The Elements of Public Finance: Including the Monetary System of the United States (1899)
(Originally published in 1899. This volume from the Cornel...)
Originally published in 1899. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies. All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume.
Winthrop More Daniels was an American government official and a professor of economics at Princeton University, 1895 - 1923, and at Yale University, 1923 - 1935.
Background
Winthrop M. Daniels was born on September 30, 1867 in Dayton, Ohio, the second son and second of four children. His father, Edwin Adams Daniels, who became a manufacturer of carriage wheels, and his mother, Mary Kilburn, were both descended from colonial Massachusetts families which had migrated to Ohio in the 1850's.
Education
Daniels prepared at a private academy and entered the College of New Jersey (Princeton) with the class of 1888. Daniels was twice elected president of his class. His classmates remembered him as one of its "most brilliant members, " and he had a reputation as a conversationalist and storyteller. He took an active part in debating and undergraduate writing and at commencement delivered the valedictory oration. Of the Princeton influences Daniels found congenial, he later recalled the "historical spirit" and the "dictates of common sense" dominating all studies, and a "theistic metaphysics" opposed to "agnosticism, materialism, or idealism. " Alexander Johnston, professor of jurisprudence and political economy (whose textbook on American history Daniels was to revise and extend in 1897), he felt embodied these traits.
Upon graduation, Daniels spent a year or two as intellectual handyman at a preparatory school near Princeton, while studying for a Master of Arts degree which he received from Princeton in 1890. He then enrolled in the University of Leipzig to study history and political economy.
Career
In 1891, Daniels secured a position at Wesleyan University, and the following year one as assistant professor of political economy at Princeton, where his departmental "chief" was Woodrow Wilson. Besides a general course in economics, Daniels found himself teaching principles of public finance, which as an undergraduate course many economists then regarded as having dubious academic standing. He was appointed professor in 1895. To research he preferred teaching undergraduates, a role in which he excelled; he also published a successful textbook, The Elements of Public Finance (1899).
Though in the 1890's the village of Princeton was an isolated country town, New York City, the center of American publishing, was near at hand, and ambitious faculty members sought to become reviewers or editors. By 1903 Daniels had broken into the Nation; and soon in summer vacations, he was serving on the editorial board of the Nation and the New York Evening Post, which were run as joint enterprises. He often reminded social "scientists, " Cassandras, "fledgling reformers, " and apostles of the Social Gospel that to their schemes there was an alternative program: "the full amplification of individual liberty, where the humblest citizen may sit 'under his own vine and fig-tree, ' with no tax to pay to the tariff baron, with no graft to render to the politician, with no obeisance to make to the labor union, and with no enforced deference to his fellows who find their pleasure in mapping out the way to Utopia".
In 1910 Woodrow Wilson entered New Jersey politics and won the governorship on a wave of reform. Daniels followed his leader, for Wilson in 1911 appointed him to the New Jersey Board of Public Utility Commissioners and, when he reached the White House, promoted his friend in 1914 to an unexpired term in the Interstate Commerce Commission. Only presidential pressure forced Daniels's nomination through the Senate. At issue were the principles he held about the correct basis for setting "just and reasonable" railroad rates.
On the New Jersey Commission, he had prepared its ruling on a complaint against gas rates in Passaic; the Commission ordered a reduction, but in ascertaining the proper rate base included such intangibles as "going concern value. " This decision had affronted local reformers. On the national scene, it also antagonized the hard core of Republicans and Westerners in the Senate who, under the tutelage of Robert La Follette, had contended through a long struggle for "enlightened" regulation that a physical valuation of railroad property was the correct base for determining rates. Daniels came upon the ICC when that body was considering a petition from railroads in the Northeast and Midwest for an increase of 5 percent in freight rates, and at a time when Wilson, the "New Freedom" behind him, was turning an increasingly friendly ear to the needs of business. Louis D. Brandeis as special counsel to the ICC opposed the increase, repeating his plea of 1910 that the adoption of scientific management principles would ensure sufficient savings to meet the railroads' needs.
The Commission's decision, in July, granted a 5 percent advance within the Midwestern states only. Daniels in his dissent explicitly dismissed the amount of Brandeis's savings as inadequate. Since 1906, he pointed out, the average rise in the world's price level had been between 30 and 50 percent; meanwhile railroad rates had stood still and the railroads' net income had declined. Fairness to the roads and to the community demanded a massive inflow of capital investments for modernization. Within a few months a majority of the Commission fell into step, particularly after the outbreak of war in Europe, and in December the ICC granted the higher rates for the Northeast as well.
Early in 1917, Wilson nominated Daniels for a full six-year term on the Commission. Again the irreconcilables in the Senate attacked Daniels as "reactionary"; they convinced fewer of their colleagues than in 1914. In accordance with custom, the Commission itself elected Daniels its chairman for the year 1918 - 1919. The added pressures of American mobilization compelled Wilson temporarily to nationalize the railroads at the end of 1917. In returning them to private ownership and operation after the war, the Transportation Act of 1920 introduced the novelty of permitting railroads to consolidate into a number of systems, including strong and weak roads, so that their rates would be as uniform as possible and thus more easily and more fairly regulated.
In retrospect, Daniels preferred greater emphasis upon maintaining competition and the regulatory powers of the ICC. Tired of the labors of his position, Daniels resigned from the ICC on July 1, 1923, six months before the expiration of his term, and accepted the Cuyler Professorship of Transportation in the Yale Graduate School. Although he published little in these years, he did deride the inconsistencies of the New Deal in a playful essay, and declared that an "Old Economist" like himself was now as much in exile as a "White Russian in Paris or New York. "
Daniels retired from Yale in 1935. The next year he served as a trustee under the receivership of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, but a severe stroke in 1937 curtailed his activities. Winthrop M. Daniels died on January 3, 1944, in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.
(Originally published in 1899. This volume from the Cornel...)
Religion
A Presbyterian in his Princeton days, Winthrop Daniels in his later years was a member of the Congregational Church.
Membership
For many years Winthrop Daniels was a member of a group-conscious "Young Faculty, " led by Wilson, who frequently voted together on college affairs.
Personality
Winthrop Daniels's outlook was factual, individualistic, affirmative, moralistic, and elitist. He feared these traits made him something of a "Bourbon"; actually, his aversion to abstraction prevented him from being a complete apostle of laissez-faire.
Connections
On October 12, 1898, Winthrop M. Daniels married Joan Robertson, the daughter of a Connnecticut papermaker. The couple had one child, Robertson Balfour.