AN ECONOMIC BAEDEKER
SCHLESINGER, ARTHUR Jr.
WRITERS AND WRITING THE NEW LEADER LITERARY SECTION An Economic Baedeker THE ECONOMIC MIND IN AMERICAN CIVILIZATION. By Joseph Dorfman. Volume Three, 1889-1918. Viking. 494 pp. $6.00. Reviewed...
...He has extolled the personal virtues of "intelligence, amenity and tolerance...
...But the method of the work is encyclopedestrian: the biography of an individual and the summary of his works alternate in somewhat implacable progression...
...In short, remember that good and evil arc more likely to be present us good-and-evil than as distinct and exclusive possibilities...
...and Mr...
...But he does not neglect the individualists and eccentrics who were making at the same time unusually stimulating contributions to economic thought...
...Trilling, despite Mr...
...But the line of descent is not a clear one, nor is the tradition itself so unambiguous...
...Trilling is content with a circular tour...
...but industrialism, in the more comprehensive sense of the word, did not become the .overshadowing factor in American economic life until after the Civil War...
...He could not find satisfaction in a point of view which, whatever its fruitfulncss for the writing of essays, was, when all is said and done, only a high form of intellectual bavardage...
...Trilling's sense of continuity of tradition, and it is rfTore than a mere shift in accent due to changing circumstances...
...For Arnold was too serious a man to remain a critical intellectual, though he was too distraught a thinker, his own relation to tradition being almost that of an auto-didact, to be anything else successfully...
...Columbia University Press...
...So Mr...
...By Lionel Trilling...
...and, though this particular formulation was dropped, the statement of principles declared boldly: Arthur Schlestnger, Jr...
...But, -under whatever name, it remains a work of basic importance for students of American intellectual history...
...Trilling is probably recognized as the outstanding representative in this...
...Arnold and Trilling MATTHEW ARNOLD...
...One'misses, for example, any discussion of W. J. Ghent or William English Walling among the Socialists...
...465 pp...
...The first two volumes of Dr...
...Eventually every leading American economist, except William Graham Sumner, became a member...
...On a minor level, men like Alexander Del Mar and N. Johannsen had thoughful things to say...
...It is this circle of criticism that Mr...
...The period between the Civil War and the First World War is an extremely rich and interesting one in our intellectual history...
...Under Ely's influence the American Economic Association had begun in something of a crusading mood...
...The circle is, the 'circle of criticism, as so beautifully defined by Arnold: "It must be apt to study and praise elements that, tor the fullness of spiritual perfection are wanted, even though they belong to a power that in the practical sphere may be malefic lent...
...Dorfman's coverage is thorough and conscientious...
...Trilling has also held up to scorn the modern radicel-liberal-progresssive, with his casual optimism, . , his blind adulation of the "common people," his condescending good-will, his failure to face up to the less tractable aspects of human nature...
...Irving Kristol la an editor of Tommanisy...
...In a recent essay in the Nation, he wrote that "For our time, in England and America, Arnold is the great continuator And transmitter of the tradition of humanism...
...Trilling would not, I am afraid, agree with this opinion and would prefer Arnold's own estimate, but that is because Mr...
...There are surprising omissions...
...American thought on social problems has always tended to polarize between the imitators of European ^pinion, on the one hand, and village cranks working out idiosyncratic theories in isolation, on the other...
...The title: The Economic Mind in The American Civilization has overtones of Parrington and Beard which the publisher's blurb—"a fundamental study in our culture"—reinforces...
...Reading once again Lionel Trilling's very fine biography (originally issued in 1939), one realizes how remarkably wrong Arnold was...
...Trilling- has made it his task to repre- " sent in our day, as he says Arnold did in his own, "the intellectual virtues that are required by a complex society...
...Volume III has much the same strengths and weaknesses as the early two volumes...
...Trilling, but not-the end-point...
...And, in the meantime, the growing: pressure of economic questions—in particular, the impact of depressions as more and more people became entirely dependent on industrial enterprise— focussed ever more urgent attention on the problems of economic society...
...5.00...
...and the work of Henry George, Edward Bellamy, and on a different level, Thorstein Veblen, without'ever becoming an organic part of the academic tradition, had fundamental effects upon it...
...Dorfman has examined the personal papers of many leading, economists, and his findings give the resulting picture of intellectual life extraordinary solidity...
...humanism, from Erasmus oh, has always been distrustful of man's ability to rule himself or to live without consoling illusions...
...Of this tradition Mr...
...criticizing one' and the other, alter* nately...
