Tag: Peabody

Harvard. Topics in Social Ethics. Outline, enrollment and final exam. Peabody et al, 1909-1910

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-12-31

Picket "Girls" on Duty: Ladies' Tailors Strike, New York City [1910 Feb]

The faculty teaching this course on selected topics in social ethics that was taught at Harvard in 1909-10 was based in the philosophy section of the School of Divinity. Social Ethics at that time was closely related to the economics department and its survey course Social Ethics 1 was a relatively popular outside field for economics graduate students. Social Ethics 4 appears to have been a course that went into greater depth on four topics: poor relief, government intervention/regulation, cooperation and immigration with emphasis on the normative issues involved.

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SOCIAL ETHICS 4
Course Announcement
1909-10

Selected Topics in Social Ethics (Social Ethics *4²hf.).

— Subjects for 1909-10:
— The Ethical Approach to the Social Question. Professor [Francis Greenwood] Peabody.
— Sources of Relief in Cases of Need. Dr. [Jeffry Richardson] Brackett.
— The Ethical Relations of the State to Industrial Affairs. Dr. [Ray Madding] McConnell.
— The Ethical Aspects of Industrial Coöperation. Mr. [James] Ford.
— The Ethics of Immigration. Mr. [Robert Franz] Foerster.

Lectures and prescribed reading. Half-course (second half-year). Tu., Th, Sat., at 12.

Source: Announcement of the Divinity School of Harvard University, 1909-10, p. 24.

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SOCIAL ETHICS 4
Course Enrollment
1909-10

Social Ethics 4^1[sic]hf. Professor [Francis Greenwood] Peabody, Dr. [Jeffry Richardson] Brackett, Dr. [Ray Madding] McConnell, Dr. [James] Ford, and Dr. [Robert Franz] Foerster. — Selected Topics in Social Ethics.

Total 19: 8 Graduates, 8 Seniors, 1 Sophomore, 2 Divinity.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1909-1910, p. 45.

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SOCIAL ETHICS 4
Final Examination
1909-10

Discuss and illustrate by historical instances the ethical principles involved in the State’s interference with the individual’s freedom of contract.
(a) Discuss Compensation for Accidents — Employer’s Liability; (b) Discuss Injunctions in Labor Disputes.
Describe the constitution and business methods of the Civil Service co-operative stores in London. State all points of divergence from Rochdale principles. What are the relative advantages or disadvantages of Civil Service co-operative methods?
Do you believe that any form of co-operation could be instituted in New England villages with reasonable expectation of success? State reasons explicitly.
“The girls have become convinced… that the only effective remedy for their unsatisfactory condition is a union, in full control of every shop on the side of the employees, and authorized to bargain with the employers on their behalf. They are willing that every one shall belong to the union.” How far do you consider that the remedy proposed by the striking shirt waist makers of New York may be effective? Explain the influence of immigration on wages in the United States.
Discuss the connection of Immigration with: (a) poverty in the United States; (b) cycles of prosperity and depression; (c) municipal government in the United States.
What are the effects of Emigration upon the countries from which it proceeds?
In what degree are the ethical principles indicated in the Introduction of this Course, verified or illustrated in the case of: State activity; or of Co-operation; or of Immigration?

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).

Image Source: Picket girls on duty: Ladies’ Tailors Strike, New York City (Feb 1910). Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Tags Brackett, Foerster, Ford, McConnellRM, Peabody

Exam Questions Harvard Social Work Socialism

Harvard. Description, enrollment and exam for Social Ethics. Peabody, 1909-1910

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-12-29

Themes of social policy were covered in the intersection of philosophy (ethics) and economics by Francis Greenwood Peabody and his staff at Harvard around the turn of the 20th century.

A brief biography of Francis Greenwood Peabody

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Social Ethics à la Peabody

Francis Greenwood Peabody. The Approach to the Social Question. New York: Macmillan, 1912. “The substance of this volume was given as the Earle Lectures at the Pacific Theological Seminary in 1907.”

Peabody’s own short bibliography on the Ethics of Social Questions was published in 1910.

Another post provides the history of Harvard’s Department of Social Ethics up through 1920.

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Material from earlier years

Exam questions for late 19^th century versions of this course have been transcribed and posted:

1888-1889; 1889-1890; 1890-1891; 1892-1893; 1893-1894; 1894-1895; 1895-1896.

1902-03. Listed as Philosophy 5. Taught by Peabody and Ireland.

1904-05. Listed as Philosophy 5 and Ethics 1. Taught by Peabody and Rogers.

1906-07. Taught by Peabody and Rogers.

1907-08. Taught by Peabody and Rogers

1908-09. Taught by Peabody, assisted by Dr. McConnell and Messrs. Ford and Foerster.

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Course Enrollment
1909-10

Social Ethics 1. Professor Peabody, assisted by Dr. McConnell, Dr. Ford, and Dr. Foerster. —The Problems of Poor-Relief, the Family, Temperance, and various phases of the Labor Question, in the light of ethical theory.

Total 80: 7 Graduates, 16 Seniors, 29 Juniors, 12 Sophomores, 3 Freshman, 13 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1909-1910, p. 45.

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Course Description
1909-10

Social Ethics. — The problems of Poor-Relief, the Family, Temperance, and various phases of the Labor Question, in the light of ethical theory. Lectures, special researches, and prescribed reading. Tu., Th., Sat., at 10. Professor Peabody Dr. McConnell, Mr. Ford, and Mr. Foerster.

This course is an application of ethical theory to the social problems of the present day. It is to be distinguished from economic courses dealing with similar subjects by the emphasis laid on the moral aspects of the Social Question and on the philosophy of society involved. Its introduction discusses various theories of Ethics and the nature and relations of the Moral Ideal [required reading from Dewey and Tufts’ Ethics]. The course then considers the ethics of the family [required reading from Bosanquet’s The Family]; the ethics of poor-relief [required reading from Warner’s American Charities]; the ethics of the labor question [required reading from Adams and Sumner’s, Labor Problems]; and the ethics of the drink question [required reading from The Liquor Problem; a Summary of Investigations]. In addition to lectures and required reading two special and detailed reports are made by each student, based as far as possible on personal research and observation of scientific methods in poor-relief and industrial reform. These researches are arranged in consultation with the instructor or his assistant; and an important feature of the course is the suggestion and direction of such personal investigation, and the provision to each student of special literature or opportunities for observation.

Rooms are expressly assigned for the convenience of students of Social Ethics, on the second floor of Emerson Hall, including a large lecture room, a seminary-room, a conference-room, a library, and two rooms occupied by the Social Museum. The Library of 1800 volumes is a special collection for the use of students of Social Ethics, with conveniences for study and research. The Social Museum is a collection of graphical material, illustrating by photographs, models, diagrams, and charts, many movements of social welfare and industrial progress.

Source: Announcement of the Divinity School of Harvard University, 1909-10, pp. 24-25.

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SOCIAL ETHICS 1
Year-end Examination 1909-10

This paper should be considered as a whole. The time should not be exhausted in answering a few questions, but such limits should be given to each answer as will permit the answering of all the questions in the time assigned.

Consider briefly : —

(a) The social conditions necessary to produce a class-conscious conflict.

(b) Economic determinism as a working faith.

The development of the English and American law on labor combinations, from 1824. (Adams & Sumner, Labor Problems, pp. 464 ff.）
The history and lessons of Employer’s Liability Acts in the United States. (Adams & Sumner, pp. 478 ff.)
How do the principles of compensation for accidents in England under the Workingmen’s Compensation Act of 1906 differ from those of the period before 1880? (Dr. Foerster’s lectures.)
The likenesses and differences between the organizations of workmen and those of the employers. (Dr. Brooks’s lectures.)
How might the assignment of laborers to tasks be accomplished in the Socialist State? Discuss three possibilities. (Dr. McConnell’s lectures.)
The French system of arbitration, as applied, first, to local disputes and, secondly, to collective bargains.
“Eventually it will be seen that industrial divisions should be perpendicular and not horizontal.” Explain and illustrate this citation.
Contrast the methods of the British (Rochdale) and Belgian (Socialist) coöperators as to distribution of the profits of coöperative business. (Dr. Ford’s lectures.)
Industrial peace, as promoted by :—

(a) The Maison Leclaire;

(b) The Pennsylvania R.R.;

Economic forces working for and against the consumption of liquor. (The Liquor Problem, a Summary of Investigations, pp. 127 ff.）

Image Sources: Radcliffe Yearbook 1914 (for Peabody), Radcliffe Yearbook 1915 for Ford and Foerster.

Tags Ford, Peabody

Exam Questions Harvard Philosophy Social Work

Harvard. Description, enrollment and exam for Social Ethics. Peabody, 1908-1909

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-06-10

At the turn of the 20th century social policy at Harvard was a subject for the department of social ethics located at the intersection of economics and philosophy. It was taught as a subfield of philosophy (Social Ethics) by divinity professor Francis Peabody together with a changing cast of junior instructors to assist him.

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Exams from past years

Exam questions this course from the late 19^th century have been transcribed and posted: 1888-1889; 1889-1890; 1890-1891; 1892-1893; 1893-1894; 1894-1895; 1895-1896.

1902-03. Listed as Philosophy 5. Taught by Peabody and Ireland.

1904-05. Listed as Philosophy 5 and Ethics 1. Taught by Peabody and Rogers.

1906-07. Taught by Peabody and Rogers.

1907-08. Taught by Peabody and Rogers.

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Francis Greenwood Peabody. The Approach to the Social Question. New York: Macmillan, 1912. “The substance of this volume was given as the Earle Lectures at the Pacific Theological Seminary in 1907.”

Peabody’s own short bibliography on the Ethics of Social Questions was published in 1910.

Another post provides the history of Harvard’s Department of Social Ethics up through 1920.

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DR. RAY MADDING McCONNELL

Harvard Instructor in Social Ethics Had Made Long Study of Important Problems

Dr. Ray Madding McConnell, long active in educational work, died early this morning at a private hospital in Cambridge. Dr. McConnell, who was a graduate of Harvard, class of 1902, was born in Tennessee in 1875, and had been since his college days a great student of sociological problems and recently instructor in social ethics at Harvard.

Dr. McConnell received numerous honorary degrees, including his A.B. from Southern University in Alabama, in 1899, his S.T.B. from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee in 1901, his A.M. from Harvard in 1902, and from that university his Ph.D. in 1908. He was a writer on the subject to which he had given so many years of earnest study and research, and last year his book on “The Duty of Altruism” was brought out and he had at this time another book in preparation, “Philosophy of Crime.” He had contributed frequently to the International Journal of Ethics, and at Harvard he had given courses of lectures on “Moral Obligations of the Modern State.”

Dr. McConnell was married, in 1907, to Miss Phoebe Estes Bedlow of Ithaca, N.Y., by whom he is survived, as well as by a young son, Frank McConnell.

Source: Boston Evening Transcript (June 24, 1911), p. 14.

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Course Description
1908-09

Social Ethics. — The problems of Poor-Relief, the Family, Temperance, and various phases of the Labor Question, in the light of ethical theory. Lectures, special researches, and prescribed reading. Tu., Th., Sat., at 10. Professor Peabody assisted by Messrs. [Ray Madding] McConnell [d. 1911 of thematic fever and pneumonia], [James] Ford, and [Robert Franz] Foerster.

This course is an application of ethical theory to the social problems of the present day. It is to be distinguished from economic courses dealing with similar subjects by the emphasis laid on the moral aspects of the Social Question and on the philosophy of society involved. Its introduction discusses various theories of Ethics and the nature and relations of the Moral Ideal [required reading from Mackenzie’s Introduction to Social Philosophy, and Seth’s Study of Ethical Principles]. The course then considers the ethics of the family [required reading from Bosanquet’s The Family]; the ethics of poor-relief [required reading from Devine’s Principles of Relief]; the ethics of the labor question [required reading from Adams and Sumner’s, Labor Problems]; and the ethics of the drink question [required reading from The Liquor Problem; a Summary of Investigations]. In addition to lectures and required reading two special and detailed reports are made by each student, based as far as possible on personal research and observation of scientific methods in poor-relief and industrial reform. These researches are arranged in consultation with the instructor or his assistant; and an important feature of the course is the suggestion and direction of such personal investigation, and the provision to each student of special literature or opportunities for observation.

Source: Announcement of the Divinity School of Harvard University, 1908-09, p. 24.

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Course Enrollment
1908-09

Social Ethics 1. Professor Peabody, assisted by Dr. McConnell and Messrs. Ford and Foerster. — Social Ethics. The problems of Poor-Relief, the Family, Temperance, and various phases of the Labor Question, in the light of ethical theory.

Total 136: 3 Graduates, 23 Seniors, 65 Juniors, 29 Sophomores, 6 Freshmen, 10 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1908-1909, p. 68.

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SOCIAL ETHICS 1
Year-end Examination 1908-09

The place in the modern labor question of:—

Leclaire.
Lassalle.
Conseils des Prud’hommes.

Discuss the following:—

“Labor is the original source of all value.”
“Property is robbery.”
“Surplus-value.”

What is:—

“Economic determinism”;
“A class-conscious conflict”;
“Collective bargaining”?

Ruskin’s criticism of the economists, and his own theory of value. [“Unto this Last” by John Ruskin]
The evidences of progress on the part of the working-classes since the introduction of the factory-system. (Adams and Sumner, pp. 502-526.)
The legal aspects of strikes. (Adams and Sumner, p. 187 ff.)
The development in England of the principle of Employer’s Liability.
The prospects of Industrial Co-operation in Great Britain and in the United States. The relative advantage of Federalism and of Individualism applied to Coöperation.
The Pennsylvania Railroad Relief-Department; its organization, operation, and the criticisms which it encounters.
The physiological action of alcohol and its relation to intellectual work. (Lectures, and The Liquor Problem, pp. 19-42.)
The Scandinavian Liquor-System. (The Liquor Problem, p. 153ff.)

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers, 1873-1915. Box 8, Bound vol. Examination Papers 1908-09; Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1909), p. 69.

Image Source: Harvard University Archives. Francis Greenwood Peabody [photographic portrait, ca. 1900], Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Tags Foerster, FordJM, McConnellRM, Peabody

Economists Harvard Philosophy

Harvard. Intersection of philosophy and political economy instruction by Benjamin Rand. 19th century

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-06-02

While even economists lacking the slightest interest in the history of economics are aware that Adam Smith lectured and wrote on moral philosophy, few probably appreciate the fact that up through the last quarter of the 19th century political economy was still a relatively minor subfield of academic philosophy. The following account provides a nice sketch of that philosophical backstory to economics instruction at Harvard.

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Looking back from 1928-1929 at instruction in philosophy at Harvard

…With the opening of the nineteenth century philosophy at Harvard enters upon a period about which information is more available than in the preceding centuries. The annual catalogue superseded the broadside in 1819. With the year 1826 begins the annual report of the President of the University. The deans’ reports date from 1869. Since 1883 a description of the courses [Note: link is for Faculty of Arts and Sciences since 1879-1880] has been published yearly by the philosophical department. From such sources reliable data may be gained of Harvard’s philosophical developments throughout the last century.

Levi Hedge (H.C. [Harvard College] 1792), who had received annual appointment as tutor in philosophy beginning in 1795, was given in the year 1800 the first permanent tutorship ever established in Harvard. For the support of this tutorship authority was obtained from the legislature to transfer to it the income then received by the College from tolls on the West Boston Bridge. The permanent tutor was assigned the same duties as the others, but in the event of marriage twenty per cent was to be added to his salary and a parietal tutor was to be appointed to supply his place within the College walls. In 1810, shortly after the administration of President Kirkland began, Mr. Hedge was promoted to a College Professorship of Logic and Metaphysics. He is therefore the first Professor of Philosophy in Harvard University. After appointment he continued his former duties with such other tasks as the boards constituting the government of the College might assign. He held this College Professorship of Philosophy from 1810 to 1827, when it was abandoned owing to the necessity of retrenchment. He was then given the Alford Professorship of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity made vacant by the death of Mr. [Levi] Frisbie who had become his associate in the department. His academic career as Alford Professor continued until 1832, when he resigned owing to an attack of paralysis. He recovered from this attack and enjoyed the twelve remaining years of his life in quiet retirement with his books and in pleasant intercourse with his friends.

