The 1913 Harvard economics Ph.D. alumnus we meet today managed to cross at least one Dean and later one of his bosses in a government job (see below). Indeed his argumentative nature gets noted in Richard J. Linton’s History of the NLRB Judges Division with Special Emphasis on the Early Years (August 1, 2004), p. 10:
As Chief Judge Bokat describes in his March 1969 oral history interview … some of the judges did not sit silently at such conferences. He reports that Judge Charles Persons was one who would argue vociferously with, particularly, Member Leiserson. …Judge Bokat tells us that there would be Judge Persons, who was not a lawyer (and neither was Member Leiserson), debating legal issues with Leiserson in the presence of several who were lawyers.
In case you are wondering: Charles Edward Persons does not appear to be closely related (if at all) to his contemporary, Warren Persons, an economics professor at Harvard at the time.
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Charles Edward Persons
Vital Records
Born: July 17, 1878 in Brandon, Iowa.
Spouse: Margaret Murday (1888-1956)
Son: William Burnett Persons (1918-1992)
Daughter: Jean Murday Persons (1922-1994)
Died: April 1, 1962
Buried: Arlington National Cemetery
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Academic and Public/Government Career Timeline
1903. A.B. Cornell College, Iowa.
1905. A.M. Harvard University.
1907-08. Wellesley. Instructor in Economics.
Industrial History of the United States. (One division, three hours a week; one year) 9 students enrolled: 4 Seniors, 4 Juniors, 1 Sophomore.
1908-09. Wellesley. Instructor in Economics.
Industrial History of the United States. (One division, three hours a week; one year) 5 students enrolled: 3 Seniors, 2 Juniors.
Industrial History of England. (One division, three hours a week; one semester) 18 students enrolled: 5 Seniors, 7 Juniors, 6 Sophomore.
Socialism. (One division, three hours a week; one semester) 14 students enrolled: 5 Seniors, 9 Juniors.
Labor Movement in the Nineteenth Century. (One division, three hours a week; one semester) 16 students enrolled: 7 Seniors, 3 Juniors, 6 Sophomores.
Selected Industries. (One division, one hour a week; one year) 52 students enrolled: 2 Seniors, 6 Juniors, 38 Sophomores, 6 Freshmen.
Municipal Socialism. (One division, three hours a week; one semester) 7 students enrolled: 2 Seniors, 5 Juniors.
1909-10. Princeton. Preceptor in History, Politics and Economics.
1910-11. Northwestern. Instructor of Economics.
1913. Ph.D. (Economics). Harvard University.
Thesis title: Factory legislation in Massachusetts: from 1825 to the passage of the ten-hour law in 1874. Pub. in “Labor laws and their enforcement,” New York, Longmans, 1911, pp. 1-129.
1913-16. Washington University, St. Louis. Assistant/Associate Professor of Sociology.
Principles of Economics, Elements of Sociology, Labor and Labor Problems, Population Problems, Social Reform, Sociology Seminar.
1917-20. U.S. Army.
Persons, Charles Edward, A.M. ’05; Ph.D. ’13. Entered Officers’ Training Camp, Fort Riley, Kans., May 1917; commissioned 1st lieutenant Infantry August 15; assigned to 164th Depot Brigade, Camp Funston, Kans.; transferred to Company K, 805th Pioneer Infantry, August 1918; sailed for France September 2; returned to United States June 27, 1919; ill in hospital; discharged January 31, 1920. Engagement: Meuse-Argonne offensive. Source: Harvard’s Military Record in the World War, p. 751.
1920-26. Professor and Head of Economics, College of Business Administration, Boston University. Boston, Mass.
Persons refused to support a student volunteer (Beanpot) candy sale project in 1922 pushed by the Dean to fund a Business College War Memorial. Persons believed “that the quality of the candy to be sold had been misrepresented, and also … that a disproportionate share of the profits would go to one or more persons teaching in the College of Business Administration and actively concerned in the management of the sale.”
Sabbatical year 1927-28. (June 16, 1927) informed by Dean it would be inadvisable for him to return after his sabbatical year. He fought the Dean and the Dean won…
Source: Academic Freedom and Tenure, Committee A. Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors, Vol. 15, No. 4 (April 1929), pp. 270-276.
1927-28. Harvard. Lecturer.
Economics 6a 2hf. Trade Unionism and Allied Problems.
1928-29. Harvard. Lecturer.
Economics 6a 1hf. Trade Unionism and Allied Problems.
Economics 6b 2hf. Labor Legislation and Social Insurance.
Economics 34 2hf. Problems of Labor.
