Henry B. Arthur papers

Henry Bradford Arthur was born 1904 in Gloversville, New York. He majored in mathematics at Union College and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1922. He received both his MA (1931) and PhD (1933) in Economics from Harvard University. While working toward his graduate degrees, Arthur taught statistics and general economics at Harvard University (1930-1932). His first professional position was as an economist for the Commission of Government Statistics (1932). He soon joined the staff of the National Recovery Administration (1933) and later, the National Emergency Council (1934-1935), and ended his government service at this time with a position at the WPA (1935-1936). While living in Washington, DC in 1935, Arthur taught statistics at American University.

In 1936, Arthur received a job offer from Chicago packing industry giant Swift & Company, to assist their chief economist George Putnam. When Putnam died in 1939, Arthur was promoted to chief economist and remained with the company until he joined the Harvard Business School faculty in 1960. Throughout his years with Swift & Company, Arthur occasionally took a leave of absence to serve with the U.S. Government in an advisory capacity on food related committees. His growing reputation in the field of agriculture was reflected in his inclusion in the decision making process on wartime food rationing in the 1940s and the Marshall Plan for European food distribution in the 1950s. By the time he was asked to fill an endowed chair at HBS, Arthur had twenty-five years of business and government service behind him and had become an expert in agribusiness and business ethics. As professor, Arthur expanded his influence worldwide and frequently served as a U.S. representative for agricultural and food supply conferences. He became an emeriti in 1971 and continued his research and writing throughout much of the 1980s. He died May 16, 1993.