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THE PALGRAVE
COMPANION TO
CHICAGO
ECONOMICS
Edited by Robert A. Cord

The Palgrave Companion to Chicago Economics
Robert A. Cord
Editor
The Palgrave
Companion to Chicago
Economics
Editor
Robert A. Cord
Researcher in Economics
London, UK
ISBN 978-3-031-01491-8 ISBN 978-3-031-01775-9 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01775-9
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2022
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For Shirin, Andy, Ayesha and Ben
Contents
Part I Themes in Chicago Economics 1
1 The
Department of Economics at the University of Chicago,
1947–1982 3
Arnold C. Harberger and Sebastian Edwards
2 Economic
History in Departments of Economics: The Case
of the University of Chicago, 1892 to the Present 21
David Mitch
3 International
Economics at Chicago 55
Sebastian Edwards and Douglas A. Irwin
4 Chicago
Political Economy and Its Virginia Cousin 79
Richard E. Wagner
5 The
Cowles Commission at the University of Chicago,
1939–1955 103
Robert W. Dimand
6 I nformation at Chicago 123

Edward Nik-Khah
vii
viii Contents
Part II Some Chicago Economists 149
7 James
Laurence Laughlin (1850–1933) 151
Charles R. McCann, Jr. and Vibha Kapuria-Foreman
8 Th
orstein Veblen (1857–1929) 175
Wesley Clair Mitchell
9 Frank
H. Knight (1885–1972) 203
Ross B. Emmett
10 L
loyd W. Mints (1888–1989) 223
Samuel Demeulemeester
11 Paul
H. Douglas (1892–1976) 249
Bill Bergman
12 J acob Viner (1892–1970) 275

Arthur I. Bloomfield
13 H
enry Schultz (1893–1938) 325
Jim Thomas
14 Margaret
Gilpin Reid (1896–1991) 343
Evelyn L. Forget
15 Henry
Calvert Simons (1899–1946) 357
Sherry Davis Kasper
16 A
aron Director (1901–2004) 383
Robert Van Horn
17 Th
eodore W. Schultz (1902–1998) 401
Paul Burnett
18 Mary
Jean Bowman (1908–2002) 421
Pedro N. Teixeira
19 George
J. Stigler (1911–1991) 445
David M. Levy and Sandra J. Peart
Contents ix
20 M
ilton Friedman (1912–2006) 477
James Forder
21 Lloyd
A. Metzler (1913–1980) 515
Robert A. Cord
22 Berthold
F. Hoselitz (1913–1995) 545
David Mitch
23 H.
Gregg Lewis (1914–1992) 573
Daniel S. Hamermesh
24 D.
Gale Johnson (1916–2003) 595
Daniel A. Sumner
25 Albert
E. Rees (1921–1992) 635
Randall K. Filer
26 Merton
H. Miller (1923–2000) 653
Bruce D. Grundy
27 Harry
G. Johnson (1923–1977) 679
Michael B. Connolly
28 Arnold
C. Harberger (1924–) 695
William Dougan
29 G
eorge S. Tolley (1925–2021) 739
Glenn C. Blomquist, Richard V. Burkhauser,
and Donald S. Kenkel
30 R
obert W. Fogel (1926–2013) 773
Richard H. Steckel
31 A
rnold Zellner (1927–2010) 789
Franz C. Palm
32 Gary
S. Becker (1930–2014) 817
Pedro N. Teixeira
x Contents
33 Robert
E. Lucas, Jr. (1937–) 841
Pierrick Clerc and Michel De Vroey
34 S
herwin Rosen (1938–2001) 871
Kenneth J. McLaughlin
35 Richard
A. Posner (1939–) 901
Jean-Baptiste Fleury and Alain Marciano
36 Eugene
F. Fama (1939–) 925
G. William Schwert
37 James
J. Heckman (1944–) 939
Richard Blundell and Flávio Cunha
38 Richard
H. Thaler (1945–) 979
Alex Imas
39 Lars
Peter Hansen (1952–)1005
Jaroslav Borovička
N
otes on Contributors1057
I ndex1069
List of Figures
Figure 34.1 Compensating price differential 875

Figure 34.2 Compensating wage differential for schooling 887
xi
List of Tables
Table 2.1 Doctoral dissertations in economic history relative to doctoral

dissertations in economics at the University of Chicago,
1892–200628
Table 13.1 Henry Schultz’s publications, 1923–1939 334
Table 21.1 Summary of effects of income transfer in the two-country model 520
Table 22.2 Summary of possible income movements in the n-country system 520
Table 23.1 Google Scholar citations to Lewis’s works 574
Table 23.2 Determinants of familiarity with Lewis’s name and contributions 576
Table 31.1 Forecast RMSEs and MAEs for Aggregate (A) and Disaggregated
(DA) models using currency as the money variable (percentage
points). Aggregate forecasts: 1952–1979 ⇒ 1980–1997: Real
income Yt (real GDP) 804
Table 31.2 Forecast RMSEs and MAEs for Aggregate (A) and
Disaggregated (DA) models using currency as the money
variable (percentage points). Disaggregated forecasts:
1952–1979 ⇒ 1980–1997 (OLS) (using MMM(A)
reduced form equations to forecast real income and real wage
rate growth) 804
Table 33.1 Friedman and Lucas under the lens of the Marshall-Walras divide 863
Table 34.1 Rosen’s most-cited papers 872
xiii
Introduction
These two volumes are about the economics and economists associated with
the University of Chicago. They are the fourth in a series to be published by
Palgrave examining the many and varied contributions made by important
centres of economics. With only a very few exceptions, the focus of most his-
tory of economic thought studies, at least in terms of books,1 has been on
schools of thought. Such an approach provides valuable insights into how
competing schools interact and how some come to predominate, for whatever
reason and length of time, while others fall out of fashion or indeed never
attain any particular notoriety. However, a key deficiency of such a modus
operandi is that it often fails to illuminate the many processes and tensions
that can and do occur at the level of the individual university, the personnel
of which may be fighting internal battles for supremacy whilst at the same
time trying to establish external hegemony.
Each volume in the series consists of two parts. The first contains a set of
chapters which consider the contributions made by a centre where these con-
tributions are considered to be especially important, this subject to a mixture
of personal preferences and soundings from those who know better. The sec-
ond, longer part is made up of chapters discussing the contributions of indi-
vidual economists attached to a particular centre. ‘Attached’ is the crucial
word. Some economists are easy to identify with a single institution as they
may, for example, have spent their whole academic careers at it. Those who
have moved from institution to institution are the more difficult case. One
way forward in these instances is to place an economist in the institution
1
Articles are of course another matter.
xvi Introduction
where they carried out their most important work, although this, in its turn,
carries with it the danger of disagreement over what ‘their most important
work’ was or is perceived to be and how this has changed over time. Another
factor perhaps worthy of consideration is an economist’s education. Where
such an education has been received at the knee of a master, to what extent has
this influenced the subsequent work of the noted pupil and how should this
be considered when that pupil has flown the nest and settled at another insti-
tution? Issues of leadership style, discipleship, loyalty, access to publication
outlets and to financing also enter the frame. Finally, there are issues of prac-
ticality, including space constraints and unavailability of contributors, among
others. Given this matrix of possibilities, disagreement about who should be
in which volume is inevitable. However, I hope that the outrage will not be
too great given the overarching goal of the series.
The next volume in the series will examine Harvard University.
Robert A. Cord
Part I
Themes in Chicago Economics
1
The Department of Economics
at the University of Chicago, 1947–1982
Arnold C. Harberger and Sebastian Edwards
1 Introduction1
This chapter is about the Department of Economics at the University of
Chicago, as seen by one of its long-term faculty members—Arnold
C. Harberger—and one of its former students, Sebastian Edwards. The period
covered is from 1947 through 1982. That is, 35 years that span from the time
Harberger arrived as a student to the time Edwards graduated with a PhD. A
few years later, in 1984, the two co-authors were reunited, this time as col-
leagues, at UCLA. The approach that we have decided to follow is somewhat
unusual: the chapter has the form of a conversation between two people from
different generations, two colleagues and friends, two professional economists
who have travelled together around the world providing advice to govern-
ments on almost every continent.
Of course, we played very different roles in the Department. Harberger was
a faculty member for over 30 years and Chairman for 12 years. He was a
colleague of some of the most famous economists of the second half of the
1
We thank Alejandra Cox for comments and suggestions.
A. C. Harberger
Department of Economics, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
e-mail: harberger@econ.ucla.edu
S. Edwards (*)
The Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
e-mail: sebastian.edwards@anderson.ucla.edu
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 3