ECONOMICS PROFESSOR IS GIVEN FEDERAL POSITION
C.E. Persons Appointed Expert on Economics of Unemployment
Professor Charles E. Persons, for the past year lecturer in the Department of Economics here has been appointed Expert on the Economics of Unemployment in the Federal Bureau of the Census. He will take up his new duties immediately.
At Harvard Professor Persons gave courses in Trade Unionism and Labor Legislation. In his previous career, aside from service in the United States Army during the war, he has been a member of the faculties of Wellesley College and of Princeton, Northwestern and Washington Universities. At the Bureau of the Census Professor Persons will have general supervision of the census of unemployment and of special studies subsidiary thereto.
Source: The Harvard Crimson, November 15, 1929
Row Over Census Of Jobless In U. S. Bureau Is Revealed
Dispute Led Up To Resignation Of Professor Persons, Expert Economist—June 26 Statement Believed Not To Give True Insight Into Situation
The Baltimore Sun, July 9, 1930, p. 2.
Washington, July 8. The census of unemployment, started in the belief it would throw light on a distressing public problem, threatens to involve the Hoover Administration in another controversy.
The question is being asked in many quarters as to whether the unemployment census is to be a real statistical investigation designed to bring out every possible fact or merely a routine enumeration, the result of which are to be used a far as possible to bolster up business confidence.
Two developments have brought this issue to the front. One is the disclosure that an expert economist employed last November to direct the unemployment census has resigned after prolonged disagreement with officials of the Census Bureau. The other is the preliminary unemployment count released through the Department of Commerce on June 26. Careful analysis of this statement has convinced more than one observer that it tells only a part of what it purports to tell.
Expert Economist Resigned
The resignation of the expert economist, Prof. Charles E. Persons, formerly of Boston University and more recently of Harvard University, occurred in May, but the controversy which led up to the resignation is only now coming to light.
The details of the row remain to be disclosed. The Census Bureau declines to say anything about the matter, except that Professor Persons resigned and that his resignation was not requested. Professor Persons likewise refuses to discuss the incident.
It is known, however, that prolonged friction preceded the decision of Professor Persons to quit and the impression grows that the economist was not allowed a free hand to pursue such statistical inquiries as he believed to be necessary.
Covered Only One Phase
Although the census statement on unemployment of June 26 was issued more than a month after Professor Persons left the service, an analysis of that statement throw an interesting light on the uses to which the results of the enumeration of jobless are being put.
The unemployment census includes two schedules, one in which persons capable of work but having no jobs are listed, and another which include persons having jobs but laid off as a result of business depression or for other causes.
The statement of June 26 covers only the first schedule. It finds there were 574,647 jobless persons among 20,264,480 persons enumerated. But it takes no account of the large number of persons actually idle, though technically in possession of jobs, for the reason the statement does not, in the opinion of not a few who have studied the subject, give an accurate picture of the unemployment situation.
Information Only Partial
Its finding that only two per cent of the enumerated population are unemployed is regarded as affording no true insight into the actual extent to which men and women are out of work, and there is a disposition in some quarters to criticize the issuance of such partial information. This disposition is underlined by the fact that the figures, as disclosed, fit in with the general policy of optimism on which the Administration has embarked.
The Census Bureau, in its statement, alluded to the partiality of its figures. It says that no records from the second schedule are yet available but there is no mention of this fact in Secretary Lamont’s rosy statement that the preliminary figures “applied to the whole population show much less unemployment than was generally estimated.”
Would Not Justify Optimism
Outside the Census Bureau it is believed that had the enumeration included both schedules in the unemployment census the result would have been much different and much less useful in supporting the optimism with which the Administration approaches this subject.
There is also a disposition in unofficial quarters to question the Census Bureau’s decision to base the percentage of unemployment on population.
It is pointed out that only about one in five of the total population is actually employed as a wage earner, and that a true percentage of unemployment would be based on the number of persons capable of work and not on the total population. On the basis of working population, the percentage of unemployment as found by the Census Bureau’s own figures would be ten percent, instead of two.
After Persons’ Census Resignation
HAVERHILL—Charles E. Persons, former director of federal census on unemployment at Washington, was appointed district manager of Haverhill Shoeworkers’ Protective Union.
Source: The Berkshire Eagle (Pittsfield, Massachusetts), December 6, 1930, p. 20.
HAVERHILL, Aug 9—Charles E. Persons, N.R.A. labor advisor, visited this city yesterday in a two days’ survey of shoe centers of Massachusetts preparatory to hearings which will be held shortly in Washington on the proposed code for the shoe industry…
Source: The Boston Globe (Boston, Massachusetts), August 9, 1933, p. 15.
