Katharine Coman

Katharine Coman
Born (1857-11-23)November 23, 1857
Newark, Ohio, United States
Died January 11, 1915(1915-01-11) (aged 57)
Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States
Occupation Professor
Nationality American
Partner Katharine Lee Bates

Katharine Ellis Coman (November 23, 1857 – January 11, 1915) was an American historian, economist, sociologist, educator, and social activist. Coman worked at Wellesley College for 35 years as an instructor, professor, and dean. Believing that the discipline of political economy could be harnessed to solve the pressing social problems of the day, Coman created new courses in the discipline. She specialized in research and teaching about the development of the American West, and British and American industrialism. In her work, she criticized capitalism and was supportive of the labor movement. She was the only woman co-founder of the American Economics Association, the author of the first important history of industry in the US, and the first female statistics professor in America. Throughout her life, she traveled widely to conduct her economics research. A social activist, Coman supported the settlement movement and the labor movement. She shared a home with poet Katharine Lee Bates for 25 years, and the two women often traveled together. Coman died of breast cancer in 1915. Wellesley College created the Katharine Coman Professorship of Industrial History in her honor.

Early life

Coman was born on November 23, 1857, to Martha Ann Seymour Coman (1826–1911) and Levi Parsons Coman (1826–1889) in Newark, Ohio.[1][2] Upon her birth, Coman's father reportedly said that he would show educators how a girl should be educated.[3] Her mother had graduated from an Ohio female seminary, and her father had been educated at Hamilton College, and thus Coman's received much of her early education at home. She attended the University of Michigan for two years, left college to teach in Ottawa, Illinois for two years, and then returned to university.[3] She earned the Bachelor of Philosophy (PhB) degree in 1880, one of only a handful of women to do so.[4] She was heavily influenced by the work of John Stuart Mill, which is evident in her later work as economist and historian.[4] Coman attended lectures about socialism while traveling in London.[5]:111 Later in her career, she became influenced by Alfred Marshall (1890), Francis Amasa Walker (1883), and social Darwinism.[4] While at the University of Michigan, Coman studied under Professors Charles Kendall Adams of the German Historical School; James Burrill Angell, then president of the university; and Henry Carter Adams, a renowned statistician.[4] After graduating with her PhB, she joined the faculty at Wellesley College, a newly established private college for women.

Wellesley College

An etching of Wellesley College circa 1881.
Etching of Wellesley College circa 1881

Coman was recruited to Wellesley College by Alice Freeman, Wellesley's president, whose goal was to attract idealistic women faculty members to teach young women how to rebuild American society after the economic and social ravages of the Civil War.[6] Noting her talent for teaching, the president of the University of Michigan, James Burrill Angell, recommended Coman.[4] She first taught English rhetoric,[1] and in 1881 became an instructor in history.[7] In 1883, she was promoted to full professor of history.[1][4] Because Coman believed that economics could address social problems, she urged the Wellesley College administration to offer courses in economics, and in 1883, she taught Wellesley's first political economy class.[4] To teach students about the practicality of applying economic theory to real world economic and social problems, Coman escorted her students on field trips to Boston's tenement houses, labor union meetings, factories, and sweatshops.[8] In 1885, at the age of 28, she became professor of history and economics.[4] That same year, she turned down the offer of a position as dean of women at the University of Michigan, stating that she preferred to remain at Wellesley and continue teaching.[4] She was acting dean of Wellesley College from 1899 to 1900; during that period she established a new department of economics[3] and sociology, becoming its head in 1900.[4] She retired from full-time teaching at Wellesley in 1913,[9] becoming professor emeritus.[10] About the farewell dinner held in her honor, the New York Times wrote: "Miss Coman has been so closely associated with the history and development of Wellesley for so long a time that her loss is felt very deeply by the whole college."[9] Coman continued to research and write until her death in 1915.[4]

