I agree with Roger that our differences involve primarily interpretations.
In my view, I have never claimed that Tarshis's book was only killed by political forces. I specifically argued that at the time there was a larger movement away from an older style text, which Tarshis represented, to a new style text which Samuelson was the template for. The newer style was more seemingly scientific; it avoided the nuances of policy that older texts dealt with--generally poorly. That's the point I made in my survey papers of the changing texts, and that I have made in my other writing about changes in methodology at the time. It was not only in macro--it was also in micro--older books discussed precepts--here is what a reasonable economist would have to say about a policy issue. The newer books discussed models and theorems--here is what the model has to say about a policy issue. They were different and the earlier style had ideology out there for people to see. The newer ones hid that ideology, and thus benefitted from an attack on ideology. In the old books, the market was good because it gave individuals freedom--in the newer books the market was good because it was efficient generally, although somegovernment action was needed to correct for market failures.
The political environment pushed textbooks toward a science approach that presented policy as following from models and science, not from ideology. Tarshis, because he was part of the Keynesian group who were seen as progressives (radicals), fell afoul of the pro-market ideology group and was singled out, and his book suffered. But he was a minor player, and easy to drop. I can totally agree that even without the pressure from the letter writing campaign, his book would likely have been dropped, but my argument is that is is unlikely that it would have occurred anywhere nearly as fast as it happened without that campaign. In terms of other people's points--Buckley had little to do with Tarshis's demise. He was writing in 1951 and was just repeating claims (with their mistakes and everything) made in the letter-writing campaign earlier.) By then the Tarshis book was essentially out of the picture.
Concerning survey that Roger discusses--I read his piece and you can see the difference in Roger's and my interpretation in what we take from the report. In his email reports that in this survey there were 37 serious attacks, which he doesn't see as significant. But doesn't state how many surveys there were. When I looked, it was 37 serious and 48 total attacks listed out of 144 total surveys, so about a third of the respondents reported some type of outside pressure about texts. That's about one third of the respondents. From my point of view, that is a very high percentage--if I sent out a survey now, I would expect close to zero professors feeling outside pressure. With one third of the professors feeling some type of outside pressure, that suggests to me that the situation was quite different than it is now, and that subtle political pressure could have played a role in the sudden demise of Tarshis's book. I think that Roger agrees; he was interpreting me as saying that the outside pressure was the only cause of Tarshis's demise, which I certainly did not mean to imploy. So I did not mean to argue that Samuelson's book didn't play a role, or that there were no other reasons why. On that we both agree.
I think this period is very important--the Tarshis book is only a minor issue, and not especially important. But the larger change that occurred in texts during this time--the movement to abstract models and directly drawing policy implications from theory, to not seeing policy as necessarily ideological and involving issues that go far beyond economics--over time changed economics in ways that were, in my view, problematic. It created a policy frame that missed many of the important issues of policy. That, as least, is the argument that I make in my recent Complexity and the Art of Public Policy book.
Dave
________________________________
From: Societies for the History of Economics [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Roger Backhouse [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, December 19, 2014 5:33 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [SHOE] Early 20th Century Principles of Economics Texts
This and some other responses go beyond my original claim, which concerned one very specific point: that we have no decisive evidence on the question of whether external political attacks were the main reason for the demise of the Tarshis textbook. Possibly Dave and I interpreted each other as making stronger claims than either of us thought we were making. I agree that it may be a case where it is impossible to get decisive evidence: there are the reasons given by others, and the fact that no one will want to admit to having been moved by external pressure. If Houghton Mifflin had archives on this, maybe there would be travelers reports that would give reasons for dropping the book, but I am not aware that anyone has found such evidence. All we have is later memories, strengthened by repetition.
I have no disagreement with the Stanford memorial by Gurley et al. That states simply that the book suffered from attacks AND the publication of Samuelson. The uncertainty is about the relative importance of these two factors.
One reason why I suspect (I put it no more strongly than that) that claims about the importance of the attacks may have been exaggerated is the survey that is discussed in a paper I have posted on the SSRN website. It is available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2540465.
