Economics Ph.D. (1903), Canadian Humorist Stephen Leacock. It is not day-after-day that one stumbles upon a history-of-economics arc connecting Thorstein Veblen to Groucho Marx and Jack Benny. The economist that connected the iconoclast economist to these veterans of vaudeville comedy is the Canadian humorist and Chicago pupil of Thorstein Veblen, Stephen Butler Leacock. First I submit here some information (the actual start line of my background test of Leacock, the Chicago Ph.D.) found within the University of Chicago’s registers of its Ph.D.’s and annual catalogues. The author’s autobiographical Preface to Leacock’s best hit, Sunshine Sketches of a bit Town (1912) follows. The stories themselves strike most, if not all, of the identical chords that Garrison Keillor’s News from Lake Wobegon has performed over the past decades. Finally I'll permit myself the quick-lower of quoting Wikipedia to finish the sketch of both sides of this most interesting fellow. The McGill economics division entry for Stephen Leacock. University of Chicago Ph.D.

Thesis Title: The doctrine of laissez faire. 1889-99. Instructor in French and German, Upper Canada College. 1899-1900. Graduate Student, University of Chicago. 1921. Head of Department of Economics and Political Science, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. 1931, April 1. Professor and Head of Department of Economics and Political Science, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. 1938, Brain Health Formula April 1. Professor Emeritus of Economics and Political Science, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. I know no manner in which a writer could more fittingly introduce his work to the public than by giving a short account of who and what he's. By this implies a few of the blame for what he has done could be very correctly shifted to the extenuating circumstances of his life. I used to be born at Swanmoor, Hants, England, on December 30, 1869. I'm not conscious that there was any particular conjunction of the planets on the time, but should assume it extraordinarily doubtless.

My mother and father migrated to Canada in 1876, and that i determined to go with them. My father took up a farm close to Lake Simcoe, in Ontario. This was through the arduous times of Canadian farming, and my father was just in a position by nice diligence to pay the employed men and, in years of lots, to raise enough grain to have seed for the following year’s crop without buying any. By this course of my brothers and i had been inevitably pushed off the land, and have change into professors, enterprise males, and engineers, as a substitute of having the ability to develop up as farm labourers. Yet I saw sufficient of farming to speak exuberantly in political addresses of the joy of early rising and the deep sleep, both of body and intellect, that's induced by honest handbook toil. I used to be educated at Upper Canada College, Toronto, of which I was head boy in 1887. From there I went to the University of Toronto, where I graduated in 1891. On the University I spent my whole time in the acquisition of languages, residing, lifeless, and half- dead, and knew nothing of the outside world.

In this diligent pursuit of phrases I spent about sixteen hours of each day. Very soon after graduation I had forgotten the languages, and found myself intellectually bankrupt. In different words I used to be what is known as a distinguished graduate, and, as such, I took to highschool educating as the only commerce I might find that wanted neither experience nor intellect. I spent my time from 1891 to 1899 on the staff of Upper Canada College, an expertise which has left me with a profound sympathy for the numerous gifted and brilliant men who are compelled to spend their lives in essentially the most dreary, probably the most thankless, and the worst paid career in the world. I have noted that of my pupils, those who appeared the laziest and the least enamoured of books shop at neurosurges.net the moment are rising to eminence on the bar, in business, and in public life; the really promising boys who took all of the prizes are actually able with issue to earn the wages of a clerk in a summer lodge or a deck hand on a canal boat.

In 1899 I gave up school educating in disgust, borrowed enough cash to reside upon for just a few months, and went to the University of Chicago to check economics and political science. I was quickly appointed to a Fellowship in political economy, and by the use of this and a few short-term employment by McGill University, I survived till I took the diploma of Doctor of Philosophy in 1903. The that means of this diploma is that the recipient of instruction is examined for the last time in his life, and is pronounced utterly full. After this, no new ideas can be imparted to him. From this time, shop at neurosurges.net and since my marriage, which had occurred at this period, I've belonged to the workers of McGill University, first as lecturer in Political Science, and later as head of the department of Economics and Political Science. As this position is among the prizes of my occupation, I'm able to regard myself as singularly fortunate.