Tracking the careers of Ph.D. trained economists at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror has not been limited to the handful of tournament winning, prize economists of past times or even the prominent gatekeepers of orthodoxy. Our series “Meet an economics Ph.D. alumna/us” includes both those who have moved and shaken their local academic communities without leaving much of a footprint in the sands of the history of economics and those who have constituted the vast majority of economists who have survived the demands of the graduate economics programs of their times and then modestly contributed to the pool of our collective economic knowledge during the course of their professional careers.
Today’s economics Ph.D. alumnus, Newman Arnold Tolles (University of Chicago, 1932), achieved considerable professional success during his lifetime, though he is unlikely to ever be found in the syllabi of present and future histories of economics. Tolles is however worthy of nomination as one of a myriad poster-children representing mid-20th century U.S. economics.
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Newman Arnold Tolles
Sept. 21, 1903. Born in New York City.
1923. B. Phil in economics, School of Commerce, University of Chicago.
1924. M.S.,University of Chicago.
1925. Recent Literature on British Unemployment Insurance. Quarterly Journal of Economics. Vol. 39, No. 4 (Aug., 1925), pp. 651-662.
1926. A.M., Harvard.
1925-27. Study at the London School of Economics.
1929-35. Assistant Professor Mount Holyoke and part-time at Smith College in 1931-33.
1932, Autumn. Ph.D. U of Chicago (diss: Economic Aspects of Unemployment Insurance in Great Britain, 1911-31. Published Chicago: University of Chicago libraries, 1935).
1935-1945. Government service (1935-38 as economist with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1938-40 as assistant director and director of research in the US Dept of Labor’s new Wage-Hour Division., 1940-45 chief of the Working Conditions Branch at BLS).
(with Louis M. Solomon) Earnings in Eastern and Midwestern Airframe Plants, 1942 : Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 728.
(with Robert Julius Myers) Income From Wages and Salaries in the Postwar Period : Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 845.
Spendable Earnings of Factory Workers, 1941-43 : Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 769.
(with Louis M. Solomon) Wage Rates in the California Airframe Industry, 1941 : Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 704.
(with Theodor Winter Reedy) Wage Stabilization in California Airframe Industry, 1943 : Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 746.
1945-47. Professor and chairman of the graduate department of economics, American University.
1947. appointed Professor at Cornell’s newly-established New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations to retirement July 1969.
1951. (with Earl Brooks and Richard F. Dean) Providing Facts and Figures for Collective Bargaining—The Controller’s Role. Ithaca: New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University.
1952. (with Robert L. Raimon) Sources of Wage Information: Employer Associations. Ithaca: Cornell Studies in Industrial and Labor Relations, no. 3.
1953-54. Fulbright guest professorship in Munich and Kiel.
1957. New York State Department of Labor. Chairman of the minimum wage board for the cleaning and dyeing industry.
1959. American Minimum Wage Laws: Their Purposes and Results. Ithaca: New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, no. 95.
1960. The Purposes and Results of U.S. Minimum Wage Laws. Monthly Labor Review, Vol. 83, No. 3 (March 1960), pp. 238-242.
1961. (assisted by Betti C. Goldwasser) Labor Costs and International Trade (Washington, D.C.: Committee for a National Trade Policy).
1964. Origins of Modern Wage Theories (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall).
1965 study of salaries of professional economists for the American Economic Association [published AER Vol. 58, No. 5, Dec. 1968, Supplement, Part 2. Studies of the Structure of Economists’ Salaries and Income.]
1966. Weathering Layoffs in a Small Community: Case Studies of Displaced Pottery and Carpet-Mill Workers. Washington, D.C.: Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1516.
1965-1969. Two terms as Ithaca city alderman as a Democrat.
1969. Lost race for mayor of Ithaca.
Two years after retirement part-time teaching at Cornell also teaching at State University College at Geneseo (economics department).
July 1971. Becomes emeritus professor at Cornell.
Apr. 10, 1973. Died from a heart attack while teaching his class at Geneseo State Teachers College.
Sources:
Cornell University Faculty Memorial Statement by Robert H. Ferguson, Vernon H. Jensen, Robert L. Aronson.
“Arnold Tolles Dead; Served County, City with ‘Compassion’”, The Ithaca Journal, April 11, 1973, p. 3.
Guide to the N. Arnold Tolles Papers. Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University Library
Image Source: From Tolles’ obituary printed in The Ithaca Journal, April 11, 1973, p. 3.
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All the World’s a Stage
Tolles @ Center Stage
Photograph of a scene from the 1932 faculty show. Verso reads: A Scene from Faculty Show, presented once every four years at Mount Holyoke College by members of the Administration and Faculty. They present ‘A Hard Struggle’ by Westland Marston, Esq., as a curtainraisser. Left to right: Miss Ruth Douglass of the department of Music, Leslie Burgeivin of the department of English Literature, Miss Dorothy Graves of the department of Art; N. Arnold Tolles of the department of economics; Miss Elizabeth Doane of the department of French; and Bernard Bloch of the department of English.
Source: https://compass.fivecolleges.edu/object/mtholyoke:24371