In 1910 Harvard published 43 short bibliographies covering “Social Ethics and Allied Subjects”, about half of which were dedicated to particular topics in economics and economic sociology. The project was coordinated by Plummer Professor of Christian Morals, Francis G. Peabody. Trade Unionism was an “allied subject” covered in the bibliography provided by Professor William Z. Ripley that has been transcribed and posted earlier along with links to digital copies of the items found at archive.org, hathitrust.org, as well as at other on-line archives. It is a safe guess that the items there represent the core of required and suggested readings for Ripley’s course on the Problems of Labor.
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Ripley’s Problems of Labor:
previous semesters
1902-03
1903-04
1904-05
1905-06
1906-07
1907-08
1908-09
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Course Teaching Assistant
1909-10
James Edwin Gardner.
A.B. Harvard, cum laude Economics 1908.
LL.B. Harvard, 1910.
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Course Announcement,
Description
1909-10
9a 1hf. Problems of Labor. Half-course (first half-year); Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 1.30. Professor Ripley and an assistant.
This course will deal mainly with the economic and social relations of employer and employed, with especial reference to legislation. Among the topics included will be, — collective bargaining; labor organizations; factory legislation in the United States and Europe; strikes, strike legislation and legal decisions; conciliation and arbitration; employers’ liability and compulsory compensation; compulsory insurance with particular reference to European experience; the problem of the unemployed; apprenticeship, and trade and technical education.
Each student will 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: Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. VI, No. 29 (23 July 1909). History and Political Science Comprising the Departments of History and Government, and Economics, 1909-10, pp. 58-59.
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Course Enrollment
1909-10
Economics 9a 1hf. Professor Ripley, assisted by Mr. J. E. Gardner. — Problems of Labor.
Total 64: 2 Graduates, 16 Seniors, 31 Juniors, 5 Sophomores, 3 Freshmen, 7 Others.
Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1909-1910, p. 44.
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ECONOMICS 9a1
Mid-Year Examination, 1909-10
- One of the main criticisms of trade unionism is that it tends to reduce all men to a dead level of mediocrity of performance. What are two possible answers to this contention?
- Webb says: “Collective bargaining thus implies, in its fullest development, compulsory Trade Unionism.” Yet the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, the most powerful union in America, enforces no closed-shop policy. The United Garment Workers seek to do so. How do you reconcile these differences of statement and of fact?
- What positive result has followed the reduction of hours of labor by law in Massachusetts, (a) in methods of manufacture; and (b) in quality of work people?
- Membership in the hat-makers’ union is highly concentrated geographically; that of the plumbers’ union is widely scattered. How would you expect to find this difference reflected in their constitutional organizations? What devices might be employed to overcome the difficulty in the second union?
- Piece work “is in appearance a system of rewards, but it is in fact a system of punishments, and worse still, a system of punishments for doing well.” What does this mean? Is it true?
- How does the “premium plan” of paying for labor propose to meet this difficulty above mentioned?
- Justice Holmes, in Plant vs. Woods, says: “Organization and strikes may get a larger share for the members of an organization, but, if they do, they get it at the expense of the less organized and less powerful portion of the laboring class. They do not create something out of nothing.” Criticise this statement.
Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers, 1873-1915. Box 9, Bound vol. Examination Papers 1910-11; Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1910), pp. 45-46.