Isaac Hourwich

Isaac Aronovich Hourwich (; April 26, 1860 – July 9, 1924) was a Jewish-American economist, statistician, lawyer, and political activist. Hourwich is best remembered as a pioneer in the development of labor statistics for the American mining industry and as a prominent public intellectual among the Yiddish-language community in the United States.

Biography

Early years

Isaac Aronovich Hourwich was born April 26, 1860, in Vilna, Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire. The Hourwich family was of the middle class, his father Aaron Hourwich was a well-educated employee in a bank who provided a quality secular education to his children.

Hourwich graduated from a classical gymnasium in the Belarusian city of Minsk in 1877. Thereafter he attended the University of St. Petersburg, where he studied mathematics. Hourwich earned his doctorate from Columbia after successfully defending a pioneering dissertation on the economics of the Russian village.

A committed socialist from his early years, in the United States Hourwich first joined the Socialist Labor Party of America, leaving it in 1897 to join the Social Democratic Party of America (SDP) headed by Eugene V. Debs. Moreover, as was the case in his earlier run for the Russian Duma, Hourwich was unsuccessful in his effort to win a seat in Congress. ), was an important member of the Russian Federation of the Socialist Party and a leader of the Left wing section which emerged early in 1919. The younger Hourwich later became a founding member of the Communist Party of America and later emigrated to the Soviet Union.

Isaac Hourwich's papers, available to researchers on 13 reels of microfilm, reside at the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research in New York City.

Footnotes

Works

The Russian Judiciary," Political Science Quarterly, vol. 7, no. 4 (Dec. 1892), pp. 673-707. In JSTOR. The Economics of the Russian Village. Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, vol. 2, no. 1. New York: University Faculty of Political Science of Columbia College, 1892. "Russia in the International Market," Journal of Political Economy, vol. 2, no. 2 (March 1894), pp. 284–290. In JSTOR. "The Rate of Profits Under the Law of Labor-Value," Journal of Political Economy, vol. 2, no. 2 (March 1894), pp. 235–250. In JSTOR. Trade Unions and the Law. n.c.: n.p., n.d. [1900s]. "The Jewish Laborer in London," Journal of Political Economy, vol. 13, no. 1 (Dec. 1904), pp. 89–98. In JSTOR. "The Social-Economic Classes of the Population of the United States," In two parts. Journal of Political Economy, vol. 19, No. 4 (April 1911), pp. 309–337. In JSTOR: Part I | Part II "The Economic Aspects of Immigration," Political Science Quarterly, vol. 26, no. 4 (Dec. 1911), pp. 615–642. In JSTOR. Immigration and Labor: The Economic Aspects of European Immigration to the United States. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1912. Revised Second Edition, New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1922. Immigration and Crime. Chicago: n.p., 1912. Thirteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1910: Volume XI: Mines and Quarries, 1909: General Report and Analysis. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1913. "The Evolution of Commercial Law," American Bar Association Journal, vol. 1, no. 2 (April 1915), pp. 70–76. In JSTOR. Oysgevehlṭe shrifṭen (Selected Writings in 4 volumes, In Yiddish). New York: Yitsḥaḳ Ayziḳ Hurviṭsh's Publiḳatsyons Ḳomiṭeṭ, 1917. Vol. 1: Immigration | Vol. 2: The Jewish Question | Vol. 3: Socialism | Vol. 4: Socialism