Economic essays

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1753623200

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136107

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Economic essays

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: viii, 368 S.; Ill., graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

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Title:: The early teaching of economics in the United States / Edwin R.A. Seligman

Collection:: Economics Books

THE EARLY TEACHING OF ECONOMICS IN THE UNITED STATES 319 4. Conclusion The conclusions from the foregoing investigations seem to be fairly definite. The earliest course in any American college dealing with Political Economy as a science can be traced to the year 1801, when it was given at William and Mary College. It is probable, though not certain, that the subject was taught there a few years earlier and it is barely possible that such instruction may have existed from 1784 on. Many, if not most, of the topics now included in the term Political Economy were taught at Columbia College for several years before its definite appearance at William and Mary. Although the professorship of Economics at Columbia, which dates from 1792, was really a chair of Economic Botany, the general topics of Trade, Commerce, Industry, and Agriculture were treated in both their historical and their practical aspects after 1784 and were probably included in the teaching of Moral Philosophy in Kings College after 1763. In the next place, so far as the first chair of Political Economy is concerned, we must distinguish between the title and the subject matter. As to the subject matter, there is no doubt that it was taught in 1815 at William and Mary; and there is every reason to believe that it was so taught from the beginning of the century as part of Moral Philosophy, reaching the dignity of an inde- pendent course in 1826. The subject was first introduced at Harvard in 1820 (although possibly taught after 1817) as a part of Moral Philosophy; it did not become an independent course until 1841. So far as the title is concerned, however, it is certain that the term Political Economy is found for the first time in 1818 at Columbia College, when McVickar was made Professor of Moral Philosophy and Political Economy; and that the second chair was that of Dr. Cooper at the College of South Carolina, in Columbia, South Carolina, when he was made Professor of Chemistry and Political Economy in 1824. In the meantime, both the title and the subject are found in the curriculum of Princeton College and of Dickinson College—at Princeton from 1819; at Dickinson in 1822, although the term was not included in the title of the chair at Princeton, and is found at Dickinson only in 1826. In the interval it is first found in New England in 1824 at Bowdoin College. At Yale and at Rutgers the subject was introduced in 1825. but not as an independent course, and

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