade-and-finance courses), it is hard to believe that Columbia specifically should withdraw from this kind of work. Surely the economic profession in USA has as part of its responsibility an understanding of the economic processes of other countries. [True, I have heard Milton Friedman say that to have a different economics for Brazil as against USA makes no more sense than to have a different science of chemistry; but he simply disregards the ethnocentric character of the economics which inward-looking economists develop for USA, and ignores the risk that what passes for “general economic law” may turn out to be a series of adhockeries concocted to be plausible for a very special and perhaps transitory state of society.] This responsibility surely comes home to Columbia. For one thing, New York is the natural focus of such work, what with its outward-looking tradition and the presence of the UN. Besides, we incur a special responsibility because we have so many overseas students. I would add that to educate overseas students too exclusively in economics-for-USA is dysfunctional: one of the major handicaps of development has been the attempt of US-trained economists overseas to apply Keynesian remedies to unemployment problems of non-Keynesian type, for example.

Economics and the SIA [School of International Affairs]

If the University were very strong financially, it seems to me plain that one would recommend developing the Economics Department in a way that would greatly strengthen the general work on international relations and on the understanding of societies outside USA which is represented by the School of International Affairs. The SIA could advantageously be much more of a research body and center of workshop activity.

I would not recommend developing an economics department within the SIA (even if SIA eventually develops a distinct and separately-recruited faculty, which I don’t think I would recommend either). To set up standards of recruiting, teaching and publication for “SIA economists” that will pass muster with the general profession is an essential safeguard, and the generally low standards of economic thinking in the UN and in overseas universities outside Europe, Japan and Australasia should be a warning that a separate international economics might not be a genuine “discipline”. But it will be a major defeat if Columbia cannot maintain and improve its standard of keeping a stable of economists for whom understanding of outside economies (and especially of the economies of poor countries) is a major concern.

A question which interacts with this, of course, is whether the SIA can develop its own sources of financing, as seemed so probable a few years ago. If not, the general financial debility of the University will mean that we must stop far short of optimum in the whole area represented by SIA, and hence also on its economic side. Specifically, it may make a great difference whether or not SIA can finance workshop activity in this area, and make a role for research posts for young economists (for example, teaching two-thirds time in the Department and working one-third-time-plus-summer in a research branch of SIA).

If the University’s policy toward economics is primarily to develop its mathematical-economics core, the contribution the Department can make on the SIA side may suffer. And reciprocally, failure to develop strength on this side may be a handicap to SIA in its efforts to get backing for a really strong program.

A postscript on professional life-cycles

One of the most valuable pieces of education I picked up in my earlier years at Columbia was a comment by Isador Rabi at a University Seminar about the problems of a field like physics where the most impressive men “peak” very young and the work regarded as important by the profession is done largely by youngsters. It would be a tremendous waste to throw men on the scrap-heap after their “peak” years, or to regard them as living on the benefits of tenure, as non-producers, for most of their profession lifetimes. The solution, Rabl indicated, was surely to be found in an appropriate division of labor between colleagues at different stages of life-cycle, working out what economists call an area of comparative advantage for the older men.

The COI report seems to me to ignore this problem, and to frame problems as if we could hope to recruit good men between age 25 and age 30 and have them conveniently remove themselves (suicide recommended?) along about age 40 — significant activities being described as those appropriate to men aged 25-40. In good part, I think the “problem” of life-cycle (once recognized) and the “problems” of maintaining strength in institutional economics and in the development/regional areas exist largely because we don’t integrate our approaches to different aspects of economics work. To a considerable degree, the natural life-cycle of the economist is to be obsessed with very abstract problems in youth, and mature into a person more concerned with and more knowledgeable about the real world. To a very large degree, the staffing of the institutional fields and of the SIA-type activities should then be handled by shifting over of people who have graduated from being pure theorists. If we don’t do this, the channels of recruiting and promotion for the continuation of the supposedly -central mathematical-economics core are apt to get clogged. It is very tricky to suppose that giving tenure to a theoretically creative young man is to acquire forty years of theoretically creative activity. Most of the relevant people have their key ideas very young, and develop them as fully as is profitable by age 40. If they continue to preempt the key teaching roles in these fields, they will keep the young from advancing and will impair the freshness of the curriculum offered to graduate and undergraduate students. [It was because of this view that I allowed myself to be pushed out of micro-teaching by Becker and Co. in the early 1960’s.] But to suck the tenured men out of these lines and make room for their successors, a Department needs a lot of roles for the maturing older man. Unless we can do well with the institutional and SIA aspects of the field, I conclude, we can’t do well in the long run with the “core” aspects.

