August 1891 to 9 May 1894, and again from 26 July 1897 to 1 August 1901. During his second his second term as minister, he was also the chairman of the Council of Ministers, a positional that would later be dubbed Prime Minister of the Netherlands. During his time as minister, he reformed the corporate and capital tax systems, and was instrumental in the establishment of Statistics Netherlands, the national statistical office. On 26 July 1905, Pierson was elected into the House of Representatives for the constituency of Gorinchem. He did not seek election in 1909, giving up his seat on 1 August. A progressive liberal, Pierson presided over a wide range of reforms as prime minister. Measures were enacted in education, worker safety, and health, with the government “breaking with past traditions in, amongst other things, making vaccinations compulsory and regulating the water supply to combat the outbreak of infectious diseases.” A series of factory acts were passed to strengthen and expand on demands laid down in a previous act from 1895, while local authorities were compelled “to establish minimum requirements for safe housing.” In addition, accident insurance was made mandatory for all industrial workers by a 1901 act. Socialist calculation debate Pierson is credited with an important role in the Socialist calculation debate, when he criticised Karl Kautsky, who had delivered a speech in Delft in 1902. Entitled The Problem of Value in the Socialist Community, this attracted little attention outside the Netherlands until it appeared in English translation in Friedrich Hayek's Collectivist Economic Planning, (1935). Family On 30 October 1862, Pierson married Catharina Rutgera Waller in Amsterdam. She died shortly after their marriage, and the couple remained childless. Pierson died on 24 December 1909, in Heemstede. References External links 1839 births 1909 deaths Businesspeople from Amsterdam Liberal Union (Netherlands) politicians Presidents of the Central Bank of the Netherlands Prime Ministers of the Netherlands Ministers of Finance of the Netherlands Members of the House of Representatives (Netherlands) Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Dutch bankers Dutch members of the Dutch Reformed Church