320 ECONOMIC ESSAYS IN HONOR OF JOHN BATES CLARK 
Economics may have been touched upon in Yale as early as 
1813. To John McVickar, of Columbia, may, therefore, be 
ascribed the distinction of occupying the first professorship of 
Political Economy in any American institution; and it was as a 
result of these facts being brought at the time to the attention 
of the Trustees of Columbia University, that the chair now filled 
by the present writer was named the McVickar Professorship of 
Political Economy. 
We see, therefore, that the teaching of Political Economy in 
the United States may be divided into three stages. In the first, 
which comprised the eighteenth century and lasted until the 
war with England, political economy was a more or less exotic 
science, included under the general subject of moral philosophy, 
as had been customary in England. The industrial revolution 
which was initiated during the decade subsequent to the war 
with England, and which brought in its train the practical prob- 
lems of banking and protection, was responsible for the interest 
taken in economic topics, and for the introduction of political 
economy as a regular part of the curriculum in a large number 
of Institutions between 1818 and 1828. Independent chairs of 
political economy did not, however, become common until the 
third period, which began in the seventies, with the appearance of 
serious economic problems like the labor question, the railroad 
question, the silver question and the other indications of mature 
development. This third period, beginning with the activity of 
Dunbar at Harvard in 1871, and of Walker at Yale in 1874 as 
well as at Johns Hopkins in 1876, marks the widespread creation 
of independent chairs of Political Economy in all the leading 
American institutions. The teaching of Political Economy in other 
words reflects, here as elsewhere, the emergence of the important 
economic problems in actual political life.