Category: Economists

Harvard. Enrollment, Course description, Final exam. Problems of Labor. Ripley and Custis, 1904-1905

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2023-09-19

Professor William Zebina Ripley of Harvard had comfortably settled in his fields of statistics, labor problems and corporate finance/industrial organization by 1904-05. In that year he co-taught his labor course with his dissertation student Vanderveer Custis, who went on to teach economics at the University of Washington and later at Northwestern University where he attained professorial rank.

Fun fact: According to the 1907 University of Washington yearbook Tyee (p. 22), Assistant Professor of Economics Vanderveer Custis was a lineal descendant of Martha Custis Washington.

__________________________

Vanderveer Custis
[1878-1961]

Chicago, June 17. Vanderveer Custis, Emeritus Professor of Economics at Northwestern University, died today in a rest home in Arlington Heights. He was 82 years old.

Mr. Custis studied at Harvard University, where he took degrees of Bachelor of Arts [1901], Master of Arts [1902] and Doctor of Philosophy [1905].

He taught economics at the University of Washington from 1905 until 1922, when he went to Northwestern as Associate Professor of Economics. He was made a full professor in 1937 and retired in 1944.

Source: New York Times (18 June 1961).

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Vanderveer Custis
Ph.D. exams

Special Examination in Economics, Wednesday, June 7, 1905.
General Examination passed May 20, 1904.
Committee: Professors Taussig (chairman), Ripley, Bullock, Sprague, and Wyman.
Academic History: Harvard College, 1897-1901; Harvard Graduate School, 1901-04; A.B. (Harvard) 1901; A.M. (ibid.) 1902.
Special Subject: Industrial Organization.
Thesis Subject: “The Theory of Industrial Consolidation.” (With Professor Ripley).

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examinations for the Ph.D. (HUC 7000.70), Folder “Examinations for the Ph.D., 1904-1905”.

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Course Enrollment
1904-05

Economics 9a ¹hf. Professor [William Zebina] Ripley and Mr. [Vanderveer] Custis. — Problems of Labor.

Total 128: 10 Graduates, 29 Seniors, 59 Juniors, 23 Sophomores, 7 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1904-1905, p. 75.

__________________________

Course Description
1904-05

[Economics] 9a ¹hf. Problems of Labor. Half-course (first half-year). Tu., Th., Sat., at 1.30. Professor Ripley.

The work of this course will be concerned mainly with the economic and social questions relating to the relations of employer and employed, with especial reference to legislation. Among the topics included will be the following, viz.: methods of remuneration, profit sharing, cooperation, collective bargaining; labor organizations; factory legislation in all its phases in the United States and Europe; strikes, strike legislation and legal decisions, conciliation and arbitration; employers’ liability and compulsory compensation acts; compulsory insurance with particular reference to European experience; provident institutions, friendly societies, building and loan associations; the problem of the unemployed; apprenticeship, and trade and technical education.

Each student will be expected to make at least one report upon a labor union, from the original documents. Two lectures a week, with one recitation, will be the usual practice.

Source: Harvard University. Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Division of History and Political Science Comprising the Departments of History and Government and Economics, 1904-05 (May 16, 1904), p. 43.

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ECONOMICS 9a¹
Year-end Examination, 1904-05

State two objections to a general policy of insurance against unemployment, as tried in Switzerland.
What peculiar trade conditions may make the National Union outweigh the locals in importance? Illustrate.
State the two principal grounds on which employees were first denied damages for injuries about 1837.
As a commercial venture how does compulsory insurance, as in Germany, differ from ordinary insurance, as it exists in the United States.
What is the present status of the “closed shop” before English and American courts?
In what respects does the British Trades Union Congress differ from the Annual Convention of the British Federation of Labor?
What were the main causes of the downfall of the Knights of Labor? How is the American Federation protecting itself in these regards?
How far has arbitration in labor disputes by governmental agency proceeded in the United States?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 7, Bound volume: Examination Papers, 1904-05; Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1905), pp. 29-30.

Image Source: The 1907 edition of the University of Washington yearbook, Tyee.

Tags Custis, Ripley

Curriculum Dartmouth Economists Undergraduate Williams

Williams College. Political Economy and Law 1794-1894. Bullock, 1904

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2023-09-15

Before he accepted an appointment to assistant professorship at Harvard in 1903, Charles Jesse Bullock was Orrin Sage professor of history and political science at Williams College. He published a short history of the first hundred years of course offerings in political economy, political philosophy/theory, constitutional law and international law at Williams in 1904.

Bonus material: links have been added to the key texts identified by Bullock.

___________________________

The History of Economic and Political Studies
in Williams College

C. J. Bullock, Assistant Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University; late Orrin Sage Professor of Political Economy in Williams College

Historical and political studies seem to have been almost wholly neglected in the American colleges of the colonial epoch. In this direction the first serious impulse came from the stirring discussions of the Revolutionary period and of the years that witnessed the adoption of the Federal Constitution. In 1784 the first law school was established at Litchfield, Connecticut; and during the next twenty years lectureships or professorships of law were created in various institutions. Before this movement had spent its force, political philosophy, political economy, and, in some cases, history had benefited by the interest thus aroused, so that one or more of these subjects found a place in the curricula of many colleges.

The “Free School” at Williamstown was transformed into Williams College in 1793, at the very time when our institutions of higher education were beginning to recognize the importance of training young men for the legal profession, the service of the State, or the common duties of citizenship. In the first invoice of books purchased for the college library, political and historical works were well represented; and upon October 20, 1794, Hon. Theodore Sedgwick, at that time a member of Congress, was appointed Professor of Law and Civil Polity. It does not appear that Mr. Sedgwick ever entered upon the work of his professorship — a fact which may be readily explained by his absorption in the duties of public life or by the meagre resources of the college; but it is interesting to note that this was the first professorship which the trustees attempted to establish.

In 1795 the first laws for the government of the college were adopted. From these we learn that the studies of the fourth year were “metaphysics, ethics, history, the law of nature and nations, civil polity, and theology.” Thomas Robbins, a member of the class of 1796, writes in his diary, under the date of January 1st of his senior year, “Reciting now Paley’s Moral Philosophy”; and under the date of March 22d, “Began to recite Vattel.” Instruction in these subjects was given by President Fitch, as we learn from a letter* written by a member of the class of 1802 who says, “Those students who were instructed by him during their senior year will never forget the ability and interest with which he explained and illustrated the writings of Locke, Paley, and Vattel.”

* [Calvin] Durfee, History of Williams College, p. 77.

The facts just mentioned are sufficient to establish the character of the instruction given in political philosophy and international law; concerning the study of history, however, no evidence is now available. Paley’s Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, published in England in 1785 and republished in Boston ten years later, devotes one entire book — the sixth — to the philosophy of the State, and treats of such subjects as forms of government, civil liberty, and the administration of justice. This book was used for many years at Williams, as elsewhere. Its author was a conservative by temperament, and a friend of the established social and political order; and these qualities would naturally commend his writings to such an ardent Federalist as President Fitch, who was greatly disturbed over the revolutionary movement in France and the rise of Jeffersonian democracy in the United States.† In his baccalaureate sermon of 1799, Dr. Fitch warned the graduating class that “every civil and religious institution is threatened with ruin,” that “the principles of deism, atheism, and disorganizing politics have of late years made rapid strides,” and he urged his hearers to oppose manfully the progress of these destructive tendencies.

† Cf. [Arthur Latham] Perry, Williamstown and Williams College, pp. 230-233.

This arrangement of studies probably remained unchanged for many years. The College Laws of 1805 repeated the provisions of those adopted in 1795; the Laws of 1815 are more general in their terms, but prescribe that history and the law of nations shall be included in the curriculum. These subjects, undoubtedly, fell to the charge of the president. In 1812 Hon. Daniel Dewey was appointed Professor of Law and Civil Polity, but it is not known that he ever gave regular instruction in the college, although his name appeared in the catalogue until his death in 1815. The laws of the latter year state merely that “the Professor of Law shall occasionally deliver lectures to the senior sophisters or to all the students.”

In 1822 the catalogue of the college contains for the first time a statement of the courses of instruction. From it we learn that history was one of three subjects studied during the third term of the sophomore year, and that Tytler’s Elements of History was used as a text-book. In the senior year Paley’s [Moral and] Political Philosophy was studied during the second term, and Vattel’s Law of Nations during the third. Altogether, one third of the instruction for three terms, or about one twelfth of the college course, was devoted to these three subjects. History was probably taught by one of the two tutors who had charge at this time of most of the studies of the lower classes; the senior courses were conducted chiefly by the president.

In 1827 William Porter [Rev. William Augustus Porter, b. 1798; d. 1830] was called to a newly established chair of Moral Philosophy and Rhetoric, and he appears to have relieved President Griffin of most of the instruction of the senior year.* Paley’s Moral and Political Philosophy was now replaced by Say’s [Treatise on] Political Economy, of which an American translation had appeared in 1821; Vattel’s Law of Nations, however, was retained several years longer. History held its place in the third term of the sophomore year.

*Memoir of W. A. Porter, p. 41.

In 1828 a Manual of Political Economy, by Willard Phillips, was published at Boston, and this work was immediately introduced in the place of Say’s treatise. When we recall that in this year the passage of the “Tariff of Abominations” stimulated excited discussions of the tariff question, and that Phillips was an advocate of protectionism, we may venture upon the conjecture that Professor Porter was dissatisfied with the teachings of Say concerning freedom of trade. At any rate Phillips’ Manual continued to be used in the college for a number of years. When Mark Hopkins was called to the chair of Moral Philosophy in 1830, Paley’s work was reintroduced, but only to supplement and not to displace Phillips and Vattel.

In 1835 Joseph Alden was called to a new professorship of Rhetoric and Political Economy, and more adequate provision was made for instruction in political and economic science. In his inaugural address in 1836, President Hopkins alluded to the recent introduction of the study of political economy, and expressed the hope that means could be provided for instruction in constitutional law. For this a place was found in the same year, when Professor Alden discarded Vattel and introduced [Joseph] Story on the Constitution [Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, Abridged by the author for the use of Colleges and High Schools, 1833)]. The sophomore course in history remained as before, and, after a time at least, came under the charge of Professor Alden. In 1837 the course in political economy was shifted to the first term of the junior year, and in 1840 Wayland’s well-known treatise [Francis Wayland, The Elements of Political Economy (1837)]was introduced as a text-book. Professor Alden was a Jeffersonian Democrat and a free trader, but seems to have made more of his lectures upon the United States Constitution* than of his work in history and political economy. In 1843 a course in American history was introduced in the second term of the junior year, and in 1844 this was placed among the studies prescribed for sophomores. Two years later, however, this subject dropped out of the curriculum.

* Cf. A. L. Perry, Miscellanies, p. 142. Williamstown, 1902.

At this point it will prove interesting to compare the development of political and economic studies at Williams with their history at a sister institution, Dartmouth College.†

† See J. F. Colby, Legal and Political Studies in Dartmouth College, Hanover, 1896.

At Hanover these studies were first introduced in 1796, under the stimulus of the same influences that were felt at Williams in the previous year. In Dartmouth the juniors were given instruction in Paley’s Moral and Political Philosophy by the professor who had general charge of that class; while the seniors, under the guidance of President Wheelock, studied Burlamaqui’s Principles of Natural and Politic Law [1792], of which an American edition had been published at Boston in 1793. In 1804 the course in political philosophy was transferred to the charge of the Professor of Divinity, and in 1823 to the Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy. In 1822 instruction in constitutional law was given to the seniors, and in 1828 a chair of Moral Philosophy and Political Economy was created. Professor Roswell Shurtleff, the incumbent of this chair, introduced Say’s Political Economy in the place of Burlamaqui’s [Principles of] Natural and Politic Law; and continued for a decade the use of Paley’s Political Philosophy and the Federalist. In 1838 Paley was replaced by Wayland’s Moral Philosophy [The Elements of Moral Science, 5^th ed. (1837)], and in 1842 a course in Kent’s Commentaries on American Law [2^nd ed., 1832: Vol. I ; Vol. II ; Vol. III ; Vol. IV] was offered to seniors. Some years later the latter work was displaced by Story’s well-known treatise. The general similarity of development in the two institutions is emphasized by the fact that Dartmouth, in 1808, made unsuccessful efforts to establish a professorship of law.

At Williams the next important event was the resignation of Professor Alden in 1852. After an interval of a year, Arthur Latham Perry was called to a professorship of History and Political Economy; and commenced those studies, especially in the field of political economy, which soon brought him a national reputation and secured distinguished recognition in France and England. Although compelled by the poverty of the college to give instruction in German and in Christian Evidences for many years, he soon built up a strong department of history and political economy. To the sophomores he gave instruction in history, at first for one and later for two terms, introducing newer and better text-books, as they appeared, in place of the wretched treatise by Tytler. To the juniors he offered a course in political economy for which he published, in 1865, the first of his well-known books, Elements of Political Economy. In addition, Professor Perry continued the work in constitutional law which had been begun by his predecessor. This study was, in 1859, transferred to the junior year, where it long remained; at the outset Story’s work was used as a text, but in time the instruction came to be given by lectures. Upon an average, during the period from 1857 to 1887, the three subjects above mentioned occupied about one-eighth of the entire college course, and until the latter year they were required of all students.*

* Cf. A. L. Perry, Miscellanies, pp. 141-148.

In 1871 Orrin Sage, a Massachusetts manufacturer, gave the college $50,000 as an endowment for Professor Perry’s chair. In part, at least, this action was the result of the attacks which had been made from time to time upon Professor Perry’s views concerning the injustice and inexpediency of the protective tariff. The trustees of the college had at all times upheld the independence of the department of political economy, but the gift was prompted by a desire to place the chair upon the most secure foundation possible. So far as freedom of teaching is concerned, few, if any, American colleges can boast of better traditions.

In 1882, with the coming of the elective system, there was established an elective course in European history, conducted by a new instructor. This marked the beginning of the separation of the departments of history and political economy, which became complete when, in 1890, an endowment was received for a chair of American History. In the following year Professor Perry closed his long term of faithful service to the college, and John Bascom was made acting professor upon the Orrin Sage foundation, which was thereafter devoted to the department of political economy. Thus at the close of the first century of its existence, Williams College had created two independent departments for the studies in which, at the outset, the president had instructed the seniors during the last half of the collegiate year.

With the history of the last decade it is not the purpose of this paper to deal. Suffice it to say that the establishment of new chairs of Political Science and of European History has enabled the college to extend and to specialize instruction in these subjects, so that now four professors are cultivating the field where Professor Perry labored so long and so successfully as Professor of History and Political Economy. In all this the college is but meeting the demands of the times for more extensive instruction in political and economic studies. To-day, as in 1794, it is attempting, so far as its resources permit, to prepare young men for the intelligent exercise of the rights and duties of citizenship; and now, as formerly, it seeks to prescribe, for students or teachers, no tests of political or economic orthodoxy. With such a record of honorable achievement, the college faces hopefully the educational demands of the twentieth century.

Source: Charles Jesse Bullock, “History of economic and political studies in Williams College.” Education, Vol. XXIV (May, 1904), pp. 532-537.

