Background
Meeker, Royal was born on February 23, 1873 in Silver Lake, Pennsylvania, United States. Son of William and Betsy (Hill) Meeker.
economist historian statistician
Meeker, Royal was born on February 23, 1873 in Silver Lake, Pennsylvania, United States. Son of William and Betsy (Hill) Meeker.
Bachelor of Science, Iowa State College, 1898. Columbia, 1899-1903, Doctor of Philosophy, 1906. U. Leipzig, 1903-1904.
Doctor of Laws, Ursinus College, Collegeville, Pennsylvania, 1924.
His dissertation was entitled History of Shipping Subsidies (1905). From 1906 to 1913, Meeker was a professor of history, economics, and political science at Ursinus College, Collegeville, Pennsylvania and a preceptor and professor of economics at Princeton. Both were associated with the Progressive movement for an active role for government.
President Wilson appointed Meeker Commissioner of Labor Statistics in 1913.
Meeker resigned from the administration in June 1920 to take up the opportunity to help organize the new International Labor Organization, where he was the Chief of the Scientific Division from 1920 to 1923. Meeker served as Pennsylvania Secretary of Labor and Industry from 1923-1924, and later joined the faculty of Carleton College (1926-1927) and Yale University (1930-1936, perhaps longer).
He was Director of Research of the Connecticut Department of Labor (1941-1946). He died in New Haven, Connecticut in 1953.
Meeker advocated progressive reforms, including national health insurance, child labor restrictions combined with strong, State-controlled schools, workmen"s compensation, and a nationwide system of public employment offices.
Meeker also held controversial views associated with eugenics that now seem harsh, writing that
“lieutenant is much better to enact a minimum-wage law even if it deprives these unfortunates of work… better that the state should support the inefficient wholly and prevent the multiplication of the breed than subsidize incompetence and unthrift, enabling them to bring forth more of their kind.”.
He knew Woodrow Wilson, then the president of Princeton, and they served together on New Jersey political boards. As the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Meeker managed special economic studies during World War I and began its regular publication, the Monthly Labor Review, in 1915.
Member American Economics Association, American Statistical Association, Academy Political Science.
Married Dora A. Pierce, July 26, 1905.