Charles E. Persons was identified as assistant to F. E. Berquist, chairman of the research and planning division of the national NRA headquarters.
Source: The South Bend Tribune (South Bend, Indiana), September 18, 1934, p. 3.
Last-stage.
1937-1949. (Date entered on duty: June 1, 1937) National Labor Relations Board Judge (trial-examiner).
Likely final case as trial examiner found in September 29, 1949 Olin Industries, Inc. (Winchester Repeating Arms Co Division). [Commerce Clearing House, Chicago. National Labor Relations Board—Decisions].
Source: See, Richard J. Linton, Administrative Law Judge (Retired), National Labor Relations Board. A History of the NLRB Judges Division with Special Emphasis on the Early Years (August 1, 2004).
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Chronological List of Publications
[with affiliations at the time of publication]
Chapter 1 “The Early History of Factory Legislation in Massachusetts” in Persons, C. E., Parton, Mabel, and Moses, Mabelle. Labor Laws and Their Enforcement with Special Reference to Massachusetts. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1911.
[Charles E. Persons, formerly Henry Bromfield Rogers Memorial Fellow, Harvard University, Instructor in Economics, Northwestern University.]
Marginal Utility and Marginal Disutility as Ultimate Standards of Value, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 27, No. 4 (August 1913), pp. 547-578.
[by Charles E. Persons, Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.]
Women’s Work and Wages in the United States, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 29, No. 2 (February 1915), pp. 201-234.
[by C. E. Persons, Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.]
Estimates of a Living Wage for Female Workers, Publications of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 14, No. 110 (June 1915), pp. 567-577.
[by Charles E. Persons, Associate Director of the School for Social Economy, Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.]
Teaching the Introductory Course in Economics, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 31, No. 1 (November 1916), pp. 86-107.
[by Charles E. Persons, Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.]
Review of Outlines of Economics by Richard T. Ely et. al. The American Economic Review, Vol. 7, No. 1 (March 1917), pp. 98-103.
[by Charles E. Persons, Washington University.]
A Balanced Industrial System—Discussion [of Professor Carver], The American Economic Review, Vol. 10, No. 1, Supplement, Papers and Proceedings of the Thirty-second Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association (March 1920), pp. 86-88.
[by Charles E. Persons, Columbus, Ohio.]
Recent Textbooks, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 34, No. 4 (August 1920), pp. 737-756.
[by Charles E. Persons, Boston University, College of Business Administration.]
Review of Elementary Economics by Thomas Nixon Carver. The American Economic Review, Vol. 11, No. 2 (June 1921), pp. 274-277
Review of Principles of Economics by F.M. Taylor. The American Economic Review, Vol. 12, No. 1 (March 1922), pp. 109-111.
[by Charles E. Persons, Boston University, College of Business Administration.]
Review of Principles of Economics by Frank W. Taussig, Vol. II (3rd ed. revised). The American Economic Review, Vol. 12, No. 3 (September 1922), pp. 474-475
[by C. E. Persons, Boston University.]
“The Course in Elementary Economics”: Comment, The American Economic Review, Vol. 13, No. 2 (June 1923), pp. 249-251.
[by Charles E. Persons, Boston University, College of Business Administration.]
Review of Practical Economics by Henry P. Shearman, The American Economic Review, Vol. 13, No. 3 (September 1923), pp. 471-472.
[by Charles E. Persons, Boston University, College of Business Administration.]
Labor Problems as Treated by American Economists, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 41, No. 3 (May 1927), pp. 487-519.
[by Charles E. Persons, Boston University.]
Unemployment as a Census Problem, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 25, No. 169, [Supplement: Proceedings of the American Statistical Association] (March 1930), pp. 117-120.
[by Charles E. Persons]
Credit Expansion, 1920 to 1929, and its Lessons, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 45, No. 1 (November 1930), pp. 94-130.
[by Charles E. Persons, Washington, D.C.]
Census Reports on Unemployment in April, 1930, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 154, The Insecurity of Industry (March 1931), pp. 12-16.
[by Charles E. Persons, Ph.D. District Manager, Show Workers’ Protective Union, Haverhill, Massachusetts]
Review of Labor and Other Essays by Henry R. Seager. Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 41, No. 1 (February 1933), pp. 121-123.
[by Charles E. Persons, Economic Research Bureau, Wellesley, Mass.]
Calculation of Relief Expenditures, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 28, No. 181, Supplement: Proceedings of the American Statistical Association (March 1933), pp. 68-74.
[by Charles E. Persons, Bureau of Economic Research, Haverhill, Mass.]
Image Source: Application for U.S. Passport 17 May 1915 to go to England for “scientific study”