Image Source: From the title page of A History of Williams College by Calvin Durfee (1860).

Tags AldenJ, Bascom, Bullock, PerryAL, PhillipsW, PorterWA, Shurtleff, Wayland

Economists Michigan War and Defense Economics

Michigan. Account of lecture on economic and sociological theory. Boulding, 1961

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2023-09-06

My first presentation at an ASSA annual meeting took place in an 8-10 a.m. session on Sunday, December 30, 1979 in Atlanta, Georgia. At “my” session were three paper authors together with the chair. Across from the four economists sitting at the panelists’ table was a public of three. Sitting in the first row of chairs was the thesis advisor of my fellow panelist Robert Scott Gassler, Professor Kenneth Boulding. So considering the product of quality and quantity of attendees, I was pretty fortunate with that early Sunday morning public. Most of the economists following Economics in the Rear-view Mirror have their own stories of brushes with legendary economists and that was mine with Kenneth Boulding. But let’s get to the Boulding content of today’s post.

Kenneth Boulding has always been a favorite of economists with interdisciplinary leanings. Fewer probably remember him as the John Bates Clark medalist (1949) who followed Samuelson and preceded Friedman, Tobin, Arrow, Klein, and Solow. He was one of a dying breed of economists having a range and depth of interests that spanned the social sciences. He has no single method or empirical finding that has survived in the textbooks that I am familiar with. However, in most every random foray into his writings I have usually found some nugget of insight or wisdom to keep.

This post began as an exploration of the University of Michigan student newspaper archives. I stumbled upon an account of a 1961 lecture given by Kenneth Boulding. The newspaper story included a photo of him that I had not ever seen. Most images one finds are typically of the later, American bald eagle look that was iconic Boulding and how he is etched on my memory. The image from the newspaper article is presumably from 1960 or 1961 and worth including among the economist mugshots shared by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Prefacing the transcribed newspaper report of Kenneth Boulding’s 1961 lecture “Economic Theory and Sociological Theory” are (i) an interdisciplinary verse composed by Boulding (included in his contribution to the 1963 AEA Papers and Proceedings); (ii) the University of Michigan’s tribute to him on the occasion of the award of an honorary doctor of laws degree (1978); (iii) a brief biographical sketch from the finding aid to Boulding’s papers at the University of Michigan.

Links to four published works from 1962 have been appended to the post to provide some meat to the skeleton of a lecture reported in the University of Michigan newspaper account.

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A Boulding Verse

Four things that give mankind a shove
Are threats, exchange, persuasion, love;
But taken in the wrong proportions
These give us cultural abortions.
For threats bring manifold abuses
In games where everybody loses;
Exchange enriches every nation
But leads to dangerous alienation;
Persuaders organize their brothers
But fool themselves as well as others;
And love, with longer pull than hate,
Is slow indeed to propagate.

Source: Boulding, Kenneth E. “Towards a Pure Theory of Threat Systems.” The American Economic Review 53, no. 2 (1963): 424–34. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1823883.

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Honorary Degree
University of Michigan
(December 17, 1978)

Since Kenneth Boulding, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, was Professor of Economics at The University of Michigan for twenty years, we may claim him as our own. Here, stimulated by our Institute for Social Research, he was able to go “beyond economics” into the philosophical and psychological problems, ranging from consumer-behavior to war-and-peace, of conflict resolution.

Honors soon followed: the John B. Clark medal for Economics, the American Council of Learned Societies’ prize in the Humanities, the Presidency of the American Association, memberships in the National Academy of Science and the American Philosophical Society. He has been visiting Professor at the University College of Kingston, Jamaica; the University of Natal; the University of Edinburgh; and the International Christian University in Tokyo. He is at home in the world as well as the universe.

A member of the Society of Friends, Professor Boulding has carried his religious commitment into the practice of love to achieve through his more than thirty challenging books goals heretofore deemed unattainable. Early he discovered that the actual writing of poetry is a whetstone with which to sharpen one’s English prose. Out of his discipline, his humanity, and his
faith, Kenneth Boulding, to quote one of his own “eiconic” phrases from The Image, has built a true “Temple of the Mind.”

With admiration and love, therefore, The University of Michigan bestows upon him the degree Doctor of Laws.

Source: University of Michigan. Faculty History Project.

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Biographical Note from the Boulding papers at Michigan

Kenneth Ewart Boulding, professor of economics and pacifist, was born in Liverpool, England, January 18, 1910. He was educated at New College, Oxford, England (1928-1932) and the University of Chicago (1932-1934). Boulding taught economics at Colgate (1937-1941), Fisk (1942-1943), Iowa State (1943-1946), and McGill University (1946-1947) before joining the University of Michigan as a professor of economics, 1949-1967. Since 1968, Boulding has been associated with the University of Colorado at Boulder as a professor of economics and director for the Program on General Social and Economic Dynamics and the Institute of Behavioral Science.

Some of his related activities and honors included receiving the John Bates Clark Medal for Economics for 1949; a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, 1954-1955; visiting professorships in Jamaica (1959-1960) and Japan (1963-1964); and directing the University of Michigan Center for Research in Conflict Resolution (1964-1966). Boulding also wrote numerous books, articles, and book reviews. Boulding was active in several peace, anti-nuclear, and disarmament groups, notably the Society of Friends and the National Council of Churches Department of the Church and Economic Life, and UNESCO. His wife, Elise (Biorn-Hansen) Boulding, was a sociologist and also very active in the international peace movement, women’s issues, and Quaker activities.

Kenneth Boulding viewed economics as a creative and philosophical integration of various disciplines–political science, sociology and anthropology. He coined the word “eiconics” to describe the weaving together and restructuring of interdisciplinary knowledge.

Source: Finding aid for the Kenneth Ewart Boulding Papers, 1880-1968, University of Michigan Library.

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Boulding Cites Passage To ‘Post Civilization Era’

By PHILIP SUTIN
The Michigan Daily (March 2, 1961)

“The world is passing from the civilization era to a post civilization era,” Prof. Kenneth Boulding of the economics department said yesterday in, his lecture on “Economic Theory and Sociological Theory.”

He noted that many of the characteristics of civilization are disintegrating. Cities, national defense, poverty, and exploitation which distinguishes this order are now changing.

National Defense

As an example he cited national defense. “National defense as a social system ended in 1945,” he said.

He explained his hypothesis by the theory of oligopoly. In a bipolar situation, for example, each nation has a certain basic home strength and declining foreign power as the distance from that nation increases. A boundary of equal strength exists between the two which shifts with variations in power until one is no longer viable.

However, today nations are at a point where they are no longer unconditionally viable due to their lack of desire or inability to reduce the power of the opposition, he said.

“Oligopoly can be demonstrated by two firms, A and B, which produce identical commodities. The total costs of transportation increase with increasing distance from the firm.

“A boundary of indifference exists between them where the consumer goes equally to both.

Push Boundary

“If A should cut his price, the boundary will be pushed toward B. This price cutting and shifting of boundaries will continue until one cannot cut his price. He can then no longer be viable,” Boulding explained.

“This is analogous to the arms race,” he said.

In discussing social theory, Boulding noted that all social sciences are essentially one. Each discipline takes pieces of the social system, often in incompatible ways.

In their studies social scientists take different levels of abstraction and parcel out the various institutions. The first action, he said, is laudable while the second is deplorable.

However, social scientists cannot study people, as they are much too complicated. So they try to develop a series of abstractions which are relevant to reality.

Meet Difficulties

They run into difficulties, however, in trying to find the level of abstraction. Society encompasses the entire social systems which is fundamentally symbolic, he explained.

“Social scientists have never succeeded in developing a level of abstraction to deal with symbolic systems. They do not know what to abstract out of them or what gives these symbolic systems power,” Boulding said.

Sociology can learn a great deal from economics as many social phenomena have exchange relationships like those that occur in economics.

The basic unit of economics, he noted is the commodity. This world of commodity is seen in terms of price. “It is only accidental to the economist that people move commodities,” Boulding noted,

Generalize Exchange

However, exchange can be generalized, missing important factors in social relationships. As an example, Boulding cited labor relations. “The economist pulls out the commodity from labor, but leaves a great residue. Group relations and alternative uses of time are important factors. A great cloud of reality overshadows- the economic framework of labor relations,” Boulding said.

He noted other comparisons between economics and sociology. The economist, he said, looks at behavior as fundamentally a problem of choice.

The individual looks over the field of alternatives, puts an evaluation in terms of ordinal numbers on each possibility, and chooses number one.

However, “rational behavior may not be sensible behavior” as rationality is merely ordering the field.

The economists view people in terms of this field theory, Boulding explained. Behavorial action tends toward the point of highest utility.

Source: The Michigan Daily, vol. 71, issue 105 (March 2, 1961), p. 5.

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Sample of Boulding’s Writings
(1962)

Boulding, Kenneth E. Conflict and Defense. New York: Harper & Bros., 1962.
Boulding, Kenneth E. “Where Are We Going If Anywhere? A Look at Post-Civilization.” Human Organization 21, no. 2 (1962): 162–67. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44127756 .
Boulding, Kenneth E. “The Death of the City: A Frightened Look at Post-Civilization.” Ekistics 13, no. 75 (1962): 19–22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43617612 .
Davis, James A., and Kenneth E. Boulding. Review of Two Critiques of Homans’ Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms, by George Caspar Homans. American Journal of Sociology 67, no. 4 (1962): 454–61. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2775146.

Image Source: The Michigan Daily, vol. 71, issue 105 (March 2, 1961), p. 5.

Tags Boulding

Cornell Dartmouth Economists Harvard Michigan Teaching Undergraduate

Harvard. Recitation section work described. Day, 1914

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2023-09-05

About 110 years ago the structure of a common lecture and smaller recitation sections for large college courses was novel enough to warrant a description with explanation. The assistant professor of economics and statistician, Edmund Ezra Day (Harvard Ph.D., 1909) penned a two page article for the Harvard Illustrated Magazine that is transcribed following a brief overview of Day’s career.

Day went on to professorships at Harvard and the University of Michigan followed by a detour through the Rockefeller Foundation that took him to the Presidency of Cornell University. Economics in the Rear-view Mirror begins this post with a chronology of Edmund Ezra Day’s life.

___________________________

Biographical Timeline

1883. Born December 7 to Ezra Alonzo and Louise Moulton (Nelson) Day at Manchester, New Hampshire.

1905. B.S., Dartmouth College (Phi Beta Kappa).

1906. A.M., Dartmouth College.

1906-10. Instructor of economics, Dartmouth College.

1909. Ph.D., Harvard University. Thesis: “The History of the General Property Tax in Massachusetts.”

1910-20. Assistant professor of economics, Harvard University.

1912. Married June 5 to Emily Sophia Emerson (daughter of Dean Charles F. Emerson of Dartmouth College). Two sons and two daughters.

1915. Questions on the Principles of Economics (with Joseph Stancliffe Davis). New York: Macmillan.

1918. Seven months as statistician of the division of planning and statistics of the U. S. shipping board. Director, in 1919.

1918. September to December 1918 as statistician of the central bureau of planning and statistics of the war industries board.

1920-23. Professor of economics, Harvard University.

1920. “An Index of the Physical Volume of Production”. The Review of Economic Statistics (September 1920—January 1921).

1922. Revised edition of Questions on the Principles of Economics (with Joseph Stancliffe Davis). New York: Macmillan.

1920-23. Chairman of the department of economics.

1923-27. Professor of economics, University of Michigan. Beginning second semester of 1922-23 academic year)

1923-24. Chairman department of economics, University of Michigan.

1925. Statistical Analysis. New York: Macmillan.

1924-28. Founding dean of the school of business administration, University of Michigan. (leave of absence during 1927-28).

1927. Dean of Administration, University of Michigan.

1927. President of the American Statistical Association.

1927-28. Leave of absence to act as administrative head of Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial for the promotion of social sciences in New York City.

1928. The Growth of Manufactures, 1899 to 1923. A Study of Indexes of Increase in the Volume of Manufactured Products (with Woodlief Thomas). Census Monographs VIII. Washington, D.C.: USGPO.

1928-37. Director for the social sciences of the Rockefeller Foundation.

1930-37. Director for general education and for the social sciences with the General Education Board.

1932-33. U.S. representative on the preparatory commission of experts for the economic conference, held in London in 1933.

1937-49. President of Cornell University.

1941. The Defense of Freedom: Four Addresses on the Present Crisis in American Democracy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.

1941 or 1942. Oncoming Changes in the Organization of American Public Education. By Edmund E. Day, Chairman of the Committee on Teacher Education of the Association of Colleges and Universities of the State of New York.

1949-50. Chancellor, Cornell University.

1951. March 23. Died from a heart attack.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Other misc. facts: Edmund Ezra Day was president of the New York State Citizens Council, the Association of Land-Grant Colleges and Universities, the World Student Service Fund; he was chairman of the American Council on Education, director of the National Bureau of Economic Research, director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (appointed January 1937), Councillor of the National Industrial Conference Board, and a trustee of Tuskegee institute beginning 1939. He held fifteen honorary degrees.

Sources:

Memorial minute. Cornell, 1951.
Ithaca Journal, March 23, 1951. p. 1. “Dr. Day, President Emeritus of Cornell, Dies at 67 of heart Attack in his Car.”
The National Cyclopedia of American Biography, 1942.

___________________________

Section Work in Economics

EDMUND E. DAY, ’09, Assistant Professor in Economics.

Among the methods of undergraduate instruction, the section-meeting is of large importance. By the section-meeting is meant an exercise attended by only a fraction of the men enrolled in the course. Usually it stands combined in varying proportions with the lecture. Usually, too, it is not in charge of the instructor “giving the course” (sic), but rather of an assistant. But neither of these common features is essential to the section idea.

The most important single question raised by the section method is: What is its purpose? Undoubtedly the section may, and does, serve many ends. It clearly is valuable in the grading of undergraduate work. It is in this rôle that, in many courses, the section is really significant. Such are the cases in which one-half of the only section-hour each week is devoted to a written test, and the balance of the hour to remarks by the assistant. But the section may certainly be made more than an adjunct to the College Office. Obviously, the section-meeting fosters that familiarity between student and instructor which should invariably exert a wholesome influence; serving the same purpose in undergraduate instruction that publicity does in politics.

Furthermore, in many courses the section-meeting offers the only opportunity for open discussion, for a free give and take between instructor and instructed. Such discussion is the sine qua non of effective teaching in many, if not in most, subjects. It develops clear thinking, power in logical analysis, and effective speech. It stimulates that interest which encourages faithful work from day to day, instead of hasty cramming at examinations. In general, it makes for permanent intellectual power as against temporary mental acquisition.

Such being the opportunities of the section-meeting, by what organization and methods may they best be seized? The immediate interest of the student might seem to demand that the instructor in charge of the course should conduct its sections. But this would violate every rule of good economy. Professors of scholarly and scientific experience and reputation, while they would probably give section instruction better than most assistants, have a vastly greater advantage in the work they are at present doing. In the long run they best advance undergraduate instruction by delegating section work to the younger men. Nor is this so generally to the disadvantage of the section as is commonly supposed. As a rule, the young instructor of promise brings to his task a zest, a sympathetic knowledge of college ways and ideals, an appreciation of the difficulties of the beginner which the older man has long since lost. And after all, teaching ability is in large measure a gift which needs little polishing by experience, good teachers are just as rare among older men as among the younger.

