Chicago. Economics Ph.D. 1903 Canadian Humorist Stephen Leacock
Economics Ph.D. (1903), Canadian Humorist Stephen Leacock. It isn't daily that one stumbles upon a historical past-of-economics arc connecting Thorstein Veblen to Groucho Marx and Jack Benny. The economist that linked the iconoclast economist to these veterans of vaudeville comedy is the Canadian humorist and Chicago scholar of Thorstein Veblen, Stephen Butler Leacock. First I submit here some knowledge (the precise starting point of my background test of Leacock, the Chicago Ph.D.) found in 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 slightly Town (1912) follows. The stories themselves strike most, if not all, of the identical chords that Garrison Keillor’s News from Lake Wobegon has played over the previous many years. Finally I will enable myself the quick-reduce 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: Mind Guard brain booster 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 Mind Guard supplement Political Science, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. 1938, April 1. Professor Emeritus of Economics and Political Science, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. I do know no manner in which a writer may extra fittingly introduce his work to the public than by giving a brief account of who and what he's. By this means a number of the blame for what he has finished may be very correctly shifted to the extenuating circumstances of his life. I used to be born at Swanmoor, Hants, England, on December 30, 1869. I am not aware that there was any particular conjunction of the planets on the time, but should suppose it extraordinarily possible.
My dad and mom migrated to Canada in 1876, improve focus naturally and i determined to go with them. My father took up a farm close to Lake Simcoe, in Ontario. This was in the course of the arduous times of Canadian farming, cognitive health supplement and my father was simply in a position by great diligence to pay the hired men and, in years of a lot, to raise enough grain to have seed for the next year’s crop without shopping for any. By this course of my brothers and i had been inevitably pushed off the land, and have grow to be professors, enterprise males, and engineers, as a substitute of having the ability to grow up as farm labourers. Yet I noticed enough of farming to speak exuberantly in political addresses of the joy of early rising and the deep sleep, both of body and intellect, that is induced by trustworthy handbook toil. I used to be educated at Upper Canada College, Toronto, of which I used to be head boy in 1887. From there I went to the University of Toronto, where I graduated in 1891. On the University I spent my entire time within the acquisition of languages, residing, useless, and half- lifeless, memory and focus supplement knew nothing of the skin world.
In this diligent pursuit of phrases I spent about sixteen hours of every day. Very soon after graduation I had forgotten the languages, and located myself intellectually bankrupt. In other phrases I used to be what known as a distinguished graduate, and, as such, I took to school instructing as the only trade I might find that needed neither expertise nor intellect. I spent my time from 1891 to 1899 on the staff of Upper Canada College, an expertise which has left me with a profound sympathy for the many gifted and good males who are compelled to spend their lives in the most dreary, probably the most thankless, and the worst paid occupation on the planet. 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 business, and in public life; the really promising boys who took all the prizes at the moment are in a position with problem to earn the wages of a clerk in a summer season lodge or a deck hand on a canal boat.
In 1899 I gave up faculty instructing in disgust, borrowed sufficient money to reside upon for Mind Guard reviews a number of months, and went to the University of Chicago to check economics and political science. I was soon appointed to a Fellowship in political economy, and by the use of this and a few temporary employment by McGill University, I survived till I took the diploma of Doctor Mind Guard supplement of Philosophy in 1903. The which 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 might be imparted to him. From this time, and since my marriage, which had occurred at this period, I've belonged to the workers 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.