Henry Charles Taylor

Henry Charles Taylor (April 16, 1873 – April 28, 1969) was an American agricultural economist. As an early pioneer in the field, he has been called the "father of agricultural economics" in the United States. Later in his career, he stated that "90 per cent of what could be done for the farmers was what they could do for themselves by adjusting production." His doctoral dissertation was on "The Decline of Land Owners Farmers in England," which had him traveling by bicycle to visit more than a hundred farms. Taylor returned to Wisconsin in 1901 to complete his degree in economics in 1902.

Career at the University of Wisconsin–Madison He stayed on at the faculty of the University of Wisconsin until 1919. Room was made for him in the Department of General Economics and the School of Commerce to teach economic geography and economic history. However, as he later noted there was nothing in the budget to provide for his area of interest, agricultural economics. Ely suggested that he simply teach the given courses and slowly develop work on agricultural economics. Upon approaching the dean with the idea, he was told there would be no place for such courses for the next ten years. Nevertheless, by the winter of 1902–03, Ely had arranged for fourteen lectures to be given to agricultural students on the economics of farm management. The dean was impressed by the prepared syllabus and eventually Taylor set up an agricultural economics course for four-year students. He devoted himself by 1903 to founding a Department of Agricultural Economics at the university for both research and teaching. Taylor wrote the first agricultural economics textbook in the United States in 1905. He also adapted a dot map system with William J. Spillman to show historical shifts in agricultural production.

Government career From 1909 to 1910 he assisted the Bureau of the Census to plan its schedule for the agricultural census, as well as for a special census of plantations. Taylor chose to join the United States Department of Agriculture for the chance at giving a national role to agricultural economics, even though the new position meant a large reduction in salary. He moved to Washington D.C. in 1919 to take charge of the USDA's Office of Farm Management and Farm Economics. Not long after his arrival in Washington, the wartime prices of farm products collapsed, which proved disastrous for a great number of farmers. In 1920, President Harding appointed Henry C. Wallace, who knew Taylor and was himself a great supporter of farmers, as the new Secretary of Agriculture. Taylor soon became Chief of the Bureau of Markets and Crop Estimates, while also being part of a commission to reorganize the offices of the USDA. For him this was a chance to consolidate the economics work of the department which had been scattered through many offices. In 1922, Wallace appointed him chief of the new Bureau of Agricultural Economics, which subsumed the former Office of Farm Management and Bureau of Markets and Crop Estimates He also brought many talented new people into the USDA. Among them, two of his Ph.D. students he had already sent to work with Spillman, Oscar C. Stine and Oliver Edwin Baker, and Lewis Cecil Gray, whom he persuaded to go with him to Washington.

Taylor then left the United States and traveled through Japan, China, Korea, and India as a member of the Commission of Appraisal of the Layman's Foreign Missions Inquiry for one year, in which he reviewed the work done by missionaries on rural problems. He then went to Rome to serve as the United States member of the Permanent Committee of the International Institution of Agriculture between 1933 and 1935.

He returned to the United States in 1935 on request from Illinois Governor Frank Lowden to serve as managing director of the recently created Farm Foundation in Chicago until 1945, where he focused on the broad problems of rural communities and worked to establish a relationship between researchers in the USDA and state agricultural colleges. He also worked closely with Oscar C. Stine on studying the history and development of agricultural economics. In 1936 he also served as president of the Agricultural History Society, of which he was a life member. In 1945 he was transferred to Washington D.C. to serve as Agricultural Economist for the Farm Foundation. This allowed him to devote himself to writing his book, The Story of Agricultural Economics, with his wife Anne Dewees Taylor, and the foundation's sponsorship. With its completion in 1952, Taylor began a study of land scarcity in highly industrialized nations like England, Germany, and Japan, and how their economies were adapting with the loss of their colonies. He stayed active to the end of his life. Taylor regularly attended the meetings of the International Conference of Agricultural Economists until he was 90, and also worked to complete a 100-year history of the original Taylor farm, Tarplewick, started by his parents in Iowa in 1861.

Even before his death he had become known as the "father of agricultural economics" in the United States. However Taylor himself noted the pioneer work of five of his contemporaries in the field along with him: Andrew Boss, William J. Spillman, and George F. Warren, from a background in agronomy, and Benjamin H. Hibbard and Thomas Nixon Carver, who along with himself were students of Richard T. Ely in general economics. Taylor nonetheless embraced this role as a sort of elder statesman, and accepted many visitors to his home, including many young agricultural economists. He found teaching to be the most rewarding part of his career. Taylor was eventually hospitalized by bone cancer of the leg, a terminal illness, but even then continued to see visitors. He died in April 1969 at the Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington. He was survived by his daughter, Esther E. Taylor.