Harry Alvin Millis (May 14, 1873 – June 25, 1948) was an American civil servant, economist, and educator who was prominent in the first four decades of the 20th century. He was a prominent educator,"Dr. H.A. Millis Dies," The New York Times, June 26, 1948. and his writings on labor relations were described at his death by several prominent economists as "landmarks".Brown, et al., "Harry Alvin Millis, 1873-1948," American Economic Review, June 1949, page 745. Millis is best known for serving on the "first" National Labor Relations Board, an executive-branch agency which had no statutory authority.Morris, The Blue Eagle at Work, 2004, page 21. He was also the second chairman of the "second" National Labor Relations Board, where he initiated a number of procedural improvements and helped stabilize the Board's enforcement of American labor law."Milestones" Time, July 5, 1948.
Early life Millis was born on May 14, 1873, in Paoli, Indiana."Personal Notes," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, January 1904, page 141.Edwards, "Millis Picked to Head NLRB, Capital Hears," Chicago Daily Tribune, November 15, 1940. He attended and graduated from Paoli High School. He was heavily involved in athletics in his youth.Brown, et al., "Harry Alvin Millis, 1873-1948," American Economic Review, June 1949, page 743. He enrolled at Indiana University Bloomington, receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1895 and his Master of Arts in finance in 1896.Nilan and Bartholomew, "No More 'The Naughty Professor': Thorstein Veblen at Stanford," Sandstone and Tile, Spring/Summer 2007, page 17. He was the first graduate student of John R. Commons, the renowned institutional economist.Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit, 1997, page 149. Millis entered the sociology program at the University of Chicago in 1896 but in 1898 he switched to the economics program and received his Doctor of Philosophy in economics in 1899."Educational Notes and News," School and Society, August 5, 1916, page 217.
From 1899 to 1902 he was reference librarian at the John Crerar Library, a then-independent, privately owned public library focusing on research and teaching in science, medicine, and technology. In 1901, he married the former Alice May Schoff.Current Biography, 1940, page 586. The couple had three children: a son, John, and two daughters, Savilla and Charlotte. Alice received her Bachelor of Laws from the University of Cincinnati and her Master of Philosophy from the University of Michigan.The Michigan Alumnus, 1955, page 34. He left his position at Crerar Library in 1902 to become professor of economics and sociology at the University of Arkansas."Millis, NLRB Ex-Chairman, Dies in Chicago," Washington Post, June 26, 1948. He taught there for only two years. He joined the faculty at Stanford University in 1904 after being appointed assistant professor of economics. While at Stanford, he became friends with the controversial economist Thorstein Veblen, and helped Veblen and his wife find housing at the college. While at Stanford, he met and became friends with the nationally known economists Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman and Thomas Sewall Adams, and in 1907 co-founded the National Tax Association (a nonpartisan organization that fosters the study of tax theory, tax policy, and other areas of public finance).Brown, et al., "Harry Alvin Millis, 1873-1948," American Economic Review, June 1949, page 744. In 1908, he published the article "Business and Professional Taxes as Sources of Local Revenue" in the Journal of Political Economy.Millis, H.A. "Business and Professional Taxes as Sources of Local Revenue." Journal of Political Economy. 16:2 (February 1908). The article made the case for taxes on professionals and businesses as a means of broadening the tax base and avoiding over-reliance on property taxes.Brown, et al., "Harry Alvin Millis, 1873-1948," American Economic Review, June 1949, pages 744-745. Simeon E. Leland, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Northwestern University and chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, later said it was a landmark in the study of state tax issues and anticipated the later, better-known work by Seligman and Adams. Millis left Stanford in 1911 and in the fall of 1912 joined the economics department at the University of Kansas."New Teachers," The Graduate Magazine of the University of Kansas, October 1912, page 12.
Millis joined the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago in the fall of 1916 as an assistant professor of economics. He was appointed chair of the department in 1928, and became professor emeritus in 1938 at the age of 65. He became associated with the "institutional economics" school, whose foremost proponents were then primarily teaching at the University of Chicago.van Overtveldt, The Chicago School: How the University of Chicago Assembled the Thinkers Who Revolutionized Economics and Business, 2007, page 128. Between 1938 and 1945, he and Royal E. Montgomery of Cornell University co-wrote a three-volume study titled The Economics of Labor. At the time of his death, a group of prominent economists called it "the most authoritative and comprehensive analysis of modern labor economics for the period covered." He followed this with How Collective Bargaining Works in 1942, a text which set the pattern for case studies in the field of industrial relations.