R. A. Cord (ed.), The Palgrave Companion to Chicago Economics,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01775-9_1
4 A. C. Harberger and S. Edwards
twentieth century and early decades of the twentieth-first, and hired many of
them. After four years as a student, Edwards went to UCLA, where he has
spent most of his career. He looked at Chicago from afar, but always with
great interest, not only because of the links established during his period
there, but also because of the role that some Chicago economists—the so-
called Chicago Boys—played in Latin American economic reforms, including
in his native Chile.2
We have labelled the approach “a conversation” for two reasons: First, we
know each other too well for it to be a simple interview. Second, in 2016,
Harberger finished taping an “Oral History” (Harberger 2016), which covers
in significant detail most of his life, including episodes related to the
Department. Of course, conversations can take many forms. In this one, we
have proceeded as follows: Edwards suggests a topic, and Harberger talks
about it; Edwards interrupts, and disagrees, and Harberger replies—some-
times he insists on his point of view, at other times he offers a variation on the
subject. In selecting the themes for the conversation, Edwards often relies on
previous exchanges and late night chats between the two of them that took
place over many years in places as different as Jakarta, Managua, Buenos Aires,
Moscow, Washington, D.C., and Tegucigalpa.
Thousands of pages have been written about the Department of Economics
at Chicago.3 Some works have been celebratory and others have been critical;
some have been deep, and others have been superficial. Because of this abun-
dance of material, we have tried to focus on aspects of the Department that
have not generally been highlighted in existing work. This means that some of
the most often discussed issues in the existing literature will not be covered in
detail (or will not be covered at all), while some lesser-known ones will be
emphasised.
The various discussions that led to this article took place over several
months in Los Angeles, California, during the time of COVID, with visits to
each other’s homes and behind masks. Most of it, but not all, has been taped.
However, even when the tape recorder was on, Edwards took copious notes,
which completely filled a notebook. Sometimes, Harberger would visit
Edwards and vice versa. The conversation is not organised in a chronological
way; it is structured around topics. In order to keep things on track, we have
made an effort to clarify what happened when and who was involved in the
different episodes being narrated. The chapter deals with ideas, professional
2
For the “Chicago Boys” and the Chilean market reforms, see Edwards and Edwards (1991) and
Edwards (2010).
3
This includes memoirs by some of its leading members; see Friedman and Friedman (1998) and
Stigler (2003).
1 The Department of Economics at the University of Chicago… 5
debates, controversies and people. In order to make it easier to read, we have

resorted to a tried-and-tested technique: Harberger’s (denoted ACH) words
are in non-italics and Edwards’ (denoted SE) are in italics.
2 The Department in the 1940s and 1950s:

The Fourth and Fifth Floors
SE: You enrolled in the Department of Economics in the fall of 1947, after
having spent a year studying international relations at the University of
Chicago. In this segment I would like to talk about two issues. First, the
general atmosphere in the Department, as seen from the perspective of a
graduate student. Second, I’d like to talk about the faculty in 1947. At
the time, the Department had a large number of very prominent mem-
bers, including some credited as having founded the “First Chicago
School”. People like Frank Knight, Lloyd Mints, Henry Simons, and
others. Also, Milton Friedman had just arrived as a faculty member, in
1946. At the same time, some very well-known scholars had recently left,
including Jacob Viner who went to Princeton, Paul Douglas who became
Senator for Illinois, and Oskar Lange who went on to have a distin-
guished career in communist Poland. So, the topic I’d like you to address
is simple: How was the Department when you joined? From today’s per-
spective, what do you think were the most salient characteristics of the
place? And, at the time, how was it different from other leading depart-
ments such as Harvard and Yale?
ACH: In 1947, there were lots of students, but it really did not feel crowded.
It was very exciting and to us it was clear that it was a special place. The
fact that the Cowles Commission was there added to the sense that
this was a unique place. I was hired as a research assistant at Cowles in
March 1949 and I shared an office with Stanley Reiter, who ended up
having a very distinguished career at Northwestern.
SE: What kind of research were you doing at Cowles? And how did it fit with
the general work being done at the Commission?
ACH: I was working on problems related to endogeneity in the estimation
of supply and demand curves. And I was interested in the subject
because of the controversy surrounding the elasticities of import and
export, and the way in which they determined whether a currency
devaluation would be effective or not. The question was determining
exogeneity, and lots of people were interested in it. There was a differ-
ence in emphasis. For me, it was sufficient when working on an

applied problem that the correlation was small enough, as to mini-
mise the simultaneity bias. Tjalling Koopmans, on the other hand,
insisted that there should be zero correlation; the variables had to be
orthogonal. Koopmans at the time was either running the Commission
or about to take over.
SE: Well, this seems to have been work related to the so-called elasticities pes-
simism controversy. In a sense, if elasticities were too small, then a very
important element in the market system would not work properly, as
devaluations or changes in the price of foreign currency would be ineffec-
tive. Did you see your work at the time as related, in any way, to Milton
Friedman’s crusade for flexible exchange rates? Well, Friedman was not
the only one at Chicago. Lloyd Mints had also written in favour of flex-
ible rates.
ACH: Quite a few people at the time were working on similar problems.
Lloyd Metzler was also interested in the subject of exchange rates
and adjustment, including issues related to international transfers.
But I would not say that there was explicit coordination among the
different people. My work was in no way part of Milton’s crusade.
SE: So tell me more about your disagreements with Koopmans.
ACH: Koopmans was a very good economist, and a very good human
being. I remember his modesty and his interest in looking at the
world from different perspectives. But we had occasional disagree-
ments. At an American Economic Association (AEA) meeting I pre-
sented a paper and he was the discussant. He was very critical, and
accused me of building a second story of a house that had no base-
ment, or foundations. Paul Samuelson, who was chairing the ses-
sion, came in my defence, and gave a ten-minute speech, where he
basically agreed with me.
SE: And which paper was this?
ACH: “The Measurement of Waste”, which was eventually published in the
American Economic Review (Harberger 1964).
SE: When you were there, did you and your fellow students think that you
were part of a distinctive school, the “First Chicago School”?
ACH: As I said, we realised that we were in a very special place. But I am
not sure that we thought that this constituted a “School”.
SE: Some people have said that the Chicago School started with Frank
Knight and from him different branches spurred out: Henry Simons,
Milton Friedman, George Stigler. Some people say that what made it
operational was Milton’s monetary analyses, plus Viner’s and Friedman’s
price theory, and George Stigler’s and Ronald Coase’s views on externali-
ties, regulatory capture, and transaction costs.
ACH: If one talks about the existence of a “Chicago School”, one also needs
to talk about T.W. Schultz. He was incredibly influential, very talented,
and a great economist. He and D. Gale Johnson ran an extremely pres-
tigious agricultural economics programme at Chicago. When I think of
the Chicago School, I think of three principles: theory is of utmost
importance, and should guide economic thinking; theoretical con-
structs should be confronted with the real world, they should be tested,
there should be a lot of data analysis; and when in doubt, always come
back to fundamental price theory, to the functioning of markets.
SE: When you came to Chicago in 1947, Frank Knight was still a member
of the faculty. Was he revered and admired by everyone?
ACH: Well, I would say yes. He was on the Committee on Social Thought.
He was a member of both the Department and the Committee. And
his office was adjacent to the Committee, on the fifth floor, and not
adjacent to the bulk of the Department on the fourth floor. So, we
didn’t see that much of him in the halls and corridors.
SE: Did you take classes from Frank Knight?
ACH: I took every class from Frank Knight. I have a joke about him. He
had a house on Kimbark Street, across the Midway, and this house
had an attic. And I pictured that his attic contained a huge barrel,
and in this barrel were written all kind of aphorisms—one-liners so
to speak—and every time he had to make a speech he would go up
there and he would crank the barrel and get one draw, and another
draw, and so on. So, after a while there was nothing you ever heard
from Frank Knight that you hadn’t heard before, but you hadn’t
heard it quite the same way.
SE: Did Frank Knight teach Price Theory, the famous 301 course, the course
that at one point or another was taught by Viner, Milton, Gary Becker,
Sherwin Rosen, and yourself among others?
ACH: I don’t think so.
SE: Which courses did you take from him?
ACH: I don’t remember the numbers, but a history of thought course,
maybe more than one.
SE: Who else besides Frank Knight represented the old generation when you
arrived in Chicago as a student?
ACH: Well, Lloyd Mints. Lloyd Mints is very underappreciated. I went
back to his notes, and he taught monetary economics from the fact
that prices of international goods, as he called them, were deter-
mined in international markets. And the doings in this country

didn’t have to do with that. They had to do with the exchange rate,
and the balance of payments and things like that. He was far more
subtle, far better than what he was given credit for.
SE: I think that Mints is making somewhat of a comeback in the history of
thought community.
ACH: That’s well deserved in my opinion. And to me, he got undervalued
because he didn’t publish. He published on banking theory, which I
believe was his dissertation. And beyond that, it’s hard to find pieces
by Mints. And, it’s a shame in a way.
SE: Who else comes to mind from those years, besides Knight and Mints?
ACH: John U. Nef. He was on the fifth floor as well, as a member of the
Committee on Social Thought. And he belonged there, in the sense
that he viewed economics from a broader perspective than the rest of
the Department. The rest of the Department were “tools oriented”,
supply, demand, and the forces of inflation, and that kind of thing.
And Nef was just sui generis. He would come and read his lecture to
you. And these lectures were all organised, and written out, and so
on. I have this imitation of him. From time to time he would pause
and say: “As Gustav Schmoller, the very famous German economic
historian from the nineteenth century once said to his classes in
Berlin, ‘Es ist alles so furchtbar kompliziert!’, which translated means ‘It
is all so terribly complicated!’” And that is a quote from John U. Nef.
Verbatim!
SE: Did you take a class from Henry Simons?
ACH: No, I did not. And that is an interesting story. In the spring of 1946
I still had not transferred officially from international relations to
economics, but I was already taking quite a few classes in the
Department. I tried to enrol in Simons’ course. But during the first
meeting he said that he wanted to restrict the course to those stu-
dents who were already writing a dissertation or were about to begin
one. I was not in that group yet, so I could not take his class. And, at
the end of the quarter he committed suicide.
SE: Let me go back to the fifth floor of the Social Sciences building. Your last
year as a student was Friedrich Hayek’s first year at Chicago. And he was
a member of the Committee on Social Thought, so he was up there on a
different floor, with Knight, Nef and others. And when you came back as
a member of the faculty in 1953, he was still there. Hayek left Chicago
in 1964, so you were colleagues for about ten years. Did you interact
with Hayek?
ACH: No.
SE: Not at all? He didn’t come to the workshops?
ACH: No. He had his own group, and there was almost no interaction
between him and the members of the Department, as far as I remem-
ber. He never came to the regular workshops.
SE: You didn’t talk to him?
ACH: Not really.
3 The Workshops System