The questionnaire was distributed in 1951 and asked the following questions:
(1) Have you ever received any extra-mural criticisms of textbooks?
(2) Which specific textbooks were involved?
(3) Were personal charges made against instructors?
(4) Do you feel that a threat to academic freedom was implied?
(5) Do you know of any other institution where such criticism has been made?
(6) Do you wish to be informed about the results of this survey?
This survey elicited evidence for 37 serious attacks on academic freedom, but concluded that they had been ineffective. I do not recall any mention of Tarshis, which I find surprising given question (5).
Roger
[cid:part1.08040309.02080609@bham.ac.uk]
Marglin, Stephen<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
18 December 2014 18:12
I remember (I hope I am not mis-remembering) a phrase from Dave Colander’s book of interviews that I think is telling. If I recall correctly, Samuelson admits to being more lawyer-like in his presentation than Tarshis. When I read this, it suggested to me that Samuelson was aware of the political attacks on Tarshis’s book and was doing his best to protect himself from similar attacks. My sense of Samuelson is that, as a graduate student and junior fellow, he was somewhat cautious about being too closely identified with the Tufts-Harvard firebrands who proposed Keynesian remedies for the Depression, but that he became bolder during the war—as witness his contribution to the Harris collection, published I believe in 1943, and, even more so the two-part article he published in the New Republic in late 1944—only to retreat as the Red Scare began in the aftermath of the war.
Roger, does this fit your understanding?
Steve Marglin
From: Societies for the History of Economics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of E. Roy Weintraub
Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2014 11:57 AM
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [SHOE] Early 20th Century Principles of Economics Texts
Backhouse wrote
"
Further evidence is that someone did a survey in the early 1950s, and when teachers in dozens of universities were asked whether they knew of any institution where a textbook had been changed because of external pressure, no-one gave any examples. People might have an incentive to deny that their own institution had responded to political pressure, but would they not report what they had heard about other places?
"
The survey was published (1958) as The Academic Mind, by Paul Lazarsfeld and Wagner Thielens, Jr. The survey was done two years earlier. It is a bit later than the Tarshis/Samuelson issue, but the question asked was as Roger noted. That people gave no examples however is not meaningful in the context of that particular survey which asked more general questions, and invited the 2,451 social scientists at 165 colleges and universities to comment on particular questions if they wished to do so. Specifically, since no question mentioned textbooks or other teaching materials, there were no prompts that would have led to any comments.
--
E. Roy Weintraub
Professor of Economics
Fellow, Center for the History of Political Economy<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__hope.econ.duke.edu_&d=AwMFaQ&c=WO-RGvefibhHBZq3fL85hQ&r=YCz_FHK5B1mWAXkiyvDqJV_J2lbzfLJAwSidelAMyvk&m=ykF6nT8-ABKT2NYU7BDCn0-IS_Xcz0yl6YqUjMD4QfI&s=LyABl7cquOwF65mi2ICmaZA28a4fBevqfedfmY1HY60&e=>
Duke University
www.econ.duke.edu/~erw/erw.homepage.html<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.econ.duke.edu_-7Eerw_erw.homepage.html&d=AwMFaQ&c=WO-RGvefibhHBZq3fL85hQ&r=YCz_FHK5B1mWAXkiyvDqJV_J2lbzfLJAwSidelAMyvk&m=ykF6nT8-ABKT2NYU7BDCn0-IS_Xcz0yl6YqUjMD4QfI&s=PJUXqZ0aF8uqqcczMjRzngB4mJZPgP4J8jYB4ESmipg&e=>
https://www.facebook.com/FindingEquilibriumDuppeWeintraub<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__press.princeton.edu_titles_10206.html&d=AwMFaQ&c=WO-RGvefibhHBZq3fL85hQ&r=YCz_FHK5B1mWAXkiyvDqJV_J2lbzfLJAwSidelAMyvk&m=ykF6nT8-ABKT2NYU7BDCn0-IS_Xcz0yl6YqUjMD4QfI&s=pzlmVECnmTUthCbq9zRziPaJo8Xel-WRsfL6U7rA2k4&e=>
[cid:part1.08040309.02080609@bham.ac.uk]
E. Roy Weintraub<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
18 December 2014 16:57
Backhouse wrote
"
Further evidence is that someone did a survey in the early 1950s, and when teachers in dozens of universities were asked whether they knew of any institution where a textbook had been changed because of external pressure, no-one gave any examples. People might have an incentive to deny that their own institution had responded to political pressure, but would they not report what they had heard about other places?