Public service Millis was a firm believer in "practical" economics and labor relations, the idea that an academic should not merely study from afar but should actively participate in the practice of his or her subjects. Accordingly, Millis agreed to serve on a number of public boards, commissions, and agencies throughout his life. He served as a staff economist and field investigator for the United States Immigration Commission from 1908 to 1910, studying Asian immigration on the West Coast and in the Rocky Mountain states and authoring a three-volume report on the issue.Brown, et al., "Harry Alvin Millis, 1873-1948," American Economic Review, June 1949, pages 743-744."Roosevelt Sets Up a New Labor Board," The New York Times, July 1, 1934.Gross, The Making of the National Labor Relations Board: A Study in Economics, Politics, and the Law, 1933-1937, 1974, pages 75-76. His 1915 book The Japanese Problem in the United States argued for restrictions on Japanese migration to the United States. He argued the Japanese would lower living standards on the West Coast and they would not assimilate. However, he argued that Japanese individuals in the United States should be permitted to gain citizenship to the United States on the same basis as other immigrants, and that individual states in the United States should not bar the Japanese from buying land.
He was director of the Illinois Health Insurance Commission from 1918 to 1919, where he oversaw the state's first large-scale effort to collect health statistics, assess the health of the citizenry, study the implementation of health laws, and make policy recommendations regarding health insurance.
From 1919 to 1921, he was chairman of the Trade Board of the Chicago Men's Clothing Industry, where he helped mediate labor disputes in the textile industry.Wolman, Wander, Mack, and Herwitz, The Clothing Workers of Chicago, 1910-1922, 1922, page 193. He was chairman of the Trade Board's Arbitration Committee from 1923 to 1924 and again from 1937 to 1940.Morris, Labor and Management, 1973, page 126.
"First" NLRB In 1934, Millis was named a member of the "first" National Labor Relations Board. On June 16, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) into law. Title I, Section 7(a) of the Act guaranteed the right of workers to form unions, and it set off a massive wave of union organizing punctuated by employer and union violence, general strikes, and recognition strikes.Bernstein, The Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933-1941, 1970, pages 170-72; Dubofsky and Dulles, Labor in America: A History, 1999, pages 252-258. Although it was felt Section 7(a) would be self-policing, that assumption failed almost immediately.Morris, The Blue Eagle at Work, 2004, page 25. On August 5, 1933, President Roosevelt announced that the National Recovery Administration was being instructed to establish a National Labor Board (NLB) to administer Section 7(a). (Millis served as the vice-chair of the NLB's Chicago office.)Gross, The Making of the National Labor Relations Board: A Study in Economics, Politics, and the Law, 1933-1937, 1974, pages 74-75. But the NLB provided ineffective without any statutory or regulatory powers, so Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6511 on December 16, 1933, to strengthen the NLB and give it the force of executive authority.Gross, The Making of the National Labor Relations Board: A Study in Economics, Politics, and the Law, 1933-1937, 1974, page 42. But this, too, proved too little to deal with the tremendous labor relations problems facing the country. Finally, threatened with a major strike in the steel industry and a Senate labor relations bill moving forward without presidential input, Roosevelt personally drafted Public Resolution No. 44, a bill which authorized the president to create one or more new labor boards to enforce Section 7(a) by conducting investigations, subpoenaing evidence and witnesses, holding elections, and issuing orders.Morris, The Blue Eagle at Work, 2004, page 47.Finegold and Skocpol, State and Party in America's New Deal, 1995, page 130. It passed both houses of Congress on June 16, and Roosevelt signed it into law on June 19, 1934. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6073 on June 29, 1934, which abolished the NLB and established the National Labor Relations Board.Tomlins, The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law, and the Organized Labor Movement in America, 1880-1960, 1985, pages 127-128. The three-person board was empowered to hold hearings and make findings of fact, investigate violations of Section 7(a), and hold union organizing elections to resolve labor disputes. Millis expressed no interest in serving on the NLRB.Tomlins, The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law, and the Organized Labor Movement in America, 1880-1960, 1985, pages 150-151. Nonetheless, he was asked to join the new board based on his national reputation as an arbitrator, and agreed to do so. Millis was sworn in as a member of the "first"The National Labor Relations Board established by Public Resolution No. 44 is often called the "first" NLRB because it was replaced by a "second" NLRB. The second (and current) NLRB was established by the National Labor Relations Act in 1935. Some sources also call the "first" NLRB the "Public Resolution No. 44 NLRB." NLRB on July 9, 1934."New Labor Board Starts Its Work," The New York Times, July 10, 1934.Tomlins, The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law, and the Organized Labor Movement in America, 1880-1960, 1985, page 127.