Source: Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections. Joseph Dorfman Collection, Box 13 (Columbia University-teaching, etc.); Folder “Economic H…P…”

Image Source: Obituary in The Columbia Spectator, October 3, 1997.

Tags Barger, Becker, Bergson, Cagan, ClarkJM, DeweyDJ, Dhrymes, EdelsteinM, Erlich, Findlay, Friedman, Goodrich, Griliches, HartAG, Hirschman, Hotelling, Issawi, Kenen, Lancaster, Landes, Mincer, Nakamura, Nurkse, OhlinG, Passell, Phelps, Riskin, Shoup, Stigler, Vickrey, Wellisz

Economists Harvard

Harvard. Letter supporting Mason written by Taussig, 1925

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-11-03

The following memo to the Dean for the files tells us probably as much about its subject, a rising star in the Harvard economics department Edward Sagendorph Mason, as it does about what academic talent-spotters in the 1920s thought important. Of course, demonstrated academic brilliance has generally been of primary importance, but in an environment notably rich in brilliance, other qualities become distinguishing. “…he is a handsome, upstanding chap. His very appearance makes an impression on the young fellows.”

__________________________

February 12, 1925

Dear Clifford:

Carver tells me that you would welcome a line from me about E. S. Mason.

He is a very unusual fellow. His special examination for the doctorate, which he took about a week ago, by agreement of the examiners was not less than brilliant. As you know, he was three years at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and learned a lot there not merely in philosophy and letters, but in ways of handling the boys. He is one of the very best of our tutors, and one of the very best of our instructors in Economics A. And he is a handsome, upstanding chap. His very appearance makes an impression on the young fellows. It being our policy to keep men of that sort in our own service instead of putting them in a position where they cannot well help but accept a tempting offer from elsewhere, he ought to be given the very best treatment we can afford.

Cordially yours,
F. W. Taussig

Professor Clifford H. Moore

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence and Papers 1930-1961, Box 2 (American-Appointments, 1925), Folder “Appointments for 1913-26”.

Image Source: Portrait of Edward S. Mason included in the Harvard Class Album 1932.

Tags Mason, Taussig

Economists Harvard International Economics

Harvard. Economics professors who signed petition supporting Congressman Jerry O’Connell’s resolution, 1938

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-09-22

In a random search for interesting newspaper reports about the Austrian economist Gottfried Haberler during his early years on the Harvard faculty, I came upon a report of a Spanish Civil War rally held at Harvard featuring the Montana one-term Congressional democrat, Jerry O’Connell, that had taken place on March 27, 1938 in Emerson Hall. The U.S. Communist Party newspaper The Daily Worker reported that a number of Harvard faculty members signed a petition to support an anti-fascist amendment to U.S. neutrality legislation of the time. They included the economists:

Gottfried Haberler
Alvin Hansen
Wassily Leontief
Edward Mason.

The amendment would have prohibited commerce with aggressor nations [Germany and Italy] and have opened American markets to the victims of aggression [the Loyalist Republicans].

This naturally leads to questions as to why these economists took a side and why other senior colleagues did not? I presume lower ranks of the faculty (instructor-tutors) also signed the petition, but all my casual research has uncovered is found in the article transcribed below.

_______________________________

Backstory of the O’Connor Peace Bill

In March 1938 Representative Jerry O’Connell introduced a House resolution to amend the existing neutrality legislation, including the Spanish embargo. Sam McReynolds, chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, initially agreed to hearings before finally refusing. James Roosevelt claimed that the hearings were stopped by the State Department to avoid public discussion of the Spanish embargo. On 24 March Breckinridge Long, employed as a lobbyist by pro-Loyalists, visited Roosevelt to argue in favor of repealing the embargo. FDR, sympathetic but noncommittal, suggested that Long talk to Hull. A week later Hull told Long that the embargo might be lifted if fascist intervention could be proved: ‘‘Hull said he would reconsider if he received sufficient factual information about Italo-German invasion in Spain—so sufficient to justify a change of policy so the president could revoke the Proclamation of Neutrality and embargo of war implements. The Spanish Ambassador today furnished him with substantial proof of alleged ‘invasion’ of Spain. Whether that is sufficient remains to be seen.’’