Section instructors and students should be, as we have noted, on terms of familiarity. Therefore assistants should be selected with great care. Appointments in the past have perhaps too little emphasized the need of certain human qualities not weighted in the Ph.D. examination. The leaven of a little sympathy, of more good humor, and of still more downright fairness and good sense works wonders in raising the level of section instruction.

Grading seems an essential element in section work, but it should be reduced to a minimum. This does not mean that it should be confined to a written test. Some grading had best accompany work in discussion. This seems necessary to compel intelligent discussion. Too often discussion degenerates into what the undergraduate expressively calls “drool.” Upon the other hand, so-called discussion sometimes is narrowed into mere drill upon the text. The assistant must steer the difficult course between the two extremes. In this endeavor a reasonable amount of inconspicuous “policing” is desirable.

Spirited and stimulated discussion is, after all, the most significant aim of the section-meeting. This imposes responsibilities upon instructor and student alike. The instructor must be able to direct and control discussion, the student must contribute his share of thought and interest; together they coöperate to make section work a success. The test of the section work in any course lies in the quality of the discussion provoked.

The weaknesses of the section are such as to call for improvement, rather than abolition, of the method. Improvement is in large measure a question of money cost. Adequate outlay would probably guarantee section instructors satisfactory alike to students and department staffs. Sufficient outlay to secure assistants with a firm grasp of their subjects is absolutely essential. But some improvements probably are within reach without much additional cost. Thus, by careful provision for standardizing grading, we may reduce the risks involved in the assignment of different students to assistants in the same course but of different experience and temperament. The value of section work may be more generally recognized and upheld. Greater emphasis may be laid on teaching ability in selecting assistants. And finally, possibly in coöperation with the Education Department, assistants may be helped to acquire the gentle art of section work.

Other improvements of the section method will undoubtedly be suggested. But to give it up entirely seems unwise; the section has probably come to stay. It seems, for the present, an advisable concession to large-scale education.

Source: The Harvard Illustrated Magazine, Vol. 15, No. 6 (March 1914), 295-296.

Image Source: Edmund Ezra Day in Harvard Class Album 1915.

Tags Day

Economics Programs Economist Market Economists Johns Hopkins Kansas Sociology

Kansas. Birth of seminary of historical and political science. Blackmar, 1889

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2023-08-25

A 35 year old Johns Hopkins University Ph.D., Frank Wilson Blackmar, was appointed professor of History and Sociology at the University of Kansas starting in the fall semester of 1889. He joined the history and civics professor James Hulme Canfield to establish a joint seminary of historical and political science in Lawrence, Kansas. The seminary was to serve as a social scientific laboratory following the model of historical seminaries established earlier in German universities and later transferred to North American universities such as Johns Hopkins during the last third of the 19th century. Blackmar’s Ph.D. subjects were History, Political Economy and Literature and he taught a broad range of courses in political economy, sociology, cultural and intellectual history, as well as social policy at Kansas. He wrote textbooks for both economics and sociology but he eventually left economics for what he must have perceived to be the virgin fields of sociology, a career path similar to that taken by Franklin H. Giddings at Columbia. In 1919 he served as president of the American Sociological Association.

Frank W. Blackmar served his university for forty years until being unceremoniously shown the door to retirement by his department in 1929. He was even forced to suffer the indignity of witnessing his own venerable sociology textbook dropped for a younger competitor.

Still Blackmar is of interest to us as one of the first generation wave of newly minted Ph.D.’s who were in search of their scientific fortune across the vast expanse of the United States at the end of the 19th century. He also serves as a reminder that the disciplinary wall between economics and sociology was then little more than a speed-bump compared to the well-fortified border today.

This is a long post so I provide the following intrapost links for ease of navigation:

Curriculum vitae of Frank Wilson Blackmar
Links to a selection of Blackmar’s books, monographs, and reports
Kansas newspaper accounts of Blackmar’s appointment
Curriculum of the Department of Historical and Political Science (1889-90)
Seminary of Historical and Political Science
Blackmar’s vision of how economics fits into the bigger picture
Slight rebranding as Department of History and Sociology

___________________________

Frank Wilson Blackmar

1854. Born November 3 in West Springfield, Pennsylvania.

1874. Graduated at the Northwestern State Normal School at Edinboro, Erie county, Pennsylvania.

1874-75. Taught at West Mill Creek school at Erie.

1875-78. Taught in California public schools.

1878. Enrolled at the University of the Pacific (San Jose, California).

1881. Ph.B. with honors from the University of the Pacific.

1881-82. Taught mathematics in the San Jose High School.

1882-86. Professor of mathematics in the University of the Pacific

1884. A.M. in mathematics and literature from the University of the Pacific.

1885. Married Mary S. Bowman, daughter of Rev. G.B. Bowman, of San Jose.

1886-89. Graduate student and fellow of Johns Hopkins University.

1887-88. Instructor in history.
1888-89. Fellow in history and politics.
1889. June 13. Awarded Ph.D. Thesis: “Spanish Colonization in the Southwest.” Subjects: History, Political Economy and English. Source: Johns Hopkins University, University Circulars, July 1889, p. 97.

1889-1929. University of Kansas.

1889-1899. Professor of history and sociology.
1889. Course in political economy. Thirteen students enrolled (University Kansan, September 27, 1889, p. 1)
1890. Course “Elements of Sociology” introduced.
1893. Course “Status of Woman” introduced.
1897. Course “Questions of Practical Sociology” introduced.
1897. Course “Remedial and Corrective Agencies” introduced.
1899-1912. Professor of sociology and economics.
1912-1926. Professor of sociology.
1899-1926. Head of the Department of Sociology.
1896-1922. Dean of the Graduate School
1929. Retirement forced at age 74 after 40 years of service to the University. His request to continue full-teaching and full-salary until June 1930 was denied.

1900-02. President of the Kansas Conference of Social Work.

1919. Ninth president of the American Sociological Society

1931. March 30. Died from influenza in Lawrence, Kansas.

Books, monographs, reports

The Study of History and Sociology. Topeka: Kansas Printing Office, 1890.

Spanish Colonization in the Southwest. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1890.

The History of Federal and State Aid to Higher Education. U.S. Bureau of Education, Circular of Information No. 9, 1890. Contributions to American Educational History, edited by Herbert B. Adams. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1890.

Spanish Institutions in the Southwest. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1891.

The Story of Human Progress, 1896.

Higher Education in Kansas. U.S. Bureau of Education, Circular of Information No. 2, 1890.

Economics. Topeka, Kansas: Crane & Company, 1900.

Spanish Colonial Policy. Publications of the American Economic Association. Vol. 1 (3), 1900, pp. 112-143.

The Study of History, Sociology, and Economics. Topeka, Kansas: Crane & Company, 1901.

The Life of Charles Robinson, the First Governor of Kansas. Topeka, Kansas: Crane & Company, 1902.

The Elements of Sociology. New York: The MacMillan Co., 1905. [In the Citizen’s Library series ed. by Richard T. Ely]

Kansas: a cyclopedia of state history, embracing events, institutions, industries, counties, cities, towns, prominent persons, etc. (2 vols.) edited by Frank W. Blackmar. Chicago: Standard Pub. Co. Volume I; Volume II.

Economics for High Schools and Academies. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1907.

Report on the Penitentiary to Governor Geo. H. Hodges. Topeka, Kansas: Kansas State Printing Office, 1914.

Outlines of Sociology, with J.G. Gillin. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1915. [Published in series: Social Science Textbooks, edited by Richard T. Ely. Note: Ely’s own contribution to the series bears the analogous title “Outlines of Economics”]

First edition (1915);
Revised edition (1923);
Third edition (1930).

History of the Kansas State Council of Defense. Topeka, Kansas: Kansas State Printing Plant, December 1920.

Lawrence Social Survey (joint with Ernest W. Burgess). Topeka, Kansas: Kansas State Printing Plant, 1917.

Justifiable Individualism. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1922.

History of Human Society. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926.

___________________________

Newspaper accounts regarding Blackmar’s appointment

PROF. BLACKMAR SELECTED.
A Good Man Elected to the New Chair of History and Sociology.

At the last meeting of the board of regents of the University, Prof. James H. Canfield recommended that instead of having an assistant as fixed by the legislature, a new chair be created to be known as History and Sociology. Prof. Canfield laid out the work to be pursued by each chair and two chairs were created by the regents as advised by him and he was allowed to have his choice and he took American History and Civics.

To-day the regents, after careful consideration of all the applicants, selected Prof. Frank W. Blackmar, who is taking an advanced course at Johns Hopkins University. Prof. Blackmar is a man of experience and is a graduate of the University of the Pacific at San Jose, Cal. For several years he has been professor of mathematics at that place. The following letter to the regents bears Mr. Blackmar good recommendations:

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY,
Baltimore, Md.

“The best man I can suggest for your purpose is Mr. F. W. Blackmar, our senior fellow in History and Politics. He was for some years professor in a California college before coming here and has just received an offer of $1500 to go to Mills College in that state. He used to receive $2000, but deliberately threw up a good place in mathematics for the sake of studying history. He is a man of fine character and ability with lots of hard sense and good tact, withal a good speaker and writer. I have employed him upon the most important of all the government monographs, the Relation of Federal and State Aid to Higher Education, a work covering the financial history of education in thirty-eight states. His report has just been accepted in Washington and will do Blackmar great honor. In fact he can get almost anything he wants after that report is published. You will be lucky if you catch him early and you will have to give him all the law allows. I shall recommend Blackmar to the vacancy arising at Bryn Mawr, where Woodrow Wilson used to be, if I am asked to nominate. Blackmar is married, has had experience as a co-educator, and has served as an assistant here, as well as a popular lecturer to workingmen. I have just answered three applications for professors, but have given you the best man

Very truly,
H. B. Adams.

With Professors Blackmar and Canfield in the political history department of the University, that department is sure to become one of the most attractive in the University.

Prof. Blackmar is a protectionist, a Republican and a member of the M. E. [Methodist Episcopal] church.

The “Athens of Kansas” welcomes Prof. and Mrs. Blackmar to her midst and we trust that they will find Lawrence a pleasant place in which to live. The success of securing such an able man is due largely to Prof. Canfield and Regent Spangler and the University is to be congratulated upon the new accession to the already strong faculty.

Source: The Evening Tribune, Lawrence, Kansas. Wednesday, May 8, 1889, p. 3.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

The New Chairs.

The University has taken so many strides towards the front during the past four or five years, that each step has ceased to attract special notice. But a change has just been made which deserves mention, and which has already attracted wide-spread attention and favorable comment.

For several years Professor Canfield has urged a division of his chair, that broader work might be offered in History and in Citizenship. The Board has never been able to meet the necessary expenses of such enlargement, and the work has been carried or driven toward success under many embarrassments.

But now the Regents find the funds on hand for a new chair, and have determined to establish it in this department. Accordingly a special committee has been in consultation with Professor Canfield, and together they have elaborated courses that are peculiarly attractive.

At his own request Professor Canfield retains the work in American History and Civics, which will hereafter be the title of his chair. American History is the favorite option. “Constitutional and Political History of the United States,” elaborated and given daily instead of three times a week. This work absorbs “Colonial History,” “Finance and Diplomacy of the Revolution,” and the “Federalist.” In addition to this will be offered work in Constitutional Law, Public Finance and Banking, Local Law and Administration, and International Law and Diplomacy.

The second chair will be History and Sociology.

It is not possible to say now who the new Professors will be, nor what work will be offered. But the two chairs will work together—the work of one really preparing for that of the other, and together they will make a strong team.

This division of the old chair gives just twice the latitude in choice of options and elections, and the number of students eager to avail themselves of this opportunity is very large.

LATER.

Prof. Frank W. Blackmar, formerly a Professor in the University of the Pacific, and at present a fellow in Johns Hopkins, has been appointed to the chair of History and Sociology, which was recently created by the division of Prof. Canfield’s work Prof. Blackmar comes with the best of recommendations, and will be a strong addition to the faculty.

Source: University Times, Lawrence, Kansas. Friday, May 10, 1889, p. 2.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Prof. F. W. Blackmar.

The rumor as to the appointment of Prof. F. W. Blackmar of Johns Hopkins University has been proven true. Through the kindness of Regent Spangler the Journal is enabled to print the following letter concerning Mr. Blackmar:

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY,
BALTIMORE, Md., April 13, 1889.

To the Trustees of Kansas State University—Gentlemen:

Allow me strongly to recommend for your new chair of History and Sociology, Mr. F. W. Blackmar, our Senior Fellow in these subjects. He was for four years Professor of Mathematics in his alma mater, the University of the Pacific, where he proved such a good administrative officer that at one time he served as the deputy of the President. We have thought so highly of his ability as a teacher and as a manager of young men that last year we put him in charge of a large class in History in our undergraduate department. He taught the class to our entire satisfaction. This year as Fellow he has not been allowed to teach, but has given his entire attention to original investigation. Besides writing a scholarly thesis on “Spanish Colonization in the Southwest,” based upon Spanish and other original authorities, he has completed under my direction a most elaborate government report on “The Relation of Federal and State Aid to the Higher Education,” or a financial history of American Colleges and universities in so far as they have been supported or assisted by government appropriations. This report, I am confident, will give Mr. Blackmar a national reputation, for it will meet the needs of every State board of trustees and of all superintendents of education in these United States. In addition to this government and university work, Mr. Blackmar has lent a hand in various popular lecture courses which I have instituted here in Baltimore. I append the printed outlines of one or two of his lectures. He is a man who can go before the people, if necessary, and make himself understood on practical questions. He takes a strong interest in social science, or questions affecting the public health and welfare, such as Sanitation, Charities, the Relation of the State and City to the care of Paupers, the Insane, the Blind, the Deaf and Dumb, etc. If you should see fit to appoint Mr. Blackmar to Historical. Economic and Social Science, it would be wise to encourage him during the coming summer to visit the leading charitable institutions of New York and Massachusetts, and to acquire a practical knowledge of the best methods, from interviews with men like Mr. Brockway, of the Elmira Reformatory, and with Mr. F. S. Sanborn, long secretary of the State Board of Charities in Massachusetts, and at one time lecturer upon these subjects at Cornell University. There is a great field here for a well-trained University man. With knowledge of the best experience of the world he can promote the usefulness and economy of charitable institutions throughout an entire state or city. The Johns Hopkins University is pushing men into this new field. Two of our graduates in succession have served as Secretary of the Organized Charities of Baltimore. Another has similar position in Brooklyn. A fourth has just been made Secretary of the New York State Charities Aid Association, an office which brings him into active relation with all the charitable institutions of both city and state. I emphasize these facts because they show the practical bearings of Social Science when properly represented in a University.