Mr. Hedge taught philosophy in Harvard for the long period of thirty-seven years. His reputation as a scholar has been best established by his excellent textbook in logic. His method of instruction was the customary one at that time of recitation. He was, however, far more punctilious than other teachers in exacting adherence to the language of the book. “Students expected,” says Professor Andrew Preston Peabody, who was his pupil, “to gain his permanent good will and lasting favor by reciting his ‘Logic’ verbatim, and there were myths afloat as to his own laudation of the book: ‘It took me fourteen years, with the assistance of the adult members of my family, to write this book; and I am sure that one cannot do better than to employ the precise words of the author.’ If Dr. Hedge thought well of his ‘Elements of Logic,’ he was entirely in the right. There is not in the whole book a definition, or the statement of a principle, or a rule that would bear abbreviation and that would not lose by being simplified.”

In 1817 Mr. Levi Frisbie (H.C. [Harvard College] 1802) who had previously been a Tutor (1805-11) and Professor (1811-17) of Latin, was elected the first Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity. This new professorship had been made possible through the bequest of John Alford, a wealthy merchant of Charlestown, Massachusetts. This benefactor had died in 1761 leaving a large portion of his estate to “pious and charitable purposes.” His executors selected Harvard College as a proper beneficiary and in 1782 transferred to it somewhat over £1300 on condition that the Corporation retain this sum and add the interest to the principal until the capital should suffice to endow a professorship. They also stipulated at considerable length the functions and duties of this chair, and some of the details which are the product of a past age. Mr. Frisbie, the first incumbent of the professorship thus established in 1817, held it till his death in 1822. His successors have been Professors Hedge, Walker, Bowen, Palmer and Hocking. Both the philosophical and the preceding classical instruction by Mr. Frisbie were attended with a considerable degree of success. “Few men,” says President Quincy, “have left deeper traces of their moral and intellectual excellence in the memories of their contemporaries than Mr. Frisbie. In the collegiate circle in which he moved, he was the object of universal confidence and affection. He united a classic taste with great acuteness of intellect and soundness of judgment; and with a mind highly gifted and highly cultivated, rich in the powers of conversation and research he regulated his life by a standard of moral and religious principle exquisitely pure and cultivated.”

After Professor Frisbie’s death on July 9, 1822, the Alford Chair remained vacant until 1827, when Professor Levi Hedge, as already mentioned, was transferred to it from his College professorship. Accompanying this change instruction in logic was assigned to the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, and the teaching of metaphysics was retained by Dr. Hedge “as not inconsistent with the Alford statutes.” After the resignation of Professor Hedge in 1832, the Alford Professorship was again permitted from considerations of economy to remain vacant until the appointment of the Reverend James Walker to it in 1838. Meanwhile, between 1832 and 1838 instruction in philosophy was given by two tutors. Joseph Giles (H.U. [Harvard University] 1829) was Tutor in Natural, Intellectual, and Moral Philosophy from 1832 to 1834, and Instructor in the same subject from 1834 to 1836. He afterwards became a lawyer in Boston, where he lived until his death in 1882. Francis Bowen was the Tutor and Instructor in Natural and Intellectual Philosophy from 1836 to 1839. Of him we later shall have much more to say.

During the period of Professors Hedge and Frisbie the courses of instruction and the textbooks underwent changes, due to a modernizing tendency. Instruction in logic, ethics, and metaphysics was given wholly by Dr. Hedge from 1795 to 1817. But when the philosophical work was shared with Professor Frisbie from 1817 to 1822, the Alford Professor taught the intellectual philosophy as well as the natural religion. After 1822 Dr. Hedge was again in complete charge of the courses, but, as he became Alford Professor from 1827 to 1832, he surrendered the logic and devoted his attention more particularly to intellectual and moral philosophy.

An examination of the annual catalogues as issued after 1819 reveals both the subjects taught and the textbooks used by the professors. From 1820 to 1827 Professor Hedge taught logic and intellectual philosophy to the Sophomores. He used his own “Logic,” and Locke’s “Essay” as textbooks. To the Juniors he gave instruction in ethics and metaphysics, using as the textbooks Paley’s “Moral Philosophy” and Stewart’s “Philosophy of the Human Mind.” Professor Frisbie gave the course to the Seniors in intellectual philosophy and political economy. For textbooks he employed Brown’s “Lectures on the Philosophy of the Mind” and Gay’s [sic, “Say’s” is correct here] “Political Economy.” [Vol. I; Vol. II] He also taught a course in natural religion to the Juniors, using Paley’s “Evidences of Christianity,” and another to the Seniors, using Butler’s “Analogy of Religion.” These various courses were termed private exercises or recitations.

In addition lectures were given by the Alford Professor upon which the students were frequently or regularly examined.

For the later period of Professor Hedge’s incumbency very complete information about the philosophical department is afforded by the report of the President, who had been asked by the Overseers to include in it annually an account of the state of the departments, the duties of the instructors and the progress of the students. Instruction in the department from 1828 to 1838, it is said, was conducted through study and recitations. The studies commenced in the Junior year with Stewart’s “Elements of the Philosophy of Mind,” and concluded with Paley’s “Moral Philosophy.” Recitations were heard six days in the week from the class in two divisions. About two thirds of each division were questioned at every recitation. The Juniors also had a forensic exercise under the instruction of the philosophical professor every other Friday. In the Senior year the study of philosophy was continued with Brown’s “Treatise on the Mind.” When both volumes of this work were completed, the class entered upon the study of Gay’s [sic, “Say’s” is correct] “Political Economy,” and concluded with Levi Hedge’s “Elements of Logic.”

During the first term recitations were heard for two hours in the afternoon five days in the week, and during the second and third terms for one hour every day. On all the books used in this department twelve pages constituted the average length of the lessons assigned. Besides the preceding work two lectures were delivered every week during the second term on Civil Polity and Locke’s “Essay on the Human Understanding.”

With the advent of Mr. Giles as Instructor in 1833-34, Locke’s “Essay” was substituted for Brown’s “Philosophy of the Mind.” He also required of the students a written analysis, upon which commentary was made by the Instructor “exhibiting the opinions of other philosophers on controversial questions.” This is the first mention of direct instruction akin to the history of philosophy. The only new feature during the term of Mr. Bowen as Instructor (1836-39) is the statement in the President’s Reports that his method included “familiar lectures.” In this direction great changes were later to be effected.

In addition to the instruction given in the philosophical department, logic, as already stated, had been transferred in 1827 to the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric at the time Professor Hedge became Alford Professor of Natural Religion. It was taught to the Sophomores during the third term by Professor Edward Channing, who at first used Hedge’s “Logic,” but in 1833 introduced Whately’s “Logic.” This work was long employed by the department of rhetoric.

It is evident from this detailed review of the courses of instruction and of the textbooks between 1800 and 1840 that the introduction of the Scottish philosophy chiefly characterized the progress of philosophical thought at Harvard during the first half of the nineteenth century. The devotion of Professor Hedge to the Scotch school is particularly revealed by the fact that he made an abridgment of Brown’s “Philosophy of the Mind” for the use of his students. The philosophy of Stewart and Reid, moreover, was prescribed throughout this period. English philosophy, however, maintained a foothold in the continuance of the study of Locke. In ethics Paley’s “Morals,” which was used at this period, offered a splendid presentation of the utilitarianism of the eighteenth century for study. The supernatural sanction added by its author to the principles of Bentham, as evidenced by his well-known definition of virtue, would also tend to make the doctrine more acceptable in New England. But Paley is a wonderful expositor and has seldom been surpassed in this respect as a writer of textbooks. Doubtless, too, this was an important factor which commended his work for use in the curriculum of instruction at Harvard. As regards the general method of instruction in the subjects here described, the change from the close adherence to textbooks by Professor Hedge to the written exercises under Mr. Giles and to the “familiar lectures” of Mr. Bowen is also an advance which occurred during the early portion of the nineteenth century.

[…]

Francis Bowen accepted the chair of Alford Professor as successor to President Walker in 1853. He was born in Charlestown in 1811 and was graduated from Harvard in the Class of 1833, that later became famous in academic circles for such members as Professors Lovering, Torrey, and Wyman. From 1833 to 1839 he had been instructor, as already mentioned, in intellectual philosophy at Harvard. From 1843 to 1854 he was editor and proprietor of the North American Review. The Alford professorship was held by him for the long period of thirty-six years, extending from 1853 to his resignation in 1889. To ascertain the influences which moulded his thought and later entered into his philosophical instruction, one must revert briefly to various papers written by him during the period when he was instructor. These are to be found in his “Critical Essays” and concern the history and existing condition of speculative philosophy. In 1837 he wrote an article upon “Locke and the Transcendentalists.” Its purport was to prove that while the transcendentalists decry Locke, he had diffused a juster mode of thinking and a clearer knowledge of the human intellect than they possessed and that his work in consequence has been of incomparable value to philosophy. “The new philosophy,” he writes, “of transcendentalism comes from Germany, and is one of the first fruits of a diseased admiration of everything from that source, which has been rapidly gaining ground of late till in many individuals it amounts to sheer midsummer madness. In the literary history of the last half-century there is nothing more striking than the various exhibitions of this German mania. The peculiarities of the German mind are too striking to grace any other people than themselves.” But for the German language, literature, and philosophy Bowen had real admiration. He perceived that the study of philosophy by the Germans was a national passion. They had produced a race of metaphysicians after Kant, while among the countrymen of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume the taste for metaphysical speculation had declined.

It is thus not surprising that Bowen turned his attention at an early date to the understanding of Kant. The first fruits of this attempt was an article on Kant and his philosophy which appeared in the North American Review in 1839. This paper consists of a review of the translation of the “Critique of Pure Reason” which had appeared in London in 1838 and in it he gives a comprehensive outline of the system of this Copernicus of philosophy. It is, so far as I am aware, the first direct presentation of the critical philosophy in America. Kant, Bowen believed, needed an interpreter, rather than a translator, and Cousin he regarded as the best qualified for this task. Nevertheless, Bowen’s own interpretations of various philosophical systems always possessed the lucidity of the French. The presentation he made of the Kantian philosophy did not lead him to become an adherent of it. A system that coupled the refutation of idealism with the denial of space and time he viewed as certainly original; but it could scarcely be expected that such a doctrine would find acceptance by a follower of the common-sense philosophy.

Both the German successors of Kant and the French philosophers were likewise studied during the period of Bowen’s instructorship. In 1841, shortly after he became an editor, his familiarity with them is revealed in two reviews, one on “Fichte’s Exposition of Kant” in the Christian Examiner (1841) and the other on “The Philosophy of Cousin” in the North American Review (1841). The latter paper consists of a detailed criticism of Cousin’s “Elements of Psychology: included in a Critical Examination of Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding,” which had recently been translated from the French by Rev. C. S. Henry. It is to Cousin rather than to Jouffroy, as attested by the translations of this work and by the use of his textbook, that the French School is indebted for the influence which it then began to acquire in England and America. Cousin’s “Elements of Psychology,” which was reviewed by Bowen, was used at Harvard in 1845–46, and became a favorite textbook in a number of other American universities. The fact that Bowen had gained a thorough acquaintance of French and German philosophy while instructor from 1836 to 1839 must be kept in mind, as it was many years after he became a professor before these subjects found a large place in his courses of instruction.

There are two distinct and separate periods both in the method and in the character of instruction given by Bowen as successor to President Walker in the Alford professorship. The first period was from 1853 to 1870, during which he employed the customary method of recitations and adhered to the prevailing Scottish philosophy. The second period lasted from 1870 to his resignation in 1889, in which he gradually adopted the method of lectures as in harmony with the elective system, and introduced the Harvard students for the first time through regular instruction to the domain of German philosophy.

The instruction during the first period of his incumbency from 1853 to 1870 was mainly based upon Reid’s “Intellectual Powers of Man,” Stewart’s “Active and Moral Powers,” Bowen’s “Ethics and Metaphysics,” Hamilton’s “Metaphysics,” edited by Bowen, and Bowen’s “Logic.” From 1853 to 1856 during the first term the junior class recited three times a week in Reid’s “Intellectual Powers of Man” and the seniors three times a week in Stewart’s “Active and Moral Powers.” During the second term the juniors recited three times a week in Bowen’s “Ethics and Metaphysics” while the seniors studied political economy and constitutional law. From 1856 to 1857 the seniors only were taught philosophy. During the first academic term throughout the year this class recited four times a week from Bowen’s “Ethics and Metaphysics,” and likewise from 1860 to 1867 in Hamilton’s “Metaphysics.” During the second term the same class recited four times a week mainly on logic, using in successive years the logic of Mill, of Hamilton, and of Bowen. From 1867 to 1870 the sophomores and juniors were again included with the seniors in the study of philosophy. The sophomores recited at this time during one term, twice a week, in Stewart’s “Metaphysics” and the juniors in Bowen’s “Logic” and Hamilton’s “Metaphysics.” The senior class recited the first term three times a week in Bowen’s “Logic[”] and [“]Political Economy,” and the second term in Hamilton’s “Metaphysics” and Bowen’s “Ethics and Metaphysics.” Forensics were also read in alternate weeks throughout the year by the juniors and seniors. From this survey of the textbooks during the first period of Bowen’s teaching, between 1853 and 1870, it is evident that the Scottish philosophy still predominated in the philosophical instruction at Harvard.

[…]

In 1869, Charles W. Eliot became President of Harvard University. Almost immediately a radical change was effected in the entire method of instruction by the permanent adoption of the elective system. Bowen proved equal to the new demands in the philosophical department. He abandoned in large measure the method of recitation and gradually adopted the lecture system. The range of his textbooks was greatly enlarged. He broadened the entire scope of instruction in philosophy and between 1870 and 1874 introduced no less than five new courses. In 1870-71 he offered a course on formal logic, using doubtless De Morgan’s “Formal Logic,” in conjunction with Bowen’s “Ethics” and Mansel’s “Metaphysics.” He also founded a course in the same year which later was the first to receive in the curriculum the formal designation of “Psychology.” The textbooks used in it were Porter “On the Human Intellect,” Locke’s “Essay,” Cousin “On Locke,” and Mill’s “Examination of Sir William Hamilton.” This course was given for five years from 1870 to 1876. A course was also given for one year (1872-73) in ancient philosophy in which the textbooks studied were by Renouvier, Ueberweg, and Bouillier.

In the development of Bowen’s instruction during the second period, two courses in the history of philosophy are of greatest importance. In 1868 to 1870 a course had been introduced in the general history of philosophy with the use of Schwegler and Kant; and in 1870–71 this course became permanently established as part of the curriculum under the title of “French and German Philosophy.” It continued to be included in Bowen’s teaching for nineteen years, until his resignation in 1889. The textbooks used in it were Bouillier’s “Historie de la philosophie cartésienne” and Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” for the entire period; Schwegler’s “History of Philosophy” from 1870 to 1879; and Bowen’s “Modern Philosophy” from 1879 to 1889. In this course, in addition to Kant, the study of the later German metaphysicians was pursued by him with the aid in 1870 of his own excellently written sketches on the “History of Modern Philosophy.” The other course by Bowen mentioned as of significance in his philosophical instruction was one in modern German philosophy. It was first offered in 1873-74 and was given until 1889 throughout the remaining period of his academic instruction. In it German textbooks were for the first time used in the study of philosophy at Harvard. The authors and the works studied were Hartmann’s “Philosophie des Unbewussten” and Schopenhauer’s “Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung.” These works were translated by the students in the classroom and their philosophical doctrines discussed. To Bowen thus fairly belongs the credit during this period of introducing the study of German philosophy into Harvard. He also laid thereby broad foundations for the future development of the entire field of the history of philosophy in the University.

Bowen’s resignation as Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity took place at the close of the College year, 1888-89. In the annual Report, dated January 16, 1890, President Eliot wrote of him: “Mr. Bowen had been forty years in the service, four years as tutor (1835–39) and thirty-six years as Alford Professor (1853-89). In the earlier part of his service as Alford Professor he gave instruction in all the great subjects mentioned in the title of his chair: in the later years the Plummer Professor and the Professor of Political Economy had relieved him of large portions of the work assigned by its founder to the Alford Professorship. As teacher and author Professor Bowen was always learned, clear, positive, and incisive; as a member of the Faculty he was punctual in attendance, usually, but not uniformly conservative in his action, and courteous though strenuous in debate. In recognition of his long, faithful, and distinguished service he has been elected, since the beginning of the current year, Alford Professor Emeritus.”

Bowen lived only six months after his resignation. His death occurred January 21, 1870. Of him a writer at the time said: “The late Professor Bowen was in some respects a more remarkable man than the comments upon him since his death would indicate. He had not an original mind, but, like Mr. John Fiske, who has given a new popular rendering to American history, he had the faculty of using the knowledge accumulated or the results reached by others in a remarkable degree. He accumulated what was going in economics, politics, literary criticism, philosophical investigation and religious thought, as if in each department he were a specialist and his long list of works shows his versatility in this respect to have been, perhaps, more remarkable than that of any American of his time.”

