N.S.B.GRAS

I am sure your time is valuable so you may want to skip this post unless you are interested in either the English Corn Laws or Western University here in London, Ontario. Our subject for today is an economic historian who moved on to Harvard after his student days at Western.

On the 60th anniversary of his death, I thought it worth recycling a piece about him that I wrote about a decade ago. It appeared in a newsletter that attempted to alert students to the wonders found in the libraries at Western and to the other often very expensive electronic resources that were provided. It was a ‘tough sell’, particularly to the business school students, and was likely ignored by most. Apparently even those within the Western Libraries were not terribly interested since the issues have been removed from the related web sites. So, I will provide the article here under the assumption that someone may benefit from learning more about this local boy who did well. His comments about what is now “Branded” as the “Western Student Experience” are interesting and amusing (unless you are a theology student or ‘jock’).

[The publication is called The Bottom Feeder and "From the Stacks" was a fairly regular column that focussed on an area of the Libraries which students entered infrequently.]

“From the Stacks”

    We often call to your attention books and journals we have uncovered in the stacks and the calls have grown louder as the volume of material transferred from our shelves to those in the ARCC increased.[ARCC was the storage facility]. While the "From the Stacks" sections of The Bottom Feeder may not contain items about which you get terribly excited, they may, at least, allow you to get some sense of what has been collected over a long period of time for students and faculty with continually changing intellectual interests.

Norman Scott Brien Gras - 1884-1956

    We have known about N.S.B. Gras for some time, but have decided now to offer this brief bibliography since we uncovered two more books in our collection that were signed by him and because it is the 100th anniversary of the Harvard Business School. Gras is regarded as one of the founders in North America of the discipline of "business history" and he spent much of his career at Harvard. We will provide here a list of some books by, and about, and autographed by Gras and we will briefly describe the connections between Gras and Western and Harvard.

    Gras's father's family emigrated to the Mohawk Valley in the 1750s and his mother's Irish ancestors settled around Tyrconnel on Lake Erie. Although Gras was born in Toronto, his family roots are closer since he spent some of his childhood in Ridgetown and he lived in London where his mother ran a boarding house. He went to Western where he earned a B.A. in 1906 and a Master's in 1907. He then went on to Harvard (along with his mother, who also started a boarding house in Cambridge).

    To learn more about his early life and Canadian background see the Development of Business History up to 1950 : Selections From the Unpublished Work of Norman Scott Brien Gras. This work was edited by his wife after his death and Chapter V consists of a biographical sketch which is essentially autobiographical in nature. The material below is from that source.

Gras at Western - 1902-1906

    " I decided to attend the Western University at least for one year and then to go on to the University of Toronto. To prepare myself the better I went again to the London Collegiate Institute for one month before the University opened. I seemed to prosper there. I also took private lessons in German from a Swiss lady. These helped me to speak German but not to read advanced German.

    At the University I met a motley group of good, bad, and indifferent. The Dearness girls were the best of the lot. [Their father, John Dearness, was the celebrated man of London who lived to be 103.] [that editorial remark is in the original and was provided by his wife, the editor].

    The divinity students were the worst. They were ignorant, lying and dishonest with only a few exceptions. On one occasion in a local conclave even they themselves laughed at the public display of dishonesty by the clergy. One of the teachers taught Hebrew. He could speak but little English yet he occupied two parishes. The Church of England had some loyal supporters but some low type followers.

    I soon learned that there were two groups of teachers and attitudes. One looked to England, especially to Oxford as the last word. The other looked to the U.S.A., especially to Columbia. Actually, the teacher I was to have much to do with received his Ph.D in Germany.

   At the University I helped found the Areopagus Society for debaters. I was its secretary. The experience was rewarding, for public speaking was not an easy matter for me. My ambition knew no bounds. I was not content with one honor course but took two or three and added to these pre-medical work. On one occasion I blew up a test tube in organic chemistry and never went back to the old gray building near the railroad tracks. The teachers were mostly practicing doctors and ill equipped for instruction.

    Of all the good things the University did for me I can mention the following: direction in a few subjects; a chance to dip into many disciplines; compulsory examinations once a year.

    There were no organized athletics at the University. After my departure football became a tin-horn sport of vast dimensions. Some day sport will be set down as the death of intellectual effort.

    Long before the end of my studies my thoughts were turning to advanced or graduate work. I chose Harvard because of Hart and Channing whose texts I knew. When, I went to Harvard, however, I was directed towards other teachers and scholars.

