James Harvey Rogers was an American educator, Yale University Sterling professor of economics, author of Capitalism in Crisis (1938), "Foreign Markets and Foreign Credits, " (1929) etc.
Background
James Harvey Rogers was born at Society Hill, South Carolina, United States, the son of John Terrel and Florence (Coker) Rogers and a nephew of the South Carolina manufacturer and philanthropist James Lide Coke. His father was a planter, and he was the fifth child and youngest son in a family of six, with two older brothers and an older half-brother.
Education
After preparatory education at St. David's Academy in Society Hill (1900 - 04), Rogers attended the University of South Carolina, from which he received the B. A. degree in 1906 and the B. S. and M. A. degrees in 1907. Following a year as superintendent and teacher at St. David's Academy, he entered Yale as a senior, graduating with a B. A. degree in 1909. He then spent two years at the University of Chicago, giving particular attention to mathematics, though he also took a graduate course in economics under Alvin Johnson. Entering the Yale graduate school in 1912, Rogers received a Ph. D. in economics in 1916. Meanwhile, in 1914-15, he had studied at the University of Geneva under Vilfredo Pareto, who had an enduring influence on his thought. While never cynical, Rogers, reflecting Pareto's teaching, was sensitive to the power of sentiment and irrationality in the conduct of political and, even, economic affairs.
Career
Rogers began his academic career as instructor in economics at the University of Missouri (1916 - 17), but his teaching was interrupted by World War I, which took him to Washington as statistician for the Council of National Defense (October 1917 to January 1918) and then as a first lieutenant in the army ordnance department. Later (April to August 1919) he served overseas in the American Red Cross. Returning to the University of Missouri in 1919 as associate professor, he taught next at Cornell (1920 - 23) and again at Missouri (1923 - 30) before accepting an appointment at Yale. From 1931 until his death he was Sterling Professor of Political Economy at Yale. He was a stimulating and influential teacher, building his courses around concepts in monetary and foreign trade analysis capable of statistical verification. As an economist Rogers combined a keen capacity for abstract mathematical analysis with a concern for concrete social problems. His doctoral dissertation was a mathematical investigation of the incidence of taxation; but in his published writings he sought to apply his knowledge of monetary theory--the field of his principal interest--to matters of immediate public concern. Thus in his America Weighs Her Gold (1931) he advocated, as measures to offset the current depression, the lowering of tariffs, readjustment of the war debts, Federal Reserve action to increase the circulating medium, and, if necessary, an abandonment of the gold standard. It was this book which probably brought Rogers into the inner circle of Franklin D. Roosevelt's advisers, beginning even before the 1932 presidential election. In July 1933, at President Roosevelt's request and in association with Prof. George F. Warren of Cornell, Rogers undertook to plan a revision of the government's fiscal policies. His monetary views--strongly influenced by Prof. Irving Fisher of Yale, with whom he had studied--fitted him well for work with an administration confronted with a deflation of unique severity which had failed to yield to time and to traditional remedy. Nevertheless, he opposed many important measures of the early New Deal, such as the NRA, the AAA, and the silver purchase policy. Unlike Warren, Rogers did not view the price of gold as the crucial influence on the general level of domestic prices. He sought a massive increase in effective demand for American products. Specifically, he urged that devaluation of the currency and abandonment of the gold standard be accompanied by a large-scale public works program and by an economic foreign policy designed to expand American lending and trade in cooperation with other governments. In his major recommendations Rogers proved ahead of his time. Although the government tended through 1934 to follow Warren's theories, Rogers continued to work with the Roosevelt administration. In 1934, as a special representative of the Treasury Department, he went to China, Japan, and India to study the silver situation. For five years, 1933-37, he was the American member of the Economic Committee of the League of Nations. Writings by Rogers, in addition to America Weighs Her Gold, include Stock Speculation and the Money Market (1927), an able but rarely cited study which had appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 1926; The Process of Inflation in France, 1914-1927 (1929); and "Foreign Markets and Foreign Credits, " in Recent Economic Changes (1929), the report of the Committee on Recent Economic Changes of the President's Conference on Unemployment. Rogers also participated in the translation, by Prof. Arthur Livingston of Columbia University, of Pareto's Trattato di Sociologia Generale into English as The Mind and Society (1935), teaching, as well, an influential course on Pareto's sociology in the Yale graduate school. His last major work, Capitalism in Crisis (1938), manifested his concern over the sharp recession of 1937-38, which he attributed to a premature tightening of credit and cutbacks on public works expenditures, among other factors.
Views
His last major work, Capitalism in Crisis (1938), manifested his concern over the sharp recession of 1937-38, which he attributed to a premature tightening of credit and cutbacks on public works expenditures, among other factors.
Personality
Both as teacher and as friend he gave to his students an extraordinary amount of time and attention.
Connections
Rogers never married.
When only fifty-two he was killed in an airplane crash in the harbor of Rio de Janeiro, on a tour designed to increase his knowledge of the war potential of the Western Hemisphere.