Let me say, in conclusion, that Mr. Blackmar is a young man of excellent moral character, a Christian gentleman, married and in good health, although just now a little overworked while preparing for his degree as Doctor of Philosophy. He is perfectly safe in all economic and social questions and is naturally endowed with a good stock of common sense.

Very respectfully recommended,
H. B. Adams.
In charge of the Department of History and Politics.

Mr. Blackwar is 34 years of age and a native of Erie county, Pa. In 1874 he graduated at the Northwestern State Normal school at Edinboro, Erie county, Pa.; the following year he taught the West Mill Creek school at Erie, at the same time carrying on studies preparatory for college. In the autumn of 1875 he went to California and there engaged in teaching in the public schools for a term of three years; in 1878 entered the University of the Pacific, San Jose, California, and graduated from that institution in 1881 receiving the degree of Ph.B. The following year he engaged in teaching mathematics in the San Jose High School. In 1882 he was called to the chair of mathematics in the University of the Pacific which he filled acceptably for a term of four years. In 1884 he received the degree of A.M. on account of work done in mathematics and literature.

In the following year he was married to Miss Mary S. Bowman, daughter of Rev. G. B. Bowman, of San Jose.

In 1886 he entered Johns Hopkins University, when he was appointed instructor in 1887 and fellow in history and politics in 1888.

Source: Lawrence Daily Journal, Lawrence, Kansas. Friday, May 10, 1889, p. 3.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Prof. Blackmar Elected.

Tuesday the board of regents after the consideration of all the applicants elected Prof. Frank W. Blackmar, who is now taking an advanced course at John Hopkins, to fill the associate chair in the history department. Prof. Blackmar is a graduate of the University of the Pacific, a republican, a prohibitionist, a Phi [Kappa] Psi. The following letter to the regents bears Prof. Blackmar good recommendations, and the Courier bids him welcome.

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY,
Baltimore, Md.

“The best man I can suggest for your purpose is Mr. F. W. Blackmar, our senior fellow in History and Politics. He was for some years professor in a California college before coming here and has just received an offer of $1500 to go to Mills College in that state. He used to receive $2000, but deliberately threw up a good place in mathematics for the sake of studying history. He is a man of fine character and ability with lots of hard sense and good tact, withal a good speaker and writer. I have employed him upon the most important of all the government monographs, the Relation of Federal and State Aid to Higher Education, a work covering the financial history of education in thirty-eight states. His report has just been accepted in Washington and will do Blackmar great honor. In fact he can get almost anything he wants after that report is published. You will be lucky if you catch him early and you will have to give him all the law allows. I shall recommend Blackmar to the vacancy arising at Bryn Mawr, where Woodrow Wilson used to be, if I am asked to nominate. Blackmar is married, has had experience as a co-educator, and has served as an assistant here, as well as a popular lecturer to workingmen. I have just answered three applications for professors, but have given you the best man

Very truly,
H.B. Adams.

Source: The University Courier, Lawrence, Kansas. Friday, May 10, 1889, p. 2.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

FRANK W. BLACKMAR

An extended sketch of Prof. Blackmar was given in The Courier last Spring, but for the benefit of the new students we reproduce a part of it. Prof. Blackmar is a native of Pa., and graduated from the Northwestern Normal School in 1874. He then went to California and taught a few years in the Public Schools of that State. He then entered the University of the Pacific, and graduated with honors with the class of ’81. He taught in the San Jose High School, and was then called back to the University of the Pacific to fill the chair of mathematics. This position he held until 1886, when he resigned to pursue a post graduate course in Johns Hopkins. During the year 1887-8, he was an instructor in History at that institution, and at the time of his election to the chair of History and Sociology in the University last spring, was a Fellow in History and Politics at Johns Hopkins. He is a member of Phi [Kappa] Psi Fraternity, having joined that organization while a student at the University of the Pacific. He took his degree of Ph.D. last June, at Johns Hopkins, the subjects covered in his course being History, Political Economy and English.

Source: The University Courier, Lawrence, Kansas. Friday, August 16, 1889, p. 2.

___________________________

Department of History, Politics and Sociology—A Circular Issued Covering the Work in that Department.

The department of history in the State University has just issued a circular covering the work in that department. By the division of the chair of history and the election of an additional professor in that department the long wished for equalizing of the course was attained and under the name of American History and Civics and History and Sociology the University presents as strong and comprehensive course in that line of college work as any other college in the country. In order that our readers may know for themselves the extent of this course and also the division of the work between Prof. Canfield and Prof. Blackmer we print the circular entire.

HISTORY, POLITICS AND SOCIOLOGY.

The following statement covers the work of the last two years of the University course, and is made in answer to many inquiries received by the instructors in charge of these topics.*

Instruction in History, Polities, and Sociology is given by means of lectures, recitations, discussions, conference, and personal direction in study and research. Special pains are taken to facilitate the use of the University library by students taking these topics; authorities closely connected with the work in hand being withheld from general circulation, and rendered more available by carefully prepared card indexes.

AMERICAN HISTORY AND CIVICS. — JAMES H. CANFIELD.

American History. — Instruction is given daily for two years in American History. The course has been prepared with especial care, with the thought that a thorough knowledge of the origin and development of the Nation is one of the most essential conditions of good citizenship. Marked attention is given to social life and institutional and industrial development; to the financial experiments of the general government, and to diplomatic relations; to the failure of the confederation, the struggle for the constitution, and to the text of the constitution itself; and to the constitutional and political history of the Union from 1789 to the present. For this the library now offers special facilities, in a complete Congressional Record, from the first Continental Congress to the present (including the Secret Journals and Diplomatic Correspondence), a complete set of Niles’ Register, and in a large collection of other public documents.

Local Administration and Law. — Lectures three times each week during the first term,† covering the management of public affairs in districts, townships, counties, cities, and States. This course is intended to increase the sense of the importance of home government, as well as to give instruction in its practical details.

Public Finance and Banking. — Lectures twice each week during the first term, on National, State, and municipal financiering; and on theoretical and practical banking, with the details of bank management.

Constitutional Law. — Lectures three times each week during the second term, on the constitution of the United States; with brief sketches of the institution and events that preceded its adoption, and with special attention to the sources and methods of its interpretation.

International Law and Diplomacy. — Lectures twice each week during the second term on the rise and growth of international law, and on the history of American diplomacy.

In all this work constant effort is made to determine the historic facts (as opposed to mere theorizing), to secure a fair presentation of opposing views, to promote free discussion and inquiry, and to encourage as complete personal investigation of all authorities as the University library permits. This method is thought to furnish the best conditions for sound opinion and individual judgment, while controlling neither.

HISTORY AND SOCIOLOGY.
— FRANK W. BLACKMAR.

The aim in the following courses is to give a comprehensive knowledge of the great topics of history, and to investigate general social, political, and economic phenomena and theories — especially those of Europe.

Instruction will be given daily throughout the first term, as follows:

English History. — This course embraces a careful study of the English people and the growth of the English nation, including a general survey of race elements, and of social and political institutions.

The Intellectual Development of Europe. — A course of lectures tracing the history and philosophy of intellectual progress from early Greek society to modern times.
Particular attention is given to the influence of Greek philosophy, the Christian church, the relation of learning to liberal government, and of the rise of modern nationality.

Political Economy. — The fundamental and elementary principles will be discussed, and will be elaborated by descriptive and historical methods. A brief historical sketch of Political Economy may be given at the close of the course.

The second term’s work includes the following courses:

Institutional History. — Lectures three times each week, on Comparative Politics. The history of Germanic institutions will constitute the main body of the course.

The Rise of Democracy. — Lectures twice each week, on the rise of popular power and the growth of political liberty throughout Europe.

Elements of Sociology. — Lectures three times each week, on the evolution of social institutions from the primitive unit, the family; including a discussion of the laws and conditions which tend to organize society. The latter part of the course will be devoted to the elements of modern social science as preliminary to the consideration of the problems of the day.

Land and Land Tenures. — Twice each week. The course will begin with a discussion of the Roman land question and extend to the Feudal land systems of France and England, and thence to the consideration of modern land tenures of Great Britain and of the United States.

Practice Course in Economics. — A full term’s work applied in economics and in the elements of social science; consisting of conferences, discussions, practical ob-servation, and the preparation of a thesis of not less than twenty thousand words on some special topic selected by each student

All general correspondence should be addressed to the Chancellor of the University; special correspondence, to either of the instructors named in this circular.

*During the first two years of the University course, students have the subjects usually required in college courses — though with choice between four lines of work. (See University Catalogue.)

†The University year is divided into two terms, of equal length.

Source: Lawrence Daily Journal (Lawrence, Kansas), Sunday, July 14, 1889, p. 3.

___________________________

Seminary of Historical and Political Science.

Announcing the new Seminary

The Political Science Club has been succeeded by the Seminary of Historical and Political Science. This new society has been organized by Profs. J. H. Canfield and F. W. Blackmar. The membership of the society is limited to the department of History and Political Science, students having two or more studies in that department being active members and those having less than two studies being associate members.

This new association will embrace all of the best features of the Political Science Club, besides several new features. From his two years’ experience with the Political Science Club, Prof. Canfield is able to accept only those features that have proven to be practical. Under the new management the Seminary is expected to be even more interesting and valuable an adjunct to the department, in the future, than the Political Science Club has been in the past.

Source: University Kansan (Lawrence, Kansas), Friday, September 27, 1889, p. 2.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

First Annual Symposium of the Seminary of Historic and Political Science of K. S. U.

A short time ago invitations were sent out to the members of the Political Seminary, and last evening a goodly number of both active and corresponding members assembled for the first annual reception and banquet. The guests were received by Prof. J. H. Canfield, director, and Prof. Blackmar, vice-director of the Seminary; and at 8:45 the line of march was taken up for room 15, which served for a banquet hall as well as a lecture room.

Here an excellent repast was served by young lady students of the University, after which Director Canfield announced the Symposium proper. The director spoke at some length of the work accomplished in the past year, giving a list of the more important papers presented, and announced that for next year papers on subjects of interest were promised by Geo. R. Peck, of Topeka; Frank H. Betton, labor commissioner of Kansas; Judge Humphrey, of Junction City; Judge Emery, D. S. Alford, Rev. Ayers, Charlie Scott and Dr. Howland.

Prof. Canfield then introduced Vice-Director Blackmar, and asked him to compare the work done by the seminary here with the same class of work in eastern colleges. Prof. Blackmar gave a short account of the present mode of studying history and political economy, saying that it was of recent date. Comparisons with Yale, Johns Hopkins and the University of Michigan, show that the work here is as thorough as at any of those institutions. The study of the Science of History has risen into prominence, as has the study of the natural sciences, and furnishes as good mental training as do the languages or even mathematics.

At the close of Prof. Blackmar’s speech Prof. Canfield announced the real topic of the occasion, “The University in its Relation to the People,” and called on Gov. Robinson to tell of the early struggle for a university in Kansas. The governor then told in his own happy manner of the early endeavors to secure a university in Kansas, of the first faculty and how it was selected for policy’s sake, of the work that the regents had to do even in the first years of the University. His hope that the present director of the seminary would never leave the University was heartily applauded.

The time having arrived when three minute speeches were in order, Prof.

Canfield called on Mr. H. F. M. Bear to talk on the “Influence of the University in the Community.” Mr. Bear opened with a story, and when that was finished so were his three minutes.

“What a University Course in Worth to the Bar of the State” was responded to by Judge Humphrey; the judge said “That a thorough collegiate education is becoming more and more recognized as a necessity in the lawyer’s profession; that the most important function of a state school is to equip men for good, honest lawyers.”

“The University Man in Politics” was discussed by A. L. Burney, of the class of ’90, “The true duty of the University graduate in politics is to be a leader, following the teachings of the golden rule.”

Colonel O. E. Learnard, in responding to “the University man” in connection with the press, said: “It was not a good plan to mix a University training with newspaper work, but that men should graduate from the University into the newspaper profession.”

Prof. Canfield, introducing the next speaker, congratulated the University in having begun right in the matter of co-education.

Miss Hunnicut, a post-graduate student in Political Science, spoke on “Post-Graduate Work, the link between the University and practical life;” thought the course too short, should be two years instead of one — this was the only opportunity offered the student to do original work.

“University boys’ outing life” was assigned to C. E. Esterley. Mr. Esterley declared that the University boys were always successful after leaving school.

“What the University can and does do for women,” was discussed by Miss Reasoner — class of ’90. Miss Reasoner is a pleasing speaker and was listened to with close attention,

Prof. Blake in speaking on “the University and applied science,” said that everything in K.S.U. depended on the crops in Kansas, and as the crop prospect was good this year, so was the outlook for applied sciences hopeful in our University. The object in giving our young men instruction in the shops was not that they might be laborers, but directors of our great industrial enterprises in the West.”

This closed the program of a most successful meeting, and Prot. Canfield then declared the assembly adjourned for one year.

Those present were: Prof. J. H. Canfield, director; Prof. F. W. Blackmar, vice-director; Misses Lockwood, Dunn, Spencer, Reasoner and Hunnicutt; Judge Humphrey, Gov. Robinson, Dr. Howland, Rev. Mr. Ayres, B. W. Woodward, D. S. Alford, Col. O. E. Learnard, Prof. Blake, and Messrs. Chapman, Esterly, Liddeke, Slosson, Burney, Mushrush, Bear, Roberts, Morse, Hill, Wilmoth.

Source: Lawrence Daily Journal (Lawrence, Kansas), Thursday, June 5, 1890, p. 4.

___________________________

Blackmar on place of political economy

ECONOMIC POLITICS. — One branch of political economy falls directly within the scope of history, and this is what may be termed economic politics, or that part of political economy which has to do with the action of the state concerning economical development. This has been called “Historico-Political Economy,” as treated by the historian. It deals less with economic life as a philosophy, and more with the practical affairs of economic legislation. As such it might assume the German name of “National Economy,” only that it would include more than is here intended. It is a separate study from the science of Political Economy as now constituted. However, in the earlier conditions of the science, and to a certain extent now among some French and German writers, political policies are confused with the science of political economy.

Within the scope of economic politics should be grouped those social and economic movements which have been directly connected with the political changes that have taken place in states. Some of the so-called political institutions have their direct cause of existence, in social or economic movements. The so-called new school, or, what is more explanatory, the “historical school” of political economists, in contradistinction to the old or “deductive” school, base their operations upon historical conditions rather than upon a priori arguments. Consequently, the association of political economy with the study of history has become common. It is true, on the one hand, that science of political economy that struggles with a priori principles, ideal men, ideal nations, and ideal conditions, was released from many of its defects when a careful search into historical conditions was made. On the other hand, there is a politico-economic history of nations which may be incorporated with the study of history proper, and still allow Political Economy to retain its own province undisturbed. It is this phase of political history which should come under the head of economic politics. The study of Political Economy as an independent science will be treated of under that heading.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Such was the condition of the study of history in the American college up to a recent period, that the dull, dry conning of the facts of universal history with the chief idea of knowing the facts of the world’s history only to forget them, was the recognized process. President Adams tells us that during the first two centuries of the existence of Harvard College, the study of history consisted in spending one hour at eight o’clock on Saturday mornings in the hearing of compositions and the reciting of history, both ancient and modern. In 1839 a special chair for the study of history was endowed for the college, yet it was not until 1870 that there was any real change in the method pursued of conning history. At that time two men were employed, where before one man did all of the work. From this time there was rapid improvement. The condition in Yale and in Columbia was not much better than that in Harvard; in Yale the entire services of one man were not required until after 1868, to teach history, and it was not until 1877 that another man was put into the field.

