Paul Schuster Taylor

Paul Schuster Taylor (June 9, 1895 in Sioux City, Iowa – 1984 in Berkeley) was a progressive agricultural economist. He was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin and earned his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley where he then became professor of economics from 1922, until his retirement in 1962.

Paul Schuster Taylor was born on June 9, 1895 in Sioux City, Iowa to Henry Taylor and Rose Eugenia Schuster. He attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

When the United States declared war in April, 1917, Taylor sought and received a commission as a 2nd Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. He took command of the 4th Platoon, 78th Company, 2nd Battalion 6th Marines in August 1917 in Quantico, Virginia. He deployed to France in January, 1918, and participated in the Battle of Chateau-Thierry and the Battle of Belleau Wood. He was severely gassed at Belleau Wood on June 14, 1918. After recuperating he served as an instructor at the First Corps Schools in Gondrecourt until returning home and mustering out in 1919.

Taylor's research career was launched by the progressive sociologist Edith Abbott. As head of a Social Science Research Council project, she was looking for someone to undertake a study of the rapidly increasing Mexican migration into the United States. Taylor took up this task.

From 1927 to 1930 he spent a great deal of time on the road, driving through the San Joaquin and Imperial Valleys in California, into Colorado and Texas, and as far east as Pennsylvania. He not only sought quantitative data on Mexican employment patterns but also learned Spanish and interviewed workers and employers. He documented what he encountered with photographs.

His approach integrated the institutional economics advocated by his professor John Commons with cultural and ethnographic matters - for example collecting Mexican corridos (popular ballads). He published thirteen monographs on Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. In this period he was the "only" Anglo scholar paying attention to Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans.

...
Wikipedia