UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #131
ELLSWORTH, PAUL THEODORE

ELLSWORTH, Paul Theodore (1897-1991)
Professor of Economics
At UW: 1941-1967

Interviewed: 1978	
Interviewer: Donna Taylor
Length: 1 hour

00:00:00

Start of Interview
00:00:12
DT:	I think to start with, I'd like to hear a little bit about your early life. I know that you were born in Vermont and then you went to high school in Seattle. So Fm wondering how you got from Vermont to Seattle.
PE:	Well I lived in Vermont until I was about eight. I was born in 1897, November. And I lived in Vermont until 1906 and moved to San Francisco where my father had been traveling for McMillan Company in New York State. In 1906 when the earthquake hit San Francisco and reorganization was desirable the company sent him out there to take over that office. Housing was scarce, and my sister was engaged to a young man and my father and mother wanted to make sure it was the real thing so they wanted to separate them for a year. And dad said to my mother to take me and my sister abroad for a year or so. So mother, sister and I went to Europe and spent about a year in Germany. And my sister who is an excellent pianist studied under a German instructor. And I went to a private school in Berlin and then later a public school in Leipzig. Sister came back, and mother and I stayed on for another six months traveling around. I remember being dragged through every art gallery in Europe and coming to hate Madonnas, which mother was very fond of and also developed a, well, I’m getting over the reluctance to enter an art museum because I want to see what's inside now. Lets see, then we came back and we had this great big home in Minnesota and went out to join my father. Lived in Berkeley for two years about I think, and then he transferred up to Seattle in another company. And I lived in Seattle went through the last part of the eighth grade, high school and the University of Washington. After graduating there I tried business for six months, thoroughly hated, I majored in economics and had a good level of accounting, and went back and taught accounting for two quarters and shifted my interest in study. 
DT:	Where did you teach accounting at the University ?
PE:	University of Washington yes. And shifted my interest of study to psychology which I had always had some interest in along with philosophy. And I got a year, I guess it was two quarters of psychology, all but got a masters degree, except for writing a thesis. And during that year I won a Rhodes scholarship and in the fall I went to Oxford. Now what else?
00:03:11
DT:	Well, then I guess its a matter of record where you studied from then. Do you want to talk briefly about the period before you came to Wisconsin? 
PE:	Well, what happened between Oxford and Wisconsin? 
DT:	Well there's sort of a time lapse there.
PE:	Yeah, there is quite a lag there. I went to Oxford in '22, was there from '22 to '25 and didn't come to Wisconsin until '44 or so, there something of twenty year period. If you want me to run over it, all right. Well, I spent three years at Oxford and came back to this country, my first job was at Dartmouth College. After a year there I was offered a job at Reed College, because my old professor at the University of Washington from whom I had elementary economics was going on leave and he remembered me and offered me a job of filling in while he was gone. I was happy to do it because the work was more interesting, more varied than at Dartmouth. So I went out there for a year, I got married just before I started at Dartmouth. And left Reed and went back to Harvard for my graduate work. I was there just as a student with a small scholarship first, and then I was there from '27 to '32 were I was an instructor and tutor for the last four years, and got my degree in '32. And that was the depth of the depression of course, and I was very lucky getting a job at the University of Cincinnati. Where I stayed eight years, interrupted by one year in the U.S. Treasury. And at the end of eight years I was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship and went to Chile. Took my family with me, my wife and two adopted children. And then I spent the year down there researching on the country and got out a little book, I think one of the first books on economic development, called Chile — and what was it, now let's see, oh I can't remember but Chile something. Just right now the names skips me, it'll come. 
DT:	We can check that.
PE	 One symptom of my age is I can't remember names sometimes. 
DT:	You got lots of company there.
PE:	Yeah, lots of company. Well I came back from there, I was there '41 and '42 and Pearl Harbor struck while I was there, the end of the year I was offered a job on the Board of Economic Warfare and they wanted me to get back to that, so I did. To make a long story short, I did something I think, rather exceptional, well anyway that's it. After about two or three months in my job I was chief of a division in the Board of Economic Warfare, which was a mini research outfit. I went to many meetings with Lend-Lease, War Production Board and State department and all the agencies. And after a couple of months I decided, except for one small unit of five men out of about a hundred in my division, all the work being done was being done better or at least as well at some other agency of the government. So I recommended that my division be abolished, which didn't make me popular with my superiors who were empire builders.
