Chicago. Economics Ph.D. 1903 Canadian Humorist Stephen Leacock
Economics Ph.D. (1903), Canadian Humorist Stephen Leacock. It is not every day that one stumbles upon a historical past-of-economics arc connecting Thorstein Veblen to Groucho Marx and Jack Benny. The economist that connected the iconoclast economist to those veterans of vaudeville comedy is the Canadian humorist and Chicago student of Thorstein Veblen, Stephen Butler Leacock. First I post right here some knowledge (the precise starting point of my background test of Leacock, the Chicago Ph.D.) discovered within the University of Chicago’s registers of its Ph.D.’s and annual catalogues. The author’s autobiographical Preface to Leacock’s greatest hit, Sunshine Sketches of a little bit Town (1912) follows. The tales themselves strike most, if not all, of the identical chords that Garrison Keillor’s News from Lake Wobegon has played over the past decades. Finally I'll allow myself the short-lower of quoting Wikipedia to complete the sketch of both sides of this most attention-grabbing fellow. The McGill economics department entry for Stephen Leacock. University of Chicago Ph.D.
Thesis Title: The doctrine of laissez faire. 1889-99. Instructor in French and German, Upper Canada College. 1899-1900. Graduate Student, University of Chicago. 1921. Head of Department of Economics and Political Science, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. 1931, April 1. Professor and Head of Department of Economics and Political Science, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. 1938, April 1. Professor Emeritus of Economics and Political Science, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. I know no means wherein a writer may more fittingly introduce his work to the public than by giving a short account of who and what he's. By this implies some of the blame for what he has done may be very properly shifted to the extenuating circumstances of his life. I was born at Swanmoor, Hants, England, on December 30, 1869. I'm not conscious that there was any explicit conjunction of the planets on the time, however should assume it extremely seemingly.
My parents migrated to Canada in 1876, and that i determined to go together with them. My father took up a farm near Lake Simcoe, in Ontario. This was through the onerous instances of Canadian farming, and my father was simply in a position by nice diligence to pay the employed men and, in years of loads, to boost enough grain to have seed for the subsequent year’s crop without shopping for any. By this course of my brothers and i were inevitably driven off the land, and have grow to be professors, business males, and engineers, as an alternative of being able to develop up as farm labourers. Yet I saw enough of farming to talk exuberantly in political addresses of the joy of early rising and the deep sleep, both of body and intellect, that is induced by trustworthy guide toil. I used to be educated at Upper Canada College, Toronto, of which I was head boy in 1887. From there I went to the University of Toronto, where I graduated in 1891. At the University I spent my whole time within the acquisition of languages, Mind Guard official site dwelling, dead, and half- dead, and knew nothing of the surface world.
On this diligent pursuit of phrases I spent about sixteen hours of every day. Very quickly after graduation I had forgotten the languages, and found myself intellectually bankrupt. In other words I was what is named a distinguished graduate, and, as such, I took to highschool teaching as the only trade I might find that wanted neither experience nor intellect. I spent my time from 1891 to 1899 on the employees of Upper Canada College, an experience which has left me with a profound sympathy for the numerous gifted and sensible males who are compelled to spend their lives in probably the most dreary, probably the most thankless, Mind Guard official site and the worst paid career on the earth. I've noted that of my pupils, those that seemed the laziest and the least enamoured of books are actually rising to eminence on the bar, in enterprise, and in public life; the really promising boys who took all of the prizes are actually ready with difficulty to earn the wages of a clerk in a summer season hotel or a deck hand on a canal boat.
In 1899 I gave up school teaching in disgust, borrowed enough cash to reside upon for a couple of months, and went to the University of Chicago to review economics and political science. I used to be soon appointed to a Fellowship in political economy, and via this and a few temporary employment by McGill University, I survived till I took the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1903. The that means of this diploma is that the recipient of instruction is examined for the last time in his life, and is pronounced fully full. After this, no new ideas will be imparted to him. From this time, and since my marriage, which had occurred at this period, I've belonged to the employees of McGill University, first as lecturer in Political Science, and later as head of the department of Economics and Political Science. As this position is one of the prizes of my occupation, I'm able to regard myself as singularly fortunate.