Wesley C. Mitchell

Wesley Clair Mitchell. [Born] 1874. Economist.

In the world of scholarship, students of the physical sciences have the easiest rôle. With them the work of the head seldom conflicts with the pull of the heart; the nature of their data does not invite conclusions that are wanted to bolster a pre-existing philosophy of government or life. They can be, as the saying is, pure.

But if you will look at the history of “economics”—and I had better write the word within quotation marks—you will see that its study has had two directions. First there was, and is, a moral one which the Law, the Prophets and the early Christian church struggled with and which men are struggling with today: in short what is “right”—again within quotation marks. The second of the directions of economic study has been factual inquiry looking for mechanical “laws” to establish predictability in the field of economic phenomena. Through the centuries many such “laws” have been stated, some based upon a very considerable critical apparatus, but the trouble was that things did not work out as the laws predicted. It was a situation which justified the mathematician Poincaré’s jibe that the social scientists had all the methodology but the physical scientists had all the results.

What Wesley Mitchell did was, to some degree, to vitiate the force of Poincaré’s jibe. When Mitchell started the National Bureau of Economic Research in 1920, the work and the teaching of economics was largely a speculative exercise. Without minimizing the rôle of theory in economics, Mitchell held that it was possible to substitute fact for conjecture and tested conclusion for hypothesis; and, what is more, he did. By measuring and analysing continuingly the central flows of our economic life he undertook to find out “what has really happened?” “what is happening?” and thus lay a foundation for the final question “why?” No economist of our time contributed so fundamentally to building a body of verified economic knowledge; no economist or group of economists ever had such a majestic research conception. It was no less than the colossal labor of making order out of all the known and knowable facts on the ups and downs of our economic life, and of anchoring theory to demonstrated reality.

Such was the contribution of Wesley Mitchell the scholar. As a citizen, fulfilling the duties of a citizen, he spent two years in the Census Office in Washington putting at its disposal his knowledge in the use and application of statistics so as to reveal the year-to-year growth in the economic stature of our country. The quality of his work in following years made it appropriate, when the United States went into the First World War, that he should become Chief of the Price Section of the War Industries Board.

Ten years later, he was made Chairman of President Hoover’s Research Committee on Social Trends. Under the New Deal, his national service continued. He served as a member of the National Planning Board, the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, and of the National Resources Board.

In the Second World War he undertook, on behalf of the President’s Committee on the Cost of Living, to make a technical appraisal of the cost of living index of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This was a singularly delicate task because at that time the validity of this index had been brought into question between labor on one side and employers on the other.

There were other economists with adequate, if not equal, technical equipment who were available. Mitchell was chosen because of his character: he could be relied upon to seek truth without bias, prejudice or self-interest. He would not bend his findings to suit any political expediency or to further anyone’s personal advantage, least of all his own. His technical competence, his balanced judgment and above all his unimpeachable integrity made it certain that his findings would not and could not be effectively disputed; and they were not.

I have come around, you see, a complete circle to the place I began: the two directions of economic study united in him.

There was a memorial service for Wesley Mitchell up at Columbia University early in December: A thousand persons, the great and the small, his students and his colleagues, co-workers in many causes dear to his great heart were there. They spoke of his intellect and his spirit, of their friend and master, of his gentle soul, of his work and his play, of his gaiety and his humor, his integrity and his faith and his humility. And they all said the same thing, that they ought to have been better than they were in the light of his life. Such is the legacy of our friend Wesley Mitchell.

Source: Henry Allen Moe Papers, Mss.B.M722. Reproduced by permission of American Philosophical Society Library & Museum, Philadelphia

Henry Allen Moe
Henry Allen Moe Papers, 1948 Memorials