"
The survey was published (1958) as The Academic Mind, by Paul Lazarsfeld and Wagner Thielens, Jr. The survey was done two years earlier. It is a bit later than the Tarshis/Samuelson issue, but the question asked was as Roger noted. That people gave no examples however is not meaningful in the context of that particular survey which asked more general questions, and invited the 2,451 social scientists at 165 colleges and universities to comment on particular questions if they wished to do so. Specifically, since no question mentioned textbooks or other teaching materials, there were no prompts that would have led to any comments.
--
E. Roy Weintraub
Professor of Economics
Fellow, Center for the History of Political Economy<http://hope.econ.duke.edu/>
Duke University
www.econ.duke.edu/~erw/erw.homepage.html<http://www.econ.duke.edu/%7Eerw/erw.homepage.html>
https://www.facebook.com/FindingEquilibriumDuppeWeintraub<http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10206.html>
[cid:part1.08040309.02080609@bham.ac.uk]
Colander, David C.<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
18 December 2014 15:57
I don't have precise numbers but I did interview both Lorie and Paul, and both agreed that Lorie's book received much greater attack than Paul's. I think Lorie said that sales fell by 90%. The interviews can be found in my The Coming of Keynesianism to America. While this information is based on their memories, which can be flawed, there seemed to be general agreement among all the old Keynesians I interviewed about what happened. I also held a seminar workshop on the topic, and all remembered it the same way. So I think Roger’s charge of “post hoc ergo propter hoc” is a bit strong.
A 90% drop in sales in one year is substantial. Such a drop would generally require much more than a new book to bring it about. I believe the market size was increasing then, so not increasing sales would be even more unusual.
Roger’s statement that Samuelson’s book is “more institutional and less theoretical” than Lorie’s is quite inconsistent with my remembrance of the books. As I remember them, Paul’s was the more theoretical book—it was a significant revision of the way economics was presented—it separated micro and macro in a quite different way than earlier. It embedded a Walrasian view of economic theory into the texts. It was much more consistent with Lerner’s “Economics of Control” sense of policy, which made the policy follow from the model, than earlier books. As I remember Paul’s book was written for MIT students—or at least Paul had been given a semester off to write a book that would be appropriate for them—so it would be quite surprising if it was less theoretical and more institutional than Lorie’s book. Roger, what is your reasoning here—what would make Paul’s book more institutional and less theoretical?) As I remember, Lorie’s book was quite different—it was a narrative that blended theory and policy in a way much more consistent with how previous books did. That’s why Paul’s book was seen as, and was, such a game changer.
The fact that the books were different in style works against Roger’s interpretation of professors simply replacing Lorie’s book with Paul’s. It wasn’t just replacing one book with another that was almost identical—it was replacing an old style book with a new style book. Such style changes are not done overnight, because it violates the 15% rule for textbooks. For new adopters it means changing notes and presentations. That would likely be done slowly, and would take a couple of editions to take place. The two books were not close substitutes as are many of today’s texts. (It would be a bit like people switching from Samuelson to Robinson and Eatwell, or to Phelps, which were two books that deviated from the Samuelson template that didn’t make it.) In my papers on the evolution of U.S. texts that I mentioned in the last email, I discuss that older style and how Samuelson changed it.