An innovation in academic instruction occurred during the period of Bowen’s teaching by the addition to the regular curriculum of courses of university lectures. These were given by eminent men in different domains who received annual appointment. Only a few lectures were delivered by any one individual; so that in a course given throughout a single year six lecturers were employed. The system failed as a scheme for giving advanced instruction. The treatment of subjects was too disconnected. Students in the higher branches demanded more continuous and systematic training. The system, therefore, disappeared in 1871-72 after a trial of nine years. The best results, however, according to the President’s Report were attained by it in the year 1869–70 from the courses through the year in modern languages and philosophy. The success of the course in philosophy was undoubtedly due to the brilliant array of lecturers appointed in that year. The list included Ralph Waldo Emerson of Concord, J. Elliot Cabot of Brookline, George P. Fisher of Yale College, Charles S. Pierce and John Fiske of Cambridge. In 1870-71, which was the last year of this University lecture course in philosophy, R. W. Emerson lectured “On the Natural History of the Intellect”; J. E. Cabot on “Kant”; Chauncy Wright of Cambridge on “Psychology” C. S. Pierce on “Logic”; and John Fiske “On the Positive Philosophy.”

III

The development of religious and moral instruction in the University has always been closely associated with the philosophical department. Natural religion and moral philosophy were among the subjects specifically assigned to the Alford Chair. They likewise formed a part of the instruction given by the Hollis Professor of Divinity. Upon the appointment of Professor Bowen in 1853 the teaching of the religious and practical aspects of these subjects, as already mentioned, was transferred to President Walker, although he continued to give a course in “Religious Instruction,” as these branches were then designated, from 1853 to 1855. In 1855, however, a new professorship of “Christian Morals” was established through the will of Caroline Plummer. The full title of the incumbent was at first “Preacher to the University” and “Plummer Professor of Christian Works”; but in 1886 it was changed to “Plummer Professor of Christian Morals.” The course in religious instruction and Christian ethics which had been given by the President was then assigned to the Plummer Professor. The first incumbent of the new chair of Christian Morals was Frederic Dan Huntington (A.B. Amherst 1839), who held it from 1855 to 1860. Instruction was given by him to the freshman class in Whately’s “Lessons in Christian Morals,” and in Paley’s “Evidences of Christianity.” He also heard recitations from the seniors in Butler’s “Analogy.” In 1860 Professor Huntington resigned to become President of Saint Andrew’s Divinity School at Syracuse, New York. Later he became “Episcopal Bishop of Central New York,” an office he held until his death in 1904.

Professor Andrew Preston Peabody (H.U. [Harvard University] 1826) received in 1860 the second appointment made to the chair of Christian Morals. He retained this professorship for the long period of twenty-one years. From 1860 to 1875 he gave instruction twice a week both to the freshman and the senior classes; but from 1875 to 1881 his work was limited mainly to the senior class. With the freshmen he used from 1862 to 1873 Champlin’s “First Principles of Ethics,” which was an elementary textbook devoted chiefly to practical ethics. In 1873 Professor Peabody published a “Manual of Moral Philosophy,” which he had prepared for the special use of his freshman class. This work contained, in addition to a discussion of the motives of action and of the various virtues, an excellent outline of the history of moral philosophy. The textbook prescribed by him for the senior class was changed nearly every year. He used in turn Hopkins’s “Lectures on Moral Science,” Peabody’s “Lowell Lectures on Christian Doctrine,” Bulfinch’s “Evidences of Christianity,” Peabody’s “Christianity, the Religion of Nature,” Fleming’s “Manual of Moral Philosophy,” Stewart’s “Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man,” Calderwood’s “Handbook of Ethics,” Jouffrey’s “Ethics,” Upham’s “Elements of Mental Philosophy,” Hodgson’s “Theory of Practice on Ethical Inquiry,” Grote’s “Treatise on the Moral Ideals,” Janet’s “Ethics,” and Plutarch’s “Morals.” No better evidence than this list of works need be offered of the wide range of his knowledge and of the character of his instruction in Christian ethics. Upon his resignation in 1884, he was appointed Professor Emeritus. Thereafter he was engaged in constant literary activity, of which one result was the publication of his “Moral Philosophy” in 1887. His death occurred on the 10th of March, 1893. It was the personality of Professor Peabody, even more than the instruction he gave, which proved an inspiration to successive generations of students. He was a modern saint, and, as is said upon his memorial tablet in Appleton Chapel, “Wist not that his face shone ?”

In the foregoing description of the progress of philosophical instruction at Harvard during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we have dealt with the work of successive professors each of whom was responsible for teaching almost all the courses in philosophy. The system of instruction, moreover, during this period was organized to correspond with the four successive years of the college course. A new era was inaugurated with the adoption of the elective system. The classification of courses based upon college classes now gave place to a grouping according to subjects from the elementary to the most advanced. The gradual growth of the elective system resulted in 1879-80 in the entire disappearance of prescribed work in philosophy. Political economy had for many years been taught as part of the work of the Alford Professor of Civil Polity and was included in the department of philosophy even after a special instructor was appointed for the subject. In 1879-80, however, a separate department of political economy was formed. From a very early date forensics also had been regarded the peculiar work of the teacher of philosophy and Professor Palmer had charge of them after his appointment, until they too, in 1879-80, ceased to be required. Henceforward the work of the philosophical department was limited to its own peculiar sphere and the changes which take place therein are those due to development within its own domain. Philosophical instruction under the elective system now devolved upon a staff of teachers each of whom became responsible in large degree for special subjects or branches of philosophy.

Prior even to the adoption of the elective system a beginning had been made towards the enlargement of the philosophical staff. In 1866, Ephraim Gurney was appointed Assistant Professor of Intellectual Philosophy and as an associate of Professor Bowen taught for two years the course given in Bowen’s “Logic” and Hamilton’s “Metaphysics” to the junior class. He had as his immediate successors, who taught the same course, William Wells Newell, Instructor in Philosophy for the year 1868-69, and Ellis Peterson, Assistant Professor of Philosophy for the years 1870-72. But with the transition to the elective system and the consequent formation of a philosophical department, in the early history of which, as already described, Professors Bowen and Peabody had shared, there was made in successive years a series of appointments to the philosophical staff of younger men who were to assume the large responsibilities of the successful development of this important division under the newly adopted elective method of instruction.

[…]

In 1880, Francis Greenwood Peabody (H.U. [Harvard University] 1869) was appointed Parkman Professor in the Harvard Divinity School, where he taught homiletics, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. In 1882-83 he added to the scope of the philosophical instruction by offering two courses in the philosophical department of the College. One of these courses was upon the philosophy of religion and the other upon ethics in relation to religion. In the latter course, he used Spencer’s “Data of Ethics” and Maurice’s “Social Morality.” The social aspects of moral questions here discussed proved significant of the future development of his work. In 1883-84 he offered a course on ethical theories and the social problem, in which he treated the topics of charity, divorce, labor, Indians, prisons, and temperance. Thereafter, in a course designated “The Ethics of the Social Questions,” he discussed the practical ethics of modern society and required of students personal investigation of various institutions of charity or reform. In 1886 he was transferred from the Parkman professorship to the Plummer professorship of Christian Morals as successor to Professor Andrew Preston Peabody and thereby maintained the prestige of an honored name in the department. The work of social ethics developed under him to such proportions as to be formed in 1905 into a separate department of the philosophical division. This department, thoroughly equipped with a library and museum of social ethics, found permanent quarters for social research in 1905 in Emerson Hall.

[…]

A systematic course in which ethical theory was applied to the social problems owed its founding at Harvard, as already stated, to Professor Francis Greenwood Peabody. It was first given by him under the designation of “Social Ethics” in 1884, having been preceded by his course on “ethics in relation to religion” from 1882 to 1884. Religious instruction, Christian ethics, and Social ethics has thus been the progressive terminology applied to their courses of instruction by the three successive Plummer Professors of Christian Morals. In the course on social ethics emphasis was laid by Professor Peabody upon the moral aspects of the social questions as well as the philosophy of society involved. The ethics of the family, of poor relief, of the labor question, and of the drink question, were studied. In addition, students made personal investigations of various institutions for the amelioration of society. Dr. Benjamin Rand was associated with Professor Peabody in the successful development of this course from 1894 to 1902. The staff for the practical study of social problems was further enlarged by the appointments of Professor David Camp Rogers and Professor Jeffrey Richardson Brackett. Through the efforts of Professor Peabody a finely equipped department for instruction in social ethics was made possible by the wise gifts of Mr. Alfred Tredway White, toward the construction and endowment of it in Emerson Hall.

Source: Benjamin Rand. Philosophical Instruction in Harvard University from 1636-1906. pp. 14-19, 23-25, 28-33, 35-36, 41-42. Reprinted from The Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, Vol. XXXVII, 1928-1929.

Tags BowenF, Frisbie, Hedge, Peabody, RandB

Exam Questions Harvard Philosophy Social Work

Harvard. Description, enrollment and exam for Social Ethics. Peabody, 1907-1908

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-01-13

Social Ethics inhabited an academic borderland between the disciplines of economics and philosophy at Harvard in the early 20th century. Professor Francis Greenwood Peabody, himself a Unitarian minister and professor of theology, governed that territory which attracted many graduate students of economics interested in social policy.

This post adds to the collection of examinations given in his courses over the course of nearly two decades.

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Exams from past years

Exam questions this course from the late 19^th century have been transcribed and posted:

1888-1889; 1889-1890; 1890-1891; 1892-1893; 1893-1894; 1894-1895; 1895-1896.

1902-03. Listed as Philosophy 5. Taught by Peabody and Ireland.

1904-05. Listed as Philosophy 5 and Ethics 1. Taught by Peabody and Rogers.

1906-07. Taught by Peabody and Rogers.

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Peabody’s own short bibliography on the Ethics of Social Questions was published in 1910.

Another post provides the history of Harvard’s Department of Social Ethics up through 1920.

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Course Description
1907-08

Social Ethics. — The problems of Poor-Relief, the Family, Temperance, and various phases of the Labor Question, in the light of ethical theory. Lectures, special researches, and prescribed reading. Tu., Th., Sat., at 10. Professor Peabody and Dr. Rogers.

This course is an application of ethical theory to the social problems of the present day. It is to be distinguished from economic courses dealing with similar subjects by the emphasis laid on the moral aspects of the Social Question and on the philosophy of society involved. Its introduction discusses various theories of Ethics and the nature and relations of the Moral Ideal [required reading from Mackenzie’s Introduction to Social Philosophy, and Seth’s Study of Ethical Principles]. The course then considers the ethics of the family [required reading from Spencer’s Principles of Sociology (Volume 1; Volume 2; Volume 3)]; the ethics of poor-relief [required reading from Charles Booth’s Life and Labor of the People (links below), and Devine’s Practice of Charity]; the ethics of the labor question [required reading from Carlyle’s“Past and Present”, Ruskin’s “Unto this Last”, Adams and Sumner’s, Labor Problems]; and the ethics of the drink question [required reading from The Liquor Problem; a Summary of Investigations]. In addition to lectures and required reading two special and detailed reports are made by each student, based as far as possible on personal research and observation of scientific methods in poor-relief and industrial reform. These researches are arranged in consultation with the instructor or his assistant; and an important feature of the course is the suggestion and direction of such personal investigation, and the provision to each student of special literature or opportunities for observation.

Source: Announcement of the Divinity School of Harvard University, 1907-08, p. 22.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Charles Booth’s Life and Labor of the People:

(Original) Volume I, East London;
(Original) Volume II, London;
(Original) Appendix to Volume II;
Note: the previous three original volumes were re-printed as four volumes that then were followed by
Volume V, Population Classified by Trades;
Volume VI, Population Classified by Trades (cont.);
Volume VII, Population Classified by Trades;
Volume VIII, Population Classified by Trades (cont.);
Volume IX, Comparisons, Survey and Conclusions.

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Course Enrollment
1907-08

Social Ethics 1. Professor Peabody and Dr. Rogers. — Social Ethics. The problems of Poor-Relief, the Family, Temperance, and various phases of the Labor Question, in the light of ethical theory.

Total 108: 3 Graduates, 13 Seniors, 44 Juniors, 38 Sophomores, 2 Freshman, 8 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1907-1908, p. 69.

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SOCIAL ETHICS 1
Year-end Examination 1907-08

The economic doctrines of Carlyle and Ruskin compared and criticized.
[cf: “Past and Present” by Thomas Carlyle; “Unto this Last” by John Ruskin]
The philosophies of the anarchist and the communist compared.
The political origins of the Labor Question in Great Britain.
The German school of Socialism; its philosophy of history, its principles and its demands.
French and English precedents in Arbitration and Conciliation, applied to the circumstances of the United States. (Lectures, and Adams & Sumner, pp. 289-305.)
The progress of Labor Legislation in the United States, and its relation to the doctrines of free contract and class legislation. (Adams & Sumner, p. 466 ff.)
The “third party” to industrial disputes; and the American method of safeguarding its interests.
The Canadian Industrial Disputes Investigation Act; its intention, limitations, and results.
The German system of Workingmen’s Insurance, its principles, methods, and applicability to the United States.
Four types of Industrial Partnership; their historical sequence, and relative importance.
The relation of the Drink Problem to poverty, crime and nationality, in the United States. (Summary of the Liquor Problem, ch. 4.)

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers, 1873-1915. Box 8, Bound vol. Examination Papers 1908-09 (HUC 7000.25), pp. 58-59.

Image Source: Harvard University Archives. Francis Greenwood Peabody [photographic portrait, ca. 1900], Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Tags Peabody

Exam Questions Harvard Philosophy Socialism

Harvard. Final examination for Ethics of the Social Questions. Peabody, 1905-1906

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2024-07-27

In 1905-06 Francis Greenwood Peabody’s popular course on the ethics of the social questions was listed for the first time as one of the course offerings in a new sub-departmental unit “Social Ethics” within the Philosophy Department. In previous years the course was listed as “Philosophy 5”. It was a relatively popular field chosen for economics Ph.D. general examinations.

More about Professor Peabody can be found in the earlier post for 1902-03 together with the final examination questions from that year. Here the course description and exam from 1904-05. Readings and final exam for social ethics in 1906-07.

A fully linked transcription of Peabody’s own short bibliography of social ethics published in 1910 is also of interest.

Note: the items cited in the exam are found in the original printed exam. Links to the corresponding passages have been added.

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A Peek into Likely Course Content

Cf. Francis Greenwood Peabody’s The Approach to the Social Question (New York: Macmillan, 1912). “The substance of this volume was given as the Earle Lectures at the Pacific Theological Seminary in 1907.”

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Course Enrollment
1905-06

Social Ethics 1 ²hf. Professor Peabody and Dr. Rogers. — Ethics of the Social Questions. The problems of Poor-Relief, the Family, Temperance, and various phases of the Labor Question, in the light of ethical theory. Lectures, special researches, and prescribed reading. Half-course (second half-year). Tu., Th., Sat., at 10.

Total 165: 5 Graduates, 24 Seniors, 59 Juniors, 50 Sophomores, 2 Freshmen, 11 Divinity, 14 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1905-1906, p. 75.

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SOCIAL ETHICS 1²
Year-end Exam, 1905-06

The place in the ethics of industry of :—
The Civic Federation.
Mundella.
Conseils de Prud’hommes.
Employers’ Associations. (Adams and Sumner, page 279.)
The Social-Democratic Party in Germany; its history and principles.
Economic and ethical criticisms on the programme of Revolutionary Socialism.
“The labor movement in America already exhibits a manifest tendency in the same direction [towards organized socialism] in which it moves in older countries.” (Sombart, Sozialismus und sozialistische Bewegung, s. 249.) How far is this judgment justified by the history of Collectivism, and by the present attitude of Tradesunionism [sic], in the United States?
Industrial education, in its relation to child-labor and to economic efficiency. (Lecture of R. A. Woods.)
The methods and policies of labor-organization in the United States. (Adams and Sumner, pages 245 ff.)
“Have the conditions of employment and the material comfort of the working classes really improved since the introduction of the factory system?” (Adams and Sumner, page 502.) The answer of these authors to their own question, and some of the evidence which they cite.
Compare, in their importance for the ethics of industry, the system of profit-sharing and the system of industrial partnership.
“Trade-agreements,” considered in their relations to the rights of the people.
The relation of the drink-habit in the United States to poverty and crime; and the economic forces now operating for temperance, (“The Liquor Problem,” Chapter IV, pages 108-134.)

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 8, Bound volume: Examination Papers, 1906-07; Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1906), p. 59.