She developed and taught new courses in economics, history, and rhetoric at Wellesley, including Statistical Study of Economic Problems, Industrial History of the United States, and Conservation of Our Natural Resources, all framed by sociological insights related to social justice.[4] Coman was the first American woman to teach statistics.[4][11] Wellesley was the only American women's college to offer statistics courses before 1900.[11]

According to historian Melinda Ponder, Coman was a popular teacher.[6]:66 Two of her students, Helen Frances Page Bates and Helen Laura Sumner Woodbury, were among the first American women to earn PhDs in economics.[4]:994 Woodbury is recognized as an important historian of labor and a noted economist,[12] while Helen Bates became a noted social worker.[4]

Coman's papers are held by the Wellesley College Archives.[13] In 1921, Wellesley College established the Katharine Coman Professorship of Industrial History to honor her service to the College.[1][4]:1001

Notable works

Coman and Elizabeth Kendall coauthored the 1902 book A Short History of England for School Use based on research that Coman had conducted in England between the years 1886 and 1894. Coman published The Industrial History of the United States[3] in 1910. Considered the first industrial history of the United States,[4] the book was reprinted nine times before 1915.[3] Her 1911 article, "Some Unsettled Problems of Irrigation," was the first article published in the newly formed journalAmerican Economic Review.[4]:36

Her 1912 work Economic Beginnings of the Far West: How We Won the Land Beyond the Mississippi[7]:xi was considered by contemporaneous scholars to be Coman's magnum opus,[2]:166[lower-alpha 1] and "one of the most important fruits of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching."[14] The book outlined the economic history of the American West.[lower-alpha 2] In this work, Coman describes the historical economic processes that led to the Far West coming under the control of settlers. She found that settlers were more economically successful than explorers, traders, trappers, and indigenous peoples because the settlers built permanent settlements, reproduced at a higher rate, and established networks of collaboration.[15]:354

Settlement movement activist Jane Addams, a close friend, urged Coman to research social insurance programs in Europe in order to establish similar programs in the United States.[3] Coman studied social insurance in England, Spain, Denmark, and Sweden, but poor health prevented her from continuing her research.[3] Her manuscript, "Unemployment Insurance: A Summary of European Systems" was published after her death in 1915.[3][lower-alpha 3]

Social activism

Coman was passionate about social and economic issues,[6][4] especially women's education, poverty, immigration, and labor.[2][3][4] Throughout her life, she was active in social reform movements, especially the labor movement and the settlement movement.[2][3][4] She served as the president of the electoral board and chair of the standing committee of the National College Settlements Association in 1900.[3] Coman organized a group of immigrant women who worked in Boston sweatshops,[2]:166 naming the group an "Evening Club for Tailoresses,"[3] and attempted to found a tailor shop that could have been an alternative to sweatshops.[3] She assisted in organizing the 1910 Chicago garment workers' strike,[16] which involved 40,000 factory workers.[17] Coman also worked with the Women's Trade Union League.[2]:166 Working with her economist and sociologist friend Emily Greene Balch and other women, Coman co-founded Denison House,[2]:166[3] a college women's settlement house located in Boston in 1892, serving as its first chair. Denison House provided a center for Boston's labor activists,[3] and is thought to be the first settlement house on the East Coast.[1]

Personal life

a middle aged woman wearing glasses
Katharine Lee Bates, author of the words to "America the Beautiful"

For 25 years, Coman lived in a "Boston marriage"[18]:192 with Wellesley professor and poet Katharine Lee Bates,[19]:190 the author of "America the Beautiful". Such partnerships were so common among Wellesley faculty that they were called "Wellesley marriages".[18]:185; 191–2 Coman and Bates shared a house they named "the Scarab" with Bates' mother, Cornelia, and her sister, Jeannie.[5]:153 The women reportedly enjoyed life together as family.[5]:176 Coman frequently traveled for her research on economic history;[4] she visited Europe, the American West, Scandinavia, and Egypt. Bates accompanied her on many of these trips.[1] Some scholars believe the two women were a lesbian couple.[20][18]:196[lower-alpha 4]