I’d have to see the survey that Roger mentions in the 1950s as support for his views. (Roger, do you have a citation? Is it for all texts or for economic texts?) Without having seen it, I wouldn’t expect much useful information from anything but a highly in-depth survey, done by someone who understands the nuances of pressure. These issues of political pressure about policy views involve enormous subtlety. This was the McCarthy period, and in academics these issues were often done with a wink and a nod—like the limitations on the number of Jews teaching at a school at the time. Seldom is the pressure done overtly in a way that can be traced to a specific person. A letter comes to the president from a major donor, or major potential donor, asking what book is used in teaching economics at the school, because they heard that communistic ideas were being taught. The president asks the econ department, but does not say they have to change. But the pressure to change is there. The pressure happens all the time—although it is often on the other political side now.
For some reason Lorie was attacked. Although he didn’t know about it at the time, there was a strong push to have him fired from Stanford where he was teaching, and it was only because the Stanford President stood firm that he wasn’t. He had been part of the Harvard-Tufts Keynesians who pushed for policy change. Paul wasn’t part of that group, and was really quite separate from the Keynesian political movement at the time. So one would expect far less pressure against him.
Roger would have to provide some strong evidence to lead me to accept his view that it was Samuelson’s book, not political pressure, which led to Lorie’s book sales dropping so precipitously.
In terms of Samuelson changing his views to reflect political pressure, the issues are, in my view, far more complicated than can be found in specific changes in Paul’s text. As a textbook author, (my principles book is now in its 9th edition.) I would not expect to find many, if any, changes that any college text author made due to direct political pressures. (I would expect to find such changes in K-12 texts, which have a different sales model.) We college text authors have academic freedom to write what we want, and we pride ourselves in not submitting to political pressure.) That said, political, cultural and social pressure is there operating in the background. After all to stay around textbooks have to sell. The changes take place in the conception of the book, and in the editing and reviewing process—one gets reviews saying that certain things are liked and others are not, and changes to those that are liked. It is all quite nuanced, and if you are looking for it on the surface, you are unlikely to see it.
Lorie was not very nuanced in his support of Keynesianism—he wrote about policy, and his political views were clear from the writing. Samuelson presented economics more in a model form—emphasizing Lerner’s interpretation of Keynes, not other less model focused interpretations. It allows economists to teach the model, and avoid the nuance of interpretation. The political views were still there, but they are deeply embedded in the model and in the frame, not put out there for all to see and attack.
________________________________
From: Societies for the History of Economics [[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>] on behalf of Roger Backhouse [[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>]
Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2014 3:09 AM
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [SHOE] Early 20th Century Principles of Economics Texts
Dave's account of the demise of the Tarshis textbook is often encountered but I would like to see some evidence for it other than post hoc ergo propter hoc.
Tarshis was published in 1947, sold well, and was immediately attacked. Though I have not seen sales figures, my understanding is that sales plummeted very quickly. However, was this because of the attacks, or because of the appearance of Samuelson's textbook in 1948? Samuelson's argument is that the books were only slightly different, therefore it must have been the attacks, but I do not buy this for two reasons. (a) It is Samuelson's way of being modest and I would conjecture that for many instructors his was a much better book because it was more institutional and less theoretical. (b) It only takes a marginal difference for people to switch from one to the other.
Further evidence is that someone did a survey in the early 1950s, and when teachers in dozens of universities were asked whether they knew of any institution where a textbook had been changed because of external pressure, no-one gave any examples. People might have an incentive to deny that their own institution had responded to political pressure, but would they not report what they had heard about other places? Hence in the absence of further evidence, I remain skeptical about whether it was political pressure that killed the Tarshis book.
The issue of how far textbooks did get modified in response to political pressure is also a difficult one on which to find hard evidence, because it can be difficult to disentangle outside pressure from the authors' own views. In due course, I hope to be able to say something more concrete about the successive editions of Samuelson, but at the moment all I can say is that I see no evidence that pressure caused him to change the way he wrote the first edition (which was attacked before publication). Where critics pointed to specific passages, he made changes that can quite easily be seen as improvements to the language that did not change the message.