SE: Tell me how you ended up joining the faculty at Chicago? How did it
happen? You were an Assistant Professor at Hopkins and you got an offer
to go to Chicago. Tell me the details of that story. As I remember it, it is
in some ways related to the famous Chicago workshops system.
ACH: T.W. Schultz read my projections on the demand for materials for
the year 1975, and decided that I was the man for public finance at
Chicago. In that work, I created an image of the 1975 economy,
with so many automobiles, and so many washing machines, and so
many refrigerators, and so much this, and so much that. And from
that I derived the demand for materials. This was very distinct from
running a regression and forecasting forward. You can see how ter-
rible job a regression would do. I don’t think it’s the right way, any-
way. The reason had to do with history: going back you had the
1920s and the Great Depression and the war, and then inflation.
There was no point in using regressions.
SE: Had you taken a formal public finance course at Chicago as a student?
ACH: Yes. That was the only B I got in economics. The professor was Roy
Blough, who had been a Treasury official, and the Teaching Assistant
was Jim Buchanan. In a way, it was funny that I would come back to
Chicago and be in charge of the field where I got my only B.
SE: The public finance workshop, which you ran, was very famous in the
1950s and 1960s. It attracted lots of students, including people like Bob
Lucas and many Latin American students. So, tell me, when did the
workshops start, and what was so special about them?
ACH: Well, the workshops started with Milton. And agricultural econom-
ics, with T.W. Schultz and D. Gale Johnson; that was effectively a
workshop, whether you call it that or not. And that was alive and
well, and strong and powerful. And when I came to Chicago in 53,
Schultz practically forced me to have a workshop in public finance.
And this was because he and Milton were looking for funding from
the Rockefeller Foundation for workshops in general. The idea was
that workshops were good, that this was a start. Here was a new fac-
ulty member, and why not get him started on the right track. So, I
was hardly given an option.
SE: So, tell me in what way was the public finance workshop different?
ACH: It was different from Milton’s in the sense that I gave much more
freedom to people, and so I had very good students, you know.
Gregory Chow, Dick Muth, Bob Lucas, among others.
SE: Someone told me that most of the Latin American students arrived about
20 minutes late to the workshop. And that that became a regular feature
of it. Is that true?
ACH: Yes, that’s true. Always a little late.
SE: Was Finis Welch, the labour economist, your student?
ACH: No. He was a card playing buddy. We played bridge.
4 Fortress Chicago
SE: When I arrived as a graduate student, in 1977, my classmates and I had
no doubt that we were in a special place, in a unique institution. We also
knew that we were in a place that was populated by people with very
strong points of view regarding the functioning of markets, the role of
monetary policy, the causes of inflation, and the limitations of fine-
tuning. We also had the feeling that intellectually we were besieged, that
the “Chicago view” was a minority view. We did not dislike this. In fact,
I think that many of my classmates liked it; we considered ourselves as
being in what I would call “Fortress Chicago”. In many ways, we thought
that it was a fortress built around Milton Friedman and his views. What
are your thoughts about this? How did you feel as a m ember of the fac-
ulty, and earlier, as a graduate student, about the notion that Chicago
was almost on its own defending certain principles?
ACH: I resist very much the idea that Chicago was basically a sounding
board for Friedman. In point of fact, we had as many people voting
Democratic as voting Republican. The thing is that the other leading
departments (MIT, Harvard and Yale) had mostly Democrats. It’s
not that we were predominantly Republican; we had some, and they
didn’t have any (or had very few), so to speak. The question is: What
determines the Chicago School? My belief was that the Chicago
School meant believing that market forces were extremely important
in determining how things worked out in the real world, and there
was no one at Chicago who disagreed with that principle.
SE: Let me push you on this: Our sense in the late 1970s—this is just when
the “rational expectations” revolution was taking hold—was that there
was only a handful of schools with majority views similar to those domi-
nant at Chicago: UCLA, Rochester, maybe Carnegie. At the policy level,
there was the St Louis FED monetary model, but not a lot more. Given
this situation, how would you characterise relations between faculty
members in the top schools?
ACH: In Cambridge and particularly at MIT, and within MIT, Paul
Samuelson and Bob Solow, made snide remarks about Chicago, and
especially about Milton Friedman’s attitude and interests, and I
would say there was a kind of belief that we were all kind of clones
of Friedman. This, of course, was not true, and certainly not true of
Ted Schultz, Harry Johnson, D. Gale Johnson, Bob Mundell. There
makes no sense of talking about clones, knowing the personalities of
the people involved. But the outside view was that most of us were,
at least partially, Miltonian clones. I would say that Milton didn’t
want to have only people like him in the Department. In the appoint-
ment process he liked diversity.
SE: Was Milton Friedman liked by his colleagues? Did the other faculty
members like him?
ACH: I have the feeling that the answer is “Yes, but…”. Certainly, Harry
Johnson had a hard time with Milton. I don’t know if he wanted to
have as much lustre around him as came around Milton; it might be
that. Harry’s economics were close to Milton, but not by any means
as doctrinaire, so to speak, as Milton’s.
5 Partial Versus General Equilibrium

SE: One of the common criticisms of Chicago during the 1950s and 1960s
was that the type of economics practised by Milton Friedman and George
Stigler, just to mention two people, was nothing more than glorified par-
tial equilibrium analysis based on Marshall. This criticism came, mostly,
from people like Samuelson, Tobin and Solow. What is your reaction to
this idea?
ACH: Well, I always had a very good relationship with Samuelson and a
pretty good relation with Tobin. And general equilibrium was pres-
ent in most of my work.
SE: Yes, your “Incidence of the Corporation Income Tax” (Harberger 1962)
and your “Three Numeraires” (Harberger 1974) papers are great exam-
ples of general equilibrium.
ACH: I think that in my own case, my grounding on trade was serious, and
trade leads you to global general equilibrium analysis of a manage-
able sort, rather than of an n-equations and n-unknowns sort.
SE: Let me stay with Samuelson. What was the origin of your good relations
with him?
ACH: As I noted, it originated with my paper “The Measurement of Waste”,
in an AEA meeting in the 1950s. Koopmans was the discussant and
he berated me for having built on the second story without having a
strong first story. And Samuelson, who was the chairman at the ses-
sion, took ten minutes to put Koopmans down.
SE: Let me try to dig some more on Samuelson, Chicago and you. There is a
long passage in Samuelson’s Foundations (1947) where he criticises the
concept of “consumer surplus”, which is very central to a lot of your work.
It also plays important roles in work by Friedman, Stigler, Johnson.
Another concept that has been criticised due to a “lack of general equilib-
rium properties” is effective rates of protection. This concept is also associ-
ated with Chicago, through Johnson’s work on protection and tariffs. I
personally find “effective protection” to be a very useful concept.
ACH: Yes. And Samuelson in some ways impeded the advancement of
“consumer surplus economics” for 20 or 30 years because of what
there was in Foundations. But consumer surplus is, and always has
been, a valid concept. So is effective protection. They are particularly
useful when we talk about intermediate goods and inputs, and the
cost of the protective structure.
6 Governance of the Department