Breast cancer and death

Coman first discovered a lump in her left breast in the fall of 1911 and underwent two surgeries in the following months. At the time, medical doctors did not understand the nature of breast cancer, its causes or its treatments, so the prognosis for Coman was poor.[21] Coman died at home in January 1915 at the age of 58.[1][21]:62 She died in a room the family had named Bohemia, as it looked out over the trees and gardens below.[5]:176 At the time of her death, Coman was working on an industrial history of New England.[4]:1001[22]

During Coman's illness, Coman and Bates' women friends—many of them also in Wellesley marriages—took Coman out for walks and visits, and invited her to stay at their country homes. They prepared meals for Coman and Bates, brought flowers and fresh vegetables, and performed tasks and services to keep Coman's spirits up.[21]

Bates chronicled Coman's illness in her diary, noting hospital visits, surgical procedures, and details about Coman's pain and suffering.[21] According to cancer historian Ellen Leopold, in the days after Coman's death, Bates wrote a memorial to Coman that was designed to be circulated privately among the women's close friends and family.[21]:61[23] Leopold believes that the book, "For Katharine Coman's Family and Innermost Circle of Friends," is the first breast cancer narrative in American literature.[21]:61 Near the end of Coman's life, the two women exchanged loving farewells through reciting poems and psalms to each other.[21][23][5]:176 Several years after Coman's death, Bates continued to mourn and to recall Coman's suffering.[5] In 1922, she published a book of poems about Coman's illness in the book Yellow Clover: A Book of Remembrance.[20][lower-alpha 5] The book's title emerged from the fact that the "two Katharines," as the women were known, would send each other sprigs of yellow clover as tokens of affection.[24]

Assessment

illustration from Coman's book
a map showing the American West
Illustrations from Coman's 1912 book, Economic Beginnings of the Far West: How We Won the Land Beyond the Mississippi.

A review of Coman's book Economic Beginnings of the Far West: How We Won the Land Beyond the Mississippi (1912) in the San Francisco Chronicle stated that "the author is one of those new women who have shown what may be accomplished in the way of research by method and industry and a great deal of enthusiasm."[25] In a 1913 review of her book, economist Thomas Nixon Carver praises Coman's narrative style and lively prose.[15] Also writing in 1913, economist Frederic Paxson criticized the book arguing that there were factual errors and inaccurate citations, and that the data for the book were already widely available in university research libraries. Paxson does credit Coman with having prepared an extensive bibliography and for providing extensive notes for the book.[26] This two-volume book, is today hailed as a classic[4] and was reprinted twice; Macmillan in 1925, and Kelly in 1969.

In 2011, the American Economic Review commemorated its first hundred years by publishing a list of the top twenty articles in the journal's history. Coman's 1911 article "Some Unsettled Problems of Irrigation," published in 1911, was the first article published by the journal[4][27] and was reprinted in the 2011 issue. The article analyzed water rights, access, and availability.[28] Also in this issue of the American Economic Review, economist Gary D. Libecap noted that Coman's work continues to be relevant today, particularly for scholars interested in the economics of climate change.[27] Elinor Ostrom, an American political economist, believes that Coman's article continues to provide "insight into the problems of collective action related to irrigation in the American West."[29]:49

Gerald F. Vaughn, a contemporary economist writing in 2004, proposes that Coman was America's first female institutional economist.[4] Vaughn notes other important facts about Coman that frame her as a pioneer for women academics, including the fact that at the time, the discipline and profession of economics was dominated by men.[4]:989 She was the only woman among the group of economists who founded the American Economic Association in 1885[4] and she was the first American woman to become a statistics professor.[4][11] Vaughn notes that her contributions to economics and social history went beyond being the "first woman," and included being the author of the first article to be published in the American Economic Review in 1911, and the writer of the first industrial history of the US.[4]:989 The University of Michigan "Naming Project" notes that she was one of the first historians to use local newspaper articles and government documents as primary sources in her teaching and writing.[1] Vaughn highlights the fact that she traveled and interviewed widely to gather the data for her work.

