1) John Commons

● John Rogers Commons was born on October 13, 1862, Hollandsburg,

Ohio, U.S. and died May 11, 1945, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
● He was an American economist who became the foremost authority on
U.S. labor in the first third of the 20th century.
● Commons studied at Oberlin College and at Johns Hopkins University
and taught at the University of Wisconsin (1904–32).
● He had a religious upbringing which led him to be an advocate for social
justice early in life.
● He was a poor student and suffered from mental illness while studying.
● He was allowed to graduate without finishing because of the potential
seen in his intense determination and curiosity.
● He established his reputation with the publication of A Documentary
History of American Industrial Society, 10 vol. (1910–11), and History of
Labour in the United States, 4 vol. (1918–35).
● Commons’s theory of the evolution of the American labor movement in
terms of changes in the market structure was generally accepted. After
World War I, Commons broadened his reputation with the publication of
Legal Foundations of Capitalism (1924) and its sequel, Institutional
Economics (1934).
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2) John Commons Contributions
● Best known for his labor research. He emphasized the collective action of
various groups in the economy and viewed their operation within a
system of continually evolving institutions and laws.
● Commons drafted much of the reform legislation that made Wisconsin an
example for other states. Such legislation introduced legal privileges for
labour unions, compulsory unemployment insurance, compulsory
workers’ compensation, and government regulation of utilities.
● He also made notable contributions to the federal government in the
areas of civil service, public utilities, and unemployment insurance and
contributed to the design of the Social Security Act of 1935, the U.S.
government’s first comprehensive program to fund old-age benefits
through payroll taxes.
● In 1934, Commons published Institutional Economics, which laid out his
view that institutions were made up of collective actions that, along with
conflict of interests, defined the economy. He believed that institutional
economics added collective control of individual transactions to existing
economic theory.