In an earlier post we are provided with a glimpse of Minnesota professor Herbert Heaton’s wit in his answer to the question “What are economic historians made of?“. In preparing that post, I came across the following 1955 interview that provided some background assessments of economic historians who he judged might have been interesting for a Brookings project on the history of the Federal Reserve System.
A 2007 tribute from the Newsletter of the Economic History Association has been appended to this post for further biographical/career information.
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Backstory to Heaton Interview
In 1954, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded a grant to the Brookings Institution to undertake “a comprehensive history of the Federal Reserve System.” The collection consists of documents gathered or generated between 1954 and 1958, during the course of the Committee’s work.
MA (the interviewer below) was Mildred Adams “a New York journalist specializing in economic affairs”.
“Deputy Treasurer of the United States W. Randolph Burgess expressed his interest in writing a “definitive” history of the Federal Reserve System when he retired from federal service….”
“On January 21, 1954, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded a grant of $10,000 to the committee for an ‘exploratory study of the historical materials relating to the Federal Reserve System.’ The grant was to be administered by Brookings.”
“From January 1954 to June 1956, Mildred Adams served as research director of the project….Meanwhile, however, Burgess had been appointed under secretary of the Treasury and decided that he would not be able to start the planned comprehensive history any time soon. The committee spent the next two years searching for an able economic historian to assume direction of this major study.”
“By the spring of 1956, the committee’s failure to find a qualified scholar and Allan Sproul’s retirement from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and subsequent resignation as chairman of the committee caused problems. With no historian, the committee redefined its goals and requested the Rockefeller Foundation to relieve the committee of its obligation to write a ‘definitive’ major study and instead allow it to encourage smaller, topical studies of the Federal Reserve System.”
Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. FRASER. Committee on the History of the Federal Reserve System: Guide to the Brookings Institution Archives.
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Notes from interview with Herbert Heaton
June 11, 1955
Internal Memorandum
Interview with Dr. Herbert Heaton, Professor of Economic History at the University of Minnesota
I went out to see Dr. Heaton on a Saturday morning at his home in Minneapolis and found him a charming Yorkshireman with a delightful sense of humor and a wide knowledge of both economics and history. Were he a little younger, he might prove to be the ideal person to do this work, although I have not yet read his books. I discussed the whole project with him in detail and then asked for any suggestions of people he might have for our purposes.
Dr. Heaton confirmed what we have already found, namely that the field is a rather arid one in the realm where history and economics meet. He himself had been on the committee which set up the economic history group with which Professor Arthur Cole of Harvard works. He agreed with Dr. [Walter W.] Stewart that that had rather worked itself out, though he said that the Hidys [Ralph Willard Hidy and Muriel E. (Wagenhauser) Hidy] were doing good work in their chosen field. They are to spend this summer in Minneapolis working on the Weyerhauser Lumber business.
Dr. Heaton said that John [K.] Langum was a brilliant student in the Harvard Business School. He had a minor in economic history and a fine historical sense.
He suggested that we talk to [Charles] Ray Whittlesey of the Wharton School who is interested in banking history. He thought that Whittlesey might have useful recommendations and called him one of the best insofar as historical interests in economic matters are concerned.
He spoke of Herman Kruse [sic, Herman E. Krooss] of New York University as someone who wrote well on financial history. He said that Mr. Kruse had energy, capacity and ability to handle material, but he seemed to think that he was lacking in tact, and he was not quite sure what he might do with an assignment in this project.
A young man named Robert Jost, now at Minnesota doing a doctor’s thesis on the Chatfield Bank, may be a possibility later on in the project, depending on what he makes of the Chatfield Bank. It is a small bank in Minnesota which, for some fortunate reason, has kept all its records and is making a very interesting study.
At the University of Wisconsin Dr. Heaton said that Rondo Cameron was working on the Credit Mobilier in Paris was worth watching. This again is a matter of seeing what he turns out.
He said that [Walter] Rostow at M.I.T., who has been devoting himself to business cycles, would ask the right questions of the material. Rostow has a quick mind and the right range of interests for this project. Oxford and Cambridge had both invited him for next year. His research expert is Mrs. [Anna] Schwartz. His brother [Eugene Rostow] is Dean of the Law School at Yale. In Dr. Heaton’s opinion, Mr. Rostow ought certainly to be explored.
Dr. Heaton says that Arthur Marget is someone he has known in the past as being brilliant on history or theory. He did not know that Mr. Marget had now gone to the Board and wondered if this might rule him out so far as the international sphere is concerned.
He also spoke of Frank A. Knox, who got his Ph.D at the University of Chicago and now writes reviews in the Canadian Journal of Economic and Political Science. Mr. Knox has not published much, but he is worth watching in Dr. Heaton’s opinion.
Dr. Heaton promised to keep the project in mind. He will talk with his associates about it and will send us any other suggestions which come up in the course of his work at the University of Minnesota.
We explored the things which he himself was doing, and he said that he had just turned 65 and did not believe that one should take on these big projects after that age. I had the feeling that he might, however, be interested in the project sufficiently so that he would take a piece of it. I had no authority to discuss it with him at that time, but I think this is worth considering. As a beginning, it might be worthwhile to read his “Economic History of Europe.”
MA:IB
Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. FRASER. Committee on the History of the Federal Reserve System.