According to Vaughn, Coman's extensive work on the processes of institutional change in the American West made her an influential industrial historian. Her text, The Industrial History of the United States (1905; revised 1910; republished by Arno Press 1973) was widely used as a textbook for decades.[4]

Selected publications

Books

  • The Growth of the English Nation (1894)
  • History of England (1899)
  • A Short history of England with Elizabeth Kendall
  • English History Told by English Poets (1902) ( ISBN 0-8369-6097-1) with Katharine Lee Bates
  • Industrial History of the United States (1905; revised 1910; reprinted 1973)
  • Economic Beginnings of the Far West: How We Won the Land Beyond the Mississippi (1912; 1925; 1969)

Articles

  • Coman, Katharine (1891). "The Tailoring Trade and the Sweating System". Publications of the American Economic Association. 6 (1/2): 144–147. JSTOR 2560467.
  • Coman, Katharine (1893). "Wages and Prices in England, 1261–1701". Journal of Political Economy. 2 (1): 92–94. JSTOR 1819834.
  • Coman, Katharine (1903). "The History of Contract Labor in the Hawaiian Islands". Publications of the American Economic Association. 4 (3): 1–61. JSTOR 2485748.
  • Coman, Katharine (1904). "The Negro as a Peasant Farmer". Publications of the American Statistical Association. 9 (66): 39–54. doi:10.2307/2276298. JSTOR 2276298.
  • Coman, Katharine; Bogart, Ernest L.; Ely, Richard T.; Gay, Edwin F. (1907). "Stages of Economic Development.-Discussion". Publications of the American Economic Association. 8 (1): 127–136. JSTOR 2999900.
  • Coman, Katharine. (1911). "Some Unsettled Problems of Irrigation." American Economic Review 1(1): 1–19. Reprinted in 2011 as American Economic Review 101: 36–48.

References

Notes
  1. ↑ According to Katharine Lee Bates, the book "best expresses [Coman's] vigorous and adventurous personality.[7]:xi
  2. ↑ It included chapters on the early Spanish explorers, Spanish missions in California, Santa Fe trade, the Russian exploration of the Pacific Northwest, the beaver fur trade, the Mexican–American War and subsequent cession of what became the American Southwest, the Mormon migration to Utah, early explorers of the West, and the creation of the states of Kansas and Oregon.[15]
  3. ↑ Coman's notes from the study of old age pensions and unemployment social insurance in Europe are housed at Wellesley in the Katharine Coman Papers Collection.[13]
  4. ↑ Writing in 1952, Burgess wrote that Coman was Bates' "dearest companion of her life."[5]:209
  5. ↑ In the poem, "In Cedar Hill Cemetery (Newark, Ohio)," Bates writes:

    O ashes, memory of moral love,
    Sealed in your urn beneath the greensward, pure
    From evil, what am I to weep above
    Your beautiful and tranquil sepulture?[7]:41

