Robert Ellis Thompson

Robert Ellis Thompson (1844-1924) was born on April 15, 1855, near Lurgan, Ireland, to Samuel and Catherine Ellis Thompson. The young Thompson and his family emigrated to the United States in 1857, where they settled in Philadelphia. Thompson would eventually undertake study at the University of Pennsylvania. It was under the instruction of his moral philosophy professor Daniel R. Goodwin, who utilized Henry Carey’s Principles of Social Science and Francis Bowen’s Principles of Political Economy as textbooks, that Thompson became a convert to American Protectionist thought. Thompson would graduate in 1865 with first class honors.

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Upon graduation, Thompson studied theology and became a preacher (he would be later ordained as a minister in 1874) with the Reformed Presbyterian Church. Around 1868, however, Thompson returned to the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed a Master of Arts, and was even selected to deliver the Master’s speech at the 1868 Commencement Ceremony.

The following year, the University offered Thompson an instructor’s position. This was initially in mathematics and Latin, but the Provost of the University was so impressed by several articles which Thompson penned on economics, that he was promptly transferred to political economy. In 1875, Thompson was then chosen to fill the newly established chair of social science. In the same year, Thompson’s first major work on political economy would appear. This work went by the name Social Science and National Economy, but would be subsequently revised and retitled in 1882 as Elements of Political Economy. Thompson’s treatise would become a staple of American Protectionist thought, with even Alfred Marshall commenting that the work largely superseded Carey’s Principles of Social Science.
 

In 1881, Thompson was handpicked by the Philadelphia industrialist Joseph Wharton to serve as both the Dean and the Chair of Social Science at the newly founded Wharton School of Business. Thompson would teach from his Elements, as well as Peshine Smith’s Manual. In addition to lecturing on a broad range of economic topics, he would also oversee original research undertaken by students. Later in 1885, Thompson would also deliver four lectures at Harvard University, seemingly at the request of Francis Bowen. The substance of these lectures was then published in his treatise Protection to Home Industry. Between 1885 and 1887, he would also deliver a series of lectures at Yale, including a ten part lecture series in 1887, and in subsequent years, he would also give lectures at Cornell, Amherst, Princeton, and Swarthmore College. Throughout his life, Thompson would engage in other literary activities. Between 1870 and 1881, Thompson would be the editor of the Penn Monthly, and then between 1881 and 1921, he would be the editor of The American Magazine. He would also regularly write articles for The American Economist and The Protectionist. In addition to political economy, Thompson also wrote numerous works pertaining to religion and Christianity, including a 460 page work on the history of the Presbyterian Church in America.
 

Thompson would eventually be forced out of the Wharton School in 1892, after a long-running dispute with Edmund James, who was made Director of the School earlier in 1883. After his termination, Thompson became head of the Central High School in Philadelphia, where he also taught classes on ethics, political science, and  economics. This role also led to the creation of his last major work on economics which was entitled Political Economy for High Schools and Academies, which lays out his system of economic thought in plain and simple language. During this time, Thompson also continued writing articles on protection and political economy, including a short critique in 1920 of John Maynard Keyne’s use of the Ricardian method. In 1921, Thompson was forced to retire as president of the high school due to Pennsylvania state law imposing a seventy-year age limit on school presidents. At the request of alumni, however, Thompson continued to teach at the school on ethics and political economy. On October 19, 1924, Thompson died in his residence at Philadelphia, at the age of eighty.