SE: The impression one gets looking back is that during those years [1960s
and 1970s] the Department was very small, and very well run. Tell me
a little bit about the governance, the way in which the faculty interacted
with each other, the role played by junior faculty, and relations with
other parts of the University.
ACH: I think that the fact that there were very few chairmen is important.
From 1945 to the mid-1980s there were only four chairmen. Albert
Rees ran the Department for three years. The rest of the time the
chairmen were Ted Schultz, D. Gale Johnson, and myself.
SE: Overall, you were chairman for 12 years, probably one of the longest, if
not the longest, maybe only comparable to James Laughlin. How were
relations among the faculty? Was it hierarchical? Or was it pretty much
horizontal?
ACH: Governance was much more democratic than at Harvard or Yale,
mostly because of the small numbers of faculty. Never more than 25,
while Harvard and Yale probably had 45 or so. Junior members
spoke up frequently and freely.
SE: Any regrets about letting people go? Someone you should have kept?
ACH: Marc Nerlove in a sense. He went to Minnesota, then Rochester,
then Maryland, if I remember correctly.
SE: What was your biggest conflict as chairman?
ACH: What I remember is not a conflict, but an embarrassing situation,
related to an appointment in public finance. I wanted to bring a very
distinguished member of the field, and had spoken to him about
joining the Department. He looked at the possibility in a very posi-
tive way. But when we took the vote, I was surprised to find out that
there was a large group who opposed him, mostly junior faculty.
There were enough “no” votes, so I thought maybe we should take a
second vote. But the second time it came in even more negative. It
was very embarrassing, but to my delight my friendship with this
scholar remained intact.
SE: You once told me about the conflict that emerged between Hans Theil
and Arnold Zellner. If I remember correctly, this story also involved the
Business School, whose Dean at the time was George Shultz.
ACH: Yes, the Theil-Zellner conflict was deep and serious. The curious
thing is that we got Arnold Zellner, mostly because Hans Theil
wanted him to join the faculty. So here comes Zellner, Theil’s favou-
rite, and once he arrives he begins to behave like an equal. Theil, who
came from the highly hierarchical European tradition, just couldn’t
take that. And in the end we had this terrible period where the
econometric prelim once a year would contain Theil, and once a year
would contain Zellner, but never contained both Theil and Zellner.
Not even George Shultz, with his enormous negotiating skills, could
solve the impasse. Theil ultimately quit Chicago and went to Florida,
where he was probably treated like the professor that he expected to
be treated.
SE: Going back to the Department chairmanship. Did you have a problem
with Harry Johnson splitting his time between LSE and Chicago, and
later between Geneva and Chicago? It’s been rumoured that there was a
problem later on with other faculty who wanted to split their time
between Chicago and another department. So, did you have any misgiv-
ings or conflict with Harry?
ACH: Harry Johnson was a very prominent and important figure. We were
very happy to have half of Harry’s time. But we did not want that
option to be spread; we did not want that to become a common
practice. So, generally, we didn’t allow this from other faculty.
SE: Did you make an effort to retain Bob Mundell when he said he was
going to Canada?
ACH: I feel that that was, in a sense, a no-brainer. Bob was of the idea that
he was going to set up in Canada a centre for international studies,
where he would draw people from all over the world. And this was a
dream in his mind. I don’t remember what kind of counter-offer we
made, or even if we did make one. Because he was dead set on having
this experiment. And when it didn’t work out he went to Columbia.
7
Journal of Political Economy (JPE)
SE: What was the JPE’s role in the life of the Department, if any? The JPE
had a life of its own, I assume.
ACH: The editorial team always included members of the Department, as
well as members from the Business School. But we didn’t have
Department meetings about the JPE.
SE: Were you ever attracted to the JPE? Did you want to become an editor?
There were some members of the faculty—I can think of Harry Johnson,
Bob Mundell, Jacob Frenkel—that loved that position. I know that you
were never an editor. Did you ever consider it?
ACH: Never! I would much rather be chairman than editor of the JPE.
SE: Why? Many people would find that a surprising answer. Running the
JPE is an incredibly influential position.
ACH: Well, it doesn’t go with my personality. Very early on I realised that
refereeing was extremely time intensive for me. It took me many,
many hours to go through a paper. Thus, editing the Journal was not
the optimal allocation of my time.
8 People
SE: To me, an interesting thing about Chicago is that so many faculty mem-
bers were, or became, household names, the greatest example, of course,
being Milton Friedman. But there were also many great scholars that
were completely unknown to the general public, even to policy makers.
So, let me read you some names of people that were in the faculty when I
was a student, or earlier, and give me your impression about them. Let’s
start with Lester Telser.
ACH: At some point there was an “attack” by Hopkins on Chicago, and
offers went out to Carl Christ, Lester Telser, and myself. And the end
result was that Christ went to Hopkins, I stayed on, and Telser, I
believe, shifted from the Business School to the Department. That is
my recollection. I believe that this was in the mid-1960s.
SE: Tell me about Arcadius Kahan. (That was the only B I got as a graduate
student at Chicago!)
ACH: Arcadius was a wonderful person, a very careful economic historian.
His book on the economic history of Russia is a classic. He spent
time in a concentration camp. He was very close to D. Gale Johnson,
and D. Gale respected him greatly.
SE: Let’s talk about Margaret Reid. I didn’t get to meet her during my time
at Chicago. Of course, I saw her all the time, always carrying a pile of
books with statistical data (or so it seemed to me).
ACH: She was a regular and valued member of the Department. She taught
consumer economics. She was a key person with T.W. Schultz in
Iowa, and he, quite wisely, brought her and D. Gale with him when
he moved to Chicago. And Milton gave her a certain amount of
credit in his “permanent income hypothesis”. For a number of years,
she was a key person at Chicago, and she carried her own weight, so
to speak.
SE: What about George Tolley?
ACH: George was a good economist, a more than an occasional wheel in
the agricultural side. He complemented T.W. Schultz and D. Gale
Johnson. And he carved out for himself the field of urban econom-
ics; he had a very respectable reputation among people in that field.
He had a quiet personality.
SE: Let’s now close this section with Larry Sjaastad. And, before you say any-
thing, I want to make a relevant point: Larry was on 134 dissertation
committees. That is an amazing number. He didn’t publish much, but
just being on all those committees is a major contribution. In terms of

economics, and in particular on the merits of fixed exchange rates in a
disinflation process, I had great disagreements with him. But I am still
amazed by his role on all of those committees.
ACH: Yes, Larry’s advice was sought by many thesis writers. He was depend-
able and helpful. On his exchange rates views he was influenced by
Mundell and later by Harry Johnson. I always thought that the pre-
ferred exchange rate regime depended on the nature of the country’s
exports, or sources of foreign exchange. In Panama it’s the Canal,
and it’s a very stable flow. So having a super peg rate makes sense. In
Chile, with copper being the main export, it doesn’t make much
sense to have a rigid exchange rate.
9 Teaching
SE: Let’s talk about teaching now. When I arrived as a student in 1977, the
entering class was about 60. And the graduating class, those who got a
PhD, was 12 or 15. The 60 entering class was a very unusual number
for a top programme. The entering class at MIT, Harvard or Yale was
about 15, almost the same number as those who graduated at Chicago.
So let me start with the following question: How large was the entering
class when you arrived in Chicago as a student?
ACH: We had about 200 graduate students in economics when I was there
because we had all the people from the war. People from 41, 42, 43,
44 and 45, and we were all being financed by the GI Bill of Rights.
So, we got our $75 a month, and if you got a fellowship—it didn’t
matter which one—you only got another $25. So $75 from the gov-
ernment plus $25 from the University, $100. And that was enough
at the time, before too much inflation.
SE: And when you came back as faculty in 1953, how large was the enter-
ing class?
ACH: About 60, I am guessing.
SE: So the tradition of having a very large entering class—as the one I had—
went way back?
ACH: Right.
SE: You once told me that at Chicago there was the view that a Master’s
degree was an earned degree, a useful degree for professional economists
that would do good work in government. It was a genuine degree, it was
not a consolation prize for those who didn’t pass the core exam. That was
different from other top programmes.
ACH: Well, we made a bit of fun of Harvard and Yale because they practi-
cally guaranteed that every entrant would get a PhD. And we thought
that that was for the birds! On the other hand, I think that two-
thirds of the people who entered Chicago had the capacity to get the
PhD, and two-thirds of them actually got the PhD.
SE: Another characteristic of the teaching programme that made it special
was that during the first year every core course was taught twice, by dif-
ferent faculty. For instance, I took the Price Theory courses (301 and
302) twice: From Gary Becker (301 and 302), and from you (301) and
Sherwin Rosen (302). Same with macro. I took 331 and 332 from Bob
Lucas, and a different version of 331 from Don Patinkin, who was visit-
ing from the Hebrew University at the time, and 332 from Jacob Frenkel,
who taught a very thorough open economy version of macro, tailored
after Mundell’s course.
ACH: And, did you find it worthwhile taking the same course twice?
SE: Totally. I benefitted from different perspectives, different emphases, dif-
ferent points of view, different reading lists, different personalities. Was
this architecture, so to speak, of two versions of the core courses offered
every year, done on purpose? And if so, what was the reason?
ACH: I think that the idea of there being two came about because of the
glut that followed the Second World War. There would not have
been two 301s and two 302s if it hadn’t been for this glut. And when
the entrance of 100 students tapered off, we chose to have an enter-
ing class of 60, and that also justified teaching two of each core
course per year.
10 The “Chicago Boys”

SE: Now that we are talking about students, maybe this is the time to talk
about the “Chicago Boys”. A lot has been written, and there was a docu-
mentary. So, maybe we should cover aspects of the Chicago Boys that are
not that well known. So, let me start with some background: the
“Friedman and Pinochet” controversy was huge, and you were affected
by it. There was that “Inquiry Commission” by Chicago students—
mostly undergraduates, I think—that made a lot of noise, and also tar-
geted you. During that discussion, Friedman repeatedly said that he
didn’t know much about Chile, and that although he did meet for about
an hour with Pinochet, he never advised the government. He added that

his personal relations with Chilean students were almost nonexistent; he
sat in only one dissertation committee for a student from Chile. He later
got to know some of the Chicago Boys, but he never developed a close
relationship. On the other hand, some of the faculty embraced the Latin
Americans and became quite close with them. Gregg Lewis, Larry
Sjaastad, Harry Johnson, Bob Mundell and, of course, yourself. So, here
is my question: Was there ever any pushback by the faculty about having
so many Latin American students?
ACH: I don’t think so because they were so good. I never found any objec-
tions to our policy of admissions of Latinos and I was, in fact, very
proud of the fact that we really knew which were the good places,
and who were the good teachers that recommended students. To
mention some: Tucumán, two or three places in Buenos Aires, in
Santiago—both the Catholic and the national universities—and
ITAM in Mexico. We were very satisfied with the quality of the stu-
dents that we got.
SE: Many of your Latin students ended up holding positions of great respon-
sibility in Latin America. There has been at least one president—Nicolás
Ardito Barletta in Panama—plus many cabinet members and central
bank governors. I remember once when Argentina was about to name a
new central bank head. The outgoing person was a student of yours
(Pedro Pou) and the two candidates were also former students, “Chicago
Boys” (Roque Fernandez and Mario Blejer). How do you feel about this
whole thing?
ACH: Well, of course, it is a source of great pride and satisfaction. But, in
addition to the big names, a large number of our students worked as
professional economists, making sure that good policies were put in
place. In that regard, the whole area of project evaluation was very
important. And not only in Latin America, but also in places
like Canada.
SE: Did the other members of the faculty value the fact that many of the
Latin students went into government, instead of academia?
ACH: I think so.
SE: When I was a student at Chicago in the late 1970s and early 1980s
there were two groups of international students that dominated the for-
eign group: Latinos and Israelis.
ACH: Yes. But the Israeli group was much smaller.
SE: True, but the point I want to make is that there was an overlap there.
There were quite a few Argentine and Uruguayans that had done their
undergraduate work in Israel, either at Hebrew or at Tel Aviv. People

like Mario Blejer, Leo Leiderman, Pablo Spiller. So tell me a bit about
the Israel connection, in general. As I said, I took my first macro course
from Don Patinkin, who was visiting. At that time, many Israeli profes-
sors spent some time in the US where salaries were much higher. As the
chairman, did you look at Israel to attract visitors?
ACH: I think that the situation was very individual. Certainly, we didn’t
make a list of Israeli professors who were about to take sabbatical,
and discuss which ones we should try to get. It came in different
ways. Patinkin wanted to come to Chicago, and we were very happy
to have him, so we got him. Same thing with Yair Mundlak,
and others.
11 The Advantage of the Chicago Department