Citations
  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Katharine Coman". sites.lsa.umich.edu. Retrieved 2018-07-07.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Norley, Katharine. (2006). "Coman, Katharine (1857–1915)," p. 166 in The biographical dictionary of American economists, Volume I, A-I, edited by Ross B. Emmett. Thoemmes Continuum: London.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 "Coman, Katharine (1857–1915) – Economic History". encyclopedia.jrank.org. Retrieved September 9, 2018.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Vaughn, Gerald F. (2016). "Katharine Coman: America's First Woman Institutional Economist and a Champion of Education for Citizenship". Journal of Economic Issues. 38 (4): 989–1002. doi:10.1080/00213624.2004.11506753.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Burgess, Dorothy. (1952). Dream and Deed: The Story of Katharine Lee Bates. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
  6. 1 2 3 Ponder, Melinda M. (2017). From Sea to Shining Sea: Katharine Lee Bates. Chicago, IL: Windy City Press. ISBN 9781941478486
  7. 1 2 3 4 Bates, Katharine Lee. (1922). Yellow Clover: A Book of Remembrance. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company.
  8. ↑ "Learning to be statesmen". The Newark Daily Advocate. 5 October 1893. p. 3. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  9. 1 2 "Farewell dinner to Miss Coman". The New York Times. 4 May 1913. p. 11. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  10. ↑ "New Wellesley dean". The New York Times. 30 March 1913. p. 8. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  11. 1 2 3 Fitzpatrick, Paul J. (1955). "The Early Teaching of Statistics in American Colleges and Universities". The American Statistician. 9 (5): 12–18. doi:10.2307/2685503. JSTOR 2685503.
  12. ↑ "Helen Laura Sumner Woodbury | American economist". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2018-07-06.
  13. 1 2 "Katharine Coman papers" (PDF). Wellesley College Archives. August 31, 2017. Retrieved July 5, 2018.
  14. ↑ "Two notable books published recently by members of faculty". The New York Times. 17 November 1912. p. 15. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  15. 1 2 3 Carver, T. N. (1913). "Review of Economic Beginnings of the Far West. How We Won the Land Beyond the Mississippi". The American Economic Review. 3 (2): 353–355. JSTOR 1827962.
  16. ↑ "The 1910 Chicago Garment Workers' Strike, Document List". womhist.alexanderstreet.com. Retrieved 2018-07-06.
  17. ↑ Sawyers, June (June 12, 1988). "The Strike That Shook Up An Entire Industry". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved September 9, 2018.
  18. 1 2 3 Faderman, Lillian. (1999). To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done for America--A History. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 039585010 Parameter error in {{isbn}}: Invalid ISBN.
  19. ↑ D'Emilio, John, and Estelle Freedman. (2012). Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (Third Edition). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226923802
  20. 1 2 Schwarz, Judith (1979). ""Yellow Clover": Katharine Lee Bates and Katharine Coman". Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. 4 (1): 59–67. doi:10.2307/3346671. JSTOR 3346671.
  21. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Leopold, Ellen (2006). "My soul is among lions: Katharine Lee Bates' account of the illness and death of Katharine Coman". Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. 23 (1): 60–73. doi:10.1353/leg.2006.0008.
  22. ↑ "Woman historian dead". The New York Times. 12 January 1915. p. 9. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  23. 1 2 Bates, Katharine Lee (2006). "For Katharine Coman's Family and Innermost Circle of Friends. Not for Print nor in any way for General Circulation". Legacy. 23 (1): 74–85. doi:10.1353/leg.2006.0002.
  24. ↑ Watson, Catherine (15 December 2002). "Life of song's author reveals a profile in literary courage". Star Tribune. p. G7-8. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  25. ↑ "Beginnings of Far West: An Elaborate Work in Two Volumes by Katharine Coman". San Francisco Chronicle. 10 November 1912. p. 48. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  26. ↑ Paxson, Frederic L. (1913). Economic Beginnings of the Far West: How We Won the Land beyond the Mississippi [by] Katharine Coman. The American Historical Review. 4, 821. ISSN 0002-8762.
  27. 1 2 Libecap, Gary D (2011). "Institutional Path Dependence in Climate Adaptation: Coman's "Some Unsettled Problems of Irrigation"". American Economic Review. 101 (1): 64–80. doi:10.1257/aer.101.1.64.
  28. ↑ Arrow, Kenneth J; Bernheim, B. Douglas; Feldstein, Martin S; McFadden, Daniel L; Poterba, James M; Solow, Robert M (2011). "100 Years of the 100 years of the American Economic Review: The Top 20 Articles". American Economic Review. 101 (1): 1–8. doi:10.1257/aer.101.1.1.
  29. ↑ Ostrom, Elinor (2011). "Reflections on "Some Unsettled Problems of Irrigation"". American Economic Review. 101 (1): 49–63. doi:10.1257/aer.101.1.49.

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