On Dan Hirschman's question, I think the answer is that there is no comprehensive source (other than those Dave mentions). However, Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization (vol 4 p. 664 and vol 5 p. 211) contains some sales figures. Daniel Macmillan (Economic Journal 1942) gives sales figures for Marshall's Principles. These figures are discussed in "The reception of Marshall in the United States" (Backhouse, Bateman and Medema) in The Impact of Alfred Marshall's Ideas (ed Raffaelli et al, Elgar 2010). Steve Medema and I also tried to find every textbook we could (after 1932) for our paper on the spread of the Robbins definition (Economica 2009) so you might find it useful to check the bibliography in that paper in that in case it has textbooks you have missed.
The other suggestion is to browse the book review sections of academic journals, because in this period Principles texts did get reviewed in places such as the AER and EJ.
Roger
[cid:part1.09020108.04010504@bham.ac.uk<mailto:cid:part1.09020108.04010504@bham.ac.uk>]
Colander, David C.<mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]>
18 December 2014 00:53
Marco Guidi did an entire study of texts around the world. looked at the evolutions of US textbooks to the 1930s in:
“The Evolution of US Textbooks” in The Economic Reader: Textbooks, Manuals and the Dissemination of the Economic Sciences during the 19th and Early 20th Centuries. (Massimo Augello and Marco Guidi, editors). Routledge, 2012.
“What We Taught and what we did: The Evolution of US Economic Textbooks (1830-1930)” Il Pensiero Economico Italiano XIV 2006
In “God, Man, and Lorie Tarshis at Yale” , in Omar Hamuda (ed.) Keynesianism and the Keynesian Revolution in America, Edward Elgar, 1998, Harry Landreth and I look at Lorie's book which was the first Keynesian book in the US--it got attacked by the Veritas Society and W. Buckley and its sales died--Samuelson was also attacked but less so. We argue that those attacks played an important role in the scientific framing of economics in the Samuelson and post Samuelson texts.
Dave
________________________________
From: Societies for the History of Economics [[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]>] on behalf of Dan Hirschman [[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]>]
Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2014 3:20 PM
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [SHOE] Early 20th Century Principles of Economics Texts
Dear SHOE,
I'm working on an analysis of introductory economics textbooks published in the United States between about 1890 and 1950 (the period between Marshall and Samuelson, roughly). I've accumulated an ad hoc collection of texts based on the holdings of my library and scattered references in the secondary literature (Elzinga 1992, Walstad et al 1998, and Giraud 2013 in particular), but I was hoping that there might be some more systematic way to generate a universe of texts from which to sample. Does anyone have a recommendation for a good source that discusses principles texts in this period, perhaps with information on relative influence (number of editions, course adoptions, or sales)? Does such a source exist?
Thanks very much!
Dan Hirschman
PhD Candidate
Department of Sociology
University of Michigan
.
[cid:part1.09020108.04010504@bham.ac.uk<mailto:cid:part1.09020108.04010504@bham.ac.uk>]
Dan Hirschman<mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]>
17 December 2014 20:20
Dear SHOE,
I'm working on an analysis of introductory economics textbooks published in the United States between about 1890 and 1950 (the period between Marshall and Samuelson, roughly). I've accumulated an ad hoc collection of texts based on the holdings of my library and scattered references in the secondary literature (Elzinga 1992, Walstad et al 1998, and Giraud 2013 in particular), but I was hoping that there might be some more systematic way to generate a universe of texts from which to sample. Does anyone have a recommendation for a good source that discusses principles texts in this period, perhaps with information on relative influence (number of editions, course adoptions, or sales)? Does such a source exist?
Thanks very much!
Dan Hirschman
PhD Candidate
Department of Sociology
University of Michigan
[cid:part1.08040309.02080609@bham.ac.uk]
Roger Backhouse<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
18 December 2014 08:09
Dave's account of the demise of the Tarshis textbook is often encountered but I would like to see some evidence for it other than post hoc ergo propter hoc.