Long did secure a promise that the embargo issue would be placed before the president. But on 10 April Long thought that no change of policy was likely, primarily because the Loyalists looked close to military collapse. Late March was also the height of the fight in Congress over reorganizing executive agencies, and FDR was particularly reluctant at this time to engage in a violent political quarrel to lift the embargo. On 5 April Byron Scott introduced a House resolution to repeal the Spanish embargo, but this effort also failed. Hull, who favored wider neutrality reform but not the repeal of the Spanish embargo, telegraphed the U.S. embassy in Spain in early April to state that repeal was ‘‘not in prospect.’’ But a few weeks later Roosevelt was told that Senator Key Pittman, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, might act on the Spanish question. On 2 May Senator Gerald Nye introduced a resolution to allow arms sales to Loyalist Spain.

… there is little evidence that Roosevelt sought to lift the Spanish embargo in the spring or summer of 1938.

Source: Dominic Tierney. FDR and the Spanish Civil War Neutrality and Commitment in the Struggle that Divided America, Chapter 7: Covert Aid. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007, pp. 92-94.

_______________________________

46 Harvard Faculty Members
Back O’Connell Peace Bill
16 Professors Among Signers of Petition

Montana Representative Main Speaker at Peace Rally in Cambridge
— Points to Danger From Reactionaries in U.S.

(Special to the Daily Worker)

BOSTON, Mass., March 27. —A group of 16 prominent Harvard professors in addition to 30 other members of the university faculty presented a petition supporting the O’Connell Peace Bill, yesterday afternoon to Representative Jerry O’Connell of Montana on the occasion of his address at a peace rally of undergraduates in Emerson Hall.

The professors who signed the petition for the Act, which would empower the President to name the aggressor nation in case of war, and apply economic sanctions against that aggressor, were:

Professors:

Arthur Holcombe—Government
Ralph Burton Perry—Philosophy
David Prall—Philosophy
Walter B. Cannon—Harvard Medical School
Hassler Whitney—Mathematics
Gordon Allport—Psychology
Gottfried Haberler—Economics
Alvin Hansen—Economics
Wassily Leontieff—Economics
Edward Mason—Economics
Kenneth Murdock—English
H. L. Blumgart—Harvard Medical School
T. Morrison—English
C. L. Kuhn—Fine Arts
Ernest Simmons—English
W. C. Greene—Classics

Speaks on Fascist Danger

In his address, Rep. O’Connell stressed the recent unparalleled spread of fascism through Europe. He pointed out the danger to American democracy from certain reactionary business interests in this country. O’Connell traced the recent development of collective security sentiment in the country and in Congress. After drawing a vivid picture of Loyalist Spain under the bombs of fascism, O’Connell urged his audience to write letters to the House Foreign Affairs Committee urging immediate consideration and passage of his Peace Act. “To keep America out of war,” he said, “keep war out of the world.”

The meeting was sponsored jointly by the Harvard Student Union (local A.S.U, chapter), the American League for Peace and Democracy, and the Cambridge Teachers’ Union.

The petition read: “We wholeheartedly support the proposed O’Connell amendment to the Neutrality Act. This amendment would prohibit commerce with aggressor nations and open American markets to the victims of aggression.”

Source: Daily Worker (New York), March 28, 1938, p. 4.

Image Source: Harvard Class Album, 1942.

Tags Haberler, Hansen, Leontief, Mason

Chicago Economists UWash

Chicago. Economics Ph.D. alumnus. Shirley Jay Coon, 1926

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-09-15

The work for this post was begun under a wrong assumption. I thought that the Chicago economics Ph.D. (1926) Shirley J. Coon was a woman and I quite honestly expected to add another PhD trained woman economist to the alumnae list of Economics in the Rear-view Mirror. The portrait of Shirley J. Coon from the University of Washington yearbook from 1931 and the discovery that “J” stood for “Jay” forced me to update my Bayesian prior in the matter of Shirley’s identity.

The post turns out to be rather short as I have been unable to find many footprints left in the sands of time by Dean Shirley Jay Coon. A dissertation on the economic development of Missoula, Montana seems as inauspicious a topic as one could imagine, even for the German Historical School, so Coon’s academic obscurity comes as little surprise one century after his dissertation year at the University of Chicago.

_______________________

Shirley Jay Coon
Timeline

1887. Born 16 June in Walworth, Wisconsin.

1909. Beloit College undergraduate.

1915. M.A., Ohio State University

1915-19. Member of the department of economics and business administration at Ohio State.

Price expert for the Ohio food administrator during WWI

1919-1927. On the faculty of Montana State University.

1920-27. Dean of the Business School, Montana State University.

1925-26. Sabbatical to complete Ph.D. at Chicago.