SE: Maybe we should end with a peroration of sorts, with a summary of
what you see as the great advantage of the Chicago Department during
the years we have been talking about. How would you summarise this
advantage?
ACH: A clear advantage was that, among the leading departments, it was
smaller; it was only half, or less, than Harvard and Yale. Hence, just
about every professor at Chicago was not a supernumerary, everyone
was important in his or her own field. The range that we had, from
Milton, Harry Johnson, Bob Mundell, T.W. Schultz, John U. Nef,
Jim Heckman. Everybody was a real leading person. Because of the
size, the number of people responsible for a field was small, and that
allowed us, for instance, to have Harry Johnson and Mundell in
international, at the same time. So, it was a great Department. Now,
our small size had to do with the fact that the University of Chicago
didn’t have the great mass of undergraduates that other schools had.
At the end, I think that we go back to my three points discussed
above. The Chicago School was about the connection between the-
ory and applied analysis. Always test the implications of the theory,
confront data with predictions, and do it again and again. Take both
theory and data seriously.
References
Edwards, S. (2010). Left Behind: Latin America and the False Promise of Populism.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Edwards, S. and A.C. Edwards (1991). Monetarism and Liberalization: The Chilean
Experiment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Friedman, M. and R.D. Friedman (1998). Two Lucky People: Memoirs. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Harberger, A.C. (1962). ‘The Incidence of the Corporation Income Tax’. Journal of
Political Economy, 70(3): 215–240.
Harberger, A.C. (1964). ‘The Measurement of Waste’. American Economic Review,
Papers and Proceedings, 54(3): 58–76.
Harberger, A.C. (1974). ‘The Case of the Three Numeraires’. Chapter 6 in
W. Sellekaerts (ed.) Economic Development & Planning: Essays in Honour of Jan
Tinbergen. London: Palgrave Macmillan 142–156.
Harberger, A.C. (2016). ‘Sense and Economics: An Oral History with Arnold
C. Harberger’. Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley, California. Available at: https://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/roho/ucb/
text/harberger_arnold_2016.pdf.
Samuelson, P.A. (1947). Foundations of Economic Analysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Stigler, G.J. (2003). Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
2
Economic History in Departments
of Economics: The Case of the University
of Chicago, 1892 to the Present
David Mitch
1 Introduction1
In the late nineteenth century various social sciences emerged as academic
disciplines distinct from either history or moral philosophy, both fields with
which they had previously been commonly intertwined. The timing and
terms on which this occurred differed between Europe and the United States
and across various social science disciplines. Nevertheless, by the turn of the
twentieth century such distinctive academic fields as history, sociology, politi-
cal science, and economics were in existence in both Europe and North
America, as evidenced by, among other considerations, the existence of dis-
tinct professional associations for each of these fields. There is by now a fairly
substantial historiography on these developments (Furner 1975; Ross 1991;
Haskell 1977 [2000]). However, this still leaves the matter of the border areas
between these disciplines and in particular the border areas between history
and the various social sciences. One area of contention in the emergence of
disciplinary specialisation in the late nineteenth century was the extent to
which particular social science disciplines should fully separate themselves
1
Editor’s note: This chapter is a reprint, with minor stylistic changes, of “Economic History in Departments
of Economics: The Case of the University of Chicago, 1892 to the Present”, by David Mitch, Social
Science History, summer 2011, volume 35, number 2, pp. 237–271. Reproduced with the kind permis-
sion of David Mitch and Cambridge University Press.
D. Mitch (*)
Department of Economics, UMBC, Baltimore, MD, USA
e-mail: mitch@umbc.edu
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 21

R. A. Cord (ed.), The Palgrave Companion to Chicago Economics,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01775-9_2
22 D. Mitch
from the study of history. Dorothy Ross (1991) suggests that this tension was
along a science-versus-history split, although Robert Adcock (2003) argues
that in the case of political science a more complex array of issues was in play.
The establishment of social science disciplines distinct from history would
seem to imply distinct boundaries with the field of history and leave little
place for border activity between them. Consistent with this point of view,
Ross (1991) suggests that, after the early twentieth century, interaction
between history and the newly emerged social science disciplines declined.
Although she acknowledges some interdisciplinary activity and the later emer-
gence in the twentieth century of the Social Science History Association
(SSHA), she dismisses the Association as involving a focus ‘almost exclusively
on exchanging methods’ without having ‘adequately addressed the positivist
stance that so often accompanies the methods’ (ibid.: 474). Moreover, her
account stops in the 1920s in part, she suggests, because by then the main
lines of disciplinary formation had been established (ibid.: 471).
More specifically, Ross’s account does not very fully consider the efforts at
interdisciplinary involvement between history and one or another of the
newly self-proclaimed social sciences that occurred during the twentieth cen-
tury. This chapter will focus on economic history. In this field there is ample
evidence of substantial twentieth-century activity between the disciplines of
history and economics, starting with the early twentieth-century Carnegie
Foundation studies on American economic history, continuing with the for-
mation of the Economic History Association (EHA) in the United States in
1941, and culminating with the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Economic
Sciences in 1993 to two economic historians. Yet the interdisciplinary field of
economic history raises two contrasting underlying tensions verging on dilem-
mas for its practitioners. On the one hand, what arguments could be made for
how the study of economic history could contribute to the advance of the
field of economics? In particular, how could the incorporation of the study of
history into the study of economics be reconciled with claims of the scientific
standing of economics? On the other hand, how could practitioners of eco-
nomic history retain their historical sensibilities about the character of eco-
nomics while also employing the tools of economics? This chapter will contend
that these tensions have recurred throughout the twentieth-century practice
of economic history but will also note that various approaches have been
taken in response. The approaches adopted in part reflected internalist intel-
lectual developments and the particular scholarly propensities of the people
involved. However, more general societal influences were also at work.
To obtain continuity and focus, this study will consider the case of the
Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. One obvious reason
2 Economic History in Departments of Economics: The Case… 23
for particular interest in the Chicago Department is that it was central to the
development of twentieth-century economics. In this regard, it is associated
with an ahistorical view of human nature and economic activity (Miller
1962). Yet it has also had a number of particularly prominent economic his-
torians on its faculty, including Robert William Fogel, a Nobel Laureate in
economics, as well as Deirdre N. McCloskey, who has served as President of
the SSHA. In addition, the University of Chicago was central in some of the
early developments regarding social science vis-à-vis historicism in the United
States (Ross 1991). Considering one case allows a more unified, continuous
view of developments. It will be suggested here that latent intellectual tenden-
cies in approaches taken at Chicago implied the persistence of interest in
economic history as well as periods of decline. Although developments at
Chicago were in a number of respects distinctive and cannot be taken as rep-
resentative of general US trends, the contrasts as well as similarities are instruc-
tive. The basic set of issues to be considered throughout are the contrasting
opportunities and conflicts in locating a historical dimension to economics as
a social science and how those applying social science methods to the study of
history could keep in view the historical dimensions of social science.
2 The Early Years, 1892–1906: Laughlin,

