Richard T. Ely
Encyclopedia
Richard Theodore Ely was an American economist
Economist
An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...

, author, and leader of the Progressive movement
Progressivism in the United States
Progressivism in the United States is a broadly based reform movement that reached its height early in the 20th century and is generally considered to be middle class and reformist in nature. It arose as a response to the vast changes brought by modernization, such as the growth of large...

 who called for more government intervention in order to reform what they perceived as the injustices of capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...

, especially regarding factory conditions, compulsory education, child labor
Child labor
Child labour refers to the employment of children at regular and sustained labour. This practice is considered exploitative by many international organizations and is illegal in many countries...

, and labor unions. Ely is best remembered as a founder and the first Secretary of the American Economic Association
American Economic Association
The American Economic Association, or AEA, is a learned society in the field of economics, headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. It publishes one of the most prestigious academic journals in economics: the American Economic Review...

, as a founder and secretary of the Christian Social Union, and as the author of a series of widely-read books on the organized labor movement
Labour movement
The term labour movement or labor movement is a broad term for the development of a collective organization of working people, to campaign in their own interest for better treatment from their employers and governments, in particular through the implementation of specific laws governing labour...

, socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

, and other social questions.

Early years

Ely was born April 13, 1854, in Ripley
Ripley, New York
Ripley is a town on Lake Erie in the westernmost part of Chautauqua County, New York, USA. The population was 2,636 at the 2000 census. The town was named after General Eleazer Wheelock Ripley. There are no incorporated villages in the town, but there is one CDP: Ripley.- History :Ripley was...

, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, the eldest of three children of Ezra Sterling Ely and the former Harriet Gardner Mason. His parents were Presbyterian but Ely transferred his affiliation to the Episcopal Church
Episcopal Church (United States)
The Episcopal Church is a mainline Anglican Christian church found mainly in the United States , but also in Honduras, Taiwan, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, the British Virgin Islands and parts of Europe...

 when in college.

Education and career

Ely attended Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, from which he received a Bachelor's degree
Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...

 in 1876 and a Master's degree
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...

 in 1879. He received a Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 in Economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

 from the University of Heidelberg in that same year. He later received a Doctorate of Laws from Hobart College
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Hobart and William Smith Colleges, located in Geneva, New York, are together a liberal arts college offering Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science and Master of Arts in Teaching degrees. In athletics, however, the two schools compete with separate teams, known as the Hobart Statesmen and the...

, receiving the degree in 1892.

Ely was a professor and head of the Department of Political Economy
Political economy
Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...

 at Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...

 in Baltimore, Maryland from 1881 to 1892.

In 1885, Ely was a founder of the American Economic Association
American Economic Association
The American Economic Association, or AEA, is a learned society in the field of economics, headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. It publishes one of the most prestigious academic journals in economics: the American Economic Review...

, serving until 1892 as the group's Secretary. He later served a term as President of the organization, holding that position from 1899 to 1901.

In April 1891, Ely was a founder and the first Secretary of the Christian Social Union
Social Gospel
The Social Gospel movement is a Protestant Christian intellectual movement that was most prominent in the early 20th century United States and Canada...

, a membership organization advocating the application of Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

 principles to the social problems of the world.

From 1892 until 1925, he was professor of Political Economy and director of the School of Economics, Political Science, and History at the University of Wisconsin
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...

 in Madison
Madison, Wisconsin
Madison is the capital of the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Dane County. It is also home to the University of Wisconsin–Madison....

. In 1894 an unsuccessful attempt was made to depose him from his chair at Wisconsin for purportedly teaching socialistic
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

 doctrines. This effort failed, with the Wisconsin
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...

 state Board of Regents
Board of Regents
In the United States, a board often governs public institutions of higher education, which include both state universities and community colleges. In each US state, such boards may govern either the state university system, individual colleges and universities, or both. In general they operate as...

 issuing a ringing proclamation in favor of academic freedom
Academic freedom
Academic freedom is the belief that the freedom of inquiry by students and faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy, and that scholars should have freedom to teach or communicate ideas or facts without being targeted for repression, job loss, or imprisonment.Academic freedom is a...

, acknowledging the necessity for freely "sifting and winnowing" among competing claims of truth.

In 1925, Ely moved to Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

 in Chicago, where he accepted a position as professor of Economics. He remained at Northwestern until his retirement in 1933.

Political views

Although regarded as a radical by his detractors on the political right, Ely was in fact opposed to socialism. "I condemn alike," he declared, "that individualism that would allow the state no room for industrial activity, and that socialism which would absorb in the state the functions of the individual." He argued that socialism was not needed, and "the alternative of socialism is our complex socio-economic order, which is based, in the main, upon private property
Private property
Private property is the right of persons and firms to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath land, capital, and other forms of property. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which refers to assets owned by a state, community or government rather than by...