In 1857 President White, of Cornell, instituted the study of history in the University of Michigan, and used the historic method employed in Germany with some modifications. This method was adopted in Cornell in 1870, and in Johns Hopkins in 1876, at the commencement of its career. With these beginnings a rapid progress has been made towards the treatment of history from a scientific standpoint. From this time the best institutions of America abandoned the old, dull process of memorizing and forgetting the facts of history without making good use of those facts. But this progress is not equal to the progress made in the old-world institutions in the organization and arrangement of courses and the number of separate fields of study. The methods used are somewhat the same.

Modern methods of historical teaching have for their chief points the systematic work of the student under the intelligent direction of the instructor. The process involves an investigation of materials, a search after the truth, a study of particular phases of historical truth, a comparison and classification of material, and an analysis of results. History is to be studied because it is interesting, and to be followed for the truth it will yield. In all of this the facts of history must not be ignored, nor the careful reading of standard authorities neglected. But the instruction works upon the principle that a person engaged in an interesting pursuit of the truth of history will retain by real knowledge of the subject the facts which if learned by rote without understanding would soon leave him.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

The MODERN SEMINARY furnishes a means of bringing together those most interested and most advanced, for the special study of subjects in history or in political and in social economy. This method, now almost universal in the foremost institutions, is of German origin, and constitutes the germ of the modern method. The seminary had its origin with the class taught by Leopold von Ranke, and from that time has been greatly improved in Germany, and extensively adopted in America. The seminary represents the historical laboratory, and each meeting should be a clearing-house of the actual work done. The object of the seminary is to develop individual thought and investigation, and to test the same by criticism and discussion. Another beneficial result will be the development in a practical way of the best methods of study. We have laboratory work in physics, chemistry, and in most of the natural sciences; if history is to be taught as a science, it must not ignore this great means of investigation. Its work may not always be original, for the word original should be used with much care in its application to any study. It must be sufficiently individual and independent that the student may verify truth by his own investigation, and learn to exercise his own judgment concerning the materials before him. The undergraduate courses in chemistry or physics seldom go beyond this in their laboratory work. The seminary is an association of individuals coöperating in the pursuit of historical truth, using scientific methods in study, research, and presentation. It should represent the highest and best work of any department or group of departments working on kindred subjects.

But whatever methods are pursued, it must be kept in mind that there are scientific processes involved, and scientific results must be expected. The chief benefits to be derived from the study of history, or of the different branches of history and sociology, are similar to those of all other sciences.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Professor R.T. Ely wrote an Introduction to Political Economy which was more or less sociological in its nature, and which assumed that Political Economy was a branch of Sociology. Subsequently a controversy arose as to the relative position of Economics and Sociology, which has been finally settled by Sociology taking and maintaining an independent position in the category of social sciences. While nearly everything relating to society has been called, at different times, Sociology, there is to-day a well-established body of knowledge, well-defined principles, and a distinct boundary of the science of Sociology.

A word must be said about the treatment of what is known as “social science” in a peculiar way, as if the only province of sociology was to care for broken-down and imperfect society; and that sociology has to deal only with social problems, and not with the rational development of human society. It must be acknowledged that the value of the study of charities and corrections cannot be overestimated, and that as representative of the position of a certain phase of social disorganization, the study of these is invaluable. These studies represent the outcrop pings of society, and just as a ledge in the mountains will show by its nature the condition of the original bed, so these parts of disorganized society will show the nature of the true structure. So, also, as it treats chiefly in its scientific methods of the reorganization of society, there is an opportunity offered for the application of the best results of the study of sociology.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

THE STUDY OF ECONOMICS.

INSTRUCTION in economics has been for many years a part of the regular course of nearly every college and university in the land, and has recently been making rapid advancement in the secondary schools. There has been rather more controversy respecting its scope than of the methods employed in study and instruction. Some have contended that as Economics is an abstract science its scope is narrow, comprising only the body of principles and laws that have been drawn from concrete experience. Others have broadened the subject to include much that rightfully belongs to sociology and political science. Others have adopted the historical method to such an extent as to exclude all scientific nature of the subject, reducing it to a mere relation of facts concerning the industrial affairs of the nation. As usual, extremists may be of service in quickening thought, but they seldom hit upon the correct solution of problems that concern a large number of people. While it is proper and unavoidable to hold to the abstract or deductive political economy, it is also necessary to carry on concrete investigations by the inductive method. Nor must industrial history be neglected, for this makes a strong background for the science and enables the student to approach the subject from a new point of view. If a student will observe the following analysis and obtain a thorough knowledge of the subjects enumerated therein, he will have a fair knowledge of the science of Economics from every essential point of view. This analysis represents the essentials of economics; more would be superfluous and less would be insufficient. True, there are many subjects more or less directly related to economics, such as economic statistics, economic ethics, and economic jurisprudence, but they do not make up the body of the subject as a science.

CLASSIFICATION OF ECONOMICS.

Classification according to the nature and logic of the science:
1. Pure or abstract Political Economy.
  1. Laws, principles, and theories.
2. Applied economics.
  1. Verification of laws and principles in concrete economic life.
  2. Practical investigation into economic phenomena, general or special, and classification and deduction of the same.
  3. Consideration of ideal standards and the means of approximating them.
3. History of economic thought.
4. Industrial history.
5. Methodology of the science.
Classification according to agencies:
1. Private or non-political economics.
2. Public or political economics.
  1. Public control of industries.
  2. Taxation and finance so far as related to economics.

While this outline carefully followed would give a student a fair knowledge of economics, it is not possible for him to have such knowledge with a narrower scope. Every point of the science is carefully fortified with concrete examples of economic life, and the progress of the industries acquaints one with the causes of changes or the process of economic evolution.

METHODS OF STUDY.

The chief difficulty met by the instructor in economics is to separate the principles and laws of economics from theoretical discussion. Theory of economics may have an important place in the class-room, but it is simply discouraging to find in an ordinary economic library that theory occupies so great a place in nearly all books on the subject. If economics is a science, what are its principles, what are its laws, and what the great body of classified knowledge that makes up the real elements of the science? In beginning the subject, then, it is necessary for the instructor to define carefully the boundary of the science. The student wants to know somewhat definitely the scope and purpose of the subject. If there is a science of economics, he wants to know definitely what is comprised in the body of classified knowledge it represents, and what are the laws and principles involved in its scientific processes.

After determining the scope of the science his next difficulty is in the classification of its subject-matter. This in itself is a difficult question; nor is the difficulty confined to economics, for it abounds in all social sciences and extends to considerable extent in the physical sciences. He will find the logical and comprehensive classification of either economic principles or economic phenomena a most difficult process. If the instructor or student can find the above conditions met in a well-arranged text-book the trouble is half over, for the principles of economic science are not difficult. Such a text-book should contain all of the essentials of the science, and should eliminate all controversial points and theories not yet well founded. For the discussion of theories, the elaboration of special topics, and the consideration of the views of economists, the student, like the instructor, must go to the library. For beginning classes this library should consist of a few carefully chosen books, each with a specific purpose. The library method in economics is largely the composition method, or possibly the compilation method. The student gets a re-statement of the principle of the text or lecture, either from a different point of view or in a more extended discourse. Great care should be taken to prevent a rambling course of reading, which is frequently carried on to the confusion of the student.

After the elements have been fairly well mastered the future work of the student should be on one or more of the great topics in economics, such as Money and Monetary Theories; Banking; Taxation and Finance; Industrial History; History and Theory of Economics: or the student may work on special themes, following them to the utmost limit, such as Capital, Wages, Interest, Labor Organization, Prices, etc.

In all this study the instructor and student must not forget to go to the concrete for verification, for illustration, and, so far as possible, for investigation. He must not forget that economic life and economic society are all about him, and the processes of economic practice, change and growth are to be observed at any time he will take the pains to inquire into their operations.

So long as the operations on the farm, the management of the household, the conduct of the factory, the operation of a bank, and the management of a railroad are ever present, the student from the beginning to the end of his course may find by actual study of the concrete the operation of the laws and processes of economics. Some difficulty will be met in teaching beginners to discriminate between the production of wealth in our economic sense and the technology of wealth-getting. In all concrete investigation this is to be carefully considered. For it is the general processes of production and their effects upon the market and upon society as a whole that interest the economist. Economics will not teach a boy how to carry on agriculture, or manufacturing; it will not teach him how to grow wealthy, except that as he studies finance, taxation, money, banking, production and distribution of wealth, he will have developed a tendency of thought, and an intelligence which would make him a better business man, a better financier, if he puts his knowledge to the proper use. The subjects treated in a general way will prepare a man theoretically if not technically for a business life. And without doubt, universities will eventually develop schools of commerce, trade, banking, business, and public service, which will give a professional and technical education in the great lines of industrial life.

The student must keep his eyes turned constantly upon the economic life around him if he would keep his knowledge from becoming visionary and non-vital. By a careful study of the actual operations of society in regard to questions of wealth and well-being, he will develop a practical knowledge of affairs that will be of service to himself personally and to the public at large. He will also find it convenient and profitable to consider the defects of economic life as compared with an ideal standard of justice, and set up a program of action. It is true that here he enters the field of economic ethics. If he then searches for a remedy for existing evils he enters economic politics. Yet economics as a science cannot be said to have worked out its purpose until it has become utilitarian in its attempt to better social conditions. It will not have done its duty until it inquires what ought to be. It should determine how the economic system of the world might bring a larger measure of justice to men, and plan such measures to be acted upon by the public to bring about a better condition of affairs. Every science must in the ultimate be of practical service to humanity if it has a reason to exist, and economics is especially adapted to render great service to humanity if properly studied and wisely taught.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

SELECTED REFERENCES.

[History]

ADAMS, C. K. — On Methods of Teaching History.

ADAMS, C. K. — Recent Historical Work in Colleges and Universities of America.

ADAMS, H. B. — Special Methods of Historical Study.

ADAMS, H. B. — New Methods of Study in History.

ALLEN, W. F. — Grades and Topics in Historical Study.

BLACKMAR, F. W. — The Story of Human Progress.

BERNHEIM, ERNST. — Lehrbuch der Historischen Methode.

BURGESS, J. W. — The Methods of Historical Study in Columbia College.

CALDWELL, H. W. — American History Studies.

DIESTERWEG, G. — Instruction in History.

DROYSEN, JOH., GUS. — Grundriss der Historik.

DROYSEN, JOH., GUS. — Principles of History. (Tr. by ANDREWS.)

EMERTON, E. — The Historical Seminary in American Teaching.

FLINT, ROBERT. — The Philosophy of History.

FLING, CHARLES MORROW. — Studies in European History.

FREEMAN, E. A. — Methods of Historical Study.

GETSCHELL, MERLE S. — The Study of Mediæval History by the Library Method.

HALL, G. STANLEY. — Methods of Teaching and Studying History.

HART, ALBERT BUSHNELL. American History told by Contemporaries.

LORENZ, OTTOKER. — Geschichtswissenschaft.

MACE, WILLIAM H. — Method in History.

MAURENBRECHER, WILHELM. — Geschichte und Politik.

[Sociology]

BLUNTSCHLI, J. K. — The Modern State.

CROOKER, J. H. — Problems in American Society.

DE GREEF, GUILLAUME. — Introduction a la Sociologie.

FAIRBANKS, ARTHUR. — Introduction to the Study of Society.

GIDDINGS, F. H. — Principles of Sociology; Sociology and Political Economy.

COMTE, AUGUST. — The Positive Philosophy.

KELLY, EDMOND. — Government, or Human Evolution.

LOTZE, HERMANN. — Microcosmus.

SEELYE, JULIUS H. — Citizenship.

SMALL, ALBION W. — Introduction to the Study of Society.

SMALL, ALBION W. — Methodology in Sociology.

SMITH, R. M. — Statistics and Sociology.

SPENCER, HERBERT. — Principles of Sociology.

SPENCER, HERBERT. — The Study of Sociology.

WARNER, AMOS G. — American Charities.

WARD, LESTER F. — Dynamic Sociology.

WARD, LESTER F. — Outlines of Sociology.

WILSON, WOODROW. — The State.

WRIGHT, CARROLL D. — Statistics in Colleges.

WRIGHT, CARROLL D. — Practical Sociology.

[Economics]

BLACKMAR, F. W. — Economics.

COSSA, LUIGI. — Introduction to the Study of Political Economy.

ELY, R. T. — Outlines of Economics.

ELY, R. T. — The Past and Present of Political Economy.

GIDDINGS, F. H. — The Sociological Character of Political Economy.

INGRAM, J. K. — The History of Political Economy.

SMITH, R. M. — Statistics and Economics.

Source: Frank W. Blackmar, The Study of History, Sociology, and Economics, pp. 7-8, 30-31, 56-58, 66-67, 83-89. Published in the series Twentieth Century Classics, No. 17 (January 1901). Topeka, Kansas: Crane & Company.

___________________________

New Staff, New Names
Rebranding

The New Professors.

The resignation of Prof. James H. Canfield, regretted by all, has led to the reorganization of the work in history and political and social science. The two departments formerly known as those of American History and Civics, and History and Sociology respectively, have been combined into the one department of History and Sociology. This department is in charge of Prof. Frank Wilson Blackmar, Ph.D. To assist in the instruction in this department, the Board has elected F. H. Hodder, Ph.D., to be Associate Professor, and E.D. Adams Ph.D., to be Assistant Professor. Dr. Hodder is taken from the faculty of Cornell University. He has for the last year been pursuing historical studies in the University of Freiburg, Germany. He comes to the University of Kansas with a fine reputation for scholarship and teaching ability. Dr. Adams is a young man, a graduate of the University of Michigan and a brother of Prof. Henry C. Adam’s. Michigan University’s professor of Political Economy and Finance. Dr. Adams comes to the University with many good words from the strong men of eastern institutions.

Source: The Lawrence Gazette (Lawrence, Kansas). Thursday, August 6, 1891, p. 2.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

New name: Department of History and Sociology (1891)

Since the publication of the last number of Seminary Notes, several important changes have taken place. First, Mr. E.D. Adams was elected Assistant in History and Sociology. Soon after this Professor Canfield resigned his professorship to go to Nebraska. Immediately after accepting his resignation, the Regents consolidated the two historical departments, under the title of History and Sociology, and elected Mr. F. H. Hodder Associate Professor. It necessarily follows that the editorial staff of Seminary Notes has two new men in the place of Professor Canfield. The present editors will carry out the original plan of the publication with such improvements as may be made from time to time.