1926. Ph.D. University of Chicago. “Economic Development of Missoula, Montana,” unpublished doctoral dissertation.

1927-1938. Professor of Economics at the University of Washington.

1931-38. Dean of the college of economics and business at University of Washington.

1938. Resigned due to ill health.

1938. Died 4 October in Seattle, Washington.

Sources: Obituary in The Daily Missoulian (Missoula, Montana) · Oct 5, 1938 and University of Washington yearbooks.

Image Source: University of Washington yearbook TYEE 1931, p. 38.

Tags CoonSJ

Brookings Economists

Brookings. Economics Ph.D. alumnus. Dexter Merriam Keezer, 1925

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-09-10

Dexter Merriam Keezer in the Amherst 1917 yearbook

Dexter Merriam Keezer
(Brookings Ph.D., 1925)

BACKSTORY TO THIS POST

Just over one hundred years ago, the wife of the newly inaugurated fourth president of Cornell University, Margaret Kate Farrand (pronounced “Fair-And”) née Carleton, along with a first year graduate student in architecture, Charles Morse Stotz, the psychology professor Harry Potter Weld, and other co-conspirators, was able to pull off an academic hoax at the Cornell Women’s Cosmopolitan Club on December 3, 1921. News of the hoax was said to have even reached the ears of Professor Sigmund Freud of Vienna for his comment. The faux lecture with its slides (!) “The Freudian Theory with Later Developments” held by Professor Herman Vosberg, as performed by Charles M. Stotz has been transcribed and posted earlier:

The subject of this post, Dexter Merriam Keezer, was there and wrote about the event in his autobiography:

I expected the Cornell student newspaper, the Cornell Sun, would have a field day with the story but it printed nothing. And neither did any other local paper. So I wrote a story of Vosberg’s (and Mrs. Farrand’s) triumph and sent it to the New York World, where it ran as a column on the first page and on into the inner pages of the paper. The story was also picked up by some newspapers overseas. No one ever asked me if I wrote it and I never had occasion to tell anybody. I simply enjoyed the experience.

Source: Along an Entertaining Way: The Autobiography of Dexter M. Keezer, 1895-1991 (Kindle edition). 2019.

_________________________

The purpose of this post is to share more information about this Brookings economics Ph.D. alumnus (1925). Keezer recounted his experience as a graduate student at Brookings with an anecdote illustrating the administration of a Ph.D. reading exam in German thrown in to illustrate graduate student life as it was lived. The extract from Keezer’s autobiography is followed by a timeline of his life and career.

_________________________

Keezer on the Brookings Graduate School and his German reading exam

I soon found that the Brookings Graduate School had many interesting and admirable attributes, not least of which was what I understood to have been the primary purpose of Robert S. Brookings, for whom the school was named, in making it possible.

As chairman of the national board in charge of regulating prices during World War I, Brookings had been appalled by the low quality of advice available to the board from practitioners in economics and the other social sciences. So he decided to devote much of the fortune he had made as an eminently successful industrialist in St. Louis to helping supply the federal government with more competent social scientists and social science research. By 1916 he established in Washington the Institute for Government Research, the pioneer in national public policy research. It was followed in 1922 by the establishment of the Institute of Economics to concentrate on economic problems. And in 1924 the Brookings Graduate School was launched to increase the supply of those possessed of an appetite for public service and equipped with first-rate education in economics and political science to exercise it. Started as a part of Washington University in St. Louis, the school was subsequently transferred to Washington, where it was expected most of its graduates would have their careers.

When I got to the school it was in what was to prove a death struggle against being merged with the other Brookings creations and having its granting of graduate degrees discontinued. I promptly became involved in this struggle and became an ardent advocate of the school in its fight for existence, a very robust struggle. Harold Moulton, the head of the Institute of Economics, the leader of those who favored closing the school, concluded that while I was intense in my opposition to him I was fair-minded about it. This conclusion was subsequently to be a decisive factor in a major turning point in my working life.

One reason for not continuing the graduate school, it was reported, was that Robert Brookings, its principal financial benefactor, was disappointed that most of those who had studied at the school did not hurry to take government jobs but found more satisfying employment outside of its orbit. The irony of this, if true, is that when the country fell apart economically in 1929 and the Great Depression descended, those who had studied at the Brookings Graduate School flocked into the government and often secured posts.

