Katharine Ellis Coman (November 23, 1857 – January 11, 1915) was an American social activist and professor. She was based at the women-only Wellesley College, Massachusetts, where she created new courses in political economy, in line with her personal belief in social change. As dean, she established a new department of economics and sociology. Among other admired works, Coman wrote The Industrial History of the United States and Economic Beginnings of the Far West: How We Won the Land Beyond the Mississippi. She was the first female statistics professor in the US, the only woman co-founder of the American Economics Association, and author of the first paper published in The American Economic Review. A believer in trades unionism, social insurance and the settlement movement, Coman travelled widely to conduct her research, and took her students on field trips to factories and tenements. She shared a home with poet Katharine Lee Bates.
Early life Coman was born in 1857 to Martha Ann Seymour Coman (1826–1911) and Levi Parsons Coman (1826–1889) in Newark, Ohio. Her mother had graduated from an Ohio female seminary, and her father had been educated at Hamilton College, and thus Coman received much of her early education at home. She attended the University of Michigan for two years, left college to teach in Ottawa, Illinois for two years, and then returned to university. She earned a Bachelor of Philosophy (PhB) degree in 1880, one of only a handful of women to do so. She was influenced by the work of John Stuart Mill, which is evident in her later work as economist and historian. Coman attended lectures about socialism while traveling in London. Later in her career, she was influenced by Alfred Marshall (1890), Francis Amasa Walker (1883), and social Darwinism. While at the University of Michigan, Coman studied under Professors Charles Kendall Adams of the German Historical School; James Burrill Angell, then president of the university; and Henry Carter Adams, a renowned statistician.
Wellesley College
After earning her PhB, she joined the faculty at Wellesley College, a newly established private college for women in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Angell recommended her for the position, noting her talent for teaching. She first taught English rhetoric, and in 1881 became an instructor in history. In 1883, she was promoted to full professor of history. Because Coman believed that economics could address social problems, she urged the Wellesley administration to offer courses on the subject, and in 1883, she taught the college's first political economy class. Coman was the first American woman to teach statistics and Wellesley became the only American women's college to offer statistics courses before 1900. Coman developed and taught several new courses in economics, history, and rhetoric, including Statistical Study of Economic Problems, Industrial History of the United States, and Conservation of Our Natural Resources, all framed by sociological insights related to social justice. To teach students about the practicality of applying economic theory to real world economic and social problems, Coman escorted her students on field trips to Boston's tenement houses, labor union meetings, factories, and sweatshops. In 1885, at the age of 28, she became professor of history and economics. That same year, she turned down the offer of a position as dean of women at the University of Michigan, stating that she preferred to remain at Wellesley and continue teaching. She was acting dean from 1899 to 1900, during which time she established a new department of economics and sociology, becoming its head in 1900. According to historian Melinda Ponder, Coman was a popular teacher. Two of her students, Helen Frances Page Bates and Helen Laura Sumner Woodbury, were among the first American women to earn PhDs in economics. Woodbury is recognized as an important historian of labor and a noted economist, while Helen Bates became a noted social worker. She retired from full-time teaching at Wellesley in 1913, becoming professor emeritus. In writing about the farewell dinner held in her honor, the New York Times said: "Miss Coman has been so closely associated with the history and development of Wellesley for so long a time that her loss is felt very deeply by the whole college." Coman continued to research and write until her death in 1915. Coman's papers are held by the Wellesley College Archives. In 1921, the college established the Katharine Coman Professorship of Industrial History to honor her service.
Notable works Coman and Elizabeth Kendall coauthored the 1902 book A Short History of England for School Use based on research that Coman conducted in England between 1886 and 1894. Coman published The Industrial History of the United States in 1910, the first industrial history of the United States. It was reprinted nine times before 1915. Her 1911 article, "Some Unsettled Problems of Irrigation," was the first article published in the newly formed journal The American Economic Review. Her 1912 work Economic Beginnings of the Far West: How We Won the Land Beyond the Mississippi was considered by contemporaneous scholars to be her magnum opus, and "one of the most important fruits of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching." The book outlined the economic history of the American West. In this work, Coman describes the historical economic processes that led to the Far West coming under the control of settlers. She found that settlers were more economically successful than explorers, traders, trappers, and indigenous peoples because the settlers built permanent settlements, reproduced at a higher rate, and established networks of collaboration. Settlement movement activist Jane Addams, a close friend, urged Coman to research social insurance programs in Europe in order to establish similar programs in the United States. Coman studied social insurance in England, Spain, Denmark, and Sweden, but poor health prevented her from continuing her research. Her manuscript, "Unemployment Insurance: A Summary of European Systems" was published after her death in 1915.
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