Nicolaas Pierson

Nicolaas Gerard Pierson (7 February 1839 – 24 December 1909) was a Dutch economist and Liberal statesman who served as the chairman of the Council of Ministers (Prime Minister) of the Netherlands from 1897 until 1901.

Pierson was a professor economics and statistics at the University of Amsterdam and director and presiding director (president-directeur) of the De Nederlandsche Bank, the Dutch national bank. He was minister of Finance in the Cabinet Van Tienhoven. During his term of office he introduced an important tax revision. After serving as chairman of the Council of Ministers for four years he took a seat in the House of Representatives for the constituency of Gorinchem from 1905 to 1909. Pierson received an honorary doctorate from the University of Cambridge.

Early life and education Nicolaas Gerard Pierson was born in Amsterdam on 7 February 1839, to Jan Lodewijk Gregory Pierson and his wife Ida Oyens. The youngest of six children, Pierson had two brothers and three sisters. Two of his brothers, Allard and Hendrik Pierson, would become famous pastors. His father was a merchant, while his mother was a Réveil writer.

Pierson attended a French school in Amsterdam from 1845 to 1853. He went to an English school in Brussels in 1853, but switched to a trade school in Amsterdam a year later. On 2 June 1864, Pierson graduated as a teacher in political economy. and Italian. In 1883 Pierson became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Pierson served as minister of Finance from 21 August 1891 to 9 May 1894, and again from 26 July 1897 to 1 August 1901. During his second his second term as minister, he was also the chairman of the Council of Ministers, a positional that would later be dubbed Prime Minister of the Netherlands. Measures were enacted in education, worker safety, and health, with the government “breaking with past traditions in, amongst other things, making vaccinations compulsory and regulating the water supply to combat the outbreak of infectious diseases.” A series of factory acts were passed to strengthen and expand on demands laid down in a previous act from 1895, while local authorities were compelled “to establish minimum requirements for safe housing.” In addition, accident insurance was made mandatory for all industrial workers by a 1901 act. A governmental decree of the 24th of June 1898 contained various health and safety provisions for factory workers. The Phosphorlucifer Act (Stb. 1901, 133) put an absolute ban on white phosphorus, which caused the disease phosphorus necrosis in workers who handled it. Under the Compulsory Education Act (1900) compulsory education was set at six years (with limited refresher education) although exemptions were granted for work in agriculture, horticulture and peat farming. The Water Management Act 1900 contained rules “on water management management, the management and maintenance of water management structures and the prevention of flooding.” Under the Health Act (1901), inspectors and Chief Inspectors were charged with enforcing laws (such as Housing Act passed in 1900 which contained provisions on the requirements that municipalities must set for building and rebuilding homes, and for proper habitation) while local health commissions were set up. The Laws of the Child (1901) included provisions “on the possibility of depriving parents of parental authority, regulation of child protection, the establishment of guardianship councils, punishments and criminal proceedings against juveniles and lowering the age of majority to 21 years.” when he criticised Karl Kautsky, who had delivered a speech in Delft in 1902. Entitled The Problem of Value in the Socialist Community, this attracted little attention outside the Netherlands until it appeared in English translation in Friedrich Hayek's Collectivist Economic Planning.

Family On 30 October 1862, Pierson married Catharina Rutgera Waller in Amsterdam. She died shortly after their marriage, and the couple remained childless. Pierson died on 24 December 1909, in Heemstede.