Adams, Henry Carter

Henry Adams is the son of a missionary who moved from New England to Iowa during the colonization of the Midwestern United States. It is likely that upbringing in a religious Protestant milieu shaped his attitude towards society and the state, which was subsequently expressed in economic works and social activities. Adams studied at the seminary for some time, but later transferred to the philological department of Greenell College (graduated in 1874), and then to the political economy department at Johns Hopkins University (graduated from 1878, then interned in Germany for two years).

He taught at Johns Hopkins University (1880–1881), Cornell University (1880–1887), professor at the University of Michigan since 1887. In the last years of his life, he was the organizer of a new branch of the university, a modern business school at the University of Michigan.

Family

The son of Henry Carter Adams, also Henry Carter Adams (Jr.) is a shipbuilding engineer, founder of the relevant department of the University of Michigan.

Adams is one of the first US economists to study the interaction of the private sector of the economy and the state during the formation of monopoly capitalism (1880s - 1890s), primarily in the field of railways. He was regularly involved in the work of a state expert on the audit of railway tariffs, tax and labor disputes in railway construction, therefore, in practice, he knew the nature of the contradictions in labor and capital and how they affected the people involved in the conflict.

Adams' theory rejected the principles of free trade of the English School of Economics ( Adam Smith ) and their French ( Frederick Bastia ) and Austrian followers, who maintained that "the state is a necessary evil." She equally distanced herself from the German theoreticians of nationalization of the economy , and from the Social Democrats . According to Adams, it was not necessary to prototype the state to society and (or) the person, but to consider the state and society as a single organism. The state in this organism serves as a regulator of public morality, limiting the negative (according to Adams) influence of competition on relations between people. In particular, the state should establish minimum standards for remuneration of labor and its conditions, even if this increases the cost of the employer-capitalist. The trade unions in this scheme looked like a legitimate and desirable intermediary between the three parties - capitalists, workers and the state regulator.

Adams' views and public appearances during the time of the "robber barons" (see Jay Gould , Rockefeller ) led him to social activity in the federal commission for regulating interstate commerce, an authority that first became concerned about restricting monopolies. Adams participated, as an expert, in the development of the first US antitrust law, the Sherman Act , but subsequently his position, radical by American standards, did not find support among lawmakers for a long time, and the Sherman Act itself lay under the cloth for a long time.

• Outline of Lectures upon Political Economy, 1886
• A Study of the Principles that Should Control the Interference of the Public Debts, 1887
• Relation of the State to Industrial Action, 1887
• The Science of Finance, 1898
• Taxation in the United States 1789-1816, 1897 (most recent reprint of Adamant Media Corporation, 2005, ISBN 1-4021-9562-1 )
• Trusts, 1904
• An interpretation of the social movements of our time (latest reprint 1964)
• American Railway Accounting, 1918

• Henry Carter Adams. S. Lawrence Bigelow, I. Leo Sharfman, RM Wenley, The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Apr., 1922), pp. 201-211
• Henry Carter Adams. The American Economic Review, Vol. 32, No. 2, Part 1 (Jun., 1942)

Bibliography of G. Adams (inaccessible link from 09/05/2013 [2168 days] - history , copy )