The conflict over continuing the graduate school was, as is generally true of conflicts in higher education, conducted in terms of high principle. But it could have been, as I have found generally to be the case in such conflicts, that a clash of personalities was close to the root of it. Harold Moulton, the head of the Institute of Economics, and Walton Hamilton, the head of the school, had been the closest of friends and colleagues, but they came to have an intense disregard for each other and the institute-graduate school conflict intensified accordingly. One reason for my partisanship for the graduate school was that Hamilton was a great teacher of economics, a fact to which I have made reference elsewhere. One entry in my little daybook reads, “Prof. Hamilton is about the best teacher I have ever known. He even made a seminar in ‘research technique’ quite exciting today.”

…To get back to what I found notable characteristics of the Brookings Graduate School, one was its physical setting. On Northwest I Street a few blocks from the White House, a fine old townhouse provided spacious and inviting parlors, an attractive dining room, enough class room for the student body of about 35 and living quarters for part of them. It was an establishment which eased the rigors of graduate study by permitting and indeed encouraging some gracious living, an encouragement also given by the generous financial provision made by their fellowships.

The resident faculty was supplemented by visiting members who stayed for extended periods and by leading academicians from institutions around the country who paid briefer visits. The eminent British economist John A. Hobson came over from England for a semester while I was at the school. And great authorities in their fields such as Thomas Read Powell of Columbia, in constitutional law, and William E. Dodd of the University of Chicago, in history, joined the faculty more briefly. In the Washington governmental establishment and in the parade of business and industrial leaders descending on the capitol, the school had ready access to experts in almost everything and used it freely to provide a remarkably well stocked body of teachers.

My zest for the intensive course I had set for myself as a social scientist, with emphasis on the scientist, flagged a bit occasionally. Once after hearing one of his lectures had prompted me to read William E. Dodd’s “The Cotton Kingdom” I remarked in my little day book that “it seemed almost too interesting to be sound history, so great has been the influence of ‘science’ on my mind.” And after reading Bernard Shaw’s “Saint Joan” I noted in the little book that it was a “delightful relief from the dull discussions of economic problems. One who could long remain an economist and not become a boor would scintillate in any other field. Such are my reactions to the Brookings School today.” That was an off day, however. Most of the time I found what I was doing as a graduate student and otherwise interesting and enjoyable. And I made enough academic headway so that about a year after I arrived I was awarded a Ph.D. degree.

Mine was one of relatively few degrees that were awarded. The school was absorbed by the Brookings Institution two years later and its teaching and degree-granting operations were discontinued. Among the reasons given for this course was that, although he had endowed it generally, Robert Brookings was afraid that not enough money could be provided to be sure of continuing to be able to pay the imposing bills of a top-flight graduate school in economics and government. In getting money to finance research in these fields the consolidated Brookings Institution has had brilliant success and has carried out a large and influential program. One is permitted the suspicion, however, that it might have been a more vibrant enterprise if it had been able to continue the school.

The school’s student body while I was there included an international group of about 35 young men and women who, as they pursued their studies, continued to embrace about as many brands of political and economic philosophy – liberal, hardcore conservative, socialist, fellow traveler – as their number. Having them not only work together in the class and study halls but live together around the clock produced an often-seething amalgam calculated to invigorate any institution engaged in social science research. The inviting armchairs in the Brookings School’s parlors, part of its notable equipment, were occasionally used for slumber. But more often they were occupied deep into the night as flaming argument raged about the true gospel in the social sciences, a guaranteed tonic for those dedicated to finding out what the true gospel really is.

On my way to the degree I was required to demonstrate competence in reading the German language. I had somehow managed to get by in demonstrating such a competence at Cornell and a repeat performance was not a joyful prospect. In succeeding in meeting it, however, I had the sort of good luck which somehow accumulated when things are going well. I decided to give myself a tough training course for my German reading ordeal. I was told that an Austrian economist named [Eugen von] Böhm-Bawerk wrote remarkably refractory German so I decided to make one of his books my training field. I had only one small section of the book more or less mastered when the time for my examination arrived. It was given by Edwin Nourse who was subsequently to become distinguished as the first chairman of the newly created federal Council of Economic Advisors. Poking around for a book in his library on which to test my mastery of German, Nourse hit not only on the book by [Eugen von] Böhm-Bawerk on which I had been practicing but on one of the very passages with which I had struggled. I sailed right through the passage to certification that I had the German language very well under control. I was left with the suspicion that Edwin Nourse may have had knowledge in advance which enabled him to give me an especially merciful examination – a suspicion that was nourished by the feeling that he was much too kindly a gentleman to set me with wrestling with [Eugen von] Böhm-Bawerk with no previous exposure to his cruelly convoluted German. But I never tested my good luck to the extent of checking on my suspicion.