Tarshis was published in 1947, sold well, and was immediately attacked. Though I have not seen sales figures, my understanding is that sales plummeted very quickly. However, was this because of the attacks, or because of the appearance of Samuelson's textbook in 1948? Samuelson's argument is that the books were only slightly different, therefore it must have been the attacks, but I do not buy this for two reasons. (a) It is Samuelson's way of being modest and I would conjecture that for many instructors his was a much better book because it was more institutional and less theoretical. (b) It only takes a marginal difference for people to switch from one to the other.
Further evidence is that someone did a survey in the early 1950s, and when teachers in dozens of universities were asked whether they knew of any institution where a textbook had been changed because of external pressure, no-one gave any examples. People might have an incentive to deny that their own institution had responded to political pressure, but would they not report what they had heard about other places? Hence in the absence of further evidence, I remain skeptical about whether it was political pressure that killed the Tarshis book.
The issue of how far textbooks did get modified in response to political pressure is also a difficult one on which to find hard evidence, because it can be difficult to disentangle outside pressure from the authors' own views. In due course, I hope to be able to say something more concrete about the successive editions of Samuelson, but at the moment all I can say is that I see no evidence that pressure caused him to change the way he wrote the first edition (which was attacked before publication). Where critics pointed to specific passages, he made changes that can quite easily be seen as improvements to the language that did not change the message.
On Dan Hirschman's question, I think the answer is that there is no comprehensive source (other than those Dave mentions). However, Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization (vol 4 p. 664 and vol 5 p. 211) contains some sales figures. Daniel Macmillan (Economic Journal 1942) gives sales figures for Marshall's Principles. These figures are discussed in "The reception of Marshall in the United States" (Backhouse, Bateman and Medema) in The Impact of Alfred Marshall's Ideas (ed Raffaelli et al, Elgar 2010). Steve Medema and I also tried to find every textbook we could (after 1932) for our paper on the spread of the Robbins definition (Economica 2009) so you might find it useful to check the bibliography in that paper in that in case it has textbooks you have missed.
The other suggestion is to browse the book review sections of academic journals, because in this period Principles texts did get reviewed in places such as the AER and EJ.
Roger
[cid:part1.08040309.02080609@bham.ac.uk]
Colander, David C.<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
18 December 2014 00:53
Marco Guidi did an entire study of texts around the world. looked at the evolutions of US textbooks to the 1930s in:
“The Evolution of US Textbooks” in The Economic Reader: Textbooks, Manuals and the Dissemination of the Economic Sciences during the 19th and Early 20th Centuries. (Massimo Augello and Marco Guidi, editors). Routledge, 2012.
“What We Taught and what we did: The Evolution of US Economic Textbooks (1830-1930)” Il Pensiero Economico Italiano XIV 2006
In “God, Man, and Lorie Tarshis at Yale” , in Omar Hamuda (ed.) Keynesianism and the Keynesian Revolution in America, Edward Elgar, 1998, Harry Landreth and I look at Lorie's book which was the first Keynesian book in the US--it got attacked by the Veritas Society and W. Buckley and its sales died--Samuelson was also attacked but less so. We argue that those attacks played an important role in the scientific framing of economics in the Samuelson and post Samuelson texts.
Dave
________________________________
From: Societies for the History of Economics [[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>] on behalf of Dan Hirschman [[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>]
Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2014 3:20 PM
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [SHOE] Early 20th Century Principles of Economics Texts
Dear SHOE,
I'm working on an analysis of introductory economics textbooks published in the United States between about 1890 and 1950 (the period between Marshall and Samuelson, roughly). I've accumulated an ad hoc collection of texts based on the holdings of my library and scattered references in the secondary literature (Elzinga 1992, Walstad et al 1998, and Giraud 2013 in particular), but I was hoping that there might be some more systematic way to generate a universe of texts from which to sample. Does anyone have a recommendation for a good source that discusses principles texts in this period, perhaps with information on relative influence (number of editions, course adoptions, or sales)? Does such a source exist?
Thanks very much!
Dan Hirschman
PhD Candidate
Department of Sociology
University of Michigan
.
|