Tags Peabody

Bibliography Harvard Philosophy Socialism

Harvard. Short Bibliography of Social Ethics for “Serious-minded Students”, Peabody, 1910

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2024-02-06

In 1910 Harvard published 43 short bibliographies covering “Social Ethics and Allied Subjects”, about half of which were dedicated to particular topics in economics, economic sociology, and social ethics. The project was coordinated by Plummer Professor of Christian Morals, Francis G. Peabody who compiled three of the short bibliographies.

Peabody regularly taught a course on the Ethics of Social Questions [e.g., 1902-03; 1904-05] so we may presume that most of the items listed below would have been in whole or in part assigned reading.

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About Francis G. Peabody

Links to biographical information previously posted

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Previously posted Harvard short bibliographies
(1910)

I.2. Economic Theory by Taussig

I.3. Economic History by Gay

I.7. Social Statistics by Ripley

II.3. Taxation by Bullock

IV.5 Economics of Socialism by Carver

IV.6 Socialism and Family/Christian Ethics by McConnell

IV.7. Trade Unionism by Ripley

IV.8. Strikes and Boycotts by Ripley

IV.12 Thrift Institutions by Oliver M. W. Sprague

IV.13. Social Insurance by Foerster

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SOCIAL ETHICS
FRANCIS G. PEABODY

The sources of instruction in Social Ethics must be sought in the philosophical masterpieces which study the individual in his relation to social order: Maurice, Social Morality, 1869; Plato, The Republic, tr. Jowett, 1871; Grote, A Treatise on the Moral Ideals, 1876; Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, 1883; Aristotle, Politics, tr. Jowett, 1885; Fichte, Vocation of Man, tr. Smith, 1889; Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, tr. Abbott, 5th ed., 1898; Royce, The World and the Individual, 1901.

Of contemporary and less academic titles, the following, out of a great number, may be named:

Addams, Jane. Democracy and social ethics. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1902, pp. 281.

A forcible exposition of the new duties created by a new social world. “The essential idea of democracy becomes the source and expression of social ethics” (p. 11).

Bosanquet, Helen. The strength of the people, a study in social economics. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1902, pp. xi, 345.

The correlation of circumstance and character traced in the problems of poverty, the family and industrialism. “‘Difficulties to overcome and freedom to overcome them’ is an essential condition of progress” (p. 339).

*Dewey, John, and Tufts, James H. Ethics. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1908, pp. xiv, 618.

Ethical theory interpreted in its relation to “the world of action.” The ethics of social organization, economic life, politics and the family effectively described.

Dole, Charles F. The ethics of progress. New York: T. Y. Crowell & Co., 1909, pp. vii, 308.

A popular and lucid exposition of “the new morality.”

Henderson, Charles R. Practical sociology in the service of social ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1902, pp. 25.

“Social technology” as the guide of social philosophy.

Hobson, J. A. The social problem; life and work. London: James Pott, 1902, pp. x, 295.

Socialism applied to the “economy of national life.” “The Social Question will find its essential unity in the problem how to deal with human waste” (p. 7). “An organized democracy standing on a sound basis of property” (p. 130).

Jones, Henry. Idealism as a practical creed. Glasgow: J. Maclehose & Sons, 1909, pp. ix, 299.

A lucid and serene exposition of the practical efficiency of ethical idealism. “The call of modern age” is a call to the “earnest questioning of our ideals of life” (p. 220).

Jones, Henry. The working faith of a social reformer. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1910, pp. xii, 308.

Lectures to students for the ministry, and collected essays, expounding the interdependence of individualism and socialism, or the concurrent evolution of social and individual rights, duties and powers” (p. 111).

*Mackenzie, John S. An introduction to social philosophy. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1890, pp. xi, 390.

An academic, somewhat elusive, but judicial and suggestive outline, which has not yet been superseded.

Muirhead, J. H. Philosophy and life and other essays. London: Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., 1902, pp. 274.

Admirable essays on various aspects of the ethics of modern life.

Peabody, Francis G. The approach to the social question. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1909, pp. vii, 210.

The ways of social science, sociology and economics traced, and the ethical approach approved and explored.

Perry, R. B. The moral economy. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909, pp. xvi, 267.

A searching and convincing analysis of the moral life in its relation to science, art and religion.

Ritchie, David G. Studies in political and social ethics. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1905, pp. ix, 238.

Occasional papers on the fundamental problems of social evolution, equality, liberty and responsibility.

*Stein, Ludwig. Die soziale Frage im Lichte der Philosophie. 2te verb. Aufl. Stuttgart: F. Enke, 1903, xvi, 598 S.

A brilliant survey of the history of social philosophy, with the outline of a system. Anti-socialist, but describing the “socializing” of property, law, politics and religion.

Wells, H. G. Mankind in the making. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1904, pp. viii, 400.

Social organization in the “New Republic,” with regulation of births, language, education and politics.

Ziegler, Theobald. Die soziale Frage eine sittliche Frage. 6te Aufl. Leipzig: G. J. Göschen‘sche Verlagshandlung, 1899, 183 S.

An early, but permanently important study of the social problem by an ethical philosopher. The moral note in socialism, industrialism and politics detected and reaffirmed.

Source: A guide to reading in social ethics and allied subjects; lists of books and articles selected and described for the use of general readers by teachers in Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University, 1910) pp. 22-24.

Image Source: Harvard University Archives. Francis Greenwood Peabody [photographic portrait, ca. 1900], Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Tags Peabody

Exam Questions Harvard Socialism

Harvard. Course description and exam for Ethics of the Social Questions. Peabody, 1904-05

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2023-12-06

With the growth of the Harvard economics and economics-related course offerings exploding at the start of the 20th century, it’s taking more time for Economics in the Rear-View Mirror to work through all the courses, year by year as we move forwards. Of course the collection of artifacts becomes more valuable as the sample size increases, but I am aware that other content is wanted by visitors too. Or at least a nice mixture across time and space.

Anyhow, this post completes the Harvard exam transcriptions for 1904-05. It was not technically an economics course, but enough economics graduate students took the course for this to be considered a serious elective or even field of specialization at the time. And any present day economist not interested in the socio-normative side of economic life is unlikely to follow Economics in the Rear-View Mirror.

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The Instructors

Francis Greenwood Peabody, A.M., D.D., Dean of the Divinity School, and Plummer Professor of Christian Morals. The field “Social Ethics” was his responsibility in the teaching programs of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (Philosophy) and the Divinity School (Ethics). It was a fairly popular elective field for graduate students in economics. Exam questions for 1889-90 and most intermediate years have been posted earlier.

David Camp Rogers (1878-1959). A.B. Princeton 1899. A.M. Harvard 1902 Ph.D. Harvard 1903 (Thesis: Coördinations in Space Perceptions). First Professor of Psychology at Smith College, appointed 1914. If this seems like an odd pairing of teaching assistant to professor, it would not have seemed particularly odd at that time. Both the study of ethics and human psychology were covered by the philosophy department. To get a Ph.D. in philosophy would have required examination in several fields of philosophy, so I suppose that ethics, or social ethics, was one of Rogers’ examination fields. He probably did well in the exam and was offered a teaching assistantship in social ethics on that basis.

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Course Enrollment
1904-05
[also listed as Ethics 1]

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

[Philosophy] 5 ¹hf. Professor Peabody, assisted by Dr. Rogers. — Ethics of the Social Questions. The problems of Poor-Relief, the Family, Temperance, and various phases of the Labor Question, in the light of ethical theory.

Total 122: 7 Graduates, 35 Seniors, 47 Juniors, 12 Sophomores, 1 Freshmen, 20 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1904-1905, p. 76.

The Divinity School

[Ethics] 1 ¹hf. Professor Peabody, assisted by Dr. Rogers. — Introductory Course. — The Ethics of the Social Questions. — The modern social questions: Charity, the Family, Temperance, and various phases of the Labor Question, in the light of ethical theory. — Lectures, special researches, and required reading. Half-course.

Total 122: 7 Graduates, 99 College, 5 Sc., 11 Divinity.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1904-1905, p. 173.

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Course Description
1904-05

Ethics

Introductory Course. The Ethics of the Social Questions. — The modern social questions: Charity, the Family, Temperance, and various phases of the Labor Question, in the light of ethical theory. Lectures, special researches, and required reading. Tu., Th., Sat., at 10. Professor Peabody, assisted by Dr. Rogers.

This course is an application of ethical theory to the social problems of the present day. It is to be distinguished from economic courses dealing with the same subjects by the emphasis laid on the moral aspects of the social situation and on the philosophy of society involved. Its introduction discusses various theories of Ethics and the nature of the Moral Ideal [required reading from (John Stuart) Mackenzie’s Introduction to Social Philosophy]. The course then considers the ethics of the family [required reading from (Herbert) Spencer’s Principles of Sociology (3^rd edition: Vol. 1; Vol. 2; Vol. 3)];the ethics of poor-relief [required reading from Devine, The Practice of Charity, and from Charles Booth’s Life and Labour of the People in London (1903 edition) [First Series, Poverty: Vol. 1; Vol. 2; Vol. 3; Vol. 4. Second Series, Industry: Vol. 1; Vol. 2; Vol. 3; Vol. 4; Vol. 5. Third Series: Religious Influences: Vol. 1; Vol. 2; Vol. 3; Vol. 4; Vol. 5; Vol. 6; Vol. 7; Concluding Volume]; the ethics of the labor question [required reading: J.A. Hobson, The Social Problem; Schäffle’s The Quintessence of Socialism] and the ethics of the drink question [required reading from Rowntree and Sherwell, The Temperance Problem and Social Reform]. In addition to lectures and required reading two special and detailed reports are made by each student, based as far as possible on personal research and observation of scientific methods in poor-relief and industrial reform. These researches are arranged in consultation with the instructor; and an important feature of the course is the suggestion and direction of such personal investigations, and the provision to each student of special literature or opportunities for observation.

A special library of 700 carefully selected volumes is provided for the use of students in this course.

Source: Announcement of the Divinity School of Harvard University 1904-05, pp. 21-22.

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PHILOSOPHY 5¹
THE ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS

The chief historical steps in the evolution of the family.
The relation of the Family to the State:—
(a) As urged by Mr. Spencer (Spencer, Sociology, I, 707).
(b) As proposed by “Scientific Socialism.”
Certain economic movements which affect the integrity of the Family.
The causes of poverty, classified and compared.
The evolution of the “Double-Decker,” and the provisions of the New York “New Law” for tenements.
Charles Booth’s Class E in East London; its dimensions, special risk of degradation, and the way of security proposed.
Some elementary principles of organized charity (Devine, The Practice of Charity, ch. IX).
Compare the “Case System” with the “Space System.”
Compare the Church Districting System with the Liverpool system of collection.
Germany and Belgium compared in their provision for the “out-of-works.”

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 7, Bound volume: Examination Papers, 1904-05; Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1905), p. 45.

Image Source: Harvard University Archives. Francis Greenwood Peabody [photographic portrait, ca. 1900], Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Tags Peabody

Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Economics and Social Ethics Semester Examinations, 1895-96

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2022-02-02

Professor Charles Dunbar had a leave of absence for the 1895-96 academic year at Harvard. His courses on public finance were taught by Dr. John Cummings and Dr. J.A. Hill. Professor Frank Taussig returned from his year leave of absence for 1894-95 and taught (among other courses) the history of financial institutions, Dunbar’s second field of specialization.

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1895-96.
The Ethics of the Social Questions.

Course Enrollment for Philosophy 5

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Philosophy] 5 . Professor Peabody. — The Ethics of the Social Questions. — The problems of Poor-Relief, the Family, Temperance, and various phases of the Labor Question in the light of ethical theory. — Lectures, special researches, and required reading. 3 hours.

Total 88: 7 Graduates, 49 Seniors, 12 Juniors, 2 Sophomores, 18 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 60.

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Mid-Year Examination

1895-96.
PHILOSOPHY 5.
THE ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS.

[This paper should be considered as a whole. The time should not be exhausted in answering a few questions, but such limit should be given to each answer as will permit the answering of all the questions in the time assigned.]

What is meant by;

Exogamy;
Marriage by capture;
The Patriarchal theory;
“The family is the unit of civilization”?

The stability of the family as affected by:

(a) city life.
(b) the conflict of State laws.
(c) the philosophy of individualism.
(d) the philosophy of collectivism.

Spencer’s view of the regime of the family in relation to the regime of the State (Principles of Sociology I, 707 pp.), with criticisms.
The distribution of wealth in Great Britain or in the United States, statistically illustrated; and its lessons,
Illustrate the indirect economic value of judicious charity.
Charles Booth’s Class B in East London; its character, dimensions, relation to the general problem of poverty, and suggested treatment. Life and Labor of the People, I, 39-44; 162-169.)
The new inquiry undertaken by Mr. Charles Booth (Vol. V and VI, 1895); its relation to the preceding researches and its confirmation of earlier results.
“What is good in the poor-administration of Germany is due to good citizenship. … We have not citizenship enough to administer it.” (C. S. Loch, Parliamentary Report of 1888, p. 88.) Compare, in the light of this comment, the English and German theories of municipal relief.
The influx to the great cities in its effect on methods of poor-relief.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 3, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1895-96.

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Final Examination

1895-96.
PHILOSOPHY 5.
THE ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS.

Explain and illustrate, briefly, what is meant by:

“The social questions are ethical questions.”
“The correlation of the social questions.”

The doctrines of social progress in Carlyle and in Ruskin compared in their bearing on the modern industrial situation.
Consider the principle of social labour-time as the standard of value:

(a) Mr. Ruskin’s theory of value;
(b) The plan proposed by scientific socialism (Schäffle, p. 81);
(c) Schäffle’s criticism of this view (ch. VI., VII.);
(d) Your own judgment.

“Socialism has no necessary affinity with any forms of violence, or confiscation, or class selfishness, or financial arrangement. … The aim of socialism is the fulfilment of service; the aim of individualism is the attainment of some personal advantage, riches, or place, or fame.” — Bishop Westcott.
“Socialism, as I understand it, is any theory of social organization which sacrifices the legitimate liberties of individuals to the will or interest of the community.” — Professor Flint.
Which of these definitions appears to you more justified by the history and tendency of socialism? What do you understand to be the “quintessence” of socialism?
The economic and ethical criticisms commonly urged against the programme of collectivism, and your estimate of their importance.
The ethical place and lessons of:

Anarchism;
Communism;
Arbitration.

Compare the plans of industrial unity illustrated by the Anzin collieries, the Val-des-Bois Mill, and the Hebden Bridge Mill.
The coöperative movement in Great Britain, its principles, its expansion, and the conditions of success for the system in this country. In federalistic coöperation what should be, in your judgment, the principle of distributing the bonus?
The polities and the ethics of the Maine liquor law (Fanshawe, VII.)

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination papers 1873-1915. Box 4, Bound volume: Examination Papers 1896-97. Papers Set for Final Examinations in Philosophy, History, Government, Economics, Fine Arts, Architecture, and Music in Harvard College, June 1896.

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1895-96.
Outlines of Economics.

Course Enrollment for Economics 1

Primarily for Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 1. Professors Taussig and Ashley, Asst. Professor Edward Cummings, and Dr. John Cummings. — Outlines of Economics. — Mill’s Principles of Political Economy. — Lectures on Economic Development, Distribution, Social Questions, and Financial Legislation. 3 hours.

Total 338: 3 Graduates, 35 Seniors, 91 Juniors, 161 Sophomores, 8 Freshmen, 40 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 63.

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Mid-Year Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 1.

Is all wealth produced by labor?
Compare the distinction between fixed and circulating capital with the distinction between auxiliary and remuneratory capital; and state why one or the other distinction is the more satisfactory.
Are differences in profits from employment to employment similar in kind to differences in wages from occupation to occupation?
In what way are differences of wages affected by the absence of effective competition between laborers? by its presence?
What are the grounds for saying that rent is a return differing in kind from interest?
Trace the effects of an issue of inconvertible paper money, less in quantity than the specie previously in use, on (1) the circulation of specie, (2) the foreign exchanges, (3) the relations of debtor to creditor.
State Mill’s reasoning as to the mode in which, under a double standard, one metal is driven from circulation; and explain how the actual process differs from that analyzed by Mill.
What are the grounds for saying that the gain of international trade does not come from the sale of surplus produce beyond the domestic demand?
In what manner is the price of landed property affected by an increased quantity of money? by a rise in the rate of interest?
Wherein does monopoly value present a case different from that of the usual operation of the laws of value?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 3, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1895-96.

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Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 1.

[Answer ten questions. Arrange your answers strictly in the order of the questions.]