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Past Presidents of the EHA:
Herbert Heaton
Herbert Heaton was one of the founding members of the Economic History Association, serving as one of its two inaugural vice presidents, ascending to the presidency in 1949, and remaining active in the association until his death. Along with E.A.J. Johnson and Arthur Cole, he drafted a grant application to the Rockefeller Foundation, which resulted in a $300,000 award in December of 1940. The grant financed research in economic history over the next four years. Heaton was a member of the original board of trustees of the EHA. Each of the five original members went on to serve as president of the association: Edwin F. Gay (1941-42), Heaton (1949-50), Earl J. Hamilton (1951-52), E.A.J. Johnson (1961-62), and Shepard B. Clough (1969).
Heaton was active in the formation of the EHA and was personally responsible for the recruitment of most of the members from the Midwest. He was an enthusiastic scholar of the evolution and applications of economic history, authoring several articles on the history of the discipline and a biography of Edwin Gay, the first president of the EHA. In an article entitled “Clio’s New Overalls,” published in The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science(November, 1954), Heaton was one of the first authors to discuss the marriage of clio and its metric partner in regard to the study of economic history. His discussion of the metric side of the equation was anything but enthusiastic however. Instead, he criticized the tendency of young scholars to use technical tools to make precise measurements of what he considered to be inaccurate data.
Heaton was born in England on June 6, 1890, the son of a blacksmith. He studied history and economics at the University of Leeds, earning his B.A. in 1911. He earned his M.A. in 1912 from the London School of Economics before accepting a position as assistant lecturer in economics under (Sir) William Ashley at the University of Birmingham. While there, he earned another Masters degree in 1914. He then moved to Australia and began a post as lecturer in history and economics at the University of Tasmania.
While in Tasmania Heaton developed the study of economics and encouraged research into Australian economic history. His controversial comments on the war provoked the censure of the more conservative elements of the Tasmanian press and public. In 1917 he moved to the University of Adelaide where he expanded the economics discipline and developed the diploma of commerce. Once again his liberal opinions aroused the ire of the conservative business class. Heaton argued that capitalism was the root of all the evils of individual and corporate life. He subscribed to the Marxist belief that capitalism would eventually give way to socialism. Consequently, the university refused to establish a degree in economics while Heaton led the discipline. As a means of preserving his academic career, he accepted a chair of economic and political science at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario in 1925. He stayed in Canada for two years before moving to the University of Minnesota, where he remained until he retired in 1958.
In 1936, Heaton compiled his research on Europe and published the Economic History of Europe, which was for a long time the standard text on the subject. Heaton said that he wrote the book especially for students with no background in economic history. He summed up economic history as the story of how man has worked to satisfy his material wants, in an environment provided by nature, but capable of improvement, in an organization made up of his relations with his fellows, and in a political unit whose head enjoys far-reaching power to aid, control, and appropriate. Such lofty views of the discipline were what made Heaton such a dedicated and valuable member of the Economic History Association.
Herbert Heaton died on January 24, 1973 in Minneapolis, survived by his three Australian-born children and his wife Marjorie Edith Ronson. He was an active scholar to the end of his life, publishing his ninth and final article in the JEH in June of 1969, nearly 28 years after his first JEH appearance.
Sources
Archives of the Economic History Association, Hagley Museum, Wilmington, DE.
Blaug, Mark, ed., Who’ s who in economics: a biographical dictionary of major economists, 1700-1986, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986, 2nd ed.
Bourke, Helen, “Heaton, Herbert (1890-1973),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 9, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1983, pp. 250-251.
Cole, Arthur H., “Economic History in the United States: Formative Years of a Discipline,” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Dec., 1968), pp. 556-589.
de Rouvray, Cristel, “‘Old’ Economic History in the United States: 1939- 1954,” Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Vol. 26, No. 2 (June, 2004), pp. 221-39.
Harte, N.B., “Herbert Heaton, 1890-1973: A Biographical Note and a Bibliography [Obituary],” Textile History Vol. 5 (1974), p. 7.
Payne, Elizabeth, “Herbert Heaton,” term paper for Professor Robert Whaples, Wake Forest University, 2006.
Selected writings of Herbert Heaton
“Heckscher on Mercantilism,” The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 45, No. 3 (June, 1937), pp. 370-93.
“Rigidity in Business Since the Industrial Revolution,” The American Economic Review, Vol. 30, No. 1, Part 2, Supplement, Papers and Proceedings of the Fifty-second Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association (Mar., 1940), pp. 306-313.
“Non-Importation, 1806-1812,” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Nov., 1941), pp. 178-98.
“The Early History of the Economic History Association,” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 1, Supplement: The Tasks of Economic History (Dec., 1941), pp. 107-09.
“Recent Developments in Economic History,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 47, No. 4 (July, 1942) pp. 727- 46.
“The Making of an Economic Historian,” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 9, Supplement: The Tasks of Economic History (1949), pp. 1-18.
“Clio’ s New Overalls,” The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Nov., 1954), pp. 467-77.
“Twenty-Five Years of the Economic History Association: A Reflective Evaluation,” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Dec., 1965), pp. 465-79.
Modern economic history, with special reference to Australia, Melbourne: Macmillan & Co., 1925.
A history of trade and commerce, with special reference to Canada, Toronto: T. Nelson & Sons, 1928.
The British Way to Recovery: Plans and Policies in Great Britain, Australia, and Canada, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1934.
Economic History of Europe, New York: Harper, 1948.
A Scholar in Action, Edwin F. Gay, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952.
Source: Past Presidents of the EHA: Herbert Heaton, The Newsletter of the Economic History Association (ed. Michael Haupert), No. 31 (December 2007), pp. 16-18.
Image Source: Newsletter of the Economic History Association, No. 31 (December 2007), p. 16.
