Economic essays

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

Collection:: Economics Books

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.

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