Henry Charles Taylor - Later Life

Later Life

Taylor returned to his academic career, briefly rejoining Ely, then going to Northwestern University to work with the Institute for Research in Land Economics until 1928. He then went to New England for three years to serve as Director of the Survey of Rural Vermont. Taylor then left the United States and traveled through Japan, China, Korea, and India as a member of the Commission of Appraisal of the Layman's Foreign Missions Inquiry for one year, in which he reviewed the work done by missionaries on rural problems. He then went to Rome to serve as the United States member of the Permanent Committee of the International Institution of Agriculture between 1933 and 1935.

He returned to the United States in 1935 on request from Illinois Governor Frank Lowden to serve as Managing Director of the recently created Farm Foundation in Chicago until 1945, where he focused on the broad problems of rural communities and worked to establish a relationship between researchers in the USDA and state agricultural colleges. He also worked closely with Oscar C. Stine on studying the history and development of agricultural economics. In 1936 he also served as president of the Agricultural History Society, of which he was a life member. In 1945 he was transferred to Washington D.C. to serve as Agricultural Economist for the Farm Foundation. This allowed him to devote himself to writing his book, The Story of Agricultural Economics, with his wife Anne Dewees Taylor, and the foundation's sponsorship. With its completion in 1952, Taylor began a study of land scarcity in highly industrialized nations like England, Germany, and Japan, and how their economies were adapting with the loss of their colonies. He stayed active to the end of his life. Taylor regularly attended the meetings of the International Conference of Agricultural Economists until he was 90, and also worked to complete a 100-year history of the original Taylor farm, Tarplewick, started by his parents in Iowa in 1861.

Even before his death he had become known as the "father of agricultural economics" in the United States. However Taylor himself noted the pioneer work of five of his contemporaries in the field along with him: Andrew Boss, William J. Spillman, and George F. Warren, from a background in agronomy, and Benjamin H. Hibbard and Thomas Nixon Carver, who along with himself were students of Richard T. Ely in general economics. Taylor nonetheless embraced this role as a sort of elder statesman, and accepted many visitors to his home, including many young agricultural economists. He found teaching to be the most rewarding part of his career. Taylor was eventually hospitalized by bone cancer of the leg, a terminal illness, but even then continued to see visitors. He died in April 1969 at the Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington. He was survived by his daughter, Esther E. Taylor.