DT:	I see.
PE:	I shifted over after a few months to the State department at a lower rank, assistant division chief and was in that for a while and then shifted still further - I won't go into the details of that but — I stayed on until '44. And then President Dykstra at the University urged me to come back, I was getting bored with the work in Washington and the war looked as if were going to end fairly soon.
00:07:13
DT:	Had you been working with Dykstra during -
PE:	No, no, no, no. I had some connection with him, I forgot what it was, but he knew me and I knew him slightly, and he wanted me to come and to be chairman of the department and try to get it ready for post war operation. But I didn't want to be chairman, I had plenty of administrative experience by then for my satisfaction, and I didn't want anymore so I just consented to come back. I forget who was my chairman but anyway it wasn't me.
DT:	Well, this would have been after Kiekhofer, would it have been Groves? Or was it— 
PE:	I don't know, no, no, no. It was Kiekhofer yes, it was '44, frankly I just don't remember who was chairman. But anyway I was there '44, and the thing of interest perhaps to your archives is that was the time when economics and commerce were together, all one lumped outfit. 
DT:	Yes, commerce was still in L & S wasn't it?
PE:	Yeah. And there was a big question within the group which consisted of people that were in both areas. The big dispute was how to divide up the work. What courses were to go to commerce and what courses were to stay in economics or go to economics, and that involved a good deal of disputation. And I recall very vividly that Walter Morton and I were almost always on the same side, in what became our department. Groves who was a very good friend, and Witte too and Mr. Perlman were on the other side. They were anxious to hang on to as much as they could, and Walter and I felt that many of those courses they wanted to hang on to were intellectual deserts and why not let them go to commerce. Walter and I finally won out, in most cases we kept what we thought were intellectual respectable courses and let commerce have — Well it really is a matter of intellectual respectability because it seems to me that the division is between courses that apply to the whole economy and courses that relate to specific business practice, management courses. But in that instance there was a good disputation about courses that we felt really had no business in economics. I think we got one or two of those, to my regret, but most of the division came out pretty well. 
DT:	I know ultimately commerce became a sep -
PE:	Within the next year or so, commerce became the Commerce School and economics department, Economics.
DT:	So that was the initial dispute —
PE:	That was the initial area of disputation you might say.
DT:	Can you tell me about some later months. I'm well aware that Commerce said that the Economics Department continued to have —
00:10:12
PE:	Oh we had problems. The worst one was one which raised me, not with Walter Morton, but against him.
DT:	How did that come about?
PE:	Well, increasingly Walter became more obstreperous and after a short time, two, three or four years it became almost impossible to get any business done because he'd bang the table and really almost yell, and students could hear him way down the hall, and really intimidated the department chairman. I think at that particular period it was Mr. Witte, and we just couldn't get any business done. And finally, I believe it was Dean Ingraham and Ed Young, now President of course, and then chairman of the department, hatched up a scheme to make Walter Morton a University Professor, outside the department with his courses not required, but open to students that wanted to take them. Now this would have gotten him out of the department with no need to be at department meetings, in fact no right to be at department meetings and would have gotten rid of this problem. Another thing was that he was inclined to wash our dirty linen in public by his close friendship with Mr. Evjue. 
DT:	Oh, I guess he did write letters and so forth.