GROUP I.
[At least one.]

Explain the meaning of two of the following terms, — margin of cultivation; wages of superintendence; rapidity of circulation (as to money).
Do profits constitute a return different from interest?
Explain what is meant by the law, or equation, of demand and supply; and in what manner it applies to commodities susceptible of indefinite multiplication without increase of cost.
In what manner does a country gain from the division of labor in its domestic trade? In what manner from international trade?

GROUP II.
[At least one.]

Does it fall within the province of the economist to discuss the institution of private property?
Show the connection between the industrial development of the present century, and the discussion among economists as to the functions of the entrepreneur.
Consider in what manner prices, or rents, [choose one] are differently determined according as they are under the influence of custom or of competition.
“The idea that economic life has ever been a progress mainly dependent on individual action is mistaken with regard to all stages of civilization, and in some respects it is the more mistaken the farther we go back.” Explain and criticize.

GROUP III.
[At least one.]

If coöperation were universally adopted, what would be left of the wages system?
Is there anything in what you learned as to the laws governing wages, which the action of the English trade-unions in regard to wages has disregarded?
Has the course of events justified Mill’s expectations in regard to the development of profit-sharing and of cooperation? Explain why, or why not.
Describe the trade and benefit features of the English trade-unions.

GROUP IV.
[At least three.]

Is the present position of the Treasury of the United States in any respect essentially similar to that of the Issue Department of the Bank of England? In any respect essentially dissimilar?
What is the test of over-issue, as to inconvertible paper money? What light does the experience of the United States and of France throw on the probability of over-issue?
Arrange in their proper order the following items in a bank account:

Capital	100,000	Bonds and Stocks	75,000
Specie	150,000	Surplus	50,000
Notes	100,000	Other Assets	50,000
Loans	400,000	Other Liabilities	60,000
Expenses	25,000	Undivided Profits	40,000
Deposits	350,000

Could this bank be a national bank of the United States? If such a bank, how would the account stand?

Compare the policy of the Bank of England in times of financial crisis with the policy of the Associated Banks of New York; and give an opinion as to which is the more effective in allaying panic.

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1895-96.
Economic Theory from Adam Smith to the present time.

Course Enrollment for Economics 2.

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 2. Professors Ashley and Macvane. — Economic Theory from Adam Smith to the present time. — Selections from Adam Smith and Ricardo. — Modern Writers. —Lectures. 3 hours.

Total 37: 5 Graduates, 14 Seniors, 7 Juniors, 4 Sophomores, 7 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 63.

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Mid-Year Examination.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 2

N.B. — Not more than seven questions must be attempted.

Compare the Aristotelian conception of Wealth with that of modern economists.
Explain the growth, in the later Middle Ages, of the theory of “Interest.”
Consider briefly the claims to consideration, in the history of economic thought, of Nicholas Oresme and Antoine de Montchrétien.
“It was reserved for the eighteenth century to let in the grand idea of necessity, and to prove that the rate of wages established in a country was the inevitable consequence of the circumstances in which that country was placed, and had no connection with the wishes of any individual, or, indeed, with the wishes of any class.” (Buckle, History of Civilization.) Consider this.
Explain the “plan” of the Wealth of Nations, and consider how far it agrees with the contents of the work.
State and discuss Adam Smith’s doctrine of the Component Parts of Price.
“A man must always live in his work.” Discuss the accuracy of this proposition, and the use made of it by Adam Smith and later economists.
The effect upon English economists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of their observation of the United Netherlands.
“Every candid reader knows that Mr. Malthus laid no stress on his unlucky attempt to give numerical precision to things which do not admit of it, and every person capable of reasoning must see that it is wholly superfluous to his argument.” (Mill). Consider this.
With what justice can socialists claim the authority of Ricardo for their “iron law of wages”?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 3, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1895-96.

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Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 2.

Take any three of the five questions.

State your conclusions regarding the various definitions of Cost of Production. Are wages an element in Cost? Show whether economic cost and commercial (or employers’) cost may vary independently of each other.
State briefly the views of Henry George, Marshall, and Boehm-Bawerk (or any other three writers) regarding the law of Interest. Give also your own conclusions.
Set down carefully your conclusions as to the source and the law of Wages. Examine at least one opposing view.
Explain and examine the Marginal Utility theory of Value. How is it reconciled with the observed connection between value and cost?
Is a high level of wages in a country an obstacle to foreign trade?

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1895-96.
The Principles of Sociology.

Course Enrollment for Economics 3.

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 3. Asst. Professor Edward Cummings. — The Principles of Sociology. — Development of the Modern State, and of its Social Functions. 2 hours.

Total 37: 8 Graduates, 21 Seniors, 6 Juniors, 2 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 63.

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Mid-Year Examination.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 3.

(Arrange your answers in the order of your questions. Omit one.)

“Hence, in this case we may assert clearly that when the individual is removed the social ceases to be, and that there is absolutely nothing in society which does not exist in a state of subdivision and continual repetition in the living individuals, — or which has not existed in the dead ancestors from whom the living proceed.” Explain carefully. Compare this conception of society with the “social organism” conception, and state clearly your own views.
What do you conceive to have been the habits and characteristics of primitive man in “a state of nature”? Discuss the evidence presented by Westermarck, Spencer, and others.
“In a word, the physiological bond, which of old constituted the main foundation of the small domestic societies, then of the tribes, then of the ancient cities, is still the essential foundation of the great nations of today.” Explain carefully. What according to Spencer, have been the merits and defects of the various forms of family organization? What are the present tendencies?
“Entangled and confused with one another as Ceremonial and Fashion are, they have thus different origins and meanings.” Explain. Trace carefully the significance of these differences, and give examples.
“Class distinctions, then, date back to the beginnings of social life.”
In what order have political institutions evolved? What have been the chief determining factors?
“M. Alfred Fouillée has endeavored to express the truth of both ways of regarding society by saying that the highest form of it must be an ‘organism contractuel,’ — a formula that may perhaps gain more general acceptance than anything expressed in the phraseology of German idealism.” Explain carefully.
Discuss the views of Spencer and of Comte in regard to the scope of sociology and its relation to other sciences

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 3, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1895-96.

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Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 3.

Answer the questions in the order in which they stand. Give one hour to each division.

I.

A critical estimate of Giddings’ Principles of Sociology, — contrasted (a) with Spencer, (b) with Tarde.

II.

A critical estimate of Evolution and Effort, — contrasting it with views set forth in Social Evolution.

III.

The bearing of sociological theory upon the practical problems of (a) poverty, (b) pauperism, (c) crime.
Which of the books read during this half-year (and not already discussed) has seemed to you of greatest worth? Why?

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1895-96.
The Theory of Statistics.

Course Enrollment for Economics 4².

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 4². Dr. John Cummings. — The Theory of Statistics. — Applications to Social and Economic Problems. — Studies in movements of Population. Hf. 3 hours. 2d half year.

Total 19: 2 Graduates, 11 Seniors, 4 Juniors, 2 Sophomores.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 64.

* * * * * * * * * *

Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 4.

(Divide your time equally between A and B.)

A
I and II may be treated as one question.

What do you understand by “movement of population”? What light do Statistics throw upon the law of population as stated by Malthus?
What are some of the “more striking facts and more pregnant results of the vast growth of population in Europe, America, and the British Colonies within the last half century”?

B.
Take five.

In constructing a life table what correction must be made for abnormal age and sex distribution of the population?
Define the following terms: “Mortality,” “Expectation of Life,” “Mean Duration of Life.” How should you calculate the mean duration of life from the census returns for any community?
How should you calculate the economic value of a population?
What are some of the inaccuracies to which censes enumerations are liable?
What is the nature of a statistical law? of what categories of social phenomena may statistical laws be formulated? in what sense are they laws? How do they bear upon freedom of the will in human conduct?
How do the conditions of observation in social sciences differ from conditions of observation in the natural sciences?
What do you understand by the law of criminal saturation?
By what considerations should the Statistician be guided in in making selection of social phenomena for investigation?

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1895-96.
Railway Transportation.

Course Enrollment for Economics 5¹.

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 5¹. Professor Taussig. — Railway Transportation. — Lectures and written work. Hf. 3 hours. 1st half year.

Total 43: 6 Graduates, 27 Seniors, 7 Juniors, 3 Law.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 64.

* * * * * * * * * *

Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 5.

The means of transportation in the United States in 1855.
Is there historical warrant for the assertion that in United States the construction and operation of railways have been left mainly to private enterprise?
The resemblances and differences between the legislation of Iowa on maximum rates, and that of England.
Are there good grounds for alarm at the tendency to consolidation and the growth of great systems among railways?
“There was never a more mistaken idea than the idea that rates would be reduced if they were based on cost of service. The principle keeps rates up. If it is strictly applied, it makes it necessary that each item of business should pay its share of fixed charges.” Why? or why not?
“It is not true that when the price falls below cost of production, people always find it for their interest to refuse to produce at a disadvantage. It very often involves worse loss to stop producing than to produce below cost.” Why and how, as to railways?
The provisions of the Interstate Commerce Act which bear on

an agreement to maintain certain rates;
an agreement to divide earnings;
a lower rate for one hundred carloads than for one carload;
a postage-stamp rate;
a higher rate for a shorter than for a longer distance.

Does the history of pooling arrangements in the United States justify the assertion that they tend to remove inequalities in the rates to shippers?
The lessons of public railway management in Italy and in France.
The evidence as to the financial and economic success of public railway management in Prussia.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 3, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1895-96.

Also found in: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination papers 1873-1915. Box 4, Bound volume: Examination Papers 1896-97. Papers Set for Final Examinations in Philosophy, History, Government, Economics, Fine Arts, Architecture, and Music in Harvard College, June 1896.

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1895-96.
History of Tariff Legislation in the United States.

Course Enrollment for Economics 6¹.

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 6¹. Professor Taussig. — History of Tariff Legislation in the United States. Hf. 2 hours. 1st half year.

Total 88: 11 Graduates, 40 Seniors, 20 Juniors, 5 Sophomores, 12 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 64.

* * * * * * * * * *

Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 6.

Arrange your answers strictly in the order of the questions. One question, and one only, may be omitted.

What earlier legislation affected the provisions of the tariff act of 1789? What light does the earlier legislation throw on the character of this act?
Was the argument for protection to young industries more applicable to cotton goods in 1816 than to silk goods in 1870?
What changes were made, in 1833, in the duties on woollens, cottons, linens, and worsteds? Why the differences in policy?
What were the grounds on which it was maintained, in 1828-32, that a tax on imports was virtually a tax on exports? How far was the assertion true?
Mention points of similarity and points of difference between Webster’s speech of 1824 and Gallatin’s memorial of 1831.
Should you say that the position of the protective system in public opinion was the same in 1870-90 as in 1816-32?
Explain the legislation in regard to the duties on sugar in the acts of 1890 and 1894. Was the at of 1894 more advantageous than its predecessor to the planters? to the refiners? to the public?
What do you believe would now be the effect, on domestic industries, of the free admission of (1) pig iron, (2) woollen goods, (3) linens?
In what mode were the tea and coffee duties dealt with in the period 1840-60? in the period 1865-95? What explanation of the general course of policy can you give in either case?
In what cases, if in any, are duties on imports a charge on the foreign producer?
The significance of the events of 1860 for the tariff history of France and of England.
Is there ground for saying that the drift since 1870 toward protective duties, in the United States and on the Continent of Europe, rests on the same general causes?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 3, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1895-96.

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1895-96.
Financial Administration and Public Debts.

Course Enrollment for Economics 7¹.

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 7¹. Dr. John Cummings. — Financial Administration and Public Debts. Hf. 3 hours. 1st half year.

Total 27: 1 Graduate, 8 Seniors, 12 Juniors, 1 Sophomore, 5 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 64.

* * * * * * * * * *

Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 7.

Divide your time equally between A and B. I and II may be treated as one question.

A.

Give an account of the sinking fund provisions enacted by Congress 1790-1820; and of the management and refunding of the debt during this period.
Examine and criticise the following account of the evolution of public credit, with a view to determining whether a government is ever justified in pledging the State to any definite policy of debt payment:—

“In this evolution, as in all others, there are transition stages: we have debts of long term, but secured by the pledging of public property or of income from taxes. Then we have a long period of redemption without such a pledge. The plan of discharging the debt simply on the ground of financial expediency, to which the debtor state has accustomed itself, presently takes the place of redemption simply at the instance of impatient creditors. Finally the question of redemption comes by mutual consent to be left entirely undetermined.”

B.
(Take any five of the questions following.)

What effect upon the present worth of a security has lengthening the term for which it is to run?
Give an account of the payment of the war indemnity to Germany.
Discuss the “use and disuse of ‘relishes,’ gambling risks which are added in order to commend a public loan to the taste of creditors,” as a feature in the development of public credit.
Compare the development of public credit in Prussia with that of Great Britain, at the beginning of this century.
Examine and criticise the following selection:—

“As regards the relation of public control to the public credit, there is obviously a lone step taken in advance when the public control comes to he so employed as to not discriminate in its own favor.”

[sic] Define the following terms, and illustrate: “budget,” “conversion,” “rolling annuity.”

[sic] What influence has our Secretary of the Treasury over financial legislation, as compared with the influence of the English Chancellor of the Exchequer? Compare the manner of making up the estimates of public income and expenditure in England and in the United States; of appropriating funds out of the Treasury.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 3, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1895-96.

___________________________

1895-96.
History of Financial Legislation in the United States.

Course Enrollment for Economics 8².

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 8². Dr. J.A. Hill. — History of Financial Legislation in the United States. Hf. 2 hours. 2d half year.

Total 64: 5 Graduates, 22 Seniors, 18 Juniors, 6 Sophomores, 13 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 64.

* * * * * * * * * *

Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 8.

(N. B. — Omit one question under each of the five main divisions of the paper.)

I.

Is the Independent Treasury System preferable to the use of banks as public depositories? Present the arguments on each side of the question, using any illustrations from the History of the United States that may occur to you.
What illustrations does our financial history afford of difficulties that may arise from an exclusive reliance upon import duties as a source of revenue?

II.

Describe the scheme which was adopted in 1790 for settling the accounts between the United States and the individual States. How did the assumption of the State debts affect the account?
In what respects did the financial policy which the country pursued during the War of 1812 deviate from that which Gallatin had advocated in anticipation of war?
What descriptions of treasury notes were issued during the War of 1812, and how did the successive issues indicate that the country was drifting towards a government paper currency?

III.

The following extract is from a speech which Webster delivered in Congress on Jan. 2, 1815. The bank bill to which it refers was substantially the same as Dallas’ plan for a bank:—
“What sort of an institution, sir, is this? It looks less like a bank than a department of the Government. It will be properly the paper money department. Its capital is Government debts; the amount of its issues will depend on Government necessities; Government, in effect, absolves itself from its own debts to the bank, and by way of compensation absolves the bank from its own contracts with others.”
What features of the proposed bank did Webster refer to in his criticisms? What sort of a bank did he favor? What was the outcome of the movement for a bank at this session of Congress?
What causes produced the surplus of 1836? When was there a somewhat similar situation in the later history of the country?
State briefly where the public moneys of the United States have been kept at different periods since 1789.

IV.

How did Secretary Chase execute the authority conferred upon him by the loan Acts of July 17 and Aug. 5, 1861, and in what respect was the course which he pursued open to criticism?
The Legal Tender Act of March 3, 1863, contains the following clauses:—

And so much of the Act to authorize the issue of United States notes, and for other purposes, approved Feb. 25, 1862, and of the act to authorize an additional issue of United States notes, and for other purposes, approved July 11, 1862, as restricts the negotiation of bonds to market value, is hereby repealed. And the holders of United States notes, issued under and by virtue of said acts, shall present the same for the purpose of exchanging the same for bonds, as therein provided, on or before the first day of July, 1863, and thereafter the right so to exchange the same shall cease and determine.
Explain the meaning, object and effect of these provisions.

How much assistance did the Government derive from the Direct Tax during the Civil War? Why is it probable that this form of taxation will never be resorted to again?

V.

Give the main provisions of the Resumption Act of 1875? Why was it doubtful whether this Act would actually secure the resumption of special payments?
State in general terms the changes effected in the form of the national debt (1) while McCulloch was Secretary of the Treasury, (2) under the Refunding Act of 1870, (3) by Secretary Windom in 1881.
Give an account of the discussion which arose in 1867-68 on the question of paying the principal of the War debt in legal tender notes.

___________________________

1895-96.
The Social and Economic Condition of Workingmen in the United States and in other countries.

Course Enrollment for Economics 9.