Veblen, Abbott, and Mitchell
The last quarter of the nineteenth century and first decade of the twentieth
century have been depicted in some accounts as a golden age for the study of
economic history in the United States (Gras 1920; Cole 1968; Sass 1978; Ross
1991). The involvement of historicist reformers such as Richard T. Ely in the
founding of the American Economic Association (AEA) and the recruitment
of the historical economist William Ashley to Harvard University from the
University of Toronto in 1892 to occupy the first chair devoted to economic
history in the United States gave an emphasis to historical perspective in the
economics profession in the US at this time.2 Ashley’s recruitment to Harvard
has been interpreted by some as an attempt by Charles Eliot to give ideological
balance to Harvard’s Department and to placate protectionist businesspeople
concerned about a free-trade bias in the Department (Church 1965: 69–71).
While some Historical School economists did indeed have a protectionist,
2
Ashley was born in England. He studied with Arnold Toynbee at Oxford University and recorded
Toynbee’s lectures on the Industrial Revolution. He subsequently taught at Oxford before moving to the
University of Toronto. Later, on leaving Harvard University, he spent the rest of his career in England.
24 D. Mitch
interventionist orientation, there were other economists with a distinctly his-

torical bent at Harvard who were more free trade and market oriented and who
employed history to defend traditional sound money practices and the role of
markets. These included Charles F. Dunbar, commonly seen as the founder of
Harvard’s Department, as well as Frank Taussig and J. Laurence Laughlin, who
would found Chicago’s Department of Political Economy in 1892 (Church
1965). Arthur H. Cole (1968: 570) notes that 10 of the 16 volumes published
in the Harvard Economic Studies series (which contained primarily Harvard
doctoral dissertations in economics) prior to 1918 could be classified as eco-
nomic history. Yale University followed suit in 1902 by establishing a chair in
economic history, and around 1904 Columbia University appointed Vladimir
Simkhovitch, who offered a survey of economic change in Europe (ibid.:
562–563). A further fillip to historical work occurred when the Carnegie
Foundation, at the urging of the statistician and reformer Carroll Wright,
funded historical studies of major sectors of the American economy through
1860 (Cole 1968). However, Cole suggests that these initial spurs to the study
of economic history in economics departments were dissipated by the onset of
the First World War. Ashley left Harvard in 1901, in part sensing an unwel-
come atmosphere for his historical approach (Church 1965).
The Carnegie Foundation started winding down its programme in
American economic history just a few years after it was started due to a lack
of support by its directors (Cole 1968). Also, Edwin Gay, an important pro-
moter of economic history at Harvard, was diverted by his recruitment to
found the Harvard Business School and then into journalism during the war
itself. A partial resurgence of efforts did occur in the later 1920s with the
short-lived Journal of Economic and Business History, founded by N.S.B. Gras,
then at Harvard, and with the funding of the Rockefeller Foundation, due in
part to a push by Gay, of the International Scientific Committee on Price
History (Cole and Crandall 1964). Still, Abbott Payson Usher et al. (1929)
reported to a European readership on the limited extent of the study of eco-
nomic history in the United States. Moreover, Steven Arthur Sass’s (1978: 51)
general assessment is that by 1940 the study of economic history in the United
States was ‘fragmented and detached from other disciplines’. He attributes
this fragmentation and isolation to the field’s resistance to the deductive anal-
ysis of the ascendant neoclassical mainstream in economics and to the loss of
contact with ‘larger historical contexts’, which could include scholars pursu-
ing heterodox, institutionalist approaches. In addition, the post-First World
War period saw the proliferation of various subfields and corresponding pro-
fessional organisations related to economic history, including business history,
industrial history, and agricultural history (Cole 1968; Sass 1978).
In contrast with the general waning of economic history in the United

States after its ascent in the 1890s, there was more stability and continuity in
its study at the University of Chicago during its first 50 years. Admittedly, the
diverse strands and the diverse possible directions potentially involved in
combining history and social science are evident from the very founding of
the Chicago Department. The founder of Chicago’s Department of Economics,
Laughlin, pursued the use of history in a conservative tradition, going back to
his Harvard mentor, Dunbar. Laughlin defended the importance of banking
and corporate interests in opposition to advocates of social reform and regula-
tion of market processes, such as Ely (Church 1965). His History of Bimetallism
(Laughlin 1886) decries the dangers of the easy money of the silver standard.
In keeping with this spirit, Laughlin recruited Adolph Casper Miller to teach
economic history at Chicago; Miller, in a visit to Germany early in his career,
attended lectures by leading representatives of the German Historical School.
He left for the University of California, Berkeley, around 1902 and subse-
quently became one of the first and longest-serving governors of the Federal
Reserve System.
However, Laughlin also brought with him from Cornell University to
Chicago the young Thorstein Veblen, who would become renowned, if not
notorious, for his iconoclasm and radical socialist propensities. Veblen also
employed historical perspectives but from a more anthropological perspective
and with a view to advocating radical social and economic reform. The puzzle
arises of why a pro-business, establishment type such as Laughlin was attracted
to Veblen. Joseph Dorfman (1934: 79–80) relates the story that he claims
Laughlin frequently told of how Veblen turned up out of the blue in Laughlin’s
office at Cornell in 1891, wearing a coonskin cap, and announced, ‘I am
Thorstein Veblen’; Laughlin was sufficiently impressed by Veblen’s earnestness
at this initial interview that he arranged a special grant to support his studies.
During his time at Cornell, Veblen published two notes on capital theory sup-
portive of Laughlin’s views (ibid.: 85–87). Although Veblen subsequently
went in a radically different direction, Laughlin seems to have continued to
respect his intellect and insights. Intellectual ability can apparently dominate
differences in ideology and practical political orientation.
Initially, neither the social reformist, anti-laissez-faire historical approach
associated with Ely nor the contrasting scientific neoclassical marginalist
approach were in evidence at Chicago. However, scholars who pursued social
reform and employed institutionalist approaches based on historical perspec-
tive did emerge among early graduate students in the Chicago Department,
in particular Edith Abbott, Sophonisba Breckinridge, and Wesley Clair
Mitchell.
26 D. Mitch
3 Wright and the Functional Approach

to Economic History, 1907–1947
One scholar during the first half of the twentieth century who enjoyed a very
long career at Chicago and who combined a number of the strands surveyed
above in his approach to economic history was Chester Wright, who joined the
Department of Economics in 1907. It was Wright who provided continuity to
the study of economic history at Chicago until the Second World War. Although
he taught economic history for some 40 years at Chicago and was known for his
textbook on American economic history, and although he was influenced by
Gay at Harvard, Wright’s basic training was in economics, not economic his-
tory. Wright’s main mentor at Harvard was Taussig, and Wright can be seen as
pursuing Taussig’s middle-ground ideological approach to the role of historical
perspective in the study of economics (Church 1965; Ross 1991). Like Taussig,
Wright employed historical perspective to address substantive policy issues in
economics; Wright (1941: ix) termed this ‘the functional approach to economic
history’.3 He did acknowledge the moral dimensions of economic history and
its contributions to the social reform tradition due to the field’s implications for
how people got their living and whether living standards had been improving
over time. However, Gras (1941: 865), in his review of Wright’s landmark text-
book on American economic history, states acerbically that Wright’s use of a
classical economic framework implied that Wright ‘has murdered to dissect: he
has found the bones but missed the life’. Gras (ibid.: 866) also notes of Wright’s
implicit social standards that the ‘objective is an increase in general production
and the general standard of living … What is important is a mass of Americans
with bathtubs and electric lights rather than a group of social and producing
classes operating under vigorous leadership and with an effective organisation’.
Wright did maintain a presence for economic history for some 40 years in
the Department. Under his watch, a second economic historian was hired,
John U. Nef, Jr. Economic history came to be incorporated in undergraduate
and doctoral graduation requirements.4 Roughly 20% of all PhDs completed
3
Wright (1941: ix) says in particular that his approach is ‘that of the economist whose immediate and
primary function is to study the production and distribution of wealth with the objective of learning how
the nation’s economic progress can be promoted and its standard of living advanced’.
4
The University of Chicago Announcements for the academic year 1920–1921 (p. 21) state for the first time
that one requirement for the PhD in economics is ‘intelligent acquaintance’ with English and American
economic history. In the Announcements for 1925–1926 (p. 52), this changes to the equivalent of an under-
graduate course in American economic history; in the Announcements for 1931–1932 (p. 21), this changes
to the equivalent of an undergraduate course in both American and European economic history. This
requirement or a similar requirement was listed in the Announcements up through the 1953–1954 academic
year. A one-quarter graduate course requirement in economic history for the PhD was listed in the
Announcements for the academic years between 1962–1963 and 1982–1983. Cole (1968: 574) claims that
most US doctoral programmes in economics in the 1920s had some sort of economic history requirement.
during Wright’s tenure were in the field of economic history (see Table 2.1).
Some students completing doctoral dissertations under his supervision, such
as Harold A. Innis and Homer Hoyt, did go on to distinguished careers.
However, by the time of his retirement in the mid-1940s, developments in
both economics and economic history were passing by Wright. By 1940,
neoclassical marginalism had established itself as the mainstream in econom-
ics, while a separate institutionalist tradition based in part on historical per-
spective was in evidence at centres such as the University of Wisconsin. In
the late 1930s, Earl J. Hamilton and others were pushing for the formation
of the EHA. Wright was not centrally involved with these developments.
Usher et al.’s 1929 survey of centres for economic history in the United
States makes no mention of Chicago. Also, George Rogers Taylor’s (1972
[2002]) memoir of his graduate days at Chicago indicates that Wright’s
course on trusts was more engaging than his course on American economic
history.
4 Knight and Nef: Contrasting Views

on the Role of Economic History
The period 1940–1960 is generally seen as one of resurgence and consolida-
tion of the field of economic history in the United States (Cole 1968; Sass
1978; de Rouvray 2004). It is bounded at its outset by the founding of the
EHA in 1940 and at its terminus by the publication of W.W. Rostow’s (1960)
Stages of Economic Growth as well as the birth of the cliometric movement.
The first two events underscore two general factors underlying the rise of eco-
nomic history during this period. The first is the emergence of clear institu-
tional support for economic history. The rise of the EHA reflects the growing
academic presence of economic history. In addition, the Rockefeller
Foundation started funding for the Committee on Research in Economic
History in the 1940s (Cole 1968; Sass 1978; de Rouvray 2004). The second
factor is that interest in economic history in the 1950s was sustained by the
emerging interest in problems of economic growth and development in the
presence of Cold War competition for the allegiances of the nations arising
from former European colonies.
At the University of Chicago during these decades, however, compared
with national trends, economic history was in a state of transition due, first,
to the anticipated retirement of Wright in the mid-1940s and, second, to the
problematic career of his replacement, Hamilton. The records and
28 D. Mitch
Table 2.1 Doctoral dissertations in economic history relative to doctoral dissertations

