I have some further clarifications and comments on Ross Emmett's
clarifications about the debate between Nef and Knight on Innis and
Hamilton. As Ross notes, Robin Neill, Ross and I have have communicated
off list about this. I am cc'ing these comments to Robin and Ross and will
leave it to Humberto Barreto to decide if these remarks would also be of
interest to others on the SHOE list.

First, the source of confusion that I think gave rise to Robin Neill's
initial queries about Innis stemmed from Ross Emmett's comment that Knight
won the debate over whether to hire Innis or Hamilton. Robin was
understandably confused over how one could say that Knight won the debate
given that Innis as well as Hamilton received an offer from Chicago in
1947. As I explained off-list to Robin, Ross's comment was probably based
on my comment in my Elgar Companion piece that "Knight's view prevailed
with the recruitment of Hamilton to Chicago." My intention in this
statement was not to refer to the outcome of department deliberations on
making an offer to Innis or Hamilton, both did indeed get offers but
rather to point to the implications for the longer term direction of
economic history at Chicago after 1947 with the recruitment of Hamilton
but not Innis to Chicago. As Robin points out, Innis did indeed turn down
the Chicago offer in part because of pulls to stay in Toronto. Indeed in
looking back at the documents I have on this,  Innis indicated in a 1947
letter to Nef that Innis had at one point submitted his resignation to
Toronto in order to go to Chicago. Innis indicates that his resignation
caused such an uproar that he felt obliged to revoke it and to stay in
Toronto after all. I also did see indications in comments that Innis made
both to Earl Hamilton in the early 1940s and to Nef and Hamilton in 1947
that Innis was concerned about the infighting that seemed to be going on
at Chicago over economic History. From looking at his papers, Nef seems to
have been a very fierce academic warrior/politician, and some in the
administration were concerned that Nef's efforts to woo Innis to Chicago
would be  prone to backfire, which it could be argued they did.

Regarding whether Knight directly opposed Innis, I would agree that Knight
as best I can tell did not express any opposition directly---I can't find
any memos from Knight conveying that opposition. Some of Knight's comments
could be construed as conveying more indirect opposition without
mentioning Innis by name but I will forego providing details here.  Henry
Simons did explicitly express opposition to hiriing Innis in a 1943 memo
he sent to Hutchins, though even this says that Simons likes Innis
personally and he would consider supporting the hire under different
terms; Simons indicates that he thought Innis was an historian not an
economist and that he did not like Nef's arrangement to set up a chair in
economic history independent of either an economics or a history
department.

The section of Ross' comments that I am most inclined to question concerns
his claim that  "In the early 1930s, both Knight and Nef were supporters
of both potential hirings [of Innis and Hamilton]."  Ross has mentioned
this to me before and I simply have not seen evidence for efforts to try
to recruit either Innis or Hamilton to Chicago as early as the early
1930s. Ross refers to material in Earl Hamilton's papers at Duke. I have
looked at Hamilton's papers at Duke. What I did find there was a letter
dated in the mid-1930s from Hamilton's former undergrad student at Duke,
Warren Scoville, when Scoville was a grad student at Chicago. Scoville
indicates to Hamilton that Frank Knight expressed to Scoville Knight's
strong admiration for Hamilton and Hamilton's approach to economic
history.  However, I don't recall seeing any other evidence either in
Hamilton's papers or elsewhere that anyone at Chicago was making serious
efforts to recruit either Innis or Hamilton there in the early or
mid-1930s. All the evidence I have seen indicates that these efforts were
confined to the 1940s.

David Mitch







> Robin Neill and David Mitch have responded both on and off list to my
> comments about the Innis-Hamilton debate between Nef and Knight. A bit of
> clarification will help.
>
> As Robin Neill knows (because I learned it from his book on Innis!),
> Knight
> and Innis met during Knight's first period at Chicago (1917-1919) when
> Innis
> was a grad student of Chester Wright. They both participated in a Veblen
> discussion group. Given Knight's views on economics at the time, I'm sure
> they agreed on a lot (at that time Knight was still hoping for a broad
> definition of economics; in the early 1920s, he abandoned that quest, and
> began to define economics quite narrowly). There is no correspondence
> between the two men after Knight's departure for Iowa City, however. Their
> next interactions come a dozen years later in the early 1930s. (The
> correspondence in the Knight Papers only runs from 1933-1944).
>
> Two things happen in the early 1930s: Innis invites Knight to speak at
> Toronto on a topic related to his "Passing of Liberalism" project (which
> started with the famous "Case for Communism" lecture). The lecture Knight
> gave in Toronto was "Social Science and the Political Trend" (adapted from
> "The Passing of Liberalism" lecture series at Chicago earlier), and Innis
> arranged for it to be published in the University of Toronto Quarterly.
> The
> second thing is that, through the impetus of Knight and Nef, the
> department
> sought to hire both Innis and Earl Hamilton (then at Duke). The Hamilton
> Papers at Duke have most of the story in the letters among the men, but
> the
> upshot was that Innis was willing to leave Toronto for Chicago, but
> Hamilton
> was not ready to leave Duke. For reasons that I haven't figured out, the
> Chicago department then dropped their pursuit of Innis as well as
> Hamilton.
> In the early 1930s, both Knight and Nef were supporters of both potential
> hirings.
>
> Ten years later, under Nef's encouragement (as I suggested earlier), the
> department inquired again of both men. This time Hamilton was willing to
> consider a move, and Innis apparently not (his involvement in the birth of
> what was to become the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of
> Canada was his primary reason, it seems). In 1943-44, the issue was again
> dropped, but Hamilton decided to leave Duke anyway and move to Chicago,
> taking a position at Northwestern. A couple of years later, he moved to
> Hyde
> Park.
>
> As Mitch as suggested, there is no reason to suspect that Knight's support
> of hiring Hamilton in the 1940s was the result of any unfriendliness
> toward
> Innis. As I suggested earlier, the primary takeaway with regard to Knight
> is
> his role in creating a department that engaged in an economic science that
> was more narrowly defined that previous Chicago economists (and even
> himself) were.
>
> Ross Emmett
>