We are glad to learn of the prosperity of the former director of the Seminary, Chancellor James A. Canfield. The number of students enrolled in the University of Nebraska is thirty per cent, greater than last year. A new Law course has been established in the university. Upon the whole the new Chancellor of Nebraska is doing just what his friends predicted — making a great success of his new work. The University of Nebraska is to be congratulated that it was able to secure such an efficient man as Chancellor Canfield.

[…]

The senior professor [Frank W. Blackmar] in the department of History and Sociology is highly gratified that the Regents of the University have again displayed their wisdom in electing two able men to positions in the department. They are young men of scholarly habits and marked ability. Professor Hodder, Associate in American History and Civics, was born at Aurora, Ill., November 6, 1860. He graduated at Michigan University in 1883, having studied history under Prof. C.K. Adams, and political economy under Prof. H.C. Adams. He was principal of the High School at Aurora. Afterwards he went to Cornell University, where he was instructor and later Assistant Professor in Political Economy from 1885 to 1890. During the last year he has been studying at the universities of Göttingen and Freiburg, under Von Hoist, Conrad and others. He is an able instructor.

Mr. E.D. Adams, Assistant in History and Sociology, was born at Decorah, Iowa, in 1865. He was a student in Iowa College, 1883 to 1885; student in the University of Michigan 1885 to 1887, taking the degree of A.B. in 1887, was principal of the High School at McGregor, Iowa, 1887 to 1888, and student of the University of Michigan for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 1888 to 1890. In 1890 he took the degree of Ph.D. Since 1890 he has been connected with the census work on street railways, and since December has held the position of special agent in charge of street railways. He is doing good work in Kansas University.

Source: Seminary Notes published by the Seminary of Historical and Political Science, Vol. I, No. 2 (October 1891), pp. 39-40.

Image Source: Kansas yearbook,The Jayhawker 1901, p. 18. Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.
Cf. portrait of Herbert Baxter Adams posted earlier. His master’s look?

Tags BlackmarFW

Chicago Economists

Chicago. Alvin Johnson remembers Robert Hoxie and his relationship to Veblen, 1906-16.

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2023-07-22

Labor economist Robert Hoxie (1868-1916) taught at the University of Chicago from 1906 to 1916. From the autobiography of Alvin S. Johnson we learn that Hoxie’s suicide would probably have come as no surprise to someone who knew him at all well.

_____________________________

Alvin S. Johnson on his personal and professional friendship with Robert Hoxie

Of all the faculty I most enjoyed Robert Hoxie. He specialized in labor problems and had the enterprise to bring before his class all types of labor leaders, to state their aims and unfold their hopes. He had in unexampled degree the art to bring even the most stubborn-tongued labor leader to an adequate expression of his views.

Hoxie was square built and well poised, of ruddy complexion and bright eyes, well equipped with wit and humor, and, you’d have said, here, anyway, was a scholar well adjusted to life. But the fact was he was subject to terrible nervous crises. He imputed his condition to an attack of poliomyelitis in his childhood, which, while it did not cripple his limbs, impaired permanently his nervous structure. I questioned the validity of his explanation until I came to know him.

He was my good friend, and we saw a lot of each other. Whenever he could get free from his office he’d come to mine and insist that we go for a walk, even if the cold wind was blowing at forty miles an hour. However busy I was I would comply, for if I did not he would fall into a lamentable fit of depression, asserting that I no longer found him interesting.

When he was scheduled for a seminar paper I had a choice of unattractive alternatives. If I did not attend, he put this down as my judgment that he had nothing to say. If I attended, he felt sure that I detected all the points where the author of a seminar paper sidesteps difficulties.

Matters were simpler when we were alone together, on our walks or over the beer at the White City, where we could argue to the accompaniment of an orchestra playing with great éclat the scores of Traviata or Aïda. So far as I could, I kept away from contentious economic subjects.

One subject of contention would, however, inevitably intrude: Veblen. Hoxie loved Veblen with a love that passeth understanding. I admired Veblen’s genius, but Veblen and I could never get nearer each other than arm’s length. He regarded me as a plodding Dane; I regarded him as a romantic Norwegian. Whenever we found ourselves together in company we spoiled each other’s style. On occasion friends would urge me to remain away from a Veblen party, for Veblen never made himself interesting when I was around.

I considered Veblen good reading for the scholar who knew how to discriminate, but a singularly dangerous guide for anyone who followed him blindly. I asserted that Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class was really a satirical essay, with literary potency and scientific intent closely parallel to Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus. Both authors counted on the pleasure a reader gets out of judiciously worded insults to himself. Both liked to make use of the principle that two half-truths make a whole truth.

Such observations filled Hoxie with indignation, but pleasant indignation, for they proved to him that I fell far short of him in the understanding of the man he considered the greatest economist of all time. Hoxie boasted that his whole system of thought came from Veblen. It was Veblen who had taught him that all ideas of reconciling the interests of labor and the employer were a fantastic delusion. For the minds of labor and of the employer were built out of completely different philosophic elements. The philosophy the worker had hammered into him by his job ran in terms of cause and effect — the efficient cause. The employer thought in terms of values, purposes, final causes. As well try to mate a sheep with a tunny fish as try to bring efficient cause and final cause to an agreement.

I argued that this contrast was just a hocus-pocus. The employer, in considering the properties of a machine he is tempted to buy, or in considering how to cut the waste of material, is thinking in terms of cause and effect. The worker in demanding an enlarged take-home is thinking in terms of values.

I refused to concede that there are impermeable septa between the thinking of any two classes, indeed, between any two individuals. Business conceptions, labor conceptions, wander afield. Does one not encounter the divine who calculates on the “unit cost of saving souls”?

Years later Hoxie visited New York and asked me to come to his hotel for the evening. He was frightening in his appearance.

“Johnson,” he said, “I’m finished. I can see now, all my work has been bunk. All my writing, every lecture I have ever given, has been bunk.”

“What in heaven’s name has happened to you, Hoxie?”

“I’ve come to see through Veblen. You partly saw through him, but not the way I do.”

In an evening that extended until four in the morning — for I did not dare to leave him — Hoxie unfolded the rather inconsequential course of his deconversion from Veblen. They had disagreed on a personal matter and Veblen had treated Hoxie rudely. But Hoxie had always known that Veblen could glory in rudeness.

Such an incident could have been effective only as a catalyst. Hoxie had been working for months with Frey, a distinguished labor leader, on a book, Industrial Management and Labor. [sic, Scientific Management and Labor is the correct title] Undoubtedly he had been unconsciously accumulating cases that exhibited the shortcomings of Veblen’s theories.

“I got to thinking,” Hoxie said, “how could a man be so great a scientist and such a damn fool? And the more I thought, the more the idea rode my mind: how great a scientist is he? Johnson thought his science was phony.”

“No,” I said, “I never thought that. I thought you had to watch him. His equations didn’t solve, and he patched them up by rhetorical ‘by and large,’ for the most part.’ Almost all economists do something of the kind sometimes.”

“Veblen knew his equations didn’t solve, but he used them just the same. And his class dope; he pretended it was psychology. It was pure abstractions; no, not pure, but with a purpose.”

“We’re all purposive, Hoxie.”

“I wouldn’t care if it was just the matter of my finding out a phony I had taken for okay. But Veblen has been the premise of all my work. My work is all rotten with Veblenism.”

“Hoxie, I’ve read about everything you ever wrote. Your work stands on its own feet. Sometimes you’re wrong–not often.”

“Johnson, you know the basis of my labor theory. Two philosophies, the employer’s and the laborer’s. The first based on the final cause. the other on the efficient cause. You called that bunk the first time we met, when we were both on the American Economic Association program.”

“It is bunk,” I agreed. “But all that enormous amount of concrete investigation you have done is quite independent of any such premise. It stands.”

“No, it doesn’t. It’s all diseased, from that premise.”

I argued with Hoxie for eight hours at a stretch. Our positions were reversed, Hoxie was attacking Veblen, I was defending him. I marshaled as many telling and meaningful passages as I held in my memory, from Veblen’s Theory of Business Enterprise, Imperial Germany, The Engineers and the Price System, even from Veblen’s most sardonic and least sincere book, The Higher Learning. Finally Hoxie seemed to be calmed down enough, or wearied enough, for sleep. I left him, promising to visit him in Chicago and renew the discussion.

But before I could get around to a Chicago trip Hoxie killed himself.

Source: Alvin Saunders Johnson. A Pioneer’s Progress. New York: Viking Press, 1952. Pages pp. 204-207.

Image Source: University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-02878, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. Potrait colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Tags Hoxie, JohnsonAS

Columbia Economists Germany Popular Economics Princeton Teaching

New York City Schools. Essay on Economics and the High School Teacher of Economics. Tildsley, 1919

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2023-07-20

Every so often I make an effort to track down students whose names have been recorded in course lists. I do this in part to hone my genealogical skills but primarily to obtain a broader sense of the population obtaining advanced training in economics beyond the exclusive society of those who ultimately clear all the hurdles in order to be awarded the Ph.D. degree. This post began with a simple list of the participants in Professor Edwin R.A. Seligman’s seminar in political economy and finance at Columbia University in 1901-02 published in the annual presidential report for that year (p. 154).

John L. Tildsley’s seminar topic was “Economic Aspects of Colonial Expansion.” I began to dig into finding out more about this Tildsley fellow, who was completely unknown to me other than for the distinction of having attended a graduate course in economics at Columbia but never having received an economics Ph.D. from the university.

It turns out that this B.A. and M.A. graduate from Princeton had indeed already been awarded a doctorate in economics from the Friedrichs Universität Halle-Wittenberg (Germany), renamed the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg in 1933, before he took any coursework at Columbia. A link to his German language doctoral dissertation on the Chartist movement is provided below.

I also found out that John Lee Tildsley went on to a distinguished if controversial career [e.g., he had no qualms about firing teachers for expressing radical opinions in the classroom] in the top tier of educational administration for the public high-schools in New York City. No less a critical writer than Upton Sinclair aimed his words at Tildsley.

For the purposes of Economics in the Rear-View Mirror John L. Tildsley is of particular interest as someone who had done much to introduce economics into the curriculum of New York City public schools.

Following data on his life culled from Who’s Who in America and New York Times articles on the occasions of his retirement and death, I have included his March 1919 essay dedicated to economics and the economics teacher in New York City high schools.

_________________________

Life and Career
of John Lee Tildsley

from Who’s Who in America, 1934

John Lee Tildsley, educator

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Mar. 13, 1867;
Son of John and Elizabeth (Withington) Tidsley;
Married Bertha Alice Watters, of New York City, June 24, 1896;
Children—Jane, John Lee, Margaret, Kathleen (deceased).

B.A., Princeton, 1893 [Classmate of A. Piatt Andrew], M.A. 1894;
Boudinot fellow in history, Princeton, 1893-94;
Teacher Greek and history, Lawrenceville (New Jersey) School, 1894-96;
Studied Universities of Halle and Berlin, 1896-98, Ph.D., Halle, 1898;
Teacher of history, Morris High School, New York City, 1898-1902;
Studied economics, Columbia, 1902;
Head of dept. of economics, High School of Commerce, 1902-08;
Principal of DeWitt Clinton High School, 1908-14;
Principal of High School of Commerce, 1914-16;
Associate Superintendent, Oct. 1916-July 1920;
District Superintendent, July 1920, City of New York.

Member: Headmasters’ Assn., Phi Beta Kappa.
Democrat.
Episcopalian.

Formulated and introduced into public schools of New York City, courses in economics and civics for secondary grades. Speaker and writer on teaching and problems of school administration.

Club: Nipnichsen.
Home: [2741 Edgehill Ave.] Spuyten Duyvil, [Bronx] New York.

Source: Who’s Who in America 1934, p. 2356.

* * * * * * * * * *

Tildsley’s 1898 doctoral dissertation on the Chartist movement (in German)

Tildsley, John L. Die Entstehung und die ökonomischen Grundsätze der Chartistenbewegung, Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der philosophischen Doktorwürde der hohen philosophischen Fakultät der vereinigten Friedrichs-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. Halle a.S. 1898.

* * * * * * * * * *

New York Times, September 2, 1937

Dr. John L. Tildsley, Associate Superintendent of Schools, retired on Sept. 1, 1937.

One of Dr. Tildsley’s pet ideas has been the formation of special schools for bright pupils. As a result of his efforts two such schools are to be established in this city, the first to be opened next February in Brooklyn.
‘This new school will develop independent habits of work on the part of the superior student,’ he has explained. ‘Special emphasis will be placed upon the development of social-mindedness.’

* * * * * * * * * *

New York Times, November 22, 1948

Dr. John L. Tildsley died November 21, 1948 in St. Luke’s Hospital, New York, N.Y.

In 1920, having fallen out of the graces of Mayor John F. Hylan because of a political speech, he was denied a second term as associate superintendent.
At the urging of many admirers, he was assigned to the position of assistant superintendent which he held until the Fusion Board of Education restored him to his former rank in the spring of 1937.
When Dr. Tildsley was demoted he refused to be silenced, constantly championing controversial causes. He attacked the ‘frontier thinkers’ of Teachers College, and charged that under the existing high school set up much waste resulted to the city and to the pupil.
He urged the development of ‘nonconformist’ pupils, and angered patriotic organizations by suggesting that patriotic songs and holidays have little value in the schools.
Born in Pittsburgh of British parents, Dr. Tildsley received his early education in schools in Lockport, N.Y., and at the Mount Hermon School. Instead of becoming a minister, as he originally had planned, he decided to study at Princeton University, where Woodrow Wilson was one of his instructors for three years.

* * * * * * * * * *

Tildsley became a target of Upton Sinclair’s critical pen for his campaign to regulate teachers’ opinions expressed in school

Upton Sinclair, The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools (1924). See Chapters XV (Honest Graft) and XVI (A Letter to Woodrow Wilson), XVII (An Arrangement of Little Bits).

Cf. Teachers’ Defense Fund. The Trial of the Three Suspended Teachers of the De Witt Clinton High School (1917).

* * * * * * * * * * * *

HISS TILDSLEY FOR PRAISE OF GERMANS
School Superintendent Aroused Criticism by Talk in Ascension Parish House.
LIKES TEUTON DISCIPLINE
When He Said Their Military Success Was a Credit to Them the Trouble Began.

The New York Times, December 10, 1917.

Dr. John L. Tildsley, Associate Superintendent of Schools in charge of high schools, whose investigation of the opinions of the teachers at the De Witt Clinton High School resulted in the suspension and trial of three of them and in the transfer of six others, was hissed last night in the parish house of the Church of the Ascension, Fifth Avenue and Eleventh Street, when he said that the success of the Germans in military affairs was a credit to them rather than a discredit, and that their “good qualities” ought not to be ignored even if “they happen to be our enemies.”

Dr. Tildsley was also denounced as a “Prussian by instinct and education,” because of his laudation of family life in Germany and because he asserted that it was desirable to have in this country more obedience instinctively to authority as exemplified by the obedience of the German child to its father. The denouncer was Adolph Benet, a lawyer, who said that Dr. Tildsley’s sojourn in Germany, where he studied at the University of Halle, caused him to misunderstand Germany.