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 9. Asst. Professor Edward Cummings. — The Social and Economic Condition of Workingmen in the United States and in other countries. 3 hours.

Total 67: 4 Graduates, 25 Seniors, 27 Juniors, 6 Sophomores, 5 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 64.

* * * * * * * * * *

Mid-Year Examination.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 9

(Arrange your answers in the order in which the questions stand. So far as possible illustrate your discussions by a comparison of different countries. Omit one question.)

Contrast the structure of industry before machinery with the structure of modern industry.
In what sense can there be said to be a law of invention? and how is this illustrated historically by the appearance and sequence of the great industrial inventions?
How does machinery affect the demand for labor? the quality of labor? the family of the laborer? his real wage?
Trade unionism vs. trades unionism; the old unionism vs. the new unionism. Explain the differences, and show how and when these phases have from time to time recurred during this century.
How is Chartism related to other phases of the labor movement in England?
The merits and the demerits of such trade-union organizations as you have thus far become acquainted with.
Arbitration and Conciliation: (a) In what industries and in what forms have they succeeded best? (b) The present status and the prospects of industrial arbitration in England and in the United States.
Taking the ordinary factory, how far is it possible or impossible to devise a system of remuneration which reconciles the interests of (a) workmen, (b) foremen, (c) employers, and (d) consumers? Explain carefully the merits and defects of the methods you propose to adopt or reject.
In what respects does labor differ from other commodities? What ethical and economic consequences flow from these differences?
How far, from time to time, has economic theory — Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, Mill, etc., — seemed to justify, and how far to suggest remedies for the industrial evils affecting wage-earners?
The relation of cooperation to trade-unions, to profit-sharing, to socialism.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 3, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1895-96.

* * * * * * * * * *

Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 9.

(Arrange your answers in the order in which the questions stand. So far as possible illustrate your discussions by a comparison of different countries. Take the first six questions and one other.)

Describe carefully the German system of compulsory insurance:

(a) To whom and to what proportion of the population it applies;
(b) The method of organization and of assessment in each case;
(c) The relation of the system to employer’s liability, to poor laws, friendly societies, etc.
(d) Arguments for and against the system.

How far and with what modifications have such schemes been adopted or seriously proposed elsewhere?

(a) Contrast the plan in each case with the German plan;
(b) What circumstances seem to you to favor and what to hinder such action by the government?

How far have voluntary organizations solved or failed to solve the problem of workingmen’s insurance, (a) in England? (b) in the United States?
What light does the experience of France and of England during this century throw upon the good or the bad effect of attempts on the part of the government either to repress or to foster, (a) labor organizations; (b) coöperation; (c) friendly societies?
In what other countries have you found instructive examples of such interference?
Compare the experience and the legislation of the United States in regard to immigration, with the experience and legislation of other countries in which immigration problems have arisen.
In what countries and in what ways have labor organization tended to drift into politics, and seek political remedies for industrial evils?

(a) Compare the experience of France, Belgium, Germany and English-speaking countries.
(b) What conclusion do you draw from such experience?

What evidence do statistics of family income and expenditure furnish (a) in regard to the social condition of labor in staple industries of the United States and of competing countries? (b) in regard to cost of labor?
What attempts have been made to perpetuate or reestablish certain aspects of the guild organization in European countries?
Discuss the schemes adopted by governments, municipalities, etc., for meeting the “out-of-work problem.”
What is the origin of that problem in the United States?

___________________________

1895-96.
The Mediaeval Economic History of Europe.

Course Enrollment for Economics 10.

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 10. Professor Ashley. — The Mediaeval Economic History of Europe. 2 hours.

Total 14: 7 Graduates, 5 Seniors, 2 Juniors.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 63.

* * * * * * * * * *

Mid-Year Examination.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 10.

I.
To be first attempted by all.

Translate, and comment, on the following passages:

Totius terrae descriptio diligens facta est, tam in nemoribus quam in pascuis et pratis, nec non in agriculturis, et verbis communibus annotata in librum redacta est.
In Tineguella . . . sunt iiii hidae et dimidia ad geldum Regis. Et de istis tenent xx homines xx virgas terrae. Et xiii homines tenent vi virgas et dimidiam.
Sicut traditum habemus a patribus, in primitivo regni statu post conquisitionem, regibus de fundis suis non auri vel argenti pondera sed sola victualia solvebantur.
Plerique, cum aut aere alieno aut magnitudine tributorum aut injuria potentiorum premuntur, sese in servitutem dicunt nobilibus, quibus in hos eadem omnia sunt jura quae dominis in servos.
Ceteris servis non in nostrum morem, descriptis per familiam ministeriis, utuntur. Suam quisque sedem, suos penates regit.

II.

Write on four only of the following subjects.

The importance of the yardland in the rural economy of the Middle Ages.
A history of the mark theory, from its first promulgation to its general acceptance.
A comparison of the life of a medieval English village with that of a New England village of today.
The Roman colonate.
An account and criticism of Mr. Seebohm’s “Tribal System in Wales.”

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 3, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1895-96.

* * * * * * * * * *

Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 10.

I.

To be first attempted by all.

Comment on the following passages, and translate those in Latin and French:—

If a man agree for a yard of land, or more, at a fixed rent, and plough it; if the lord desire to raise the land to him to service and to rent, he need not take it upon him, if the lord do not give him a dwelling.
Ego Eadward . . . rex . . . dedi X manentes in illo loco qui dicitur aet Stoce be Hysseburnam, cum omnibus hominibus qui in illa terra erant qando Ælfred rex viam universeæ carnis adiit.
Magnates regni et alii minores domini qui tenentes habebant perdonarunt redditum de redditu ne tenentes abirent prae defectu servorum et caristia rerum.
Whan Adam dalf and Eve span,
Wo was thanne a gentilman?
Nul ne deit rien achater a revendre en la vile meyme, fors yl sera Gildeyn.
Cives Londoniae debent LX marcas pro Gilda telaria delenda ita ut de cetero non suscitetur.
No one of the trade of Spurriers shall work longer than from the beginning of the day until curfew rings out at the church of St. Sepulchre.

II.

Write on four only of the following subjects:

The economic and constitutional questions involved in recent discussions as to the beginnings of town life in mediaeval Europe.
A comparison of a mediaeval merchant gild with a modern “trust,” and of a craft gild with a modern trade union.
The extent and character of the public regulation of prices and wages in the later middle ages.
The cause of the Peasant Revolt in 1381.
The relation of the English Reformation to the origin of the Poor Laws.
A criticism of Cunningham and McArthur’s Outlines of English Industrial History.

___________________________

1895-96.
Banking and the History of the leading Banking Systems.

Course Enrollment for Economics 12².

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 12². Professor Taussig. — Banking and the History of the leading Banking Systems. Hf. 3 hours. 2d half year.

Total 70: 10 Graduates, 30 Seniors, 19 Juniors, 4 Sophomores, 7 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 64.

* * * * * * * * * *

Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 12.

[Arrange your answers strictly in the order of the questions. Give some answer, however brief, to each question.]

What was Bagehot’s opinion as to the advantage of a “many reserve” system as compared with a “single reserve” system? What light does American experience give?
What important proposal made by Bagehot in Lombard Street has been adopted?
What was the theory of the act of 1844? How far was that theory followed in the legislation on the Reichsbank of Germany?
(a) Arrange in their proper order the following items, in which the figures stand for millions of marks.

Capital	150	Loans	800
Specie	800	Securities	50
Notes	1150	Other Assets	50
Deposits	350	Other Liabilities	50

(b) Consider what would be the significance of the statement if it were for the Reichsbank of Germany; assuming the limit of uncovered issue to be 300 millions of marks.

(c) Rearrange the items as they would appear if the statement were one of the condition of the Bank of England; assuming the limit of notes not required to be covered by specie to be 16 millions sterling = 400 million marks, and assuming that securities of any sort may be held against the uncovered issue. Consider then how the statement, thus rearranged, differs from a probable statement of the actual condition of the Bank of England in recent times.

Does the Bank of France supply an elastic currency? Do the National Banks of the United States?
“Redemption by the Treasury under the national bank legislation has been a convenient method of disposing of worn and soiled notes, and in case of accumulations of currency at special points has facilitated its rapid exchange for legal tender and specie. But nobody would say that this system has compelled any bank to face its notes in the same sense in which it has to face its liability for checks drawn against deposits.” Explain.
Consider the effects on bank-note circulation and redemption of (1) exchange of notes among banks; (2) legislative prohibition of payment by a bank of notes other than its own; and give historical examples of the use of one or the other method.
Does the United States Treasury now carry on a banking business? Did the Comptoir d’Escompte in 1848? The Prussian government in 1866?
Does a banker lend his own money? the money of others?
To what extent, and for what reasons, should the operations of savings-banks, private bankers, and trust companies, be excluded from consideration in this course?

___________________________

1895-96.
Scope and Method in Economic Theory and Investigation.

Course Enrollment for Economics 13².

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 13². Professor Taussig. — Scope and Method in Economic Theory and Investigation. Hf. 2 hours. 2d half-year.

Total 14: 11 Graduates, 3 Seniors.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 63.

* * * * * * * * * *

Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 13.

Compare Wagner’s enumeration of the problems within the scope of economic science with Keynes’s; and consider what doubts or objections there may be in regard to any of the problems mentioned by either writer.
Explain and examine critically one of the following passages in Wagner:
Section 63 (pp. 158-163).
Section 70 (pp. 180-182).
Illustrate the mode in which use is advantageously made of the deductive and the inductive method in regard to two of the following topics:

the causes which determine the general range of prices;
the prospects of socialism;
the prospects of coöperation.

What peculiarities and difficulties appear for economic science if the choice of terminology and in definition? Illustrate.
Is there ground for saying that the economic history of very recent times is of greater value for economic theory than the economic history of remote periods?
What do you conceive to be the position in regard to method in economies of Ricardo? J.S. Mill? Roscher? Schmoller?

___________________________

1895-96.
Communism and Socialism.

Course Enrollment for Economics 14¹.

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

[Economics] 14¹. Asst. Professor Edward Cummings. — Communism and Socialism. — Utopias, ancient and modern. Hf. 2 hours. 1st half-year.

Total 15: 1 Graduate, 10 Seniors, 2 Juniors, 2 Sophomores.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1895-96, p. 63.

* * * * * * * * * *

Final Examination

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 14.

(Arrange your answers in the order of the questions. Omit one.)

The different senses in which the word Socialism is used. Where do you intend to draw the line between Socialism proper, and familiar forms of government interference and control — such as factory legislation, municipal water works, and government postal, telegraph or railroad services?
“National communism has been confused with the common ownership of the family; tenure in common has been confused with ownership in common; agrarian communism with village commons.” Discuss the evidence.
“Just as Plato had his Republic, Campanella his City of the Sun, and Sir Thomas More his Utopia, so Baboeuf had his Charter of Equality, Cabet his Icaria, St. Simon his Industrial System, and Fourier his ideal Phalanstery. . . . But the common criticism of Socialism has not yet noted the change, and continues to deal with the obsolete Utopias of the pre-evolutionary age.” What do you conceive to be the character of the change referred to? How far did the earlier Utopias anticipate the ideals of the modern social democracy?
What indication of Socialistic tendency are to be found in the discipline of the Christian church? Explain the triple contract and its bearing on the doctrine of usury.
“The Communistic scheme, instead of being peculiarly open to the objection drawn from danger of over-population, has the recommendation of tending in an especial degree to the prevention of that evil.” Explain Mill’s argument. Do you agree?
To what extent are the theories of Karl Marx indebted to earlier writers in the 19th century?
How far are the economic theories of (a) Lasalle, (b) Marx related to the theories of the so-called orthodox Economists? Explain critically.
How far do you trace the influence of historical conditions in the social philosophies of Plato, More, Bacon, Rousseau, St. Simon, Karl Marx?
What connection do you see between the teachings of Rousseau and (a) modern Socialism. (b) modern Anarchism?
What, according to Hertzka, is the economic defect of the existing social and industrial system, and what is the remedy? Contrast “Freeland” with “Looking Backward.”

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 3, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1895-96.

Also reprinted in. Harvard University, Examination papers 1873-1915. Box 4, Bound volume: Examination Papers 1896-97. Papers Set for Final Examinations in Philosophy, History, Government, Economics, Fine Arts, Architecture, and Music in Harvard College, June 1896.

Tags Ashley, CummingsEdward, CummingsJohn, HillJA, Peabody, Taussig

Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Mid-year and Year-End Final Exams in Economics and Social Ethics, 1894-1895

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2022-01-12

With this post Economics in the Rear-view Mirror adds yet another annual collection of final examination questions for the economics courses offered at Harvard together with the questions from Professor Peabody’s “Ethics of the Social Questions” that covered issues such as poverty, labor relations, and socialism (as opposed to doctrines of individualism). In 1894-95 Frank Taussig was on sabbatical leave in Italy which accounts for his whereabouts that academic year. Today I learned that “doctrine” was understood as a synonym for “theory” during the gay nineties, see Economics 2 (Economic Theory from Adam Smith to the present time) below.

Exams for one course taught were not included in the published collection of exams. It was Edward Cummings course Economics 14 (Philosophy and Political Economy.—Utopian Literature from Plato’s Republic to the present time). Exams for Economics 14 given in other years have been transcribed and posted.

__________________

1894-95.
PHILOSOPHY 5.

Course Title, Staffing, and Enrollment

[PHILOSOPHY] 5. Professor [Francis G.] Peabody. — The Ethics of the Social Questions. — The questions of Charity, the Family, Temperance, and the various phases of the Labor Question, as problems of practical Ethics. — Lectures, essays, and practical observations. 2 hours.

Total 84: 1 Graduate, 40 Seniors, 15 Juniors, 3 Sophomores, 25 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1894-1895, p. 59.

PHILOSOPHY 5.
THE ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS
Mid-Year Examination. 1895.

[Omit one question.]

The Ethical Idealism of Plato, of Aristotle, and of Kant, compared with the modern doctrine of duty.
Professor Sumner’s doctrine of the Social Fulcrum vs. the philosophy of scientific charity.
Indicate, very briefly, the place in the History of Philanthropy of:

Frédéric Le Play,
Dorothea Dix,
Pastor von Bodelschwingh,
Charles L. Brace,
Samuel G. Howe.

The Elberfeld System — its organization, officials, relation tomunicipal government, and practical working.
The Liverpool System of Collection.
Mr. Charles Booth’s eight classes of East London,— their definition, dimensions, traits, and proportion. (Labor and Life of the People, I. pp. 37-62.) Mr. Booth’s view of the children of Class E (p. 160).
Compare Mr. Booth’s method and results in East London with his method and results in all London.
Compare the principle as to direct relief of the London Charity Organization Society with that of the Boston Associated Charities. (Loch, Charity Organization, pp. 59, 82.) Which is the sounder principle? Why?
The Belgian Labor Colonies,— their scope and method of classification. Compare their aims with those of the colonies of Holland and Germany.
The Christian doctrine of the Social Order — its principles and its peril.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 3. Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Year 1894-95.

PHILOSOPHY 5.
THE ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS.
Year-end Examination. 1895.

Explain the theory of ethics which makes the basis of this course of study; and the way in which this theory is practically illustrated by phases of the modern labor question.
In what respect do the social ideals of Carlyle and Ruskin seem identical, and in what respect do they appear to be inconsistent with each other?
The authorship and the significance of the following phrases:

“There is no wealth but Life…. A strange political economy; the only one, nevertheless, that ever was or can be.”

“I am for permanence in all things. Blessed is he that continueth where he is.”

“The gospel of dilettantism.”

“Roots of honour.”

“Ricardo is the parent of Socialism.”

“The value of a thing is independent of opinion and of quantity.”

“The reformation was the work of a monk; the revolution must be the work of a philosopher.”

“The people are the Rock on which the Church of the future must be built.”

The practical programme proposed by Scientific Socialism; the chief advantages claimed for it by its adherents; and the criticisms on it which appear to you most serious. Utilize here your reading of Naquet and The Social Horizon.
Socialism and Religion. The apparent grounds for sympathy and the practical reasons for antagonism. The teachings concerning socialism in the Encyclical of 1891.
The philosophy of history which encourages the Socialist, and the “Opportunist’s” view of this “Law” of social evolution.
The growth of Trades Unionism in Great Britain, and its contribution to moral education.
Federalism and Individualism in English Coöperation. The issue involved, and the advantages of each scheme of expansion.
Compare the characteristics of the forms of Liquor Legislation in force in Massachusetts and in Pennsylvania. (Fanshawe, XI, XII.) How are licenses granted under the Brooks Law? What is the function of probation-officers in Massachusetts?
How far do physiological considerations go to determine one’s duty as to drink?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers, 1873-1915. Box 4. Bound volume: Examination Papers, 1893-95. “Papers Set for Final Examinations in Philosophy, History, Government and Law, Economics, Fine Arts, Architecture, and Music in Harvard College, June, 1895,” pp. 6-7.

