Background
Henry Vethake was born in Essequibo County, British Guiana. He was brought to the United States by his parents at the age of four.
(Excerpt from The Principles of Political Economy He has,...)
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(Excerpt from An Exposition of the Reasons for the Resigna...)
Excerpt from An Exposition of the Reasons for the Resignation of Some of the Professors in the University of the City of New York Shortly after, this occurrence was related to the Faculty in the pre. Sence of Dr. Mathews. We will, to do justice to him, state the expla nation which he then gave of his agency in the. Transaction to which it has reference, with all the strength, too, which he subsequently attempted to give to it before the committee of the Council. He said that he did not appoint the young men to prepare the Speeches that have been mentioned, and did not, therefore, assign; to them of his own motion the honours of the institution; that he only told A, ou are a good Latin scholar, and if we shall have a public commencement, you will very probably speak the Latin Salutatory, and to B, that he would very probably have the Valedictory assigned to him, and to the candidates generally, that there was no harm in their getting ready for a com. Mencement if there should be one; and that inasmuch as it had been mentioned, at some' meeting of the Faculty, as a proper thing, even though no commencement should take place, for each of the young men, whom it should be resolved to recommend to the Council for de grees, to prepare an essay, as an exercise to take the place of his com, mencement speech, - he thought there was no harm in setting the young men to work in the preparation of their speeches, the more especially as he also thought the time allowed them for that purpose might otherwise be rather short. Let the reader, and especially the reader who is acquainted with the usages of colleges and universities, decide on the merits of the excuses rendered. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Henry Vethake was born in Essequibo County, British Guiana. He was brought to the United States by his parents at the age of four.
Graduating at Columbia College in 1808, Vethake subsequently taught mathematics and geography there; he also studied law.
In 1813, Vethake became a professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Queen's College (now Rutgers University). He moved rapidly from one institution to another, going to the College of New Jersey in 1817, to Dickinson College in 1821, and returning to the College of New Jersey in 1829 as professor of natural philosophy.
In 1832, he became a professor in the University of the City of New York, which he left in about three years to become president for eighteen months of Washington College, Lexington, Virginia. Here he also occupied the chair of intellectual and moral philosophy. His longest period of academic service was at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a professor of mathematics and philosophy (1836 - 55) and of philosophy (1855 - 59), vice-provost (1845 - 55), and provost (1855 - 59). He was not successful in administrative work.
In 1859, he was appointed a professor of mathematics in the Polytechnic College, Philadelphia, where he remained until his death. On April 15, 1831, he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society. His Introductory Lecture on Political Economy (1831), devoted mainly to a defense of the science, then unfamiliar in this country, may be read today with profit.
He edited, and published in 1840, J. R. McCulloch's A Dictionary, Practical, Theoretical, and Historical, of Commerce and Commercial Navigation, with additional articles, mostly embracing American material, and was the editor, and in large part the author, of Encyclopedia Americana, Supplementary Volume (1848); this last named, while in the main prepared from secondary sources, showed his wide range of knowledge and ability to cull essential data.
(Excerpt from The Principles of Political Economy He has,...)
(Excerpt from An Exposition of the Reasons for the Resigna...)
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
Vethake's political economy was thoroughly orthodox. Despite his hopeful American environment, where rapid progress was being made in all departments of economic life, and notwithstanding his residence in Philadelphia, which was the home of the budding nationalist school, he was obsessed with the notion of diminishing returns. He was opposed to practically every form of governmental interference in economic life, and constantly betrayed the current European fear that the capitalist would be inconvenienced for humanitarian objects.
He affords a good illustration of the transfer of classical economic inhibitions to the new continent. One of the earliest in a long line of scholars proficient in the mathematical and natural sciences who expounded political economy, he appreciated the limitations and at the same time the difficulties of social studies. By the time he published The Principles of Political Economy (1838, 1844), he had broadened his concept of wealth to include services, and that of capital to embrace knowledge and skills, but this natural introduction to a liberal treatment of the whole subject was denied in the subsequent chapters.
His acceptance of the wage-fund theory, i. e. , that wages were paid out of a predetermined allocation by capitalist employers, led him to declare, in the way so familiar in British economic writing of the period, that "no advantage can be derived, by the receivers of wages, from the trades' unions", and that "Although the action of the trades' unions can hardly be stigmatized as of a dishonest character, such action is, nevertheless, a violation to a certain extent of the rights of property.
And if these rights may be once violated by the trades' unions, they may be again and again violated by them; and the apprehension of this taking place would constitute a check to the accumulation of capital with its usual rapidity; inducing, in consequence, a fall of wages below the usual rate".
He was opposed to the statutory shortening of hours for all but children, and held that the leisure time provided the worker might tend to "deteriorate instead of improving his condition, by being spent in dissipation and vice . " He refused to condemn the production of commodities by convicts, was wary of even private charity, and could tolerate public works to relieve the unemployed only if wages on them were below the going rate. However, he came close to approving the absorption of economic rent in taxes.
a member of the American Philosophical Society
Vethake married a woman named Elizabeth in 1836, after arriving in Philadelphia; but no further information was found on her.
