DINNER IN HONOR OF PROFESSOR JOHN BATES CLARK 359
economic and social sciences in this country. They have competed with
each other in achieving great results; and what does not frequently happen
to competitors, they each reached the goal of fame and success. Our birth-
day child, as the continentals call the guest of the day, soon became the
acknowledged leader of the economists in this county; and his young
friend and colleague rapidly achieved a similar position among those that
began to call themselves by the novel name of sociologists. Accordingly,
gentlemen, I have great pleasure in now presenting to you that codperator
and that competitor, my beloved colleague, Professor Giddings.
Professor Franklin H. Giddings
Mr. Chairman, Professor Clark and Gentlemen:
It is difficult for me to speak on this occasion because all I have to say
is so suffused with the feeling born of my personal relations with Pro-
fessor Clark that it must necessarily seem to you to be of an almost too
personal character. In the days to which our Chairman has referred and
when Professor Clark was the occupant of the chair of history and
economics at Smith College, I was following the craft of the daily news-
paper man in the neighboring city of Springfield. It was my good fortune
soon after going there, to make the acquaintance of Professor Clark. The
acquaintance quickly ripened into a rare intimacy and became one of those
friendships destined to be lifelong in duration, and of the most helpful
kind because it was from the first moment a friendship of mutual interest
in ideas, in work and in ambitions.
At that time I was presumptuously writing editorials on such topics as
the tariff and money, labor troubles and the like. My preparation in
economics had been of a casual sort, consisting .of a somewhat diligent
reading of the old classical economists and a correspondence with two
kindly friends, one, David A. Wells, the other Professor Arthur L. Perry
of Williams College.
From the moment when I became acquainted with Professor Clark, I
realized that I was in contact with a mind of a type that I never before
had met. Professor Clark had worked out his philosophy of wealth, and
we talked about it and about the various openings into which it seemed
to lead. I was fascinated by it. I had not before realized the possibilities
of developing economic theory as Professor Clark had then developed it.
A thing that greatly interested me was that he clearly regarded this work
of his not as an achievement, but as a mere beginning of things to which he
wished to press forward. In our frequent interviews, visits and rides
together in the beautiful Connecticut valley, we exchanged our notions
about the changes that were taking place in the industrial world, the
political world, and the social world, and the interpretation of them all in
terms of new theoretical formulations which by that time had come to be
regarded almost as old, accepted and established.
Professor Clark’s first book, The Philosophy of Wealth, was a rare pro-
duction in more ways than one. For one thing, it was the work of a master