PE:	Letters to the editor and then Evjue would expand on them and it was not very pleasant. Well anyway, there was this scheme and we were to have a meeting in Mr. Fred's, the president's, office to discuss this matter and it was Mr. Ingraham had told Ed Young, Mr. Fred was willing to go along with this proposal. Suddenly, just the night before the meeting was to occur, he called Ed up, and Ed called all of the group up Mr. Ingraham having said that you better call your men up and get them together, warn them that Mr. Fred is getting cold feet about this proposal. So he warned us, and we all went to Mr. Fred's the next morning wondering what was going to happen. Well Mr. Fred started off with a rather ambiguous question as to what problems are bothering you in your department, when the obvious one was the Morton problem. And Ed Young started it off, being chairman of course by detailing the problems he confronted that business was very difficult to conduct. When he got through there was a pause, and I thought well I better jump into the breach or this may slide off. So I jumped in and said, Ed been there thirteen years and during most of that period its been almost impossible because of Walter's conduct to get any business done. As I mentioned earlier he'd pound the table and yell and be just obstructive. In fact one year Dean Ingraham had to come in and take over the chair at our meetings in order to make them run at all. A fantastic situation. So, well Mr. Fred listened to all of us, it went down the line, the only person who spoke up for Walter was Mr. Glaeser who's a close friend, even Selig Perlman was a mild mannered man sided with the outstanding majority. Well, no action was taken or indicated by Mr. Fred, but anyway we all went out to Jim Earley's and got pretty high that night and strangely enough from then on we had peace in the department. Walter sort of crawled into his hole and pulled it in after him.
DT:	Was he a aware of this?
PE:	Oh, very much so. At this time he was in Puerto Rico on vacation, I think it was, I think this was happening Easter vacation. Anyway he was in Puerto Rico. And he came back and one day he confronted me in the hall and says "I understand you've been knocking me in the back." I said do you know what I said Walter and we went into his office and I told him precisely what I told you just now, and what happened there and exactly what I said, and for a whole couple of years he didn't speak to me. And gradually he'd start grunting and finally we became friends again, on this visit here we've been very cordial. So it's worn off, I'm very glad to say. 
DT:	But he was never made University Professor.
PE:	No, no. Nothing was ever done. This was apparently enough of a slap down, I guess he was sensitive enough to shut up. Most of the time he didn't even come to meetings. In fact he rarely came to meetings, which was in a way a shame because Walter is a very bright man, and could make useful suggestions, if he would make them and not raise hell over it.
DT:	Was there any sort of consistent position that he took during these years when he was disrupting the meetings?
PE:	I don't remember, all kinds of things came up and he would make a big noise about it, I don't remember, of course where I sided with Walter was in the first two or three years when this matter of Commerce separating from Economics came up and there was a disagreement about the division of courses, of the areas. But later on it was one thing after another and I don't particularly remember any specific issue, let me think. Well often it was a matter of standards on passing Ph.D. candidates, cause Walter and I and particularly at that time Martin Bronfenbrenner had different views about standards of Ph.D. candidates and what should be required. Do you want me to go into that at all, because that involves personalities.
DT:	Well, yes I would be interested in that. I was going to ask you about him.
00:16:19 
PE:	Well, I always felt I respected particularly Selig Perlman for his intellectual ability, and Witte for his legal craftsmanship, after all he was the father of the Social Security Act. But I felt that both those men were lacking in their judgment of graduate students, and so did Martin Bronfenbrenner and so did generally Walter Morton. We three voted as a block, generally in the meetings, Martin and I always and Walter sometimes. I remember one case where Witte wanted to pass a man on the grounds that he had four children and would lose his job if he didn't pass his prelims, to which my comment was "what's that got to do with this examination? We're supposed to judge his attainment in economics and not his social status. Maybe he should be running a filling station." A remark by Selig Perlman when we were discussing these matters was "who are we to judge" to which my reply was, "who else, that's one of the things we're paid for." I do remember another very vivid case that came up the other day, about which Jack Barbash was very nice, I had lunch with him and some other men in the department. There was, I think, an Iraqi student, one of Jack's, and he had just taken his prelim and he was a very weak candidate yet, it seemed to me there was no question but that he was just awful. And Martin Bronfenbrenner and I were standing firmly against his passage, but the plea was that he threatened to commit suicide if he didn't pass his exam. Which my reply was, "well if he's that neurotic he's going to commit suicide anyway, so we shouldn't let it concern us in the least." But however the committee passed him, he promised not to come back, and I understand that now some fifteen years later he is here on a sabbatical from some job he has in Iraq and wants to go on and get his doctorate and finish his thesis. 