...It is the deficiencies of style and interpretation which render the choice of title partiularly unfortunate...
...and such other .founding members as Henry C. Adams, Simon Patten, John Bates v Clack, and K. R» A. Seligman, were . abreast of the best contemporary work in economic theory...
...Ely's original prospectus stated that "the doctrine of laissez faire is unsafe in politics and unsound in morals...
...He has even challenged the "humanistic belief, often delusive, that society can change itself gradually by taking thought and revising sensibility,'" though it is also clear that he is ultimately committed to this belief...
...Reviewed by ARTHUR SCHLESINOER, JR...
...Dorfman's history of American economic thought accordingly described the response of economic thought in a primarily agricultural nation to problems of commerce and credit...
...Trilling is a liberal of the present...
...But Mr...
...The section on the trust controversy leaves out C. R. Van Hise's influential Concentration and Control...
...In a few years, however, the Association toned down its constitution in order to attract • economists of all schools...
...Jn the years after the Civil War the United States saw both the development of an able and sophisticated academic tradition in economics, utilizing the most advanced tools of analysis, and at the same time a brilliant flowering of the individualists and eccentrics...
...Nor does the dogged, graceless and dull style help to liven the text...
...We regard the State as an agency whose positive assistance is one of the indispensable conditions of human progress...
...Trilling is an orthodox Freudian, his only orthodoxy and one which serves him as a bed-rock of pessimism—the secular analogue to "original sin"— on which he can erect not too dangerously optimistic thoughts...
...the noted Harvard historian, is the author of "The Age el Jackson...
...The son of Amasa Walker, an influential writer on economic questions in'the first half of the century, Francis A. Walker brought to economics a tolerant and intelligent eclecticism, bis interest in theory tempered by his considerable practical-experience as superintendent of the censuses of 1870 and 1880...
...The larger outlines of interpretation, to which the author makes mild obeisance at intervals, tend to vanish before the barrage of the encyclopedist...
...There is a profound difference between Arnold and Mr...
...It would better have discharged its promises under some more modest name, like A History of American Economic Thought...
...THE FOUNDING IN 1885 of the American Economic Association signalized the growing importance of the professional economists...
...He was something far different from a liberal of the future — he was a liberal of the past...
...Reviewed by IRVING KRISTOL MATTHEW ARNOLD CALLED HIMSELF a "Liberal of the future...
...Trilling identifies with humanism, and within which he has enriched contemporary American thought...
...INDUSTRY INVADED THE UNITED STATES in the early years of the American republic...
...DORFMAN TRACES the development of the academic tradition through "the" younger traditionalists," like Laughlin and Taussig, the infusion of practicality with John R. Commons, the rise of more rigorous abstract analysis with Irving Fisher and Fred M. Taylor, and the appearance of such able modern scholars as Ah/in Johnson and Wesley Mitchell...
...For all its admirable qualities, The Economic Mind in American Civilization lacks * the sweep or penetration of a significant interpretation of American history...
...Trilling's humanism is supple, weary, and self-conscious, pressing both illusion and disillusion into a perspective from which the object can be seen "as it really is...
...He stands between history and morality...
...There is nothing on the work of Walter A. Wyckoff, or, in quite another field, of Frederick W. Taylor...
...He has chided those moderns who have surrendered to the currents of irrationalism,, whose preference "is increasingly for-(he absolute and extreme, of which we feel violence to be the true sign...
...That, too, was Arnold's goal: to see* the object as it really is...
...But the omissions are few...
...Richard Ely, the moving, figure in Hie new group, had studied with leaden of the German school ef historical economics...
...His third volume, just published, takes up the story from Appomattox to Versailles, describing the response of economic thought to the new problems of industrial expansion...
...Arnold, after a lifetime of search, ended up in a rather bleak, if pious, alley...
...It must be apt lo discern the spiritual shortcomings or illusions of power that in the praclcial sphere may be beneficent...
...Arnold's thought developed in a linear fashion from the "poets sad lucidity of soul" to the humanistic concern for religion ("morality touched with emotion"), moral uplift ("he who is morbid is no adequate interpreter of his, age*'), and law-andorder (with a "paramount authority" for "right reason...
...The research is industrious and resourceful...
...Arnold's double-edged theory of criticism Was the apex of the normal curve of his intellectual history—the high point, we may agree with Mr...
...The first president of the, Association, Francia A. Walker, represented the bridge, to to apeak, between the new professional spirit and the older American traditions in economics...
...country at this time...
Vol. 32 • July 1949 • No. 27