__________________

1894-95.
ECONOMICS 1.

Course Title, Staffing, and Enrollment

[ECONOMICS] 1. Professor [William] Ashley, Asst. Professor [Edward] Cummings, Dr. [John] Cummings, and Mr. [Frederick Redman] Clow. — Outlines of Economics. — Mill’s Principles of Political Economy. — Lectures on Economic Development, Distribution, Social Questions, and Financial Legislation. 3 hours.

Total 277: 2 Graduates, 39 Seniors, 18 Juniors, 159 Sophomores, 9 Freshmen, 50 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1894-1895, p. 62.

ECONOMICS 1.
Mid-Year Examination. 1895.

[Arrange your answers strictly in the order of the question. One question may be omitted.]

“All members of the community are not laborers, but all are consumers, and consume either unproductively or productively.” Explain and illustrate by examples. Suppose everybody resolved to consume “productively” only, what would be the result?
“The distinction, then, between capital and not-capital, does not lie in the kind of commodities, but in the mind of the capitalist — in his will to employ them for one purpose rather than another.” Discuss this statement, using the following illustrations:—

Bread.
A knitting machine.
A steam engine.
A carriage.

Where does true economic rent appear in the following cases:—

(a) The cultivation of a farm by its owner.
(b) The rental of a farm under a long lease by a tenant who has made permanent improvements on the land.

What is the effect on values of a general fall of profits? Of a general fall of wages?
What is the effect on rents of (1) an improvement in the methods of agriculture, (2) an improvement in transportation?
“The price of land, mines, and all other fixed sources of income, depends on the rate of interest.” Explain.
According to Mill, “Every addition to capital gives to labor either additional employment, or additional remuneration.” Why? What is the effect of an increase of labor-saving machinery on employment and on remuneration? Illustrate carefully.
“Money cannot in itself perform any part of the office of capital, since it can afford no assistance to production.” Do you agree or disagree? Why? Is money capital? Is credit money? Is credit capital?
What does Mill mean by “stationary state”? And what changes would bring about a progressive state?
What would be the effect on prices of (1) adding to a gold and silver currency a small issue of inconvertible paper money, (2) the discovery of very rich gold fields?
What do you understand by the Domestic system? By Competition? By Labor?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 3. Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Year 1894-95.

ECONOMICS 1.
Year-end Examination. 1895.

(Arrange your answers strictly in the order of the question. Omit three of the even numbers: answer all others.)

“We must suppose the entire savings of the community to be annually invested in really productive employment within the country itself; and no new channels opened by industrial inventions, or by more extensive substitution of the best known processes for inferior ones.” How would profits be affected supposing population (a) to remain stationary; (b) to increase in proportion to the increase in capital?
The operations, therefore, of speculative dealers, are useful to the public whenever profitable to themselves; and although they are sometimes injurious to the public, by heightening the fluctuations which their more usual office is to alleviate, yet, whenever this happens the speculators are the greatest losers. Explain Mill’s reasoning.
Mill says of the stationary state, “I am inclined to believe that it would be, on the whole, a very considerable improvement on our present condition.” Why? Explain carefully.
Is there a necessary hostility of interests between consumers organized in co-operative associations and producers organized in trade unions?
Describe the different results obtained in co-operation by distributing profits in the form of dividend (a) on capital, (b) on labor (in proportion to wages), (c) on purchases. Illustrate by the experience of co-operation in France and England.
How do you distinguish between what Mill calls the necessary and the optional functions of government?
“We have had an example of a tax on exports, that is, on foreigners, falling in part on ourselves. We shall therefore not be surprised if we find a tax on imports, that is, on ourselves, partly falling on foreigners.” Explain carefully each case, tracing the possible effects upon prices and international trade of taxes (a) upon exports; (b) upon imports.
“Equality of taxation, therefore, as a maxim of polities, means equality of sacrifice.” Apply this maxim to a tax on incomes.
Suppose a tax of a fixed sum per bushel to be laid upon corn; what would be the effect (a) upon prices; (b) upon population; (c) upon profits; (d) upon rents?
How would the results differ if instead of a fixed sum per bushel the tax were…

(i) …a fixed proportion of the produce;
(ii) …proportioned to the rent of the land;
(iii) …a fixed sum of so much per cultivated acre? Explain carefully each case.

Describe the kinds of currency used in the United States, indicating briefly the conditions of issue in each case.
Explain the causes and effects of (a) combined reserves, (b) a suspension of the Bank Charter Act in England.
What are the provisions of the law in regard to the issue of bank notes at the present day in England? In Germany?

__________________

1894-95.
ECONOMICS 2.

Course Title, Staffing, and Enrollment

[ECONOMICS] 2. Professors Ashley and [Silus Marcus] Macvane. — Economic Theory from Adam Smith to the present time. — Selections from Adam Smith and Ricardo. — Modern Writers. — Lectures. 3 hours.

Total 34: 9 Graduates, 14 Seniors, 6 Juniors, 1 Sophomores, 4 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1894-1895, p. 62.

ECONOMICS 2.
Mid-Year Examination. 1895.

N.B.—Not more than seven questions must be attempted.

“The study which lately in England has been called Political Economy is, in reality, nothing more than the investigation of some accidental phenomena of modern commercial operations, nor has it been true in its investigation even of these. It has no connection whatever with political economy, as understood and treated of by the great thinkers of past ages; and as long as its unscholarly and undefined statements are allowed to pass under the same name, every word written on the subject by those thinkers—and chiefly the words of Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, and Bacon—must be nearly useless to mankind” (Ruskin, Munera Pulveris). Consider some or all of these assertions.
Give a brief account of the Physiocrat doctrine, and state to what extent it was “corrected” by Adam Smith.
Explain the origin and content of Adam Smith’s conception of “Nature.”
“A diamond has scarcely any value in use.” Consider this statement in its relation to the discussion since Adam Smith’s time of the doctrine of Value.
How does the doctrine of Rent expounded by Adam Smith agree with, and differ from, that of Ricardo?
Compare Adam Smith’s “natural rate of wages” with Ricardo’s “natural price of labour.”
“Population tends to outstrip the means of subsistence.” Distinguish the various meanings assignable to this phrase, and indicate which was meant by Malthus.
What does Adam Smith understand by “Capital”? Compare his conception with that of John Stuart Mill.
Present a critical estimate—based upon your own study—of one of the following:

1. Ingram, History of Political Economy.
2. Price, Political Economy in England.
3. Cossa, Introduction to the Study of Political Economy.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 3. Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Year 1894-95.

ECONOMICS 2.
Year-end Examination, 1895

Answer at least four, but not more than six, of the following questions:

What is the economic source of Interest? Examine the proposition that “interest is the price paid for the use of capital.”
State briefly your conclusions as to the law of general wages.
Apply the Austrian theory of wages to the following case:
Number of laborers 1,000,000; total subsistence fund $600,000,000; scale of increase of productiveness of labor as the “productive period” is lengthened from one year to seven years: $350, $450, $530, $580, $620, $650, and $670.
How, in your opinion, are the profits of employers determined? What is your conclusion as to the function, in distribution, of the so-called “no profits employers.”
Discuss the following passages:
“This National Dividend is at once the aggregate Net product of, and the sole source of payment for, all the agents of production within the country: it is divided up into Earnings of labour, Interest of capital, and lastly the Producer’s Surplus, or Rent, of land and of other differential advantages for production. It constitutes the whole of them and the whole of it is distributed among them.”
“The proposal to put rent aside while we are considering how earnings and interest are determined, has been found to suggest that rent is determined first and then takes part in determining earnings and interest; and this is, of course, the opposite of what really occurs.”
It has been said that Mill expresses his meaning badly when he said that demand for commodities is not a demand for labor. Does the proposition seem to you to need revision!
Does increase of saving tend to make the supply of goods outrun the demand for goods?
Examine the doctrine that the exchange value of commodities is determined by marginal utility.
Past and present relations between gold and silver.

__________________

1894-95.
ECONOMICS 3.

Course Title, Staffing, and Enrollment

[ECONOMICS] 3. Asst. Professor Cummings. — The Principles of Sociology. — Development of the Modern State, and of its Social Functions. 2 hours.

Total 52: 10 Graduates, 30 Seniors, 4 Juniors, 3 Sophomores, 5 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1894-1895, p. 62.

ECONOMICS 3.
Mid-Year Examination. 1895.

Answer the questions in the order in which they stand. Omit three questions.

State accurately the reading you have done in this course to date.
“But now let us drop the alleged parallelism between individual organizations and social organizations. I have used the analogies elaborated but as a scaffolding to help in building up a coherent body of sociological inductions. Let us take away the scaffolding: the inductions will stand by themselves.” What are these inductions?
“The family relinquishes one provisional and temporary function after another; its only purpose being to fill gaps in social offices, it made way for independent institutions … as soon as these institutions arose.” Explain and illustrate. How far would Spencer assent to this doctrine?
“Most anthropologists who have written on prehistoric customs believe, indeed, that man lived originally in a state of promiscuity or ‘communal marriage’; but we have found this hypothesis is essentially unscientific.” Discuss the evidence.
“The status of children, in common with that of women, rises in proportion as the compulsory coöperation characterizing militant societies, becomes qualified by the voluntary coöperation characterising industrial societies.” Why? Trace the rise, and illustrate.
“These three distinct states of mind, all of which, in point of fact, are admitted to exist together at the present time, and perhaps to have always done so to a greater or less extent, Comte declares to have undergone a regular progressive movement in the history of society. There have been three successive epochs, during which these philosophic principles, each in its turn, preponderated over both the others and controlled the current of human events.” Explain.
“So that as law differentiates from personal commands, and as morality differentiates from religious injunctions, so politeness differentiates from ceremonial observance. To which I may add, so does rational usage differentiate from fashion.” Explain and illustrate.
How does Spencer account for the diverse types of political organization; and what influences determine the order in which they arise? Illustrate.
“From the Evolution-standpoint we are thus enabled to discern the relative beneficence of institutions which, considered absolutely, are not beneficent; and are taught to approve as temporary that which, as permanent, we abhor.” Explain and illustrate. Does our idea of progress then include all social changes?
“In all ways, then, we are shown that with this relative decrease of militancy and relative increase of industrialism, there has been a change from a social order in which individuals exist for the State, to a social order in which the State exists for individuals?” Explain and illustrate.
According to Spencer, what are likely to be the future forms of political organization and action in societies that are favorably circumstanced for carrying social evolution to its highest stage?
“At bottom this is a physical explanation, and Spencerian sociology in general, whether formulated by Mr. Spencer or by other writers under the influence of his thought, is essentially a physical philosophy of society, notwithstanding its liberal use of biological and psychological data.” Do you agree or disagree? Why?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 3. Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Year 1894-95.

ECONOMICS 3.
Year-end Examination

[Answer the questions in the order in which they stand. Omit one question.]

State accurately the reading you have done in this course to date.
What has been the function of religion in social evolution? (Compare Spencer and Kidd.) Do you find reasons for thinking society will become more religious?
“The only conclusion to which we are brought by this prolonged examination of authorities is that community of land has not yet been historically proved.” Discuss the evidence.
“And as of old, Society and State tend to coincide, political questions to become identical with social questions.” Discuss the historical changes and tendencies in question. Distinguish carefully between Society, the State, the Government, the Nation.
“It is becoming clear that, when people speak of natural rights of liberty, property, etc., they really mean, not rights which once existed and have been lost, but rights which they believe ought to exist, and which would be produced by a condition of society and an ordering of the State such as they think desirable.” Explain. How far do changes in the theory and practice of penal legislation substantiate this view?
“The gulf between the state of society towards which it is the tendency of the process of evolution now in progress to carry us, and socialism, is wide and deep.”
“The Individualism of the past is buried, and the immediate future is unmistakably with a progressive Socialism, the full extent of which no man can get see.” Discuss carefully the facts and theories upon which these opposing views are based.
“The philanthropic and experimental forms of socialism, which played a conspicuous rôle before 1848, perished then in the wreck of the Revolution, and have never risen to life again.” What were the characteristics of these earlier forms; and what was their relation to the movements which preceded them and followed them?

__________________

1894-95.
ECONOMICS 5.

Course Title, Staffing, and Enrollment

[ECONOMICS] 5². Mr. George Ole Virtue. — Railway Transportation. — Lectures and written work. 3 hours. 2d half-year.

Total 21: 2 Graduates, 10 Seniors, 6 Juniors, 1 Sophomores, 2 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1894-1895, p. 62.

ECONOMICS 5.
Year-end Examination. 1895.

Sketch the railroad history of France.
“The [Reilly] bill now before Congress proposes to extend the debt for another fifty years and a grand opportunity will thus be let slip for trying, under the most favorable circumstances, an experiment whose possibilities no man can measure.”
What legislation can you suggest for improving the relations between the different classes of owners of railway capital? For the protection of the interests of investors in railway capital generally?
State briefly the significance in railway history of the following cases: Munn v. Illinois; Wabash, etc. Ry. Co. v. Illinois; Ames v. U. P. Ry. Co.; Budd v. New York; In re Louisville & Nashville; The Denaby Main Colliery Case.
Choose one:

(a) The bearing upon the making of rates, of the “cost of service”; “value of service”; “charging what the traffic will bear”; “joint cost.”
(b) “Group rates,” “equal mileage rates,” “the blanket rate,” “the postage rate,” “Wagen-raum tarif,” “differentials.”
(c) A “reasonable rates.”

Recount the experience which has led the Interstate Commerce Commission to recomment an amendment to the Act to Regulate Commerce: (a) Construing the meaning of “the word ‘line’ when used in the act to be a physical line and not a business arrangement”; (b) relieving “shippers and individuals not connected with railway employment from liability to fine and imprisonment under Section 10,” with certain exceptions.
What would be the probable effect of giving the Commission power to prescribe minimum as well as maximum rates? Would it obviate the necessity now claimed for pooling?
“When the first bill to regulate commerce was passed the great and powerful wedge of State socialism, so far as government control of railroads is concerned, was driven one-quarter of its length into the timber of conservative government. … The pending bill, [the pooling which passed the House at the last session is referred to] the moment it becomes a law, will drive the wedge three-quarters of its length into the timber.”
Give your reasons for agreeing or disagreeing with each of the above statements.
What conclusions on the question of public management can you draw from the experience of the states in the internal improvement movement?
Why is it peculiarly true in railway business that “competition must end in combination”?
The success of the State Railroad Commissions and suggestions for increasing their efficiency.

__________________

1894-95.
ECONOMICS 7¹.

Course Title, Staffing, and Enrollment

[ECONOMICS] 7¹. Professor [Charles F.] Dunbar. — The Theory and Methods of Taxation, with special reference to local taxation in the United States. 3 hours. 1^st half-year.

Total 28: 6 Graduates, 11 Seniors, 9 Juniors, 2 Sophomores.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1894-1895, p. 62.

ECONOMICS 7¹.
Mid-year Examination. 1895.

What is the “Benefit Theory” of taxation? What is the “Faculty Theory”? Define “Faculty” as used in this expression.
What are the leading points of difference between the English, Prussian and American income tax systems?
What reasons are there for having income tax levied by national authority rather than local? To what extent, if at all, do these reasons apply also to a general property tax?
In levying a general property tax, should the debts of the taxpayer be deducted from the property held by him?
By what reasoning is it maintained that,—
“When the local real estate tax is levied according to rental value and assessed in the first instance on the occupier, as is the case in England, the main burden of the tax will rest ultimately on the occupier, not the owner of the premises.”
Will the same reasoning apply to the income tax on rent, assessed under Schedule A., and collected from the occupier?
What are the leading points of difference between the German method of taxing distilled liquors and the method practised in England and the United States?
The theories of Canard, Thiers and Stein are,—
“That every tax is shifted on everybody — that every consumer will again shift the tax on a third party, and that this third party who is again a consumer will shift it to someone else — and so ad infinitum. And since everyone is a consumer, everyone will bear a portion of the taxes that everybody else pays.”
Professor Seligman’s comment is that “the error of this doctrine lies in the failure to distinguish between productive and unproductive consumption.” Is this answer complete? If not, wherein does it fail?
In a statement of the circumstances under which a tax may or may not be capitalized, it is said,—
“The principle would not apply to special taxes on property or profits if the capital value of this class of commodities should for any other reason fluctuate in price. For example, if a special tax were levied on government securities it might nevertheless happen that if some reason confidence in government bonds, as over against general securities, might decrease to such an extent as to counterbalance the decreased returns from the investment. In such a case there would be no capitalization of the tax.”
What criticism have you to make on this reasoning?
Can the theory of progressive taxation be satisfied by a gradually decreasing rate of progression [“degressively progressive taxation”]. or does it require a rate which shall cut off all income or accumulation above a certain level?
What practical difficulties does the taxation of real estate offer in shaping a system of progressive taxation?