DT:	But he hasn't committed suicide?
PE:	He still hasn't committed suicide. I was sure he wouldn't.
DT:	That's very interesting.
PE:	Jack was very nice about it, at this lunch I told these stories about Witte and Perlman rather mischievously, I was curious to see what Jack's reaction would be, and he was very nice and said "oh, you clobbered me once in a meeting like that." 
DT:	Oh, did you? 
PE:	Well, this was it, this Iraqi. 
DT:	Oh, I see.
PE:	He was very nice, and amused at the recollection of the thing and he'd mentioned that this guy was back here and wanted to get his thesis out of the way now.
00:19:18
DT:	 Do you recall any effort that you can think of to get Walter Morton to leave the University?
PE:	Oh no. No we weren't anxious to get rid of him. No, we just wanted him out of the department.
DT: 	Out of your hair so to speak.
PE:	Out of our hair, yeah. No, as a university professor he would have retained his rank, his tenure and everything else. But he would have been out of our hair, as you put it. That was all. 
DT:	Interviewer: You mentioned Bronfenbrenner, he did leave.
PE:	Oh, yes. Bronfenbrenner, well he was a strange character. I've always been very fond of Martin, we get along fine. He has a very fine intellect, but he has a tendency to put his foot in his mouth. And he felt he offended Dean Ingraham, by one of his rather abrasive remarks I guess, and thought he had better get out of here, so he went to Minnesota. But he was restless, I think he had itchy feet. He went from Minnesota to Carnegie Institute of Technology it was at that time in Pittsburgh, it became Carnegie-Mellon later. And I think he was for a time at Michigan State and then he finally went to Duke where I understand he is now very happy. But he moved around a good deal.
DT:	So you think he would have done that anyway, regardless of the situation? 
PE:	Yeah probably. I think was mistaken about Dean Ingraham, because Dean Ingraham was a generous man, and I don't think he'd would take offense at a minor abrasive conduct. 
DT:	Probably not. 
PE:	No.
DT:	From what I know of him.
PE:	Bronfenbrenner was a sensitive guy, and maybe he overreacted to things. I was very amused in San Diego where I taught one course in the San Diego State University for three years. Bronfenbrenner keep in touch through Christmas notes and he sent me a note the first Christmas I was there addressed to University of California at San Diego saying at the end of his letter I'm sending this to this institution on the grounds it's the more reputable of the two, where I presume you will be, which of course I wasn't. That department was quite too mathematical for me, they would have had no use for me.
00:21:51
DT:	Well that's interesting. What do you mean by too mathematical?
PE:	Economics has become much more mathematical, in fact the main journal American Economic
Review is becoming so much mathematical now I can hardly understand –This is probably a result of the feeling that a subject is a science only to the extent to which it can be quantified and you can't quantify a science unless you, or it doesn't do any good to quantify it in terms of just gathering statistics unless you can generalize from those and for that you need mathematical formulations. So there's a reason for it, the only trouble is the mathematics is getting ahead of the statistics. You can't always fill in your equations, empty equations doesn't help a great deal. A rule out of the work is of course is what we call a model building and you don't have to have a mathematical equation for that but you can make it more precise with them, so that accounts for a good deal of it I think. But my mathematics is limited in scope, consequently I have been left behind, of course I've been retired for eleven years and it doesn't bother me. Back then mathematics did bother me for quite a while but I managed to get by, though I regret I didn't have more earlier, it was not a great matter at my age.
DT:	Has this become a general trend or are there two schools of thought? 
PE:	Well it's become a general trend but I think it has set in now something of a backlash against excessive mathematics, and more conviction that there is room for political economy. Which is more related to policy and doesn't rest upon mathematical formulations that are rather elaborate but often inapplicable models.
DT:	How did the department here stand in relation to this?
PE:	Well this department I don't think had become overwhelmingly mathematical, even now, it's become more so because that's been the trend throughout the profession. But the UC San Diego Economics department started off as a highly mathematical oriented department, because our college was aimed at the sciences, and the economics department was put in math. Now they had developed service courses for some of the other colleges which are not science oriented, but they still are heavily mathematical as a department.