Source: Along an Entertaining Way: The Autobiography of Dexter M. Keezer, 1895-1991 (Kindle edition), 2019.

_________________________

The Life of
Dexter Merriam Keezer

1895. Born August 24 in Acton, Massachusetts.

1917-19. Service in the U.S. Army in World War I.

1919. Attended lectures at the Sorbonne.

1920. A.B. Amherst.

1920-21. Reporter at The Denver Times.

1922-23. Instructor in economics at Cornell University.

1923. A.M. Cornell.

1923-24. Assistant professor of economics at the University of Colorado.

1925. Ph.D. Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government.

1926-27. Associate professor of economics at the University of North Carolina.

1927. Married Anne Mellett, June 22.

1927-28. Reporter at the Washington Bureau of Scripps-Howard newspapers.

1928-29. Visiting lecturer in citizenship at Dartmouth College.

1929-33. Associate editor of The Baltimore Sun.

1933-34. Executive director of the Consumer Advisory Board of the National Recovery Administration.

1934-42. President of Reed College.

1938. Bernard Moses Memorial Lecture held November 4 at the University of California, Berkeley. “The Problem of Controversial Issues in the Teaching of the Social Sciences.”

1938. LL.D. Amherst College.

1940. LL.D. Mills College.

1941. Chairman of a Commission set up by National Defense Mediation Board to study dispute between the Employers Negotiating Committee of Puget Sound lumber industry and the International Woodworkers of America.

Supplement to the Interdepartmental Report on the Douglas Fir Lumber Industry (November 1941).

1942-43. Deputy Administrator, Office of Price Administration.

Keezer, probably in his OPA office. From the Library of Congress, https://lccn.loc.gov/2017692864

1943. Economic advisor, U.S. Mission for Economic Affairs, London, England.

1944-45. Public member of the War Labor Board.

1945-1960. McGraw-Hill where he became director of the department of economics. His department developed annual surveys of capital spending and of research and development expenditures.
Vice-president, 1953-1960.

1955. L.H.D. Clarkson College of Technology.

1957. LL.D. Macalester College.

1959. LL.D. Elmira College. LL.D. Miami (Ohio) University.

1960-71. Economic adviser for McGraw-Hill.

1963-70. Trustee Elmira College.

1968-70. President of the Truro, Mass. Civic Association. In the mid-1970’s he campaigned against nude bathing at Brush Hollow Beach (Cape Cod).

1972-75. President of the Board of Directors of the Association for Improving Medical Resources of Outer Cape Cod

1991. Died of congestive heart failure on June 24 at the Orleans Nursing and Convalescent Center in Orleans, Massachusetts.

Selected Publications:

Problem Economics. With Addison Thayer Cutler and Frank Richardson Garfield. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1928.

The Public Control of Business. With Stacy May). Harper & Brothers, 1930.

The Light that Flickers: A View of College Education which Contrasts Promise and Performance and Suggests Improvements. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947.

Making Capitalism Work. With members of the Department of Economics of the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950.

Editor and wrote the Introductory chapter to Financing Higher Education, 1960-70. The McGraw-Hill Book Company 50^th Anniversary Study of the Economics of Higher Education in the United States. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1959.

New Forces in American Business, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959.

Are We Slaves of Some Defunct Economist. Claremont Graduate School and University Center, 1963

Editor. The Performing Arts—Problems and Prospects, 1965.

A Unique Contribution to International Relations: The Story of Wilton Park, 1973.

Sources:

Who’s Who in America. Chicago: A.N. Marquis, 1962, p. 1652. Who’s Who in America, Vol. XX, 1976, p. 1679.
Obituary in The New York Times, 25 June 1991, p. D24.

Image Source: Amherst College, The Olio 1917, p. 221..

Tags HamiltonWH, KeezerDM, Moulton, Nourse

Economists Exam Questions Harvard Public Finance

Harvard. Public Finance. Course description, enrollment, final exam. Huse, 1909-1910

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-09-01

The recent Harvard economics Ph.D. alumnus (1907), Charles Phillips Huse, substituted for his thesis advisor, Charles Jesse Bullock, to teach the course on public finance in 1909-10 that was focussed on the theory and methods of taxation. We begin with Huse’s major life and career dates and follow that timeline with links to material from nearly a decade of courses on public finance taught at Harvard at the start of the 20th century.

The new transcribed content of this post includes a course description, enrollment figures and the final examination questions.

