Here we see a very early attempt to establish a beachhead for business education, or at least some business education for undergraduates. A liberal arts education in college was long recognised as a prep-school for the traditional professions (save one) of law, medicine, or the theology in 1875, and here we see the business camel sticking its nose into the political economy tent. Merchants and manufacturers of the world unite!
___________________________
For more about the visiting committee:
Edward Atkinson
Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 42, No. 29 (Aug., 1907), pp. 761-769.
James Munson Barnard
Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 41, No. 35 (Jul., 1906), pp. 837-841 (5 pages)
Joseph S. Ropes [see below]
___________________________
JOSEPH S. ROPES
As one reviews even a moderately long business career, it is a pathetic thing to see how men who have filled the largest places in the business life of their time, or who have been conspicuous in the philanthropic or the religious movements of their generation, after a few years of retirement, pass away and leave so few memorials behind them.
Forty years ago the house of William Ropes & Co. had reached the leading position in our American trade with Russia. A generation before that time, the senior William Ropes had established a house in St. Petersburg. with other branches in London and New York, while here in Boston, no great commercial establishment was more honored or better known. Their ships sailed many seas, and large enterprises both at home and abroad were carried forward with such high honor and integrity of soul on the part of this noble group of men, that it became an example and an inspiration to the younger generation of merchants who were about them.
Mr. Joseph S. Ropes whose life here in Boston is but a memory to his friends, was one of the leading members of this great firm. His death was announced in your paper on Saturday. He was educated in Russia. His training and accomplishments were of the highest order. He had a singularly acute mind and in the great financial movements of his time he was a recognized authority. During his residence and business life in Russia he had mastered nearly all of the languages of Northern Europe, and I have often seen the eagerness with which he would talk in his Boston office with stranded sailors from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland or Russia, with the same facility with which he would use his own mother tongue. He was always tender, considerate and generous with the unfortunate and with strangers landed here from foreign ports.
I remember also when Prince Alexis of the royal house of Russia visited Boston with the group of noblemen and officers of the Russian navy many years ago. Mr. Joseph Ropes was sought for as the only man in Boston who knew the Russian tongue. He surprised and delighted his visitors by his rare accomplishments and knowledge of their language and literature, and it was said that he was the only man, not a native, they had ever met in any land who spoke and thought in Russian as if it were his mother tongue.
There was another side of his character besides that of the merchant and man of letters. He was of gentle and heroic mould. Those who knew him will recognize this as true. How few men stricken with sudden blindness have met that sad fate as he met this dreadful going out of the light of day. With his brilliant, tireless, mental activity, with his insatiable thirst for knowledge, his passion for books, giving up every active Interest in life and forced to sit with folded hands in darkened room for months, facing the years as he did afterwards in dependence upon others — his sublime patience and heroism of soul through all this was something to be remembered by those who knew him.
The source and centre of it all was his religious faith. It was a well-spring within him. Sorrow, loss, broken companionships, old age, failing strength, never could quench the undying flame of his spiritual life. The morning dawned for him at last, with the heavenly vision, as he entered through the gates into the city.
W.H.R.
Source: Boston Evening Transcript (May 19, 1903), p. 9.
Funeral of Joseph S. Ropes
Funeral services for Hon. Joseph S. Ropes were held yesterday afternoon at the Immanuel Congregational Church, Roxbury. Rev. Charles H. Beale, D. D., pastor of the church, officiated. Among the mourners were the deacons and members of the church, business men, members of the Board of Trade and men who sat in the State Legislature with him. Burial was in Forest Hills Cemetery.
Source: Boston Evening Transcript (May 20, 1903), p. 8.
Joseph S. Ropes.
Joseph S. Ropes, for many years a resident of Norwich, died Saturday morning at the home of his niece, Miss Huntington, in Norwich Town, aged 84 years. He was born in Boston, Mass., and early in his boyhood went to St. Petersburg, Russia, with his father, the founder of the American-Russian firm of William Ropes & Co., who imported from Russia cargoes of hemp, cordage, iron, etc. While in Russia Mr. Ropes entered the University of St. Petersburg, where after a full course of studies he graduated with honors. He then went into business with his father. After the death of his father and brother, William Ropes, he became the head of the firm, making his home in Boston. He was gradually obliged through loss of eyesight to withdraw from business cares and up to the time of his death spent his time in Christian work and missionary enterprises.
Source: Hartford Courant, March 16, 1903.
___________________________
Copy of a letter in the Atkinson Collection in the Massachusetts Historical Society. Volume VI, p. 418.
Boston, July 21, 1875
Honorable Richard H. Dana, Jr., Chairman
Sir:
The committee appointed to visit Harvard University for the purpose of observing the instruction given and the progress of the students in the department of political science have attended the duty assigned to them and report with pleasure that the instruction given by Professor Dunbar is thorough and excellent;— that the election of the study of political economy and the attendance of the students indicate a hearty interest in this course and a degree of application and intelligence which promises much usefulness both to the graduates and to the public when the former shall come to the application of their lessons to the practical affairs of life.
Your committee respectfully submit the following reasons for enlarging the scope of the instruction given in the department of political science — the country is now suffering depression and loss, not more from the direct consequences than from the disturbed relations of economic and fiscal interests. Had more attention been paid to the simplest principles of economic science in the schools, colleges, and universities it is not to be doubted that many of the disasters and losses that have marked the last few years might have been avoided.
The costly and ineffective system of slave labor has disappeared from the southern states: — rarely has there been greater progress in the applied sciences than in the last few years — improvements and invention in the tools of production and the apparatus of distribution have caused an immense increase in production to become possible, relatively to the population: — but the methods of distributing this abundance which the advance in mechanical and agricultural science has brought forth have been restricted by fiscal causes and bad methods of administration: — evils which it falls within the province of political science to remove.
The instruction given by Professor Dunbar is admirable but more work might be done to meet the case. Your committee consists of men who are or have been engaged in business pursuits and as merchants they may suggest whether the function of the university should not be to train young men to become good merchants as well as able professional men, and whether the means for obtaining such an education as a merchant might find most useful, have been as carefully provided for as they have been in other branches. They fully admit that a thoroughly trained man need not have been technically taught in the undergraduate department, yet that it would be well if those whom choice or necessity may direct toward active business life could elect studies during the latter part of their college course that would fit them more directly for their future occupation.
To this end it would seem to your committee that more opportunity might be offered to undergraduates to obtain instruction in the principles and history of international and commercial law and in commercial and physical geography as to the last named studies it may be urged that they are important in themselves and their relation to political and commercial history and to political science.
What are called “business colleges” attract a great many young men and are believed to be pecuniarily, very profitable in many instances to those who control them. May not the university offer to do thoroughly what is elsewhere done superficially and thus abate even the shadow of foundation for the charge sometimes made, that the four years of college life are apt to unfit young men for business pursuits. Your committee urge that a broad and liberal course of study could be mapped out, no more subject to the charge of being merely utilitarian than the course which a young man would elect who intended to become a lawyer, physician or clergyman and which would enable men to become better merchants and manufacturers and to begin the necessary work of their lives more fully prepared than it is now possible for them to be.
Respectfully submitted,
Committee:
Edward Atkinson
Alex Rice [Alexander H. Rice]
Jos. S. Ropes
Wm. Endicott, Jr.
Jas. M. Barnard
by E.A.
Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics: Correspondence and papers 1930-1961 and some earlier. (UAV 349.11) Box 25, Folder “Visiting Committee.”
Image Source: The Harvard Graduates’Magazine, Vol. VIII, No. 32 (June, 1900), Frontspiece. Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.