“There is one thing that is bad in Germany,” declared Mr Benet. “That thing is unqualified and instinctive respect for authority. And Dr. Tildsley, after living in Germany and observing the country, would come here and try to introduce here the worst part of the whole German system. I say Dr. Tildsley is a Prussian by instinct and a Prussian by education. Why did he not say these things two months ago when many were denouncing a Judge who is now Mayor-elect?”

The stormy part of the evening took place in the parish house, where the audience repaired to ask questions after Dr. Tildsley delivered an address in the church on “Regulation of Opinion in the Schools.” The hissing of the speaker occurred during his explanation of his ideas on obedience. He explained the system of instinctive obedience to authority which marks all Germans, and then said: “German family life is magnificent, and we ought to emulate it.” Here the hissing began. A minute later it began again and grew in volume for about minute, when it stopped.

In reply to another question relating to his charges against teachers, Dr. Tildslev. said that teachers have too much protection in the schools, and that not a single high school teacher in nineteen years has been brought up on charges. In this connection he declared that when a teacher is brought up on charges the Board of Education is handicapped in the handling of the case because must accept such a lawyer as it gets from the Corporation Counsel while the teacher may get the cleverest lawyer that money can buy. This was taken by the high school teacher in the audience to mean that Dr. Tildsley was dissatisfied with handling of the trial against the three teachers by the Corporation Counsel.

In his formal address Dr. Tildsley said that the teachers who were tried and those who were transferred were not accused of disloyalty. Later. in the parish house. he said he believed they were all internationalists and doubted whether a teacher who had the spirit of internationalism had the spirit necessary to teach high school students.

He said the teachers he investigated held that unrestricted expression of opinion was the best means of developing good citizenship. With this point of view he said, he and others differed. He quoted one teacher as being a believer in Bertrand Russell and he read from one of Russell’s works a passage which said in substance that it did not matter what the teacher said but what he felt and that it was what he felt that reached the consciousness of the pupils. It was Dr. Tildsley’s belief that the opinions which the teachers hold are accepted by the pupils, even if they if they were unexpressed. Dr. Tildsley read the letter of Hyman Herman, the sixteen-year-old pupil whose composition was the basis for a charge against Samuel Schmalhauser one of the suspended teachers. In this letter President Wilson was denounced as a “murderer.” Dr. Tildsley said the teacher was in in no way responsible for the letter.

While the speaker said that the teachers loyal he investigated were not disloyal and declared their convictions were honest, he also said that though the nation had gone to war they were unable to subscribe to the decision of the majority. He divided the radical group among the teachers into three classes, those who believe in absolute and unrestrained expression by the students, those who are opposed to the war and do not believe in it, and a third class, born in Germany, , who cannot be blamed for feeling as they do about Germany. The last mentioned he declared, must not allow any of their feelings to escape into their teaching. He gave a clean bill oi health as to loyalty to all the teachers in the De Witt Clinton High School.

“A teacher is not an ordinary citizen who has the right to express his opinions freely,” continued Dr. Tildsley. “Every teacher always teaches himself, and if he has not the right ideas toward the Government he has no right to accept payment from the taxpayers. We make no claim that any of these teachers were consciously disloyal, but if because of this belief in unrestricted utterance they spread disloyalty they are not persons to be intrusted with the teaching of citizenship to students.”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

From the New York Times, November 5, 1918:

…the dismissal of Thomas Mufson, A. Henry Schneer, and Samuel D. Schmalhausen in the De Witt Clinton High School was upheld by Acting New York Commissioner of Education E. Thomas Finegan.

_________________________

ECONOMICS AND THE TEACHER OF ECONOMICS IN THE NEW YORK CITY HIGH SCHOOLS

John L. Tildsley,
Associate Superintendent in Charge of High Schools.
[March 1919]

Every student graduated in June, 1920 and thereafter from the general course of the high schools of New York City, must have had a course in economics of not less than five periods a week for one-half year. This requirement, recently adopted by the Board of Superintendents, is one of the changes which may be charged directly to the clearer vision of our educational needs which the war has brought us. Many of us have long believed that economics is an essential element in the curriculum of the public high school, whose fundamental aim is to train the young to play their part in an environment whose ruling forces are preeminently industrial and commercial. But it has required the revelation of the dangers inherent in our untrained citizenship to cause us to force a place for the upwelcome intruder among the college preparatory subjects whose vested rights are based on immemorial possession of the field of secondary education.

One of the chief aims of the Board of Superintendents in establishing this new requirement is, without doubt, to give high school students a specialized training which shall bring to them some understanding of the forces economic and political which so largely determine their happiness and general well being, to the end that these students shall discharge more intelligently their duties as citizens in a democracy, and shall develop their productive capacity to the increase of their own well being and to the resulting advancement of the common good. A further reason for introducing economics is the belief that the boys and girls who have had this training will be better able to analyze the various remedies proposed for the evils of our social organization and to detect the iallacies which are so often put forth as measures of reform. These students should find in such training an antidote to the movements which have as their aim the over throw of institutions which the experience of our race has evolved through the centuries.

Because of this realization that economics deals not only with the conduct of business enterprises but also with political institutions and with movements for social amelioration, it is apt to enroll among its teachers the enthusiastic social reformer whose sympathies are all-embracing, who readily becomes a propagandist for his or her pet project of reform, and who finds it impossible to resist the temptation to enroll converts among the trusting students of his or her classes. It is because of this conception of the nature of economics teaching in our educational program that the new subject has been some what despised by the teachers of the sterner disciplinary subjects.

With full sympathy with the vocational aim of economics, I would offer as its chief claim for a place in our high school curriculum, that it is essentially a disciplinary subject, that it can be taught and should be taught so as to yield a training of the highest order, somewhat different in its processes, but no less searching in its demands upon the students, than mathematics or physical science.

It is a subject, therefore, to be taught by the man with the keenly analytical mind, by the man who can detect the untruth and train pupils to detect the untruth in the major premise, by the man who from tested premises can proceed to a valid conclusion. Economics is essentially applied logic rather than a confused program of social reform, as too many of its advocates have led the layman to believe.

Economics in the past has been for the most part a college and university subject. Consequently the well-trained student of economics has found his work in the college, in government service, on newspaper or magazine, and, in ever-increasing numbers, in bank ing and finance. Practically none has sought to find a career for himself in secondary work.

With full knowledge of this fact, we have added economics to the high school curriculum in the hope that ultimately the demand will create a supply of teachers thoroughly trained in economic theory before they begin their teaching. Meanwhile, we confidently expect that men thoroughly trained in other subjects which require a high degree of analysis and synthesis, will come to the rescue as they see the need. Applying the knowledge of scientific method which they possess to the new subject matter, these teachers may speedily acquire that mastery of principles which is necessary for the effective teaching of economics.

In my own experience, as I sought for economics teachers in the High School of Commerce, I found them among the teachers of mathematics and of biology. Certain of these teachers, who had an interest in business and public affairs and who were masters of scientific methods, became in the course of a single term expert teachers of economics. They even preferred the new subject to the old, because of the greater interest manifested by the students in this subject which never fails to enlist the enthusiastic interest of students when properly taught.

I trust, therefore, that some of our teachers who enjoy close, accurate thinking will take up some economic text, such as Taussig, Seligman, Seager, Carver, or Marshall, and, having read this, will follow it up with other texts on the specific fields of economics to which they find themselves attracted. Very soon, I believe, such teachers, in view of the urgent need for teachers of economics, will realize the very great service they can render our schools by utilizing their knowledge of boys and girls, their mastery of method, their awakened interest in economics and social phenomena, in training these boys and girls in this most vital subject.

As a text book for classroom use, I recommend a systematic book, such as Bullock’s Introduction to [the Study of] Economics, which lays the emphasis on principles rather than on descriptions of industrial processes or on the operation of social agencies. There are several books which are more interestingly written, but in the hands of most teachers they will lead to a descriptive treatment of industry and social institutions, to discussions for which the students are not qualified because of their ignorance of and want of drill in economic principles.

Our students need to be trained in economic theory before they attempt to discuss measures of social reform. They need to grasp the meaning of utility, value, price, before they take up the study of industrial processes. It is because of hazy conception of these primary elements that we fall so readily into error. The key to economic thinking lies in a clear understanding of the terms margin and marginal. The boy who has digested the concept “marginal utility” is already on the way to becoming a student of economics. Until he has arrived at an understanding of the nature of value, he is hardly ready to discuss socialism, wage theories, the single tax or other like themes.

The temptation for the untrained or inexperienced teacher is to begin with the study of actual business, partly as a means of interesting the student by causing him to feel that he is dealing with practical life, partly because he conceives business as a laboratory and desires as a scientist to employ the inductive method. The study of the factory or store takes the place of the study of the crayfish. The analogy does not hold. Induction in economics is the method of discovery, it is not the method of teaching, especially of secondary teaching. The method is deductive. The teacher must assume that certain great principles have been shown to be valid. He should drill on these principles and their application till the pupil has mastered them.

Let no one believe that this means a dull grind. Even such a subject as marginal utility can be made interesting to every student. It is altogether a matter of method. The concept must be presented from a dozen different angles. There must be no lecturing, no mere hearing of recitations. The pupil must not be assigned a few pages or paragraphs in the book and then left to work out his salvation. The real teaching must be done in the recitation period, with the teacher at the blackboard with a piece of chalk in his hand, ready to answer all questions and with a dozen illustrations at his command with which to drive home the principle, illustrations with which the pupils are thoroughly familiar because taken from the daily occurrences about them. For example, to explain the principle that the value of any commodity is determined by its marginal utility and that its marginal utility is the lowest use to which any commodity must be put in order to exhaust its supply, take the teacher’s desk as the illustration. Elicit from the pupils the different uses to which that desk may be put, and write the list as it is given on the blackboard. Some boy will remark that the desk could be used for firewood and will ask why the value of the desk is not determined by its utility as firewood; then comes the query, will not the supply of desks be exhausted before it is necessary to use them as firewood? As a result of this give and take process, the boys, in one recitation, may grasp this principle which is the very keystone of our modern economics.

John Bates Clark, our foremost theorist, once said to me that there is no principle in economics so difficult that it cannot be understood by a ten year old child if it is properly taught. But how often it is not properly taught! Teaching economics is like kneading bread. The teacher must turn over these principles again and again until they are kneaded into the boy so thoroughly that they have become a part of his mind stuff. When he has once had kneaded into him the concepts of the margin, marginal utility, the marginal producer, the marginal land, the marginal unit of capital, the marginal laborer, he can move fearlessly forward to the conquest of the most involved propositions of actual business. In business, in government, in all the multitudinous activities of life, we come to grief because our concepts are not clearly defined. Because of deficient analysis, we accept wrong premises and because of muddy reasoning, we allow factors to enter into the conclusion which were not in the premises. If economics be taught with the same degree of analysis of conditions, with the same accuracy in checking the reasoning as in geometry, the teacher will find himself surprised by the ability of the students to solve a most difficult problem in the incidence of taxation or one in the operations of foreign exchange. As a means of testing whether the student has gained a clear concept, problem questions should be assigned at the close of every discussion, to be answered at home in writing by the pupil, and written tests should be given at least once a week. Purely oral work makes possible much confusion of thought on the part of the pupil without the knowledge of the teacher. The slovenly thinking which may thus become a habit will produce a wrongly-trained citizen more dangerous than one who has had no training in economics at all. The problems which this training fits the student to solve are precisely the kind of problems that every businessman is called upon to face every day of his life. For example, the man who keeps the country store at Marlborough or Milton on the Hudson will soon need to decide how large a stock of goods he will order for the fall trade. This may seem to be a simple problem and yet he needs all his experience to enable him to analyze the problem of demand for his goods. This involves the effect of the mild weather on the vines and peach trees, the possibility of his customers again securing boys and girls from New York to pick the crops, the matter of freight rates on fruit, the buying capacity of the people of New York which, in turn, involves a knowledge of conditions in many industries. After he has considered all of these elements, he has come to a conclusion as to demand for his goods, but he has not yet touched the question whether the cost of his goods is to be higher or lower before September next. Do we wonder that failures are so common when we realize that few of our people, even our college graduates, are trained in accurate observation, keen analysis, rigid reasoning? The development of these powers in his pupils should be the fundamental aim of every teacher of economics this coming year. If this aim should be realized for every high school pupil in this country, we should not need to fear for the future of our city, our state, our nation. Inefficient government is due chiefly to the failure of our people to realize the connection between incompetent or dishonest officials and the well-being of the individual. Dangerous movements like the I. W. W. and Bolshevism are due to slovenly thinking, poor analysis of conditions by both the members of these organizations and those responsible for the conditions which breed these dangerous movements. Marxian socialism is based on premises which will not bear analysis, namely, the Marxian theory of value, which is not evolved from experience, the resulting expropriation theory, which depends upon this false theory of value, and the inevitable class struggle and the ultimate triumph of the proletariat, an unwarranted conclusion from invalid premises.

I have indicated that the primary aim of the Board of Superintendents in making economics a required subject was vocational in character. Through the medium of this subject it seeks to train good citizens. I trust I have made clear that this vocational aim can be best realized by making all aims subsidiary to the disciplinary aim; that we should, therefore, make the recitation periods in this subject exercises in exact analysis and rigid reasoning. If our schools can produce a generation of students with trained intelligence, students who can see straight, and think straight on economic data, we need not fear the attacks on our cherished institutions of the newcomers from lands where they have not been permitted to be trained and where the nursing of grievances has so stimulated the emotional nature as to render the dispassionate analysis of industrial movements and civil activities almost an impossibility.

Effective teaching in economics brings to the teacher an immediate reward, for the efficient teacher of economics must keep in touch not only with the changes in economic theory but with the movements in industry and finance, with problems of labor, problems of administration, local and national, with the vast field of legislation, and these not only in America, but in Asia, Australia, South America and Europe as well. Every newspaper, every periodical yields him material for his classroom. Almost every man he meets may be made to contribute to his work. The boundaries of his subject are ever widening. There is, moreover, no need of the stultifying repetition of subject matter, for there is no end to the material for the elucidation of economic principles. Nor is the teacher of economics in the high school compelled to create in his pupils an interest in the subject. for every New York boy is an economist in embryo. Questions of cost, price, wages, profits, labor, capital, are already the subjects of daily discussion.

The complaint so often heard that the teacher is academic, that he is removed from the world of practical affairs, and has little touch with the man in the street, cannot be made of the teachers of economics, who is vitally interested in his teaching. The more he studies his subject, the more he becomes a citizen of the world with an ever-deepening interest in all kinds of men and in all that pertains to man, the broader becomes his sympathies, the wider his vision.

The New York high schools offer great opportunities for men and women who, whether trained students of economics or not, are students of life. Here they may serve the state as effectively as the soldier in the field. Here they may train the young for lasting usefulness to themselves and to the city, while at the same time they are broadening their interests, expanding their vision and growing in intellectual vigor under, the compulsion of keeping pace with the demands of a subject which reflects as a mirror the changing needs and desires of men. The teaching of economics in high schools demands our strongest teachers. There is no place for the man who has finished his growth, who cannot change to meet changed conditions; nor is there place for the man who loves change just because it is change. The teacher of economics in the New York City high schools should be a co-worker with all those who seek to preserve and to develop those institutions, economic and civic, which have stood the test and gained the approval of the wise among us through the years. He should be a man who is fundamentally an optimist, constructive in his outlook on life, not destructive. If his motto be, “All’s wrong with the world,” there should be no place for him as a teacher of economics in a high school in New York City or in any other American city.

