ABSTRACT
In March 1937 the following announcement appeared under the heading ‘Works of Comrades’ in the newsletter sent to the members of X-Crise (Centre Polytechnicien d’Études Économiques. X-Crise. Bulletin Mensuel, 1935, No. 36: 57):
‘Our comrade Father Potron (90), PhD in Mathematics, will give six lectures on:
The relations which exist between certain economic problems and some fairly recent results of a mathematical theory.
These lectures will be held on Thursdays at 5 p.m., in the Institut Catholique, 21 rue d’Assas, Room A (corridor at the end of the atrium, to the left of the entry gate of No. 21).
Thursday 11 March
A mathematical aspect of the problem of the equilibrium between production and consumption, a given standard of living being assigned to each profession and each social condition.
Why and how the possibility question of this problem arises.
Thursday 18 March
A mathematical aspect of the problem of the adjustment of prices and wages, the standards of living being equal to those of the previous problem. Relation of this problem with the previous. Does a new possibility condition arise?
Thursday 8 April
The Frobenius theorems (stated and proved in 1909) on matrices or linear substitutions with positive entries. Possibility condition of problems which are somewhat analogous to those of the equilibria production-consumption and prices-wages.
Thursday 15 April
Extension of the Frobenius theorems to matrices with nonnegative entries only. These theorems allow to completely answer the possibility question which arises for the two economic problems considered.
Thursday 22 April
Is the large number of equations an insuperable obstacle for the calculation of solutions? Exposition of an hitherto unpublished method for the practical solution of a large number of linear equations.
Thursday 29 April
Some economic conclusions suggested by the formulas obtained. Is the race to the rise between prices and wages inevitable? Rationalization and unemployment. Overproduction and hoarding.
The text of the six lectures might be published in a typed booklet of about fifty pages, at the price of 6 francs per copy, due after receipt.
Those who would like to receive one or more copies of it are kindly requested to inform Father Potron, 114 rue du Bac, Paris (7th district). The booklet will undoubtedly be published around the end of May.’
Potron affixed posters announcing the lecture series in the Institut Catholique itself but failed to inform its direction. The administration was afraid of the unchecked initiative of a mathematics teacher who intended to intervene on economic and social matters. It finally gave a late authorization with a call to order (poster and letters in the Archives de l’Institut Catholique de Paris). Potron also produced the promised typescript: L’aspect mathématique de certains problèmes économiques en relation avec de récentes acquisitions de la théorie des matrices non négatives. Conférences faites à l’Institut Catholique de Paris, with an appendix entitled Le problème de la manne des Hébreux (s.l., s.d., 34 + 5 pp.). A copy of the booklet is conserved in the folder ‘Potron’ of the Archives Jésuites de la Province de France, and another one is available in the Bibliothèque Universitaire des Sciences et Techniques, Université Bordeaux 1 (catalogue number FR 19069). In 1942 Alfred Barriol reviewed it in the Journal de la Société de Statistiques de Paris (see W2/Appendix II below).