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[NOTE: Posted on behalf of Roger Sandilands. -- RBE] 
 
I was interested to learn from Mike Lynch that Cournot was the first  
person to use calculus to derive the profit maximum condition of MR =  
MC, the foundation stone of imperfect competition theory. He may be  
interested in the following letter from Earl Hamilton to Allyn Young's  
biographer Charles Blitch.   
 
Young was Edward Chamberlin's PhD supervisor and is known to  
have taught him MC = MR, etc, and the implications. Earl Hamilton's  
letter gives interesting details of Young's admiration for Cournot, and  
his much cooler view of some of the German economists. This letter,  
plus about 15 others to Charles Blitch from Allyn Young's students  
(including Nicholas Kaldor, Bertil Ohlin, Frank Fetter, Lauchlin Currie,  
James Angell, Howard Ellis, Melvin Knight and Overton Taylor) will be  
published shortly in the Journal of Economic Studies. 
 
Roger Sandilands 
[log in to unmask] 
 
 
University of Chicago 
February 14, 1973 
 
Dear Professor Blitch: 
 
... It is a pity that I could not foresee your request for information  
concerning Allyn Young before I began packing to leave Duke, for I  
took extensive lecture notes under him in two major courses and  
preserved them until 1944. One thing that my notes taken in 1924-1926  
conclusively showed was that every worthwhile idea in E. H.  
Chamberlin's subsequent work on imperfect competition had been  
clearly expounded by Allyn Young in class long before Chamberlin put  
pen to paper. Curiously, Young credited Cournot for most of what he  
said! He was the epitome of modesty.   
 
Nevertheless, Young either did not prepare his lectures or prepared  
them very poorly. Nothing could have been more disorganized than he  
was in class. Consequently, as much as 90 percent of the time I spent  
in his classes was wasted. But in the remaining time I got something  
that was so original, so profound, so meaningful and so impossible to  
get anywhere else that the total time I spent with him was invaluable. In  
the years I was at Harvard the Department of Economics was clearly  
the best in the United States, and Allyn Young was far and away the  
most innovative thinker in the Department. He was the least prejudiced  
of all the scholars or even persons I have ever known. Yet he  
constantly said that he had no knowledge of this or that, that he only  
had prejudice. Incidentally, his downright prejudice against Gustav  
Schmoller was colossal. But I never detected any other prejudice  
toward anybody or any thing. I must say, however, that Young never  
criticized Schmoller without prefacing his remarks by a strong reminder  
that he was chock full of prejudice against him. I must qualify what I  
have said above by pointing out that some of Young's prejudice against  
Schmoller was reflected in Young's attitude to his colleague Edwin F.  
Gay, who studied under Schmoller and was his disciple.   
 
I am sure you know that Young was handsome and that he had a  
magnetic personality.   
 
You may be interested in knowing that Irving Fisher told me several  
times that Allyn Young was decidedly the best mathematician among  
living American economists. As you probably know, Fisher's Ph. D.  
was in mathematics, not in economics. I believe I am right in thinking  
that Young never had a course in mathematics beyond the sophomore  
level in college.   
 
My admiration for Young is enormous, and I am eternally grateful for  
what I learned from him. What I treasure most of all is the inculcation  
of his firm belief that the world is full of interesting problems about  
which we know next to nothing and that if one tackles them and really  
studies them, there is no limit to what one can achieve except  
limitations inherent in himself. He made me feel this strongly when I left  
almost every class I ever had under him.   
 
One thing that you will need to read and re-read until it becomes a part  
of you is the article by Nicholas Kaldor, on "The Irrelevance of  
Equilibrium Economics," in The Economic Journal, December 1972,  
pp. 1237-1255 which has just reached me and that I have just read. It is  
largely devoted to the brilliant and path-breaking thought of Allyn  
Young. I expect to read this at least twice more myself. You can easily  
guess how infrequently I do this with any article.   
 
Perhaps you know that, although Allyn Young was there less than three  
years, the London School of Economics bought Allyn Young's books  
that he had with him, installed them in a room with a splendid portrait  
of him and calls this the Allyn A. Young Room. Offhand, I cannot  
think of another prestigious institution anywhere in the world that is  
shorter of space than the London School. I do not know but suspect  
that papers of Young are in that room too...   
 
You may know that the late Frank H. Knight wrote his doctoral  
dissertation under Allyn Young, and the two were very close until  
Young died. I know that in Knight's papers there is a lot of material  
pertaining to Allyn Young...   
 
Incidentally, Mrs. Hamilton and I took one full-year course together  
under Allyn Young. She fully shares my exalted opinion of him.   
 
Earl Hamilton 
 
 
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