." He warned that the proper "balance between private and public enterprise" is "menaced by socialism, on the one hand, and by plutocracy
Plutocracy
Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth. The combination of both plutocracy and oligarchy is called plutarchy. The word plutocracy is derived from the Ancient Greek root ploutos, meaning wealth and kratos, meaning to rule or to govern.-Usage:The term plutocracy is generally...

, on the other."

Ely's critique of socialism made him a political target of the socialists themselves. In his 1910 book, Ten Blind Leaders of the Blind, Arthur Morrow Lewis acknowledged that Ely was a "fair opponent" who had "done much to obtain a hearing for [socialism] among the unreasonable," but charged he was merely one of those "bourgeois intellectuals" who were "not sufficiently intellectual to grasp the nature of our position."

Ely was a product of the German historical school with an emphasis on evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

 to new forms, and never accepted the marginalist revolution that was transforming economic theory in Britain and the U.S. He was strongly influenced by Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....

 and strongly favored competition over monopoly
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...

 or state ownership
State ownership
State ownership, also called public ownership, government ownership or state property, are property interests that are vested in the state, rather than an individual or communities....

, with regulation to "secure its benefits" and "mitigate its evils." What was needed was "to raise its moral and ethical level." However, whereas Herbert Spencer believed that free competition was best served by deregulation and a smaller state, Richard Ely believed that more regulation and a more interventionist state was the policy to follow. Also on "Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics...

", Herbert Spencer believed that the state should not get involved in supporting one ethnic group over another – whereas Richard Ely believed that the state should support white "Nordic" people against people of other races (in line with the opinions of his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin, Edward Ross and Charles Van Hise).

Ely did support labor unions and opposed child labor, as did many leaders of the Progressive Movement, including such conservatives as Mark Hanna
Mark Hanna
Marcus Alonzo "Mark" Hanna was a United States Senator from Ohio and the friend and political manager of President William McKinley...

. He was close to the Social Gospel
Social Gospel
The Social Gospel movement is a Protestant Christian intellectual movement that was most prominent in the early 20th century United States and Canada...

 movement, emphasizing that the Gospel
Gospel
A gospel is an account, often written, that describes the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In a more general sense the term "gospel" may refer to the good news message of the New Testament. It is primarily used in reference to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...

 of Christ
Christ
Christ is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...

 applied to society as a whole and was not merely individualistic; he worked hard to convince churches to advocate on behalf of workers. Ely strongly influenced his friend Walter Rauschenbusch
Walter Rauschenbusch
Walter Rauschenbusch was a Christian theologian and Baptist minister. He was a key figure in the Social Gospel movement in the United States of America.-Evolution of Thought:...

, a leading spokesman for the Social Gospel.

During World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, Ely was active in the political movement to build popular support for the American war effort, taking part in the activities of the League to Enforce Peace
League to Enforce Peace
The League to Enforce Peace was an American organization established in 1915 to promote the formation of an international body for world peace...

. Ely was the head of the committee of arrangements for a "Win the War Convention" held in Madison from November 8-10, 1918. Richard Ely's political activities during the First World War included his strong campaign to remove Senator La Follette from politics. Although Robert La Follette was generally a Progressive in politics, his lack of support for the war had made him unfit for office, in the opinion of Richard Ely, and so Ely compaigned to both have him removed from the United States Senate and to end his influence in the politics of Wisconsin.

Ely edited Macmillan's Citizen's Library of Economics, Politics, and Sociology and its Social Science Textbook Series, Crowell's Library of Economics and Politics, and was a frequent contributor to periodical literature, both scientific and popular.

Death and legacy

Richard Ely died in Old Lyme, Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...

 on October 4, 1943. A large portion of his library was purchased by Louisiana State University
Louisiana State University
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, most often referred to as Louisiana State University, or LSU, is a public coeducational university located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The University was founded in 1853 in what is now known as Pineville, Louisiana, under the name...

 and is now a part of LSU's Special Collections division.

Ely is honored together with William Dwight Porter Bliss
William Dwight Porter Bliss
William Dwight Porter Bliss was an American Christian Socialist writer, editor, and activist. He is remembered as a pioneer historian of the world socialist movement.-Early life:...

 with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA)
Calendar of saints (Episcopal Church in the United States of America)
The veneration of saints in the Episcopal Church is a continuation of an ancient tradition from the early Church which honors important people of the Christian faith. The usage of the term "saint" is similar to Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Those in the Anglo-Catholic tradition may...

 on October 8.

The American Economic Association instituted the annual "Richard T. Ely Lecture" in 1960 in his memory, which, unlike the Association's other honors is also open to non-American economists.

Works


Additional reading


External links

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