in economics at the University of Chicago, 1892–2006
Economic history Economic history narrow Total doctoral
broad definition definition dissertations in
Time period N N economics
1892–1920 12 32.40 8 21.60 37
1921–1930 17 34.00 10 20.00 50
1931–1940 9 23.70 7 18.40 38
1941–1950 7 10.10 5 7.20 69
1951–1960 18 12.50 16 11.10 144
1961–1962 5 17.86 4 14.30 28
[23.80 [19.00 [21
corrected] corrected] corrected]
1963–1975 30 11.95 22 8.80 251
[12.90 [9.50 [232
corrected] corrected] corrected]
1976–1980 15 12.70 10 8.50 118
1981–1990 24 10.50 17 7.40 229
1991–2000 40 12.90 14 4.50 311
2001–2006 20 12.40 7 4.30 161
1892–2006 197 13.70 120 8.30 1,436
Note: The list of dissertations in economic history was obtained by starting with the list
generated by searching in ProQuest, digital dissertations for institution, University of
Chicago, and subject of dissertation, economic history. Dissertations whose clear focus
was the history of economic thought were excluded. Additional titles were added by
going to the University of Chicago Library catalogue and searching through
dissertations completed in the Department of Economics (or Dept. of Economics or
Department of Political Economy). A dissertation was classified as being in economic
history if any of the following criteria was met: (a) has history in title, (b) covers time
span of more than 25 years, or (c) takes up an episode that occurred more than 25 years
before the dissertation was submitted. Even with these criteria, some basic judgement
calls were made in deciding whether a substantial focus was on economic history. The
broad category included both dissertations in the narrow category and dissertations
completed in departments other than economics as well as dissertations completed in
economics for which, though listed by digital dissertations as having economic history
as the subject, the focus on economic history was more secondary. The narrow category
included only dissertations submitted to the Department of Economics and whose
primary focus, in my judgement, was on economic history. Judgement calls were still
involved, and there may well have been economic history dissertations excluded,
especially those completed in other departments, such as history, while some
dissertations included even in the narrow category may not, in the judgement of the
dissertation author, have been in economic history. The figures for total doctoral
dissertations in economics were obtained by searching in ProQuest, digital dissertations
for institution, University of Chicago, and subject of dissertation, economics. The
corrections reported for these figures for the years 1961–1975 were obtained by using
the University of Chicago Library online catalogue to count the total number of
doctoral dissertations completed in the Department of Economics
correspondence that remain from the deliberations over finding a replace-

ment for Wright in the 1940s indicate that considerable importance was
attached to the field of economic history. Further evidence of this is that
efforts were actually made to hire two senior economic historians at this
time, Hamilton and Innis, in addition to Nef, who was already on the
Department’s faculty. As Department Chair Simeon E. Leland put it in a
1945 letter to Hamilton:
We have pinned our goal to a star. Our choice is like that of a child—instead of
selecting the apple or the orange, he prefers both. So do we. What would be
better than a combination of Hamilton and Innis or Innis and Hamilton to
work with Nef in Economic History and all the rest of us on everything else!5
The Chicago Economics Department at this time had only about 15 ten-
ured or tenure-track faculty members (the 1944–1945 University of Chicago
Announcements lists 14 people with the rank of assistant professor or higher—
that is excluding instructors, lecturers, and affiliate faculty—and only 10 full
professors). Thus the hiring of three specialist economic historians would have
implied that 18% (3 of 16) of the Department’s regular faculty positions, and
25% (3 of 12) of its full professor slots, were occupied by economic histori-
ans. In actuality, only Hamilton was recruited in 1947, implying, for the
academic year 1947–1948, that 10% (2 of 20) of the Department’s faculty at
the rank of assistant professor or higher were devoted to economic history but
also 25% (2 of 8) of its full professors.
The Department’s choice of Innis and Hamilton features two fundamen-
tally contrasting approaches to how economic history relates to the discipline
of economics, and this reflected the contrasting views of Nef and Frank
Knight on this issue. Furthermore, the issue is one that has recurred in relat-
ing economic history to the study of economics. Innis, Nef ’s choice, increas-
ingly pursued in his work a transcendent, integrative role for economic
history with a limited scope for the application of economic theory. In con-
trast, Hamilton, Knight’s choice, employed the use of economic concepts
and extensive quantification in the study of long-run historical issues of
interest to economists. Each approach posed dilemmas for incorporating
economic history into the study of economics, and thus the history of how
each played out at Chicago is worth further consideration here. The Nef-
Innis approach would seem to squeeze out the role of economic theory, while
the Hamilton-Knight approach subordinated history to theory and raised
5
Leland to Hamilton, 10 August 1945, Earl J. Hamilton Papers, Duke University, Box 2.
30 D. Mitch
issues as to whether there was a significant historical dimension to the study

of economics.
Furthermore, the views of Knight in these deliberations are of general sig-
nificance, since Ross has argued that he was pivotal in weakening the role of
history within the US economics profession. Ross’s (1991: 420) subsection on
Knight in her history of American social science bears the title “Frank Knight
and the Final Turn Against History”. Ross notes that Knight was aware of the
limitations of economics as a positivistic science and that he allowed scope for
the role of history in the study of economics. But she argues that he ultimately
viewed historical knowledge as of a lower form than that based on deductive
economic theory:
Knight thus stands at a fundamental turning point in political economy. He

first expressed the position taken by Mill and developed in America from the
time of Francis A. Walker onward, that consigned all the wider human pur-
poses, and the changing social and institutional world in which they acted, to a
vaguely delineated realm of history, exterior to the realm of market rationality.
Under the pressure of profound disillusionment with that historical world,
however, Knight turned and began to colonise it for market analysis. In the
work of his students, history as anything other than the utility-maximising
behaviour of individuals has disappeared (ibid.: 427).
An important issue for further consideration, then, is whether Knight’s

stance regarding economic history weakened the role of history as much as
Ross suggests.
The approach to economic history taken by Innis and Nef harks back to
late nineteenth-century American historicist approaches that integrated his-
tory, economics, and sociology (see Ross 1991: Chapter 4 and the discussion
below). Innis, as noted above, was a prominent Chicago product who finished
his thesis on the economic impact of the Canadian Pacific Railway under
Wright’s supervision in 1920 and then took a position at Toronto, where he
did important work on the staples approach to export-led growth as it applied
to Canada.6 However, his work branched out from economic history to
encompass interactions between economic and cultural change, as particu-
larly evidenced in his studies of the cultural consequences of changes in com-
munications media (Innis 1950, 1951 [1991]). A protégé of Innis at Toronto
was Marshall McLuhan, of the medium-is-the-message fame, and Innis
6
Parallels and contrasts between Innis’s work on the economic impact of the Canadian Pacific and Fogel’s
work on the Union Pacific are developed in Peter George’s Foreword to Innis’s (1923 [1971]) A History
of the Canadian Pacific Railway.
himself has been acknowledged as an important influence on the develop-

ment of modern media studies.7 Thus Innis’s work came to highlight the
interaction between economic and noneconomic factors, and Innis can be
seen as an interdisciplinary generalist rather than a specialist.
Nef, Innis’s advocate in the 1940s, did not assume a position on the faculty
at Chicago until 1929, almost a decade after Innis had left the University.
Although not nearly as well remembered as Knight, Nef was quite influential
both at Chicago, as founder of the Committee on Social Thought (which cur-
rently bears his name), and in the field of economic history. His father had
founded Chicago’s Department of Chemistry. Nef completed a doctoral dis-
sertation, which then became his first book (Nef 1932), on the rise of the
British coal industry, under the direction of R.H. Tawney in London, though
the degree was officially awarded by the Robert Brookings Graduate School in
Washington, D.C. While the dissertation and the first book were on a prosaic,
albeit standard, topic in economic history, Nef ’s subsequent topics took up
far more wide-ranging topics concerning the role of government, war, and
culture in economic affairs. His attraction to the study of history seems to
have been the potential it offered for pursuing connections among diverse
areas of human endeavour, including the arts, literature, and science as well as
economics.
Nef (1973: 189) indicates in his autobiography that his choice of the early
modern British coal industry for his dissertation was guided by Charles
Homer Haskins’s suggestion in a Harvard seminar that ‘unlike a synthesis, a
monograph, if done thoroughly and well, would have a long life expectancy’.
However, in the process of establishing the Committee on Social Thought in
the early 1940s, Nef (ibid.: 191) found that his scholarly interests had shifted
from ‘seeking to illuminate a special subject as had been the original object of
the monograph on the coal industry’ to ‘exploring interrelations between
many branches of history that were being erected in special and separate fields
of scholarly inquiry. The object was to discover and reveal the inter-dependence
between the various sides of human endeavour and thus contribute to the
unification of knowledge’.
Nef (ibid.: 194) also indicates that his artistic proclivities drew him to take
a more synthetic approach to history:
The attempt to establish historical interrelationships is inviting to the artistic

mind. The whole idea of such interrelationships is artificial. In one sense they
are not history at all. But if they are successfully established by art, nourished
7
See the introduction by Paul Heyer and David Crowley in Innis (1951 [1991]: xxi–xxv).
32 D. Mitch
with accurately handled materials, they can help us to understand the broad
course history has taken better than factual accounts of particular aspects. Thus
the artistically-oriented historian should be capable of creating a world corre-
sponding to the realities of past evolution, just as great painting or a great con-
certo corresponds to realities which are recognised by others only because the
artist reveals them.
Nef acknowledged that economic history on the surface might seem to be

