For the post on the Rockefeller Foundation funded series: The Ethics and Economics of Society, I came across the name of Janet M. Hooks who collaborated with Elizabeth E. Hoyt, Margaret G. Reid, and Joseph L. McConnell, on the volume American Income and Its Use (1954). Because I found relatively little about her through my searches, I figured I ought to share those facts that I have been able to string together about Janet M. Hooks’ life and career.
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Janet Montgomery Hooks (Bassie)
Her Biographical Timeline
Born April 25, 1912, in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Parents: David Munro Hooks and Maud E. Montgomery.
A.B., Mount Holyoke College, 1933 — major in Economics (Honor Work), minor in History.
A.M. Bryn Mawr College (1934).
1936. Federal Consumer Purchases Study at Toledo, Ohio.
Married Oct. 2, 1937 (Saturday), to V. Lewis Bassie of Chicago, in a private ceremony at the Hooks family home in West Englewood, N.J., performed by the Rev. William K. Russell of Christ Episcopal Church, West Englewood. Attendants were her sisters Vida and Maida Hooks; best man was Charles Coe of Washington, D.C. The couple honeymooned to Bermuda on the S.S. Monarch of Bermuda and settled in Washington, D.C.
Source: “Miss Hooks Married to V. L. Bassie,” The Record (Hackensack, N.J.), Oct. 4, 1937, p. 14.
Groom’s background per the same announcement: “Mr. Bassie is an alumnus of the University of Chicago and is with the Federal Reserve Board.” V. Lewis Bassie (1907/08–June 5, 1997) took his Ph.D. at Chicago in 1931, later becoming a well-known business-cycle forecaster, joining the University of Illinois economics faculty in 1948 as director of the Bureau of Economic and Business Research, and retiring in 1976. Illinois economics department’s historical profile of V. Lewis Bassie.
She was to publish professionally under her maiden name “Janet M. Hooks”.
1940 U.S. Census: listed as “Jr. economist,” Government — living in Arlington, Va., with her husband, economist V. Lewis Bassie. By the April 1940 census date she was already a federal government economist.
1940-48: Research Division, U.S. Department of Labor Women’s Bureau.
Source: Biographical Listing of Members of the American Economic Association. American Economic Review, December 1989), p. 221.
Catalog record: catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/003493587
Full view: babel.hathitrust.org (uiug.30112104139305)
1941: Employment of women in the Federal Government, 1923 to 1929 by Rachel Fesler Nyswander and Janet M. Hooks. U.S. Department of Labor, Bulletin of the Women’s Bureau, no. 182.
Catalog record: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/003493587
Full view: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112104139305
Feb. 2, 1942, p. 24 — Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) identified her as an active member on the Workers’ Education Committee that sponsored a party to raise funds for the American Labor Education Service. Others named in the article constitute a list of a Washington women’s who’s who of economic policy loc.gov (Feb. 2, 1942, p. 24)
1944: author, British Policies and Methods in Employing Women in Wartime, Women’s Bureau Bulletin No. 200 (Washington: GPO, 1944).
Catalog record: catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/003493702
Full view: babel.hathitrust.org (uiug.30112102049118)
1947: author, Women’s Occupations Through Seven Decades, Women’s Bureau Bulletin No. 218 (Washington: GPO, 1947). The bulletin’s own foreword states: “The analysis was made and the report written by Janet M. Hooks, of the Bureau’s Research Division.”
PDF: fraser.stlouisfed.org (Bulletin 218)
Full text: fraser.stlouisfed.org (fulltext)
FRASER author page: fraser.stlouisfed.org/author/hooks-janet-m
1948: Her husband V. Lewis Bassie joined the University of Illinois faculty.
1949–1950: co-author (with Mary E. Pidgeon), Women in the Federal Service, 1923–1947. U.S. Dept. of Labor, Women’s Bureau, 1949–1950), 2 vols. NOTE: vol. 2 was written without participation of Janet M. Hooks.
Catalog record: catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011397919
Full view Volume 1: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112102049753
Full view Volume 2: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112102049761
1950: U.S. Census. Family of V. Lewis Bassie (age 42, b. in Illinois) and Janet M. Bassie (age 37, b. in Massachusetts), daughter Carol M. (age 6, b. in Virginia) and son William C. (age 1, b. in Washington, DC) Father is listed as Professor of Economics, Director of Business research at the state university. Mother has no occupation listed.
1954: Co-author with Joseph L. McConnell of Part III The Changing Family and its Dependents in the volume American Income and Its Use (1954) by Elizabeth E. Hoyt, Margaret G. Reid, Joseph L. McConnell, and Janet Montgomery Hooks, published in the Rockefeller Foundation funded series: The Ethics and Economics of Society (Harper & Brothers). Note: Margaret Reid was at the University of Illinois 1948-51. Also Howard Bowen (a principal in the Rockefeller Foundation project was Dean at the University of Illinois, removed as dean in 1951).
1960: Awarded Ph.D. in economics per the Report of the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, meeting of June 14, 1960 (pp. 1333–35): under “In Economics” — “Janet Montgomery Hooks, A.B., Mount Holyoke College, 1933; A.M., Bryn Mawr, 1934.” Dissertation: The Contribution of Household Production to the National Income.
1963-1977. Eastern Illinois University. [Just over 50 years old, having completed her doctorate in Economics at Illinois in 1960 — 26 years after her Bryn Mawr A.M., about a decade after her husband V. Lewis Bassie joined the Illinois faculty (1948), and roughly a decade after her last confirmed Women’s Bureau byline (1949–50), she becomes a full fledged academic economist.]
Source: Biographical Listing of Members of the American Economic Association. American Economic Review, December 1989), p. 221.
1967: Assistant Professor of Economics, Eastern Illinois University (The Warbler, 1967, p. 67)
1977: Professor emeritus. Eastern Illinois University
Source: Biographical Listing of Members of the American Economic Association. American Economic Review, December 1989), p. 221.
Died April 4, 2002, in Urbana, Illinois.
Source: Obituary: “Janet Montgomery Hooks Bassie,” News and Record (Greensboro, N.C.), April 6, 2002, p. 19.
Image Sources: Yearbook of Eastern Illinois University, The Warbler, 1967