P.S. Two impressions that he left on his students and included in the Boston University yearbooks of 1924 and 1927 have been appended to the timeline. Note the hint given to future cohorts of students: “…[Huse’s] unchanging method nets a return of old quiz questions yearly rejuvenated on each anniversary of their first propounding”

________________________

Charles Phillips Huse
Timeline

1883. Born March 3 in Worcester, MA. Attended Springfield High School. Springfield, MA.

1904. A.B. Harvard.

1905. A.M. Harvard.

1907. Ph.D. Harvard. Thesis: The Financial History of Boston from 1822 to 1859.

1908-09. Instructor in Economics, Dartmouth College.

1909-11. Instructor in Economics at Harvard.

1911-14. Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Missouri.

1914-20. Assistant Professor of Economics, Boston University.

1920-53. Professor of Economics, Boston University.

1958. Died July 13 in Belmont, MA.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Professor Huse economizes on our nerves as he never did on ice cream or time. His peculiar humor relieves a mental struggle with Gresham’s Law, and his unchanging method nets a return of old quiz questions yearly rejuvenated on each anniversary of their first propounding. This holds true in the long run. That will be all for this time.

Source: Boston University Yearbook, The Hub 1924, p. 32.

One of the greatest and most worth while experiences in Dr. Huse’s life came in 1910 when he went to Washington to aid the National Monetary Commission. His task was to read the volumes written by the Commission and, as each volume was published, to prepare press statements for the newspapers. Partly as a result of the work of this Commission, the Federal Reserve Act was passed. While he was in Washington he had the opportunity of seeing the public buildings and of taking trips into the surrounding country to places of interest.

Source: Boston University Yearbook, The Hub 1927, p. 18.

________________________

Some earlier public finance exams
at Harvard

1901-02. Economics 7a and 7b. Financial administration; taxation [undergraduate] taught by Charles Jesse Bullock

1902-03. Economics 7b. Theory and methods of taxation [undergraduate] taught by Edward Dana Durand.

1902-03. Economics 16. Financial History of the United States taught by Prof Henry Brayton Gardner of Brown University.

1903-04. Economics 16. Financial history of the United States taught by Charles Jesse Bullock

1904-05. Economics 7a. Introduction to public finance [undergraduate] taught by Charles Jesse Bullock

1904-05. Economics 7b. Theory and methods of taxation [undergraduate] taught by Charles Jesse Bullock

1904-05. Economics 16. Financial history of the United States taught by Charles Jesse Bullock

1905-06. Economics 7. Public finance [undergraduate] taught by Charles Jesse Bullock

1905-06. Economics 16. Public finance [advanced] taught by Charles Jesse Bullock

1906-07. Economics 16. Public finance and taxation taught by Charles Jesse Bullock

1907-08. Economics 16. Public finance and taxation taught by Charles Jesse Bullock

1908-09. Economics 7. Public finance [undergraduate] taught by Charles Jesse Bullock

1908-09. Economics 16. Public finance [advanced course] taught by Charles Jesse Bullock

________________________

Readings in public finance
used at Harvard

From 1906: Selected Readings in Public Finance edited by Charles Jesse Bullock (Boston: Inn & Company).

From 1910: Short bibliography on public finance “for serious minded students” by Bullock

________________________

Course Description
1909-10

7 ²hf. Public Finance, considered with special reference to the Theory and Methods of Taxation. Half-course (second half-year). Mon., Wed., Fri., at 10. Dr. Huse and an assistant.

This course is for undergraduates exclusively, and cannot be elected by graduates. As stated in the title, much attention is given to the subject of taxation, which will occupy about one half of the time of the course and will be studied with special reference to federal, state, and local taxation in the United States. The remainder of the time will be given to such topics as governmental expenditures, governmental industries (including some study of the relation of the state to railways and other public-service industries), public debts, and financial administration.

The course may, with the consent of the instructor, be elected by students who are taking Economies 1 in the same year.

Source: Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. VI, No. 29 (23 July 1909). History and Political Science Comprising the Departments of History and Government, and Economics, 1909-10, p. 52.

________________________

Course Enrollment
1909-10

Economics 7 ²hf. Dr. Huse. — Public Finance considered with special reference to the Theory and Methods of Taxation.

Total 124: 1 Graduate, 28 Seniors, 37 Juniors, 33 Sophomores, 9 Freshmen, 16 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1909-1910, p. 44.

