Apparently what happened in Chicago didn’t have to stay in Chicago, judging from the casual background check on John Maurice Clark seen in the letter sent to the chairman of the political science department there, Charles E. Meriam (Columbia PhD, 1900), by Edwin R.A. Seligman, the executive officer [chairman] of the department of economics at Columbia. It would be interesting to know whether or what the colleagues at Chicago answered. In any event John Maurice Clark was appointed professor of economics as of the academic year 1926-27. I must say November 1925 seems rather late in the game to be making such discrete inquiries. Was Seligman looking to cover his backside or was he looking for evidence to possibly block Clark’s appointment. Under either interpretation, the matter would have been delicate.
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Cast of Characters
The economists have been introduced in other posts here at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror:
John Maurice Clark. …graduated from Amherst in 1905 and received his Ph.D. at Columbia five years later. He taught at Colorado College, Amherst and the University of Chicago before joining the Columbia faculty in 1926. He retired in 1956.
Source: From his obituary in the New York Times (June 28, 1963).
Incidentally, the biographical notes for Clark have incorrect dates for his professorship, but for the sake of completeness I include the link to the finding guide to his papers. Columbia University Libraries, Rare Book & Manuscript Library. John Maurice Clark papers, 1920-1963. Collection Overview.
Image Source: John Maurice Clark. University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-0171. Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.
Edwin R. A. Seligman. Columbia A.B. 1879; A.M. 1884; L.L.B. 1884; Ph.D. 1885; L.L.D. 1904. Seligman served on the Columbia University faculty 1885-1931; the Tax Committee of New York City 1914-1916 and of New York State 1929-1931; the League of Nations committee on economics and finance 1922-1923; financial advisor to Cuba in 1931; editor of the Political Science Quarterly and the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, among many other roles.
Source: Columbia University Libraries, Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Edwin Anderson Seligman papers, 1750-1939. Collection Overview.
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Ernst Freund, 1864-1932, was professor of law at the University of Chicago from 1902 to his death. Born in New York City during a brief visit by his German parents, Freund was raised in Dresden and Frankfurt-am-Main. He was educated at the Universities of Berlin and Heidelberg, receiving a Doctor of Law degree from the latter in 1884. Soon after, Freund immigrated to the United States where he practiced law in New York City. In 1892, he expanded his career by accepting a position as acting professor of administrative law at Columbia College. This position sparked an interest in teaching, which led Freund, in 1894, to abandon his law practice in order to accept a full-time appointment on the political science faculty at the University of Chicago as instructor of Roman law and jurisprudence. During his early years at Chicago, Freund pursued a part-time graduate career at Columbia, which awarded him a Ph.D. in political science in 1897.
Ernst Freund played a significant role in the founding of the University of Chicago Law School. William Rainey Harper’s original plan for legal education at Chicago was to integrate a research-oriented institute of jurisprudence into the graduate programs of the university proper. In spite of his interest in political science and jurisprudence, Freund urged Harper to develop instead a professional graduate law school whose standards would surpass those of Harvard and Columbia. It was Freund’s argument that legal research was already being conducted in the Departments of History, Political Science, Sociology, and Political Economy. If the new Law School attracted a quality faculty interested in the teaching of law, a research relationship would naturally develop. Freund’s idea of legal curriculum incorporated traditional methods with a new emphasis on the Law School’s responsibility to the University and community at large. In addition to standard courses, Freund advocated the teaching of constitutional and international law, administrative law, and various courses under the rubric of jurisprudence, which were then being taught in other departments of the University. This curriculum broke with the Harvard plan that stressed more strictly legal subjects which was then accepted as the model for American legal education. In spite of this concept of legal education, Freund turned to Harvard for leadership in organizing the new Law School. He recommended that Harper recruit Harvard’s Joseph H. Beale, one of the foremost legal scholars in the nation, on a two-year appointment to put the new school in order. Beale accepted Harper’s offer only after making it clear that Freund’s plan would have to be modified. The resulting curriculum is described by Frank Ellsworth in his Developments in American Legal Education at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (University of Chicago Ph.D. dissertation, 1976). Ellsworth writes:
By merging the traditional technical insight of Beale with the innovative ideals of Freund, a blend of the traditional and a farsighted curriculum occured and resulted in the first significant effort to liberalize the curriculum in legal education since Langdell’s work at Harvard.
