| Leon C. Marshall | |
| Birth Date: | March 15, 1879 |
| Birth Place: | Zanesville, Ohio |
| Death Date: | March 1966 |
| Nationality: | American |
| Institutions: | --> |
| Field: | Political Economy, economic organization, and business administration |
| Alma Mater: | Ohio Wesleyan University, Harvard University, Ohio Wesleyan University |
| Spouses: | --> |
Leon Carroll Marshall (March 15, 1879 - March 1966) was an American economist, Professor of Political Economy and fourth dean of the Booth School of Business from 1909 to 1924, Professor at the Law School of the Johns Hopkins University, and Professor at the American University. He is known for his works on our(?) economic organization,[1] business administration,[2] curriculum-making in the social studies[3] and the divorce court, as well as his involvement in the Bohemian Grove.[4]
Born in Zanesville, Ohio in 1879, Marshall in 1900 obtained his BA at the Ohio Wesleyan University, and in 1902 his MA from Harvard University, Later on in 1918 he obtained his law degree at the Ohio Wesleyan University.[5]
Marshall started his academic career at the business school of the University of Chicago, the Booth School of Business, where he became Professor of Political Economy and was fourth dean of the business school from 1909 to 1924. Sequentially he moved to the Johns Hopkins University, where he was professor and director of its Institute of Law from 1928 to 1933. In 1934 Marshall was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as member of the National Labor Board and of the National Recovery Administration to support Roosevelt's New Deal policies and the "measure and combat the effects of the Great Depression."[5] He also became a member of the National Educational Association. From 1936 to 1948 Marshall was Professor of Political Economy at American University in Washington, D.C.
Marshall wrote several textbooks on Social Studies topics at the secondary school and grade-school level, starting with Materials For the Study of Elementary Economics in 1913 coauthored with James A. Field (1879–1927) and Chester Whitney Wright (1880–1966).[5]
Marshall came into prominence in the years from 1913 to 1919, when he was involved with professor of Economics James A. Field and the economic historian Chester W. Wright in "attempts to move economics instruction away from the 'rigorous drill in orthodox theory' or the 'straight-jacket of conventional theory' to a method of instruction emphasizing the development of economic institutions, inquiry into current problems and issues, and fostering of creativity and originality (field 1917). To this end, they produced a book of readings to supplement the usual texts (Marshall, Wright, and Field 1913)."[6]
In 1918 Marshall published his Readings in Industrial Society. This work had a heavy emphasis on the institutional development of industrial society, the money economy and financial organization, machine industry, the wage system and the worker, industrial concentration, competition, private property, and social control."[6]
The work contained reading from founders of the institutional economics such as Thorstein Veblen, Wesley Clair Mitchell, Walton H. Hamilton, Harold G. Moulton, Robert F. Hoxie, John M. Clark, Edwin Cannan, and John A. Hobson.[6] He also reprinted diagrams from the work of Henry Rogers Seager, picturing the economic production and distribution from 1904,[7] and Paul Nystrom, picturing the channels of distribution for various lines of goods from 1915.[8]
Leon Ardzrooni, known as "Veblen's most faithful disciple",[9] reviewed the book for Political Science Quarterly, and introduced the work as follows:
Clarence Edwin Ayres explicitly regarded "Marshall's book as a contribution to the institutional type of economics."[6]
In 1921 Marshall and Leverett S. Lyon (1885–1959) published their "Our economic organization." The main purpose of this book in the field of elementary economics is to present in systematic fashion the structure of economic society under the spur of competition.[10]
The treatment is necessarily brief on account of the large number of topics to be covered, and also on account of the requirements of an elementary text book. The approach is functional. The authors stated in its preface the purpose is to present economic organization in its functional aspect, to show in some detail not so much what the organization is as how it operates.[10]
And more even specific "it is a study of the devices which exist in industrial society, primarily in terms of their activities, and, quite secondarily, in terms of their structures."
In a 1921 review of the work The American Economic Review, by Everett Walton Goodhue (1878–1940s), Professor of Sociology and Economics at Colgate University,[11] Goodhue explained, that this work compares the economic organization to machine, and introduces a process approach (or systems approach) to economics. Goodhue (1921) explained.
The complete work is illustrated with over 100 illustrations; tables, schemes, pictures, drawings, maps, graphs, block diagrams, tree diagrams, classification and organization charts, presenting a mix of empirical and theoretical data. The process approach is recognizable in the visualization of some specific economic phenomena in diagrams, such as the diagram of gratifying wants (see image).
Goodhue (1921) further explained, that the book at the outset rather assumes human wants and the goods to gratify those wants. Its interest lies in the field of processes. The aim was to start the student in elementary economics with a study of our want gratifying machine, to show him how this machine has come to be, and how it serves its purpose in apportioning our social resources, viz: labor power, capital, acquired knowledge and natural resources to the production and sale of goods.[10]
Although this approach to economics in its time was somewhat new and rather unorthodox, nevertheless there was much to be said in its favor, according to Goodhue (1921):[10]
There is no attempt to expound principles. All that is left to be taken up at a later point in the course. Those who have taught elementary economics will appreciate the difficulty of interesting and holding the students when they are plunged at the outset into the midst of the complexities of utility, value, and prices. This book goes far to solve that most difficult problem of arousing student interest in the course. It was considered eminently practical, readable, suggestive, and as such merits consideration.[10]
The topics discussed in the book are in the main those of Professor Marshall's more pretentious work Readings in Industrial Society. The first two chapters on human wants and social resources aim to show the reasons for any form of economic organization.
Then follow six chapters on English industrial history which, as the authors state, "are not 'historical' in any orthodox sense of the term. They are a somewhat more extended view of the problem at issue." The remainder of the book is taken up with a functionalized description of the economic organization of the United States. There are four chapters on specialization, two on machine industry, three on business organization, three on the province of the enterpriser, two each on money and financial organization and the utilization of natural and human resources, and one on planning, guiding, and controlling.[10]
A 1921 review of this work by Goodhue,[10] states that:And furthermore: