Hinrichs, Albert F.

Albert Ford Hinrichs (1899-1978), professor of economics, was born in Brooklyn, New York, on September 20, 1899. He attended Cornell University from 1916 to 1920, but received all his degrees from Columbia, the bachelor of arts in 1921, master of arts in 1922, and Ph.D. in 1923. He taught at Columbia, and was director of research in the New York State Bureau of Housing and Regional Planning from 1924 to 1926. He was assistant professor of economics at Brown from 1926 to 1930, and associate professor from 1930 to 1935. In the summer of 1930 he was a member of the first team of American economists to visit the USSR. In 1932-33 he traveled to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, and the USSR, studying economic conditions. In September 1934 Hinrichs submitted a provisional resignation to Brown University. He was about to take a year’s leave of absence to serve as chief economist of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington. His name had been linked to “Red Rioters” in the Providence Journal as a result of his having stood bail for Esther Marx, who had been arrested and held for 48 hours in a roundup of Communists in Providence. Hinrichs had compared the Governor’s order to arrest members of a legal political party to Nazi tactics in Germany, and his offer to resign was caused by his desire to spare the University embarrassment. In April 1935 he was attacked in a confidential bulletin (dutifully reported by the Providence Journal) to the Rhode Island Textile Association, warning its members to “treat him as an enemy” in his investigations for his department in Rhode Island. He resigned from Brown and remained with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and from 1948 to 1953 was with the Division of Finance and Fiscal Policy. His later assignments included a post with the Institute of Public and Business Administration at the University of Karachi, principal statistical advisor to the government of Pakistan, professor at Syracuse University, and chief of the statistical advisors to the government of the Republic of China in 1965. He died on October 12, 1978 in Washington.