Chicago. Economics Ph.D. 1903 Canadian Humorist Stephen Leacock

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Economics Ph.D. (1903), Canadian Humorist Stephen Leacock. It is not every single day that one stumbles upon a history-of-economics arc connecting Thorstein Veblen to Groucho Marx and Jack Benny. The economist that related the iconoclast economist to those veterans of vaudeville comedy is the Canadian humorist and Chicago scholar of Thorstein Veblen, Stephen Butler Leacock. First I submit here some knowledge (the actual start line of my background verify of Leacock, the Chicago Ph.D.) found in the University of Chicago’s registers of its Ph.D.’s and Mind Guard annual catalogues. The author’s autobiographical Preface to Leacock’s greatest hit, Sunshine Sketches of a little bit Town (1912) follows. The stories themselves strike most, if not all, of the same chords that Garrison Keillor’s News from Lake Wobegon has played over the past many years. Finally I will enable myself the short-minimize of quoting Wikipedia to complete the sketch of each sides of this most fascinating 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, Mind Guard 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, Mind Guard supplement Montreal, Canada. I do know no approach wherein a writer may extra fittingly introduce his work to the public than by giving a quick account of who and what he is. By this implies some of the blame for what he has executed may be very properly shifted to the extenuating circumstances of his life. I used to be born at Swanmoor, Hants, England, on December 30, 1869. I'm not aware that there was any specific conjunction of the planets on the time, Mind Guard but should think it extremely doubtless.



My dad and mom migrated to Canada in 1876, and cognitive health supplement that i determined to go together with them. My father took up a farm close to Lake Simcoe, in Ontario. This was during the onerous instances of Canadian farming, and my father was just ready by nice diligence to pay the hired males and, in years of lots, to boost enough grain to have seed for the subsequent year’s crop with out buying any. By this process my brothers and that i were inevitably pushed off the land, and have become professors, business men, and nootropic brain supplement engineers, as a substitute of being able to develop up as farm labourers. Yet I noticed sufficient of farming to talk exuberantly in political addresses of the joy of early rising and support memory and clarity the deep sleep, each of physique and intellect, that is induced by honest 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, the place I graduated in 1891. On the University I spent my total time within the acquisition of languages, residing, useless, and half- lifeless, and knew nothing of the outside world.



In this diligent pursuit of words I spent about sixteen hours of every day. Very soon after graduation I had forgotten the languages, and found myself intellectually bankrupt. In other words I used to be what known as a distinguished graduate, and, as such, I took to highschool instructing as the only commerce I may discover that needed neither expertise nor intellect. I spent my time from 1891 to 1899 on the workers of Upper Canada College, an expertise which has left me with a profound sympathy for the numerous gifted and sensible men who are compelled to spend their lives in essentially the most dreary, essentially the most thankless, Mind Guard and the worst paid career on the earth. I've noted that of my pupils, those who appeared the laziest and the least enamoured of books are actually rising to eminence at the bar, in business, Mind Guard and in public life; the really promising boys who took all the prizes are now ready with difficulty to earn the wages of a clerk in a summer season resort or a deck hand on a canal boat.



In 1899 I gave up faculty instructing in disgust, Mind Guard borrowed enough cash to stay upon for just a few months, and went to the University of Chicago to study economics and political science. I used to be soon appointed to a Fellowship in political economic system, and via this and a few non permanent employment by McGill University, I survived till I took the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1903. The which means of this degree is that the recipient of instruction is examined for the final time in his life, and is pronounced utterly full. After this, Mind Guard no new ideas can be imparted to him. From this time, and since my marriage, which had occurred at this interval, 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 among the prizes of my occupation, I am able to regard myself as singularly lucky.