________________________

ECONOMICS 7
Year-end Examination, 1909-10

What has been the public land policy of the United States? Do you favor the retention of any part of the public lands? Give your reasons.
Explain the two distinct grounds on which progression has been advocated, giving your opinion of each.
Discuss the incidence of a tax on the net profits of a monopoly; on a good produced under competitive conditions; on real estate.
Compare the British and Prussian income taxes, as to the method of assessment and the rate.
What has been the experience of the United States with income taxes? Are you in favor of a federal income tax? If so, why? If not, why not?
You are a resident of Boston. Your property consists of real estate worth $50,000, which is mortgaged for $10,000, and personal property amounting to $900,000, made up of the following items: shares in New Jersey corporations, $500,000; shares in Massachusetts corporations, $200,000; bonds of Massachusetts corporations, $200,000.
1. Send the assessors a true declaration of your taxable property.
2. Forget to send it. Tell what items are likely to be assessed and at what figures, giving your reasons in every case.
—

Capital	$100,000	Real Estate	$50,000
Debt	$100,000	Machinery	$50,000
		Merchandise	$100,000
	$200,000		$200,000

You are a partner in this Massachusetts company. How is it taxed as a partnership? How would it be taxed as a Massachusetts corporation, assuming the market value of its stock to be $125,000? Would you advise incorporation?

A war of long duration will begin in 1915. You are called upon now to reconstruct the federal tax system in preparation for the war and to finance it when it comes. Justify the policy you adopt.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers, 1873-1915. Box 9, Bound vol. Examination Papers 1910-11; Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1910), pp. 43-44.

Image Source: Boston University yearbook, 1927.

Tags Huse

Education, Technology & the GNP

Two-fifths of the growth in our national product came mainly from what goes on in men’s heads

Janet Montgomery Hooks (Bassie) Her Biographical Timeline

Cast of Characters

What’s John Maurice Clark really like?… asking for a friend?

Named in the Instructional Budget, 1944-45

The University of Chicago Budget and Appointment Recommendations 1944-45

Division of the Social Sciences Department of Economics

Instructional Budget Account

Items requiring no change in rank or salary

Professor Jacob Viner

Professor T. W. Schultz

Professor Jacob Marschak

Professor Paul H. Douglas

Assistant Professor Frederick H. Harbison

Associate Professor Lloyd W. Mints

Associate Professor Henry C. Simons

Instructor H. Gregg Lewis

Lecturer Robert K. Burns

Professor Frank H. Knight

Professor John U. Nef

Professor Oscar Lange

Professor Simeon E. Leland

Professor Chester W. Wright

Instructor Henry S. Bloch

Visiting Professor D. H. Buchanan

Research Associate Gale Johnson

Lecturer John K. Langum

Professor Maynard C. Krueger

Assistant Prof. Gerhard E.O. Meyer

Instructor/Dean of Students Christine McGuire Masserman

Instructor C. H. Masserman

Previously posted content related to Albert G. Hart

University of Chicago

Columbia University

RESPONSIBILITIES AND RESOURCES OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Backstory of the O’Connor Peace Bill

46 Harvard Faculty Members Back O’Connell Peace Bill 16 Professors Among Signers of Petition

Montana Representative Main Speaker at Peace Rally in Cambridge — Points to Danger From Reactionaries in U.S.

Shirley Jay Coon Timeline

Dexter Merriam Keezer (Brookings Ph.D., 1925)

BACKSTORY TO THIS POST

Keezer on the Brookings Graduate School and his German reading exam

The Life of Dexter Merriam Keezer

Charles Phillips Huse Timeline

Some earlier public finance exams at Harvard

Readings in public finance used at Harvard

Course Description 1909-10

Course Enrollment 1909-10

ECONOMICS 7 Year-end Examination, 1909-10

Janet Montgomery Hooks (Bassie)
Her Biographical Timeline

The University of Chicago
Budget and Appointment Recommendations
1944-45

Division of the Social Sciences
Department of Economics

Items requiring no change
in rank or salary

RESPONSIBILITIES AND RESOURCES OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

46 Harvard Faculty Members
Back O’Connell Peace Bill
16 Professors Among Signers of Petition

Montana Representative Main Speaker at Peace Rally in Cambridge
— Points to Danger From Reactionaries in U.S.

Shirley Jay Coon
Timeline

Dexter Merriam Keezer
(Brookings Ph.D., 1925)

The Life of
Dexter Merriam Keezer

Charles Phillips Huse
Timeline

Some earlier public finance exams
at Harvard

Readings in public finance
used at Harvard

Course Description
1909-10

Course Enrollment
1909-10

ECONOMICS 7
Year-end Examination, 1909-10