THE EARLY TEACHING OF ECONOMICS IN THE UNITED STATES 289 
Jonathan Edwards was not much concerned with material things. 
On the other hand, Benjamin Franklin took from the very outset 
a lively interest in economic questions. It is significant that in 
1749, when he was organizing the academy which subsequently 
developed into the University of Pennsylvania, he issued his 
Proposals for a Complete Education of Youth. In this document 
he suggested a course of instruction which, although dealing 
primarily with history, was to treat of many topics now included 
under the general name of economics. He proposed that infor- 
mation be given in the curriculum on “the history of commerce, 
on the invention of the arts, on the rise of manufactures, on the 
progress of trade, and the change of its seats together with the 
reasons and causes therefor.” ' 
Although nothing seems to have come of this suggestion, we find 
that, according to an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette 
in 1750, the college at that time included in the curriculum a 
course of study entitled “Merchants’ Accounts.” * What was 
taught in this course and how long it continued, we do not know. 
Perhaps a further study of the contemporary periodical litera- 
ture may throw some light on the matter. At all events, we hear 
nothing more of Political Economy or anything resembling it for 
over a century. The first instruction in the subject at the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania—unless, indeed, as we suspect, later 
investigation may disclose the fact that economics was taught 
by Dr. Vethake in the preceding decade *—seems to have been 
given in the year 1855-6 by the professor of Intellectual and 
Moral Philosophy, the course being turned over in 1868 to the 
professor of English. 
A more detailed development may be traced in Kings College, 
the forerunner of Columbia University, founded in 1754. Tts first 
president was the Reverend Dr. Samuel Johnson, born in Guil- 
ford, Connecticut, in 1696. He graduated from the college at 
Saybrooke, now Yale University, where he subsequently remained 
as a tutor for three years. He became a Congregational minister, 
but soon went to England and took orders in the Church of 
England. On his return to the colonies, he settled. at Stratford, 
' Cf. Montgomery, C. H., A History of the University of Pennsylvania 
from its Foundations to 1770, p. 500. i 
* We owe this fact to the kindness of Dr. W. C. Plummer, instructor in 
Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. 
* See below, p. 311.