RICHARD GILBERT, AT 83; PROFESSOR,
WORLD WAR II ECONOMICS ARCHITECT
Author: By Edgar J. Driscoll and William P. Coughlin, Globe Staff
Date: Tuesday, October 8, 1985
Page: 59
Section: OBITUARY
Richard V. Gilbert, 83, one of the most influential economists in
Washington during World War II and a former instructor of economics at Harvard
University and the Fletcher School of International Law and Diplomacy at Tufts
University, died Sunday at his home in Cambridge. He had been ill with cancer
and suffered a heart attack 10 days ago.
Mr. Gilbert left teaching posts at Harvard, Radcliffe and the Fletcher
School in 1939 to become economic adviser to Secretary of Commerce Harry
Hopkins, later becoming economic adviser to the price administrator and
director of research, Office of Price Administration.
An ardent New Deal Democrat, he also was a major speechwriter for President
Franklin D. Roosevelt on economic and other matters. Recently he gave the
manuscripts of his speeches, with notations by FDR, to the Roosevelt Memorial
Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.
The distinguished economist Walter Salant of the Brookings Institute in
Washington wrote in the Journal of Economic Literature a few years ago of Mr.
Gilbert's "original analytical work and powers of persuasion" and called his
leadership "inspired." Later he wrote: 'Richard Gilbert was the outstanding,
unsung hero of American wartime economic policy. . . ."
Salant also cited Mr. Gilbert's "leadership in developing methods of
estimating the potential American output and with Robert Nathan in persuading
Hopkins, and through him President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to raise government
sights as to the feasible production of aircraft and merchant shipping."
Under Mr. Gilbert's and Nathan's urging, aircraft production was
increased from 60,000 in 1942 to 125,000 in 1943; tanks from 45,000 in 1942 to
75,000 in 1943 and merchant shipping from 1.1 million deadweight tons to 6
million in 1942 and 10 million in 1943.
Of his important wartime role as the Roosevelt administration's
representative in the Treasury, the War Labor Board and the Office of Economic
Stablization, Mr. Gilbert once modestly said:
"While I had little to do with operations, I had a hand in shaping the
major moves: the general price freeze and the seven-point program of the
spring of 1942; the wage stabilization fight of the fall of 1942; the 'hold-
the-line' order of April 1943, coupled with the subsidy program that made it
workable; and the reconversion price and wage programs of 1945, which in
retrospect do not appear as attractive as they did when they were being
formulated, but which, if anyone wishes to get tough about it, I am still
prepared to defend."
After the war, Mr. Gilbert opened offices as a consulting economist in
Washington, where he remained for seven years. Then he joined Schenley
Industries, one of his clients, as assistant to the president, later becoming
a vice president. He remained with Schenley until 1959, when he joined the
Harvard Economic Development Advisory Service as director of its mission to
Pakistan. He worked with the Pakistan Planning Commission from 1960 to 1966
and again from 1969 to 1970.
A book on Pakistan's developing policy is dedicated to him, as "Teacher,
Activist and Humanist." The foreward says: "He made a lasting impression on
the country's developing policy, its growing pool of skilled government
economists and several generations of development advisory advisors . . .
Always incisive and a persuasive advocate, he demonstrated the power of an
artful combination of sound theory, respect for the fact, political
sensitivity, and a strong sense of priority."
Mr. Gilbert was born in Carmel, N.J., on Sept. 6, 1902, the son of Meyer
Gilbert and Frances (Gaylburd) Gilbert. He was a graduate of Central High
School, Philadelphia, and of Harvard College, summa cum laude, in 1923. He
went on to receive his master's degree from Harvard in 1925 and his doctorate
in 1930. He began teaching at Harvard in 1933, becoming an associate professor
at the Fletcher School at Tufts in 1936 and at Harvard, where he conducted
seminars in money and banking, in 1938.
He was a member of the American Economic Association, the American
Statistical Society and Americans for Democratic Action. He was the author of
''An Economic Program for American Democracy" and articles for scientific and
other journals.
Mr. Gilbert leaves his wife, the former Emma Cohen; two sons, Walter of
Cambridge, a Nobel Prize laureate and microbiologist, and Alan Gilbert, a
professor of international studies at the University of Denver; a daughter,
Dr. Joanne Schwartzberg of Chicago; a brother, Taft Gilbert of Flushing, New
York; a sister, Nora Willig of Washington, D.C.; and six grandchildren.
EDRISC;10/07,15:04 NKELLY;10/09,10:34 GILBER08
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