__________________

1894-95.
ECONOMICS 7².

Course Title, Staffing, and Enrollment

[ECONOMICS] 7². Professor Dunbar. — Financial Administration and Public Debts. 3 hours. 2d half-year.

Total 28: 7 Graduates, 11 Seniors, 9 Juniors, 1 Sophomores.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1894-1895, p. 62.

ECONOMICS 7².
Year-end Examination

[Spend an hour on A, and the remainder of the time on B.]

A.

Give an account of the management of the English debt in the decade 1880-90.
Do “sound rules of finance” demand that the principal of the debt or the rate of interest shall be determined by the government? that securities shall never be issued below par? that a government shall not buy in its securities at a premium?

B.

How far, if at all, is the government justified in pledging itself to any fixed policy of debt payment?
How may the policy of conversation conflict with the policy of debt payment?
Give an account of the United States refunding operations in the decade 1865-75.
Discuss the respective powers of the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Great Britain, the minister of finance in France.
In each case where does the responsibility for the financial policy of the government rest?
Give an account of the creation of Pit’s sinking fund and of the successive modifications made in the sinking fund provisions down to 1803.
Discuss the various methods of placing government securities in the market, and the conditions of contract which make one form of security more attractive to buyers than another.
The United States 4 per cent. 30-year bonds are quoted at about 123¼; how is the present worth of these securities determined?
What determines the present worth of a terminable annuity? of a perpetual annuity? of a life annuity?
Discuss the manner of making up the estimates of public income and expenditure in Great Britain and in France; the manner of providing for any deficits which may occur in any department during the year; the manner of providing for carrying on the government where the enactment of the budget is delayed until after the beginning of the year; and the disposal of balances unexpended at the end of the year.

__________________

1894-95.
ECONOMICS 8.

Course Title, Staffing, and Enrollment

[ECONOMICS] 8¹. Professor Dunbar. — History of Financial Legislation in the United States. 2 hours.

Total 52: 5 Graduates, 22 Seniors, 22 Juniors, 3 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1894-1895, p. 62.

ECONOMICS 8.
Mid-Year Examination. 1895.

Hamilton is sometimes said to have favored the policy of perpetual debt, and Gallatin, on the other hand, to have established the policy of debt-payment. How far are these statements confirmed by the measures of Hamilton and Gallatin respectively?
How far should you say that Hamilton was justified in his expectation (stated in the Report on Public Credit), (1) That the public debt, if properly funded, would answer most of the purposes of money, and (2) that it would increase the amount of capital for use in trade and lower the interest of money?
When were the several classes of obligations in which the revolutionary debt was funded finally paid off?
Was it fortunate or unfortunate that Congress did not adopt Madison’s policy as to a United States Bank in January, 1815? Why?
Give a list, with dates, of the cases in which bills for establishing a United States Bank have been vetoed.
Give as complete a chronology as you can of the events connected with the Bank, from President Jackson’s first attack upon it down to its final failure.
The removal of the deposits is sometimes spoken of as a fatal blow to the United States Bank. What do you gather from your reading as to its importance as regards the business position or credit of the Bank?
What was the Specie Circular of 1836, and what serious financial results did it produce?
What led to the adoption of the National Bank system in 1863?
How would it have eased the financial difficulty in 1861, if the Secretary of the Treasury had made more free use of his authority, under the act of August 5, for suspending some of the provisions of the Independent Treasury act?
The earlier legal-tender acts provided for funding the notes, at the pleasure of the holder, in United States bonds. When and why was this privilege of funding withdrawn? What would probably have been the effect if it had been retained until the close of the war?
What were the steps by which the legal tender issues came to be treated as the practically permanent element in our paper currency and to be fixed in amount?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 3. Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Year 1894-95.

__________________

1894-95.
ECONOMICS 9.

Course Title, Staffing, and Enrollment

[ECONOMICS] 9. Asst. Professor Cummings. — The Social and Economic Condition of Workingmen in the United States and in other countries. 3 hours.

Total 79: 3 Graduates, 34 Seniors, 31 Juniors, 5 Sophomores, 6 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1894-1895, p. 62.

ECONOMICS 9.
Mid-Year Examination, 1895.

(Arrange your answers, in the order in which the questions stand. So far as possible illustrate your discussions by a comparison of the experience of different countries.)

State accurately the reading you have done in this course to date.
“The interests of the working classes are identical in all lands governed by capitalist methods of production. The extension of the world’s commerce and production for the world’s markets, make the position of the workman in any one country daily more dependent upon that of the workmen in other countries.” Why? Explain how in the history of trade unions this community of interest among workmen, not only of the same trade and the same country but of different trades and different countries, has actually manifested itself. Illustrate.
Precisely what answer to the “lump of labor” theory is to be drawn from that version of the wage-fund doctrine adopted by Mill, by Walker, by yourself?
How far has the theory and the practice of coöperation offered a complete remedy for the evils of the existing industrial organization? and at precisely what points has the theory and the practice broken down? Illustrate carefully.
“The struggle of the working classes against capitalist exploitation must of necessity be a political struggle.” How far does the history of trade unions and of coöperation show a tendency in this direction? Illustrate carefully.
“But above all things, observe that all types of piece wage, whether single or progressive, and whether individual or collective, possess this most marked superiority over Profit-sharing.” … “At the same time, it is right to remark that there are many cases, in which the method of Profit-sharing surpasses in important respects any form of the ordinary wage-system.” Explain carefully the grounds of the alleged inferiority and superiority in each case.
“Before, therefore, the trade union can realize its policy of ‘collective bargaining,’ it must solve the two-fold problem – how to bind its own constituents, and how to obtain the recognition of employers.” By what methods have trade unions endeavored to solve this problem? Illustrate.
Trace the successive stages of the so-called “industrial revolution” during the last hundred and fifty years.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 3. Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Year 1894-95.

ECONOMICS 9.
Year-end Examination. 1895.

[Arrange your answers in the order in which the questions stand. So far as possible illustrate your discussions by statistical and descriptive matter showing the relative condition of working people in the United States and in other countries.]

I.

State accurately the reading you have done in this course since the mid-year examinations.

II.

Devote three hours to a careful discussion of the merits and defects of the German system of compulsory insurance, under the following general heads:

An accurate account of the origin, scope, organization, administration of the system in Germany, — stating approximately the numbers insured, the cost of insurance to all parties concerned, the benefits provided, the methods of collection, distribution, etc.;
Difficulties, opposition, and criticisms thus far encountered;
Progress of similar movements towards compulsory insurance in other countries;
Facts bearing upon the adequacy of existing provisions for sickness, accident, old age in England and the United States;
A biographical sketch showing at what age and in what respects the State already interferes to prescribe conditions of employment, education, etc., for operatives reared from childhood to old age in the factory system of Massachusetts: showing also the additional interference which would be involved in the adoption of the German system of compulsory insurance;
Conclusion.

__________________

1894-95.
ECONOMICS 10.

Course Title, Staffing, and Enrollment

[ECONOMICS] 10. Professor Ashley. — The Elements of Economic History from the Middle Ages to Modern Times. 2 hours.

Total 61: 9 Graduates, 20 Seniors, 21 Juniors, 10 Sophomores, 1 Other.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1894-1895, p. 62.

ECONOMICS 10.
Mid-Year Examination. 1895.

I. To be first attempted by all.

Translate, and comment on, the following passages:

Quomodo vocatur mansio; quis tenuit eam T. R. E.; quis mod tenet; quot hidae; quot carrucae in dominio; quot hominum; quot villani; quot cotarii; quot servi; quot liberi homines; quot sochemanni.
De virgis operantur ii diebus in ebdomada.
Rex. . . destinavit per regnum quos ad id prudentiores.. . . cognoverat, qui circumeuntes et oculata fide fundos singulos perlustrantes, habita aestimatione victualium quae de hiis solvebantur, redegerunt in summam denariorum.
Interiors plerique frumenta non serunt, sed lacte et carne vivunt, pellibusque sunt vestiti.
Ideo rogamus, sacratissime imperator, subvenias. . . . ademptum sit jus etiam procuratoribus, nedum conductori, adversus colonos ampliandi partes agrarias.
Arva per annos mutant et superest ager.
Ego Eddi episcopus terram quae dicitur Lantocal tres cassatos Heglisco abbati libenter largior.
Rex misit in singulos comitatus quod messores et alii operarii non plus caperent quam capere solebant.
Noveritis nos concessisse omnibus tenentibus nostris . . . . quod omnia praedicta terrae et tenementa de cetero sint libera, et liberae conditionis.

II. Write on two only of the following subjects.

The reasons for believing in the survival in Britain of the Roman agrarian organisation.
A comparison, from the economic point of view, of the open-field system with modern methods of farming.
The condition of the tillers of the soil in England in A.D. 1381 as compared with A.D. 1066.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 3. Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Year 1894-95.

ECONOMICS 10.
Year-end Examination. 1895.

I.
[To be first attempted by all.]

TRANSLATE, and comment on, the following passages:—

In Kateringes sunt x. hidae ad geldum Regis. Et de istis
hidis tenent xl. villani xl. virgas terrae. … Et omnes isti homines operantur iii^bus diebus in ebdomada.
Agriculturae non student; majorque pars eorum victus in lacte caseo carne consistit; neque quisquam agri modum certum aut fines habet proprios; sed magistratus ac principes in annos singulos gentibus cognationibusque hominum qui una coierunt, quantum et quo loco visum est agri attribuunt atque anno post alio transire cogunt.
Nul ne deit rien acheter a revendre en la vile meyme, fors yl serra Gildeyn.
Cives Londoniae debent xl marcas pro Gilda Telaria delenda; ita ut de cetero non suscitetur.
Johannes Hore mortuus est, qui tenuit de domino dimidiam acram terrae cujus heriettum unus vitulus precii iiii d. Et Johanna soror dicti Johannis est proximus heres, quae venit et gersummavit dictam terram tenendam sibi et suis in villenagio ad voluntatem per servicia et consuetudines.

II.
[Write on four only of the following subjects.]

“I contend that from 1563 to 1824, a conspiracy, concocted by the law and carried out by parties interested in its success, was entered into, to cheat the English workman of his wages, to tie him to the soil, to deprive him of hope, and to degrade him into irremediable poverty.” Consider this.
Discuss the question whether the statute of 5 Eliz. c. 4, displays any distinct economic policy.
Explain the causes, nature and consequences of the change in commercial routes in the sixteenth century.
What is meant by a national economy, as contrasted with a town economy? Illustrate from European conditions in the 15th and 16th centuries.
What has been the economic gain to England from immigration?
Mention briefly those respects in which the economic development of England has resembled that of Western Europe, and those respects in which it has been peculiar.

Tags Ashley, Clow, CummingsEdward, CummingsJohn, Dunbar, Macvane, Peabody, Virtue

SOCIAL ETHICS 4 Course Announcement 1909-10

SOCIAL ETHICS 4 Course Enrollment 1909-10

SOCIAL ETHICS 4 Final Examination 1909-10

Social Ethics à la Peabody

Material from earlier years

Course Enrollment 1909-10

Course Description 1909-10

SOCIAL ETHICS 1 Year-end Examination 1909-10

Exams from past years

DR. RAY MADDING McCONNELL

Course Description 1908-09

Course Enrollment 1908-09

SOCIAL ETHICS 1 Year-end Examination 1908-09

Looking back from 1928-1929 at instruction in philosophy at Harvard

Exams from past years

Course Description 1907-08

Course Enrollment 1907-08

SOCIAL ETHICS 1 Year-end Examination 1907-08

A Peek into Likely Course Content

Course Enrollment 1905-06

SOCIAL ETHICS 12 Year-end Exam, 1905-06

About Francis G. Peabody

Previously posted Harvard short bibliographies (1910)

SOCIAL ETHICS FRANCIS G. PEABODY

The Instructors

Course Enrollment 1904-05 [also listed as Ethics 1]

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

The Divinity School

Course Description 1904-05

Ethics

PHILOSOPHY 51 THE ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS

1895-96. The Ethics of the Social Questions.

Course Enrollment for Philosophy 5

Mid-Year Examination

1895-96. PHILOSOPHY 5. THE ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS.

Final Examination

1895-96. PHILOSOPHY 5. THE ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS.

1895-96. Outlines of Economics.

Course Enrollment for Economics 1

Mid-Year Examination

1895-96. ECONOMICS 1.

Final Examination

1895-96. ECONOMICS 1.

[Answer ten questions. Arrange your answers strictly in the order of the questions.]

GROUP I. [At least one.]

GROUP II. [At least one.]

GROUP III. [At least one.]

GROUP IV. [At least three.]

1895-96. Economic Theory from Adam Smith to the present time.

Course Enrollment for Economics 2.

Mid-Year Examination.

1895-96. ECONOMICS 2

Final Examination

1895-96. ECONOMICS 2.

Take any three of the five questions.

1895-96. The Principles of Sociology.

Course Enrollment for Economics 3.

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

Mid-Year Examination.

1895-96. ECONOMICS 3.

(Arrange your answers in the order of your questions. Omit one.)

Final Examination

1895-96. ECONOMICS 3.

Answer the questions in the order in which they stand. Give one hour to each division.

I.

II.

III.

1895-96. The Theory of Statistics.

Course Enrollment for Economics 42.

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

Final Examination

1895-96. ECONOMICS 4.

(Divide your time equally between A and B.)

A I and II may be treated as one question.

B. Take five.

1895-96. Railway Transportation.

Course Enrollment for Economics 51.

For Graduates and Undergraduates:—

Final Examination

1895-96. ECONOMICS 5.

SOCIAL ETHICS 4
Course Announcement
1909-10

SOCIAL ETHICS 4
Course Enrollment
1909-10

SOCIAL ETHICS 4
Final Examination
1909-10

Course Enrollment
1909-10

Course Description
1909-10

SOCIAL ETHICS 1
Year-end Examination 1909-10

Course Description
1908-09

Course Enrollment
1908-09

SOCIAL ETHICS 1
Year-end Examination 1908-09

Course Description
1907-08

Course Enrollment
1907-08

SOCIAL ETHICS 1
Year-end Examination 1907-08

Course Enrollment
1905-06

SOCIAL ETHICS 1²
Year-end Exam, 1905-06

Previously posted Harvard short bibliographies
(1910)

SOCIAL ETHICS
FRANCIS G. PEABODY

Course Enrollment
1904-05
[also listed as Ethics 1]

Course Description
1904-05

PHILOSOPHY 5¹
THE ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS

1895-96.
The Ethics of the Social Questions.

1895-96.
PHILOSOPHY 5.
THE ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS.

1895-96.
PHILOSOPHY 5.
THE ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS.

1895-96.
Outlines of Economics.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 1.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 1.

GROUP I.
[At least one.]

GROUP II.
[At least one.]

GROUP III.
[At least one.]

GROUP IV.
[At least three.]

1895-96.
Economic Theory from Adam Smith to the present time.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 2

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 2.

1895-96.
The Principles of Sociology.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 3.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 3.

1895-96.
The Theory of Statistics.

Course Enrollment for Economics 4².

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 4.

A
I and II may be treated as one question.

B.
Take five.

1895-96.
Railway Transportation.

Course Enrollment for Economics 5¹.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 5.

1895-96.
History of Tariff Legislation in the United States.

Course Enrollment for Economics 6¹.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 6.

1895-96.
Financial Administration and Public Debts.

Course Enrollment for Economics 7¹.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 7.

B.
(Take any five of the questions following.)

1895-96.
History of Financial Legislation in the United States.

Course Enrollment for Economics 8².

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 8.

1895-96.
The Social and Economic Condition of Workingmen in the United States and in other countries.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 9

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 9.

1895-96.
The Mediaeval Economic History of Europe.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 10.

I.
To be first attempted by all.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 10.

1895-96.
Banking and the History of the leading Banking Systems.

Course Enrollment for Economics 12².

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 12.

1895-96.
Scope and Method in Economic Theory and Investigation.

Course Enrollment for Economics 13².

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 13.

1895-96.
Communism and Socialism.

Course Enrollment for Economics 14¹.

1895-96.
ECONOMICS 14.