   Every year I won a scholarship at the Western and stayed on beyond the first year. I ended with the Governor-General's medal, which meant nothing, though I kept it."

Gras was awarded an LL.D. from the University of Western Ontario in 1925.

For additional biographical information, the chapter (from which the above was copied) in the Development of Business History up to 1950: Selections From the Unpublished Work of Norman Scott Brien Gras is a great place to start. It includes sections relating to his student days at Harvard and to his subsequent academic career elsewhere and his return to Harvard as a faculty member.

    For an article that covers Gras's early development and then traces his scholarly evolution and places it within the context of the development of the discipline of business history see: "A Theme Worthy of Epic Treatment: N.S.B. Gras and the Emergence of American Business History", by Barry Boothman, Journal of Macromarketing, Vol.21, No.1, June 2001, p.61-73

Two good articles that trace the evolution of the study of business history at Harvard are: McCraw, T. K., N. F. Koehn, and H. V. Nelles, "Business History," T. K. McCraw and J. Cruikshank, eds., The Intellectual Venture Capitalist: John H. McArthur and the Work of the Harvard Business School 1980-1995, pp.245-272. The success of the program is noted in: "Teaching History Courses to Harvard MBA Students: Building Enrollment from 21 to 1300," by Thomas K. McCraw, Business and Economic History, Vol. 28, No.2, Winter 1999, p.153.

In this article, the difficulty of teaching history to MBAs is recognized by Gras: "As Harvard's first Straus Professor of Business History, a Canadian-born scholar named N. S. B. Gras, wrote in a letter dated 1927, "Teaching history to a group of professional students just a few months before they expect to enter practical affairs is an exceedingly difficult task. I am not sure I will succeed, but I do sympathize with the motive behind the experiment, that is, to give the students a cultural background for their work and a perspective to their training".

Books by Gras

The collection of books by Gras held in the Western Libraries is a thorough one. The books are listed here in chronological order.

1915 - The Evolution of the English Corn Market From the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Century

1918 - The Early English Customs System : A Documentary Study of the Institutional and Economic History of the Customs From the Thirteenth to the Sixteenth Century

1922 - An Introduction to Economic History

1930 - Industrial Evolution

1930 - The Economic and Social History of an English Village (Crawley, Hampshire) A.D. 909-1928,(an online version is also available to you as part of the ACLS Humanities E-Book Project)

1931 - Jacob Fugger the Rich, Merchant and Banker of Augsburg, 1459-1525

1932 - The Rise of Big Business

1937 - The Massachusetts First National Bank of Boston, 1784-1934

1939 - Business and Capitalism ; An Introduction to Business History

1939 - Casebook in American Business History

1940 - A History of Agriculture in Europe and America

1941 - Fundamental Business Ideals

(This work is held in Special Collections. It is a "reprint of papers presented at the conference of the American Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Association with the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, Boston, Mass., June 24th, 1941)

1942 - Harvard Co-operative Society Past and Present, 1882-1942

1944 - Are you Writing a Business History?

1962 - Development of Business History up to 1950 : Selections From the Unpublished Work of Norman Scott Brien Gras ( compiled and edited by Ethel C. Gras.)

1967 - Business History of the United States About 1650 to 1950's (condensed from his unpublished three-volume manuscript by Ethel C. Gras.)

So far we have found in the Western Libraries these books autographed by Gras: Industrial Evolution, 1930. Glossary of Mediaeval Terms of Business, Italian series, 1200-1600 1934. The House of Baring in American Trade and Finance; English Merchant Bankers at Work, 1763-1861. 1949.

    Additional information relating to Gras is found on the Baker Library site. See especially the "Historical Collections Department" and related archival collections such as the "Henrietta Larson Papers, 1947-1962.

Obituaries:

    Many can be found. Here is the one that appeared in the Boston newspaper.

“Norman S.B. Gras, 72: Former Business Professor at Harvard,” Daily Boston Globe, Oct. 11, 1956, p.12.

“Prof. Gras was the first professor of business history at Harvard. He retired in 1950 after 23 years service. He was the author of many books in his field. Dr. Gas [sic], born in Toronto, was educated at the University of Western Ontario and at Harvard University, receiving his Ph.D from the latter.”

See also: "Norman Scott Brien Gras, 1884-1956," anon. The Business History Review, Vol.30, No.4, Dec. 1956.