Fred Rogers Fairchild

Background

He was born in Crete, Nebraska, the son of Arthur Babbitt Fairchild, an educator, and Isabel Amanda Pratt.

Education

Fairchild attended local schools and earned a B. A. from Doane College in Crete in 1898 and began teaching at Glenwood Collegiate Institute (Matawan, New Jersey) in the following fall.

Career

He then served a two-year instructorship at the Gunnery School in Washington, Connecticut After earning a Ph. D. from Yale in 1904, he joined the faculty as an instructor in economics and political economy.

He was promoted to assistant professor in 1908 and to professor in 1913. While at Yale, he chaired the Department of Social and Political Science (1920 - 1924), the Department of Economics, Sociology, and Government (1924 - 1925), and the Department of Economics (1937 - 1939).

In 1933 he was named a fellow of Calhoun College and in 1936 the Seymour H. Knox Professor of Economics, a post he held until his retirement in 1945.

His two-volume text Elementary Economics (1926) was written in collaboration with Edgar S. Furniss and Norman S. Buck. (It ran through five editions; the 1954 edition listed as authors Fairchild, Buck, and Reuben Emanuel Slesinger. )

When the work was first published, Harry Elmer Barnes described it as "an almost ideal textbook, " but noted that it was in the conventional, rather than the emerging institutionalist, tradition.

Fairchild's other academic works include Essentials of Economics (1923), Economic Problems (with R. T. Compton, 1928), Economics (1932), Understanding Our Free Economy (with Thomas Shelley, 1952), and Principles of Economics (with others, 1954).

He also wrote the brief Description of the New Deal (with Furniss, Buck, and Chester Howard Whelden, Jr. , 1935), which one reviewer claimed was "an excellent and objective study of the New Deal, " characterizing its main conclusions as "disturbing or gratifying (depending upon one's point of view). " Of these conclusions, the most prescient was that "the vast machinery set up by the 'New Deal' will in all likelihood become more or less permanent. "

Much of Fairchild's work in the field of public finance is reflected in numerous published reports, including The Factory Legislation of the State of New York (1905); "Taxation of Timberlands, " in the Report of the National Conservation Committee (1909); Report of Study of Connecticut Tax System (for the Connecticut Chamber of Commerce, 1917); National Survey of School Finance (prepared for the United States Commissioner of Education under the direction of Dr. Paul R. Mort, with Fairchild one of many expert contributors, 1933); and Forest Taxation: A Report of the Forest Taxation Inquiry (1935). He also contributed to Tax Policy (edited by Mabel Walker, 1944).

The school finance report's principal recommendations were that states, rather than local communities, should bear the cost of public education, in order to equalize educational opportunities; that the property tax ought not to be the sole source of educational funds; and that, in assuming the educational cost burden, states should separate the matter of control from subvention.

The forest taxation report (authorized in 1924 and issued in 1935) attempted to deal with the claims of timber growers that they were being subjected to unjust and burdensome taxation. Conflict had arisen out of the government's need to derive revenue from continuous property taxation and from the growers' irregular earnings resulting from the sporadic cutting and marketing of timber.

Fairchild's domestic contributions were augmented by foreign service.

In 1917-1918 he was consulted by the Dominican Republic on problems of taxation and public debt.

In 1923, Colombia asked him and four others to help advise on the reorganization of its financial system. Fairchild's general economic orientation was neoclassical and conservative. Consequently, he was asked by such organizations as the United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Manufacturers' Association of Connecticut, and the Connecticut Bankers' Association to represent them.

Fourteen years later, in a column for the Herald Tribune (September 4, 1942), Fairchild opposed levying taxes on the income from these securities, fearing that the tax burden at the lower governmental levels would rise and that such taxation would threaten the integrity of state and local governments.

The change is explicable insofar as the national government of the 1920's seemed to have limited historical functions, whereas in the 1930's it was viewed by Fairchild as a burgeoning, power-hungry leviathan. Fairchild was not a Keynesian.

He died in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Achievements

• In 1929, Fairchild served as president of the National Tax Association. On one tax issue, Fairchild changed his mind: in 1923 he advocated revision of the Constitution to permit federal taxation of interest generated by state and municipal securities.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Bulletin of the National Tax Association, Vol. 4: October, 1918-June, 1919 (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Bulletin of the National Tax Association...)

  • A description of the "New Deal,"

    (Additional Author Chester Howard Whelden, Jr.)

  • Essentials Of Economics
  • Elementary Economics
  • Principles of Economics
  • Economics
  • Understanding our free economy;: An introduction to economics,
  • Economics
  • ELEMENTARY ECONOMICS, VOLUME II

Politics

Fairchild, who made his home in Fairfield, Connecticut, was not affiliated with any political party.

Views

Fairchild's professional career was marked by meritorious service as a teacher and author of a popular text in introductory economics, as an expert in public finance, and as a spokesman for business on tax matters.

He advocated governmental frugality, balanced governmental budgets, low rates of taxation, and tax simplification. He favored a federal sales tax to supplement the federal income tax. He fought against government regulations that tended to stifle private enterprise, and he testified against resale price maintenance.

Quotations: "I am convinced that the supposed benefits of Government spending are an illusion, " he wrote. "Government has no magic power to raise the standard of living by spending money. "

His arguments in favor of President Calvin Coolidge's proposal were that "tax exemption destroys the personal character of the income tax and builds up a tax-exempt class of the wealthier citizens. "

Membership

Fairchild was an honorary member of the National Tax Association, an educational association of taxation experts.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• One reviewer, noting the recommendations of the investigators, welcomed the report but pessimistically concluded, "There is little ground for hoping that either tax relief or any other measure likely to be accepted will induce private owners to engage in socially advantageous behavior. "

Interests

• His avocational interests included traveling, carpentry, tennis, and swimming.

Connections

On June 23, 1917, Fairchild married Ruth Loraine Evans; they had two children.

Father:

Arthur Babbitt Fairchild

mother Isabel Amanda Pratt

brother:

Henry Pratt Fairchild

sociologist and educator

Wife:

Ruth Loraine Evans