Freund joined the faculty of the new Law School as Professor in 1902. He continued in that position until 1929 when he was appointed the first holder of the John P. Wilson Professorship in Law, a position he held until his death in 1932.
Freund’s career was composed of three basic parts: teacher, scholar, and advisor. In each of these areas, he integrated traditional legal scholarship, augmented by his experience in the German university, with a new emphasis on the interdisciplinary approach to legal education. Freund taught subjects which ranged from administrative law to social legislation and domestic relations. His scholarship rested on such significant contributions as The Police Power: Public Policy and Constitutional Rights (1904) and Standards of American Legislation (1917) for which he was awarded the James Barr Ames medal of the Harvard Law School. Along with these and other major works were numerous articles in the Social Science Review, Labor Legislation Review, and the Political Science Quarterly, which dealt with subjects that ranged from health insurance to illegitimacy. Freund played a major role as advisor to legislative agencies around the United States. He served as commissioner from Illinois to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. He drafted the act creating the Illinois State Immigrant’s Commission and served as president of the Immigrant’s Protective League. His devotion to these and other social welfare activities led Jane Addams to eulogize him as one who, “never once failed to be sensitive to injustice and preventable suffering.”
Source: Guide to the Ernst Freund Papers 1882-1934. University of Chicago Library, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center.
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Charles E. Merriam was a Political scientist and politician. A.B., Lenox College, 1893; A.B., State University of Iowa, 1895. A.M., Columbia University, 1898; Ph.D., 1900. Docent in political science, University of Chicago, 1900-1902; associate, 1902-1903; instructor, 1903-1905; assistant professor, 1905-1907; associate professor, 1907-1911; professor, 1911-1940; chairman, Department of Political Science, 1923-1940; Morton D. Hull Distinguished Professor of Political Science. Chicago alderman, 1909-1911 and 1913-1917. Candidate for mayor of Chicago, 1911 and 1919. Founder, Social Science Research Council, 1924.
Source: Guide to the Charles E. Merriam Papers 1893-1957, p. 8. University of Chicago Library, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center.
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What’s John Maurice Clark really like?… asking for a friend?
[Copy of typed letter]
Also to Professor Ernst Freund
November 4, 1925
Professor Charles E. Merriam,
University of Chicago,
Chicago, Illinois.
My dear Merriam:
I am taking the liberty of writing to you on a very private and confidential matter and I hope that you will respond in an equally frank and confidential way. The point is this: we are thinking of adding to our corps of professors in the Faculty of Political Science (and we are on the lookout for the biggest man in the United States who is available). One of the two or three men that I have in mind is Maurice Clark, who of course I know very well as an old and excellent student. I want, however, to ascertain a little more about the following points:
1) Is it true, as is sometimes stated, that he is an exceptionally poor teacher and that he does not even interest the best graduate students, for the alleged reason that he is more of a closet philosopher who takes very little interest in human beings?
2) Is it true that he does not pull his oar in the ordinary departmental and faculty work and that he is of a rather non-cooperative disposition?
As to his brilliancy and creative power, I need no advice because those qualities are perfectly familiar to me, and while I am not at all sure that even if your answers to my questions were in the affirmative, those defects would outweigh his qualities, but I do count upon your giving me confidentially your opinion about these matters.
Of course it goes without saying that things are still in the embryo condition and that all I am trying to do now is to get a little more light on the situation so that I can bring it to the attention of my colleagues.
I am by no means sure that even if we should decide that Clark was the right man for us, he could be prevailed upon to leave the place where he is so happy as he is with you, — but all that is in the distant future.
With kind regards,
Faithfully yours,
P.S. Of course you will say nothing of this to anyone else.
Source: Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections. Seligman, Edwin Robert Anderson Collection, Box 37 (Box 100: Columbia 1924-1930).