Publication: A Princeton Companion
McCabe, David Aloysious (1883-1974), first Joseph D. Green 1895 Professor of Economics, laid the groundwork for the development of Princeton's distinguished tradition in labor economics. One of the last preceptors appointed by Woodrow Wilson, McCabe was discovered by Winthrop M. Daniels, chairman of the Department of History, Politics, and Economics, who lectured at Johns Hopkins in 1909, the year McCabe took his Ph.D. there under George Barnett, the American pioneer in the study of labor relations. For forty-three years thereafter McCabe was one of the University's most popular teachers and a valued counselor in faculty affairs; he was for a time chairman of the economics department.
His four books dealt with labor relations: the first, the standard wage rate in American trade unions; the second (written with his old Hopkins teacher, Barnett), the handling of industrial disputes; the third, collective bargaining in the pottery industry; and the fourth (written with his younger colleague, Richard A. Lester, later a successor as Green Professor), labor and social reorganization.
He was a member of various commissions for the prevention and settlement of labor disputes, serving notably as chairman of the Regional Labor Board for New Jersey in the 1930s and as arbitrator for the National War Labor Board during the Second World War. His warm personality made him a good negotiator, and he enjoyed his relations with workers and employers. Returning once from arbitrating a wage dispute, he quoted with relish a labor representative who had interrupted an analysis McCabe was presenting with the injunction: ``Never mind the statistics, professor, just give us the facts.''
Witty, blunt, and demanding, he was a provocative teacher. His lectures were models of clarity and his preceptorials so challenging that places in his sections were always eagerly sought. For many years before his marriage he lived in a campus dormitory (Patton Hall) and was interested in all phases of student life; with Dean Hugh S. Taylor, he helped establish the Catholic chaplaincy in 1928. His short stature was a source of good-natured ribbing by undergraduates, who called him ``Shorty'': ``How about this man, McCabe,'' the seniors sang, ``Who ceased to grow while still a babe?''
McCabe's forensic skill -- he had been a prize debater at Harvard -- and his bubbling Irish wit made him a vigorous and respected elder statesman in faculty meetings. He was said to have spent much time and ingenuity getting off committees to which his admiring colleagues insisted on appointing him. Once at a tea party the president's wife lavished praise on McCabe as one whose counsel her husband counted on in all faculty matters. ``Ah, Mrs. Hibben,'' Shorty rejoined, ``I too have kissed the blarney stone.''
When he died, at the age of 90, the faculty memorialized him as ``a stalwart exponent of its best traditions in teaching, scholarship, and public service.''
From Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton University Press (1978).