DT:	But this did not ever become a divisive issue, here of course?
PE:	No, no, I don't think so. Not to my knowledge anyway, it may have after I left.
00:24:48
DT:	Well somebody else that I think left was Eugene Rotwein. Did he leave the —
PE:	Oh yes, he left the university.
DT:	Do you recall any of those circumstances?
PE:	I don't recall the occasion. I think, I'm not sure that he left before I did, I guess he did yeah. But I don't know the reason for it, I don't recall it anyway.
DT:	Another thing I'd be interested in is what role Elizabeth Brandeis played in the department.
PE:	Well she was a very non mathematical person and concerned primarily with the social aspects of economics, and very good at that.
DT:	I know her position was sort of a little unusual and that she was part-time — 
PE:	Yes, she was part-time, I don't know whether that has - I think that was probably from choice. After all she was married and undoubtedly had other duties and maybe that was all she wanted to take on.
DT:	Did her opinions carry some weight in the department? 
PE:	Yes, I think always. She was a respected person. 
DT:	I know she was there for a long time. 
PE:	Oh yeah.
DT:	You've talked about some of the people, who were the people you felt closest to? 
PE:	Well, Martin Bronfenbrenner for one. And early on Walter Morton. Especially Jim Earley, he is now out at Riverside and he and his lovely wife Betty have been almost like brother and sister to me out there. I always liked John Korbel very much, he was here, but let go and is now at New Hampshire. I was sorry to see him go, the reason being that he was not a research oriented person and it was publish or perish, and he perished. 
DT:	That sometimes happens.
PE:	Yeah. Well there were many others, I like Gene Rotwein very much, so I was sorry to see him go and sorry to see him and his wife divorce. Oh Ted Morgan of course, always been a very close friend. He came here in '47, so we had a long relationship, a very happy one together. And I got to know and like very much Dave Johnson and John Culbertson, in fact all of the group that was
here when I was. Bob Baldwin came in rather late so I didn't get to know him as well as the others, but I liked him very much. In fact I felt this way about the department the last few years I was here, was a very harmonious department. I was very pleased with it that people got along beautifully. We had disagreements but they were always handled with care and sophistication and decency. 
DT:	Sounds like something had changed. 
PE:	Very much so.
DT:	How do account for it. Is there anything beyond the -
PE:	Partly that we had very nice people there. Morton was sort of paranoid, I think that was the
source of the problem. All these people were well balanced and very sensible individuals. Very little rancor, in fact no rancor that I can recall in the last ten years of so.
00:28:54
DT:	One person we haven't talked about of course is Ed Young, do you —
PE:	I respected him very much indeed. He has a real talent for administration obviously.
DT:	Was he chairman right away, or did he become as chairman or was that somewhat
later?
PE:	I don't recall, you'd have to ask Ed that. He became chairman very early on, he was one of my students actually. 
DT:	Oh he was?
PE:	Oh yeah, I had him in class. He just took one course from me in the international area, his area of interest of course was labor. He just happened to drift in and take a course and I knew him as a student and then later on as a professor and then as chairman of the department, the of course as Chancellor and now president. 
00:29:44
I recall excellent statements on frequent occasions. He was really a moving force at our faculty meetings. You could always count on Dick Hartshorne to stand up and say something worth listening to. 
DT:	Where as you did not –
00:30:10
PE:	I was a little slow in getting on my feet and talking in meetings. I was much better at committee meetings where matters were more informal. I guess maybe it was a little matter of shyness, I don't know.
DT:	Were you on any committees that—
PE:	Very few. I avoided them, whenever possible. 
DT:	Which few were they? 
PE:	I don't even remember.
DT:	There was something I came across about an integrated course that you did at some point with Professors Dangerfield and Hartshorne and Dick said he though he remembered James McCreedy at Political Science also was part of that.
PE:	I remember participating, its just a matter of my giving three or four lectures that's all. Bringing in economics along with geography and political science and so on. I don't remember very vividly what the focus was.
DT:	Well I think it had something to do with a war college or something of that sort. 