Economics is closely allied with the study of civics or government. In every school where there is not a full program in economics, the teacher of economics should also teach the civics. With the great increase in our civics work, there should be established in each school a department of economics and civics. For each of these subjects a license is being issued and separate examinations are being held. For the new department first assistants may be appointed and will be appointed.

May we not, therefore, confidently expect that some of our strongest teachers shall prepare themselves for this most interesting and vital work which will be given in every high school beginning September next?

Source: Bulletin of the High Points in the Work of the High Schools of New York City, Vol. I, No 3 (March 1919), pp. 3-7.

Image Source: Photo of Dr. John L. Tildsley in “Modern Girls Not All Wild; Here is Proof” [Construction of a new building to house Girls’ Commercial High on Classon Avenue, near Union Street] Sunday News,Brooklyn Section, p. B-15.

Tags Carver, ClarkJB, Marshall, Seager, Seligman, Taussig, Tildsley

Columbia Economics Programs Economists Germany

Columbia. Munroe Smith’s history of the faculty of political science as told by A.S. Johnson, 1952.

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2023-07-17

The following paragraphs come from Alvin S. Johnson’s 1952 autobiography that is filled with many such nuggets of fact and context that are relevant for the work of Economics in the Rear-View Mirror. The institutional histories from which departments of economics have emerged provide some of the initial conditions for the evolution of organized economics education. Like Johns Hopkins and unlike Harvard and Chicago, Columbia University economics was to a large part made in Germany.

_________________________

[p. 164] …Munroe Smith gave me detail after detail of the history of the faculty. Dean Burgess, as a cavalry officer in the Civil War, had had much time for reflection on the stupendous folly of a war in which citizens laid waste other citizens’ country and slaughtered each other without ill will. All the issues, Burgess believed, could have been compromised if the lawyers who controlled Congress and the state legislatures had been trained in history, political science, and public law. As soon as he was discharged from the army, after Appomattox, he set out for Germany to study the political sciences. He spent several years at different universities, forming friendships with the most famous professors and imbuing himself thoroughly with the spirit of German scholarship. On his return he accepted an appointment in history at Columbia College, then a pleasant young gentlemen’s finishing school. He was permitted to offer courses in public law. Although these could not be counted for credit toward the A.B., many of the ablest students were drawn to his lectures.

From among his students he picked out four and enlisted them in a project for transforming Columbia College into a university. The four were Nicholas Murray Butler, E. R. A. Seligman, Frank Goodnow, and Munroe Smith. They were to proceed to Germany to get their doctorates. Butler was to study philosophy and education; Seligman, economics; Goodnow, administration; Munroe Smith, Roman law. The young men executed Burgess’s command like good soldiers and in due time returned to offer non-credit courses at Columbia College.

Burgess’s next move was to turn his group into a graduate faculty. Such a faculty had been set up at Johns Hopkins, the first in America, and commanded nationwide interest among educators. Burgess argued with President Frederick Barnard on the need of a graduate school in the greatest city of the country. After some years the Board of Trustees authorized in 1886 the setting up of a graduate School of Political Science, manned by Burgess and his disciples, now advanced to professorial rank.

Butler early stepped aside to develop courses he later organized into Teachers College. Burgess and his three younger colleagues watched for opportunities to enlist additional abilities: William A. Dunning in political theory, Herbert L. Osgood in American history, John Bassett Moore in international law, John Bates Clark in [p. 165] economics Franklin Giddings in sociology. This process of expansion was going on energetically while I was on the faculty; Henry R. Seager and Henry L. Moore were enlisted for the economics department, Edward T. Devine and Samuel McCune Lindsay for sociology, James Harvey Robinson and later Charles A. Beard for history. In the meantime other graduate courses were springing up throughout the institution. The towering structure of Columbia University had risen up out of Burgess’s small bottle.

Still in my time the controlling nucleus of our faculty consisted of Burgess, Seligman, Goodnow, and Munroe Smith. They all knew American colonial history well and had followed the step-by-step evolution of Massachusetts Bay from a settlement governed by a chartered company in England to a free self-governing community, germ of American liberty. Step by step Burgess and his lieutenants built up the liberties of the School of Political Science. They got the Board of Trustees to accept the principle of the absolute freedom of the scholar to pursue the truth as he sees it, whatever the consequences; the principle of absolute equality of the faculty members; the principle that no scholar might be added to the faculty without the unanimous consent of the faculty. The principle was established that the president and trustees could intervene in the affairs of the faculty only through the power of the purse.

President Seth Low, regarding himself justly as a recognized authority on administration, sought admission to the meetings of the faculty. He was turned down. A university president could not conduct himself as an equal among equals. When Nicholas Murray Butler became president he thought it would be a good idea for him to sit in with the faculty. After all, he had been one of Burgess’s first panel. We voted the proposition down, unanimously.

Since my time the faculty has grown in numbers and its relations with other departments of the university have become closer. But the spirit of liberty and equality, established by Burgess and his lieutenants, still lives on at Columbia and has overflowed into the universities of America. From time to time a board of trustees steps outside its moral sphere and undertakes to purge and discipline the faculty. But established liberties stricken down are bound to rise again.

Source: Alvin Saunders Johnson. A Pioneer’s Progress. New York: Viking Press, 1952.

Image Source: The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. “Columbia College, Madison Ave., New York, N.Y” [Architect: C. C. Haight] The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1886-09-04. Image of the Mid-town Campus from The American Architect and Building News, September 4, 1886. (cf. https://www.wikicu.com/Midtown_campus)

Tags BeardCA, Burgess, Butler, ClarkJB, DevineET, Dunning, Giddings, Goodnow, LindsaySM, Moore, MooreJB, Osgood, RobinsonJH, Seager, Seligman, SmithMunroe

Columbia Economists

Columbia. Alvin S. Johnson’s impressions of Edwin R.A. Seligman, 1898-1902

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2023-07-16

"He had a catholic mind and found some good in every author, no matter how crackbrained."

Alvin Saunders Johnson’s 1952 autobiography, A Pioneer’s Progress, provides us a treasure chest of granular detail regarding his academic and life experiences. This co-founder of the New School for Social Research in New York City went on to live another 19 years after publishing his autobiography to reach the age of 96.

Economics in the Rear-View Mirror will clip personal and departmental remembrances of Johnson’s own economics training and teaching days. This post shares a transcription of his impressions of Edwin R. A. Seligman.

Previously posted Johnson observations: John W. Burgess, Franklin H. Giddings.

_________________________

Alvin Johnson reminisces
about Seligman

[p. 123] Edwin R. A. Seligman was head of the Department of Economics.

He was a strikingly handsome figure, with his thick dark beard, wavy in structure, with mahogany overtones. We called it an ambrosial beard; I doubt great Zeus had a handsomer.

No economist living had read so widely in the literature of the social sciences as Seligman. He had a catholic mind and found some good in every author, no matter how crackbrained. A man of large income, he was the foremost academic advocate of progressive income and inheritance taxes at a time when all regular economists abominated the idea of the income tax as a Populist attack on the wealthy and cultured classes. He was a staunch supporter of trade unionism and government regulation of railway rates. It was hard for me to distinguish between Seligman’s populism and mine.

As a lecturer he was systematic and eloquent. He never appeared before a class without thorough preparation, and in the seminar meetings at his house he was always primed with all the facts and ideas that might supplement the students’ papers. He was a great teacher, and most of the graduate students turned to him for direction…

* * * * * *

[p. 137]…As the doctoral examinations approached in the spring of 1901, three of our group of students — Jesse Eliphalet Pope, Allan Willett, and I — spent much time together cramming. We were to be examined on the entire literature of our major economics — and on the courses in the minors for which we had registered, in my case sociology under Giddings. It goes without saying that we hadn’t a chance to load ourselves up for the particular questions we might be asked in a three-hour oral examination. Still we boned manfully.

Our Columbia professors were as a rule very humane. If a student seemed to be floored by a question the examiner made haste to substitute another and easier question. I felt I was getting on very satisfactorily under the questioning of Seligman and Clark. But then Giddings pounced on me with blood in his eye. He was having a feud with Seligman at the time and meant to take it out of my hide. He did, and I resented it, for he was my friend.

After the examination I waited in the corridor to hear the results of the examiners’ deliberations. Soon Seligman came out and announced that I had passed with flying colors….

We were all three candidates for teaching positions, and Seligman had a powerful reach out into the colleges of the country. Three openings came to his jurisdiction: an associate professorship at New York University, which he awarded to Pope, the faculty favorite; an instructorship at Brown University, which went to Willett; and a position as Reader at Bryn Maw College, which he reserved for me. I was [p. 138] so very young, he said — all through my undergraduate life I had felt reprehensibly old. At Bryn Maw I would give only one three-hour course and have nearly all my time for finishing my doctor’s thesis.

* * * * * *

[p. 151] … [At] Columbia and Barnard, in the fall of 1902, instruction presented problems quite new to me. Sometimes the problems were perplexing, often annoying, but usually capable of some sort of solution. By the end of my four years at Columbia I had been whipped into the shape of a fairly good teacher, although I was quite incapable of rising to the quizmaster heights many heads of departments at that time regarded as ideal.

My principal function was to drill classes of juniors, at Columbia and Barnard, in Bullock’s Introduction to Economics. At Columbia, Professor Seligman would lecture one hour to the assembled classes.

At Barnard, Professor Henry L. Moore would likewise assemble all the students for a general lecture. Then I would take over the students in smaller, though still large, groups and try to polish them off by quizzing them. It was on the whole a bad method.

* * * * * *

Source: Alvin Saunders Johnson. A Pioneer’s Progress. New York: Viking Press, 1952.

Image Source: E.R.A. Seligman in Universities and their Sons, Vol. 2 (1899), pp. 484-6. Colorized by Economics in the Rear-View Mirror.

Tags Bullock, Giddings, JohnsonAS, Moore, Seligman

Columbia Economists

Columbia. Alvin S. Johnson’s impressions of Dean John W. Burgess, October 1898

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2023-07-14

“When he retired from the New School, Dr. Johnson did not leave the academic world. He came to the school each morning, and served as its elder statesman.”

What a way to go!

Economics in the Rear-View Mirror will clip personal and departmental remembrances of Johnson’s own economics training and teaching days. This post includes his first encounter with the founder of the Columbia School of Political Sciences, John W. Burgess, together with a tiny capsule of Burgessian Weltanschauung.

__________________________

Earlier Posts dealing with
John W. Burgess

__________________________

From Alvin S. Johnson’s Autobiography

[p. 120] … So here was I [in October 1898], a provincial, bound to Columbia for life by the calm magnificence of the Seth Low Library.

Entering, I met a janitor who directed me to the dean’s office on the third floor. The dean, John W. Burgess, looked classic too, with the classicism of highbred British stock, or rather, of the cavalier stock that first settled in Virginia. Though he had enlisted in the Northern cavalry from Tennessee, he was Virginian in his melodiously fluent speech. He treated even the rawest student or a janitor’s assistant with high courtesy and consideration….

I exhibited my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees [from the University of Nebraska] — the latter won without examination by the patriotic action of the state legislature, which voted the appropriate degrees for all volunteers who were approaching the conclusion of their requirements. He glanced at the diplomas and asked me what I wanted to study.

International relations, I said, political science, economics.

Then, he said, it would be best for me to major in economics, the strongest department. I’d need to make sociology one of my minors, according to the rules of the faculty. I could later decide what other minor I might like to take. He’d advise me to browse around freely the first year. Everybody ought to have some philosophy, and there was a famous course given by Professor Nicholas Murray Butler. Also, a course in literature might be useful.

He gave me some blanks to fill out, accepted them, and sent me to the bursar, who collected my semester’s tuition and minor fees for privileges I didn’t need.
So I was a registered graduate student in the School of Political Science. No question had been raised as to my antecedent scholarly preparation. Of course, I thought, the faculty would discover soon enough my ignorance of the field. They never did. I must have hidden it well…

[p. 122] …The Columbia School of Political Science, under which I was to work for three years, was manned by professors too distinguished to be called anywhere, except to university presidencies or high administrative office. Naturally I could not work under all of them in my first year, but I could visit all their classes and judge for myself what men of top distinction were like.

Foremost stood the dean, John W. Burgess, gentleman and scholar, reputed first authority on American constitutional history and constitutional law. He was an imperialist. At the time the problems of war and peace occupied my mind, and I classified men’s positions accordingly. Burgess had a grandiose idea of a permanent coalition among the three vital nations, America, England, and Germany, to rule the world. The decadent Latin nations were to be thrust into the role of charming museum pieces; the colored peoples and the half-Tartar Slavs were to be ruled with the firmness and justice of British rule in India…

Source: Alvin Saunders Johnson. A Pioneer’s Progress. New York: Viking Press, 1952.

Image Source: John W. Burgess in Universities and their Sons, Vol. 2. Boston: R. Herndon Company, 1899, p. 481. Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Tags Burgess, JohnsonAS

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PROF. BLACKMAR SELECTED. A Good Man Elected to the New Chair of History and Sociology.

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Prof. Blackmar Elected.

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Department of History, Politics and Sociology—A Circular Issued Covering the Work in that Department.

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HISS TILDSLEY FOR PRAISE OF GERMANS School Superintendent Aroused Criticism by Talk in Ascension Parish House. LIKES TEUTON DISCIPLINE When He Said Their Military Success Was a Credit to Them the Trouble Began.

From the New York Times, November 5, 1918:

ECONOMICS AND THE TEACHER OF ECONOMICS IN THE NEW YORK CITY HIGH SCHOOLS

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From Alvin S. Johnson’s Autobiography

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for William Z. Ripley

Vanderveer Custis
[1878-1961]

Vanderveer Custis
Ph.D. exams

Course Enrollment
1904-05

Course Description
1904-05

ECONOMICS 9a¹
Year-end Examination, 1904-05

Other Williams College
Related Posts

The History of Economic and Political Studies
in Williams College

Honorary Degree
University of Michigan
(December 17, 1978)

Sample of Boulding’s Writings
(1962)

PROF. BLACKMAR SELECTED.
A Good Man Elected to the New Chair of History and Sociology.

HISTORY AND SOCIOLOGY.
— FRANK W. BLACKMAR.

New Staff, New Names
Rebranding

Life and Career
of John Lee Tildsley

HISS TILDSLEY FOR PRAISE OF GERMANS
School Superintendent Aroused Criticism by Talk in Ascension Parish House.
LIKES TEUTON DISCIPLINE
When He Said Their Military Success Was a Credit to Them the Trouble Began.

Other posts with
E.R.A. Seligman content

Alvin Johnson reminisces
about Seligman

Earlier Posts dealing with
John W. Burgess