1837 was not a good year to graduate from college. Following the financial panic that spring, banks contracted credit and the economy shrank. By October, the Concord Bank had reduced its lending by more than $20,000, on a downward course to a four-year low six months later. By this “careful business,” the institution remained solvent, never missing a semiannual dividend of 3 percent, but the cost was paid in “general distress in the community.”
Members of the Harvard Class of 1837 faced a shortage of opportunities to employ their education. But Henry Thoreau had no reason to complain. A week after commencement, he became master of the brick grammar school on the common—yet another in a long line of recent Harvard graduates to rotate through that post. The salary was $500 for the year, a substantial and steady income at a time when many Americans were out of work. A decade earlier Edward Jarvis had faced opposition to his appointment to the school, owing to doubts that he could ever command the respect of students who had known him as a boy. Thoreau, who had studied under Jarvis in this very school, met with no such objection. The 20-year-old’s ability to maintain discipline went unquestioned.
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