Mordecai Joseph Brill Ezekiel was born on May 10, 1899, in Richmond, Virginia. Following a boyhood spent in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., he enrolled, in 1914, at the Maryland Agricultural College, from which he graduated four years later with a Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture. After a brief term of military service, Ezekiel began work, in 1919, with the United States Census Bureau. In 1922, he moved to the Department of Agriculture, working as an economist with the Division of Farm Management. He continued while working to attend classes, first at the Department of Agriculture's Graduate School and the University of Minnesota, which latter school granted him a Master of Science degree in 1923, and then at the Robert Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government, which awarded him a Doctor of Philosophy degree in economics in 1926. In 1930, Ezekiel published his first book, METHODS OF CORRELATION ANALYSIS. In that same year he began work as Assistant Chief Economist with the Federal Farm Board. From September, 1930, to September, 1931, he travelled through Europe and Russia as a Guggenheim Fellow. On his return to the United States, Ezekiel began the work which brought him to a position of major importance within the Department of Agriculture. In the summer and fall of 1932, he formulated the details of what was to become the Agriculture Adjustment Administration. In the late fall of that year, he helped prepare a draft of the Agricultural Adjustment Act. In late November, * Ezekiel met in Albany with President-elect Franklin Roosevelt, Rexford Tugwell, M. L. Wilson, and Henry Morgenthau, Jr., to discuss the farm policy of the new administration. From 1933 until 1944, Ezekiel held the position of Economic Advisor to the Secretary of Agriculture. In two books published during this period, $2500 A YEAR: FROM SCARCITY TO ABUNDANCE (1936) AND JOBS FOR ALL (1939), he tried to popularize his ideas for extending the concept of planned production, which the Agricultural Adjustment Administration had applied to agriculture, to industry. In 1944, Ezekiel moved from the Secretary of Agriculture's office to become Economic Advisor in the Bureau of Agriculture Economics. During his last years with the Department of Agriculture -- he was involuntarily retired through a reduction in force in 1947 -- Ezekiel was often involved with the founding conferences and early activities of what was to become the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. In 1943 he helped plan, though he did not attend, the Hot Springs Food Conference. In 1944 he served as a member of the United Nations Interim Commission on Food and Agriculture. In 1945 he served as a member of two of the FAO's first field missions to Greece and Poland. In July, 1947, Ezekiel began full-time work with the Food and Agriculture Organization. He held, during the next fifteen years, the positions of Economist in charge of the Economic Analysis Branch, Deputy Director of the Economics Division, Head of the Economics Department, Assistant Director General in charge of the Economics Department, and, finally, Special Assistant to the Director General. He retired from FAO in June, 1962, to take a position with the United States Agency for International Development. He served as chief of the United Nations Division of this agency until his retirement in 1967. During the last years of his life, Ezekiel took occasional assignments as consultant. In 1969, he worked for several months with the Food and Agriculture Organization, helping prepare a report entitled "Indicative Plan for World Agricultural Development". He died in Washington, D.C., on October 31, 1974. Ezekiel did not attempt to keep in his personal files a complete record of his long and varied career. His papers document most fully his professional career outside his official duties -- that is, his work as author, speaker, and teacher. Ezekiel was, above all else, a man of ideas. The speech and article file and those folders within the subject file which deal with his teaching and writing document rather fully the development and promulgation of his ideas. There are of course folders within the subject file documenting his official duties with the Department of Agriculture, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and the Agency for International Development, but their coverage is incomplete. * In a letter to Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., September 2, 1957, Ezekiel says this meeting took place "in the fall after the election -- in late November, I believe..." In his Columbia Oral History Project interview (p.48), he places the meeting in early December and in Hyde Park rather than in Albany.

Diaries and notebooks, correspondence, memoranda, telegrams, data sheets and graphs, printed and processed material. The material contained in the files marked "Ezekiel, Mordecai: Personal" falls for the most part into four categories: correspondence regarding (1) the publication of Ezekiel's books and essays, (2) appointments in the Department of Agriculture and requests for positions and for letters of recommendation, (3) Ezekiel's attendence at professional conferences, and (4) perfunctory business and personal matters. Probably three fifths of the "personal" files fall into these categories. Another fifth is composed of correspondence which discusses the ideas contained in Ezekiel's writings. The file marked "Ezekiel, Mordecai: Reading File" is composed of essays and books which Ezekiel has annotated.

Holograph manuscripts, typescripts, reprints and processed copies of Ezekiel's speeches, articles, and book projects, together with correspondence, memoranda, notes, data sheets, graphs and maps related to these speeches and writings. Arranged chronologically, with miscellaneous and unidentified material gathered both by decade, where appropriate, and at the end of the series. The titles and dates carried on the file folders are approximations.

Newspaper and magazine clippings, arranged in approximate chronological order and, in four instances, by subject. There is also one file box of names and addresses; this has been placed at the end of the series and is listed as Container No. 45.

"A Project to Measure and Evaluate Economic Growth and Development Effects of Food Aid Shipments and Investment Projects Under the Revised Food for Peace Act of 1966,"

Student Papers on the "Economics of Instability", "A Study of the Price-Making Forces in the Cotton Textile Industry", by William Crow

Student Papers on the "Economics of Instability", "A Study of the Cement Industry", by C. B. Barre, ca. 1937

Student Papers on "The Economics of Instability", "Analysis of the Automobile Industry as to Economic Instability", by Ramond Eliason

Student Papers on the "Economics of Instability", "Crude Rubber", by Gladys Eesley

Student Papers on the "Economics of Instability", "Factors Affecting the Production, Consumption and Price of Copper", by Raymond Vernon

Student Papers on the "Economics of Instability", "Instability Analysis of the Cotton Production Industry in the United States", by N. Koffsky and L. Ducoff

Student Papers on the "Economics of Instability", "Analysis of Rice Production", by Fred Rossiter

Student Papers on the "Economics of Instability", "An Analysis of the Pig Iron Industry as to Its Economic Instability", by Jacob Kaufman

Student Papers on the "Economics of Instability", "Monopolistic Competition in the Tobacco Industry", by Jas. Robinson, ca. 1938

Student Papers on the "Economics of Instability", "Analysis of the Housing Industry with Reference to Economic Instability", by Kathryn Wylie, ca. 1938

Student Papers on the "Economics of Instability", "Some Economic Information Relating to the Steel Industry", by Arley and Olin Timm

Student Papers on the "Economics of Instability", "The Response of New Construction in the Electric Utility Industry to the Demand for Power", by Wentworth W. Peirce

Student Papers on the "Economics of Instability", "The Automobile Industry", by Robert Solo

Student Papers on the "Economics of Instability", " Economic Instability in the Crude Rubber Industry", by John deBeers

Student Papers on the "Economics of Instability", "Economic Instability in the Cotton Textile Industry", by Albert Westefeld

Correspondence with the publisher regarding

Comments on prior to publication

Comments on following publication

Acknowledgements for receipt of advance copy

mailing lists

reviews of

miscellaneous

"The Short-Cut Graphic Method: an Illustration of 'Flexible' of Multiple Correlation Techniques,"

"World Food Production -- Economic and Technical Aspects", "Forecasting in Agriculture", Helsinki, Finland,

697 matches returned.