Hourwich

vol. II; Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character
of Leonidas Campbell Honk (1892) ; also in Cong. Rec-
ord, s^nd Cong., i Sess., pp. 690-703 and 967-970;
Knoxmlle Jour., May 26, 28, 29, 1891; Nashville Daily
Am., May 26, 1861.] F.L. 0.

HOURWICH, ISAAC AARONOVICH

(Apr. 26, iS6o-July 9, 1924), statistician, law-
yer, was born in Vilna, Russia, the son of Adolph
and Rebecca (Sheveliovich) Hourwich. After
graduation from the Gymnasium at Minsk in
1877 he began the study of medicine at St. Peters-
burg. There he became interested in social and
political questions and at the age of nineteen he
wrote a pamphlet, "What is Constitutionalism?"
which caused his arrest and imprisonment on a
charge of treason. Upon his discharge nine
months later he became an active worker in the
cause of revolution. Abandoning medicine he
took up law as a career, receiving the degree of
LL.M. from the Demidov Juridical Lyceum at
Yaroslav in 1887. After a second arrest for po-
litical reasons he fled to Sweden and thence emi-
grated to the United States. He was then thirty
years old. Columbia College awarded him the
Seligman fellowship in political science and in
1893 conferred upon him the degree of Ph.D.
For two years, 1893-95, he taught statistics at
the University of Chicago. Then he returned to
New York, was admitted to the bar, and began
the practice of law. After several years he gave
up legal work to enter government service.
From 1900 to 1913 he was employed by the
United States Bureau of the Mint, the United
States Census Bureau, and the New York Pub-
lic Service Commission. After the war he was
retained as counsel by the New York Bureau of
the Russian Soviet Government.

Hourwich was a talented and prolific writer.
He published in 1888, in Russian, a study of the
peasant migration to Siberia, and in 1892 The
Economics of the Russian Village, in which he
analyzed the problems of individual and collec-
tive land-holding in relation to crop production
and peasant welfare. The publication which at-
tracted most attention was Immigration and La-
bor (1912, 1921), which was denounced by one
reviewer as "a very ingenious, clever and dan-
gerous book" (H. P. Fairchild, in the National
Municipal Review, October 1913). In it Hour-
wich attacked the arguments for the restriction
of immigration contained in the Reports of the
United States Immigration Commission (41
vols., 1911). He denied that the data gathered
by the Commission proved that immigration had
reduced the wages of native labor or had in-
creased unemployment and, rejecting theoretical
argument, he adduced statistical support of his
position from the Commission's reports. Al-

House

though lacking in balanced reasoning, the vigor-
ous style of Hourwich's book made it a formi-
dable controversial weapon and it was given ex-
tended consideration in reviews. (See partic-
ularly R. F. Foerster in the Quarterly Journal
of Economics, August 1913.) His other publi-
cations include a Digest of the Commercial Laws
of the World (1902); a study, in Russian, of the
development of American democracy (1905);
another study in Yiddish, of mooted questions in
Socialism (1917), and a Yiddish translation of
Das KapitaL At the time of his death, in New
York City, he is said to have left an unfinished
autobiography entitled "Memoirs of a Heretic."
Hourwich was connected with a number of Jew-
ish philanthropies and was interested in move-
ments for reform in city government. He was
twice married: in 1881 to Helen Kushelevsky of
Minsk, Russia, and in 1893 to Louise Joffe of
New York.

IWho's Who in America, 1924-25; the Outlook, July
26, 1913; the Jewish Tribune and Hebrew Standard
(N. Y.), July 18, 1924; the Reform Advocate (Chi-
cago), July 19, 1924; N. Y. Times, July n, 1924.]

P.W.B.

HOUSE, EDWARD HOWARD (Sept. 5,
iS36-Dec, 17, 1901), journalist, author, and mu-
sician, Japan's first official foreign publicist, was
born at Boston, Mass., the son of Timothy and
Ellen Maria (Child) House. His father was a
banknote engraver and desired his son to follow
the same vocation. Young House preferred mu-
sic, however, and for three years after 1850 stud-
ied orchestral composition, producing a few
pieces which were occasionally performed. In
1854 he became music and dramatic critic for the
Boston Courier, transferring in 1858 to the New
York Tribune which he served in the same ca-
pacity. The following year this paper sent him
to report the John Brown raid, and during the
Civil War he was a special correspondent with
the Federal armies in Virginia. After the res-
toration of peace he spent three years in New
York and London in theatrical management, re-
turning in 1868 to the Tribune. In 1870, he
joined the staff of the New York Times. Earlier,
while in New York, he had met Richard Hil-
dreth [g.z>.], author of Japan As It Was and Is
(1855), who had excited his imagination by tales
of the Perry Expedition and given him a strong-
ly pro-Japanese bent As a result he sought and
obtained appointment as "Professor of the Eng-
lish Language and Literature" at the Nanko
(Kaisei Gakko), in Tokyo, an institution now
forming part of the Imperial University.

He arrived in Japan in 1871, but found the title
of his position unduly ornate for the almost ele-
mentary work involved. He devoted his leisure

257