PE:	My only dealings with the War College were a couple of lectures that I gave there once. 
DT:	Maybe that's all it took.
PE:	No, I had some experience overseas maybe that was brought in. I was here actually through '44 until '67 which is twenty three years I was attached to the University, but I was on leave for five of those. Working for the World Bank or The United Nations and in one instance a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii. So I had some experience with economic development in the field, and maybe that was called in, I don't know.
DT:	Very likely. Now then also, I think also read that you did some lectures in the contemporary trends.
PE:	I probably did, I don't remember. I was called on to give lectures every now and again, but you know I did quite a number, even extension division and that sort of thing. 
DT:	Did you give them around the state to —
PE:	Two or three yes, early on. I think they got fed up with me after a while.
00:32:35
DT:	If you left in '67 what was your feeling about the University at that time? This was a rather —
PE:	Well I left just before the roof fell in. I left in June '67 and that year there had been some turmoil in the Commerce Building, not really a riot but some noise and commotion it was like just the beginning of it. But the next year as I say the roof fell in, everything began to happen. And that was fortunately out of it then.
DT:	Did you stay in Madison, or did you leave — 
PE:	No, I left in June, went out to Riverside. 
DT:	You went right away?
PE:	Jim Earley you see had been offered the chairmanship of the department at Riverside and was going out and I had applied to a number of universities out there, I didn't want to quit teaching entirely yet, I was interested in maybe one course. And I had two or three nibbles but Jim said that there's an opening in the international field at Riverside why don't you come along. So I did, and I got there and somebody else quit within the economic development field so I ended up by teaching full time, which was two courses which is rather nice. 
DT:	Very nice.
PE:	I taught there two years and my wife didn't like the smog or the heat of the summer in Riverside so we looked around and decided to go San Diego.
00:34:00
DT:	You said something earlier about this one situation with President Fred, I'm wondering what you thought of him as a president.
PE:	Well I liked Mr. Fred very much, as a person. I understand that he was especially good in his leadership at the university, in dealing with problems with the legislature and regents, extra campus sorts of things, but I thought he was not as strong as he might have been with internal matters like this. It would have been very helpful if he'd stood up and backed us up in this situation, but maybe he was right after all because it turned out Walter Morton's reaction was to shut up and stay away from department meetings. Though the results as far as we were concerned was just as useful as if he'd had been made a university professor, maybe Mr. Fred was right. 
DT:	Possibly, who knows. 
PE:	Yeah.
DT:	Harrington though was very contrasting —
PE:	Not having been active in university affairs, I don't remember much about Harrington's activities, although I knew Fred as an individual. 
DT:	You did? 
PE:	Mmm.
DT:	He was quite a backer of Young of course. 
PE:	Well I'm glad of that.
00:35:43
DT:	You don't know anything about Young's coming back —
PE:	Well I remember that he was at the University of Maine, as President of University of Maine and he was brought back here. Was he made a Chancellor immediately?
DT:	Not right away, but I think Bill Sewell was Chancellor I think when Young came back. 
PE:	Oh yes, that's right.
DT:	And then when he left, he was only Chancellor for one year, and then Young I guess took over after that. Because I know he was Chancellor during the balance of those years of turmoil here.
PE:	Yeah.
DT:	Over the Vietnam War.
PE:	Yeah, Ed stepped in to that, right in the middle of it.
DT:	Yes exactly, you said it already. You said it was going full force when the — 
PE:	Yeah, the bombing of Sterling Hall happened under Ed's administration.
DT:	I believe so, yes. Has he talked about that at all?
PE:	No he hasn't actually we've had a chance to reminisce but he'd been so busy one whole day and half at Washington and now he's just taking off I just saw him yesterday and he took off for the North for a short fishing vacation, well not vacation, two days isn't a vacation but, a short fishing interval. So we haven't had as much time to talk as we would have liked.
DT:	No that isn't much time. Are there any other things, anything particular that comes to mind that you feel like saying again? If not I want to thank you very much for taking some time out from your brief visit to Madison to make this recording.
00:37:48
End of Interview