an arbitrary starting point for exploring interrelationships among diverse
human endeavours. Although perhaps not to the same degree as his mentor,
Tawney, it was the potential moral dimension of economic history that Nef
(ibid.: 194–195) saw as justifying it as a starting point for his project:
Some may ask how one could hope to draw history into the realm of beauty and
delight, when history is so vile? … Historians…dealt with wars and other struggles
for power, which are by their nature, evil and messy, and therefore revolting to the
finest human aspirations. The new materials now available for discovering interre-
lationships, and through these for reexamining the nature of causation, can bring
less base motives—for instance the search for the beautiful and the good—into
new constructions as neglected factors in history … If a commitment to order and
elegance [inspired by the arts] could enable the historian to reach towards perma-
nence, the same is true of a commitment to moral principles, to a hierarchy of ethi-
cal values, which inevitably guides the greatest artists in their work. Virtue therefore
would be a stabilising force, like beauty, in any artistic historical construction.
In a 1960 memo to a Rockefeller Foundation programme officer, Nef sum-

marised the development of his vision of economic history away from an
emphasis on technology and industrial enterprise to one on spiritual values,
in particular those of Christianity:
I used to suppose that the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in
Europe were an important turning point by virtue of the tangible changes that
took place, above all in Great Britain, in industrial growth, industrial technol-
ogy and the forms of industrial enterprise. I no longer think that these tangible
changes were of decisive importance. But I have come to see that changes in
men’s minds and hearts which occurred at this very time were of decisive impor-
tance and have a bearing on the whole future of the industrial civilisation which
these changes helped to bring into being. More and more I have come to see
that the origins of these changes go back to Christianity.8
8
“Memo to Mr. John Greedneldt, Rockefeller Foundation, 26 April 1960”, John U. Nef, Jr. Papers,
University of Chicago Library: Box 36, Folder 15.
Tawney, not surprisingly, since he was his dissertation mentor, exerted a

considerable subsequent influence on Nef. Tawney visited Chicago on three
occasions (during the springs of 1939, 1941, and 1948 (Terrill 1973: 86, 87,
91)), and Nef seems to have been instrumental in setting up these invitations
and arrangements. Nef also attempted, unsuccessfully, to recruit Tawney for a
permanent position at Chicago. Thus Tawney’s more systematically exposited
work may provide further insights into Nef ’s outlook and the integrative tra-
dition that Nef represented.9
Tawney was influenced by Christian socialism, and his approach to eco-
nomic and social history was informed by his moral values and his sense of
social responsibility to the individual. He distanced himself from Marxism
but was influential in English socialist and labour circles. Tawney’s approach
to history was thus informed by his general moral framework, his belief in the
importance of ideas and values, and his quest for suitable moral ideals, in
particular for a sense of lost human fellowship that past societies possessed
(Tawney 1972: 9, 75). For Tawney, economic history provided contact with
the humbler elements of society, and he thought that appreciating the story of
their exploitation and alienation was key to restoring spiritual health to soci-
ety at large. Tawney (1912: xxiii) believed that the study of economic history
would reveal suitable moral ideals for society at large by revealing how these
ideals had been lost in the past:
The supreme interest of economic history lies, it seems to me, in the clue it
offers to the development of those dimly conceived presuppositions as to social
expediency which influence the actions not only of statesmen, but of humble
individuals and classes, and influence, perhaps most decisively those who are
least conscious of any theoretical bias.
Nef ’s quest, less focused than Tawney’s, did contain a moral dimension but
ranged broadly over culture and civilisation generally. Nef thus employed his-
tory as a springboard for the general study of culture.
Nef’s own approach to integrating economic history with history and culture
in general was not particularly systematic; his books after his first and arguably
most important contribution, on the British coal industry, tend to ramble; and
the Committee on Social Thought at Chicago continues to be sui generis.
9
Interestingly, Nef admired Friedrich von Hayek as well as Tawney and played a pivotal role in recruiting
Hayek to a chair at Chicago with the Committee on Social Thought, which Hayek occupied for over a
decade. Nef, a New Deal Democrat politically, appears to have been attracted to Hayek not because of
his libertarian ideology but because of his appreciation for the moral implications of social science
scholarship.
Another random document with
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§. 11. Of the Worms of the Spindle.
I promised at the latter end of Numb. 2. to give a more copious
account than there I did of making Worms, when I came to exercise
upon Printing-Press Spindles; and being now arrived to it, I shall
here make good my promise.
¶. 1. The Worms for Printing-Press Spindles must be projected

with such a declivity, as that they may come down at an
assigned progress of the Bar.
The assigned progress may be various, and yet the Spindle do its
office: For if the Cheeks of the Press stand wide assunder, the
sweep or progress of the same Bar will be greater than if they stand
nearer together.
It is confirm’d upon good consideration and Reason as well as
constant experience, that in a whole Revolution of the Spindle, in the
Nut, the Toe does and ought to come down two Inches and an half;
but the Spindle in work seldom makes above one quarter of a
Revolution at one Pull, in which sweep it comes down but half an
Inch and half a quarter of an Inch; and the reason to be given for this
coming down, is the squeezing of the several parts in the Press,
subject to squeeze between the Mortesses of the Winter and the
Mortesses the Head works in; and every Joynt between these are
subject to squeeze by the force of a Pull. As first, The Winter may
squeeze down into its Mortess one third part of the thickness of a
Scabbord. (Allowing a Scabbord to be half a Nomparel thick.)
Secondly, The Ribs squeeze closer to the Winter one Scabbord.
Thirdly, The Iron-Ribs to the Wooden Ribs one Scabbord. Fourthly,
The Cramp-Irons to the Planck of the Coffin one Scabbord. Fifthly,
The Planck it self half a Scabbord. Sixthly, The Stone to the Planck
one Scabbord. Seventhly, The Form to the Stone half a Scabbord.
Eighthly, The Justifyers in the Mortess of the Head three Scabbords.
Ninthly, The Nut in the Head one Scabbord. Tenthly, The Paper,
Tympans and Blankets two Scabbords. Eleventhly, Play for the Irons
of the Tympans four Scabbords. Altogether make fifteen Scabbords
and one third part of a Scabbord thick, which (as aforesaid) by
allowing two Scabbords to make a Nomparel, and as I shewed in
Vol. 2. Numb. 2. §. 2. One hundred and fifty Nomparels to make one
Foot, gives twelve and an half Nomparels for an Inch, and
consequently twenty five Scabbords for an Inch; so by proportion,
fifteen Scabbords and one third part of a Scabbord, gives five eighth
parts of an Inch, and a very small matter more, which is just so much
as the Toe of the Spindle comes down in a quarter of a Revolution.
This is the Reason that the coming down of the Toe ought to be just
thus much; for should it be less, the natural Spring that all these
Joynts have, when they are unsqueez’d, would mount the Irons of
the Tympans so high, that it would be troublesom and tedious for the
Press-man to Run them under the Plattin, unless the Cheeks stood
wider assunder, and consequently every sweep of the Bar in a Pull
exceed a quarter of a Revolution, which would be both laborious for
the Press-man, and would hinder his usual riddance of Work.
I shew’d in Numb. 2. fol. 31, 32, 33, 34, 35. the manner of making a
Screw in general; but assigned it no particular Rise; which for the
aforesaid reason, these Printing-Press Screws are strictly bound to
have: Therefore its assigned Rise being two Inches and an half in a
Revolution, This measure must be set off upon the Cilindrick Shank,
from the top towards the Cube of the Spindle, on any part of the
Cilinder, and there make a small mark with a fine Prick-Punch, and
in an exact Perpendicular to this mark make another small mark on
the top of the Cilinder, and laying a straight Ruler on these two
marks, draw a straight line through them, and continue that line
almost as low as the Cube of the Spindle. Then devide that portion
of the straight line contained between the two marks into eight equal
parts, and set off those equal parts from the two Inch and half mark
upwards, and then downwards in the line so oft as you can: Devide
also the Circumference of the Shank of the Cilinder into eight equal
parts, and draw straight lines through each devision, parallel to the
first upright line; and describe the Screw as you were directed in the
afore-quoted place; so will you find that the revolution of every line
so carried on about the Shank of the Cilinder, will be just two Inches
and an half off the top of the Shank: which measure and manner of
working may be continued downward to within an Inch and an half of
the Cube of the Spindle. This is the Rule and Measure that ought to
be observ’d for ordinary Presses: But if for some by-reasons the
aforesaid Measure of two Inches and an half must be varied, then
the varied Measure must be set off from the top of the Cilinder, and
working with that varied Measure as hath been directed, the Toe of
the Spindle will come down lower in a revolution if the varied
Measure be longer, or not so low if the varied Measure be shorter.
There is a Notion vulgarly accepted among Workmen, that the
Spindle will Rise more or less for the number of Worms winding
about the Cilinder; for they think, or at least by tradition are taught to
say, that a Three-Worm’d Spindle comes faster and lower down than
a four-Worm’d Spindle: But the opinion is false; for if a Spindle were
made but with a Single-Worm, and should have this Measure, viz.
Two Inches and an half set off from the top, and a Worm cut to make
a Revolution to this Measure, it would come down just as fast, and
as low, as if there were two, three, four, five or six Worms, &c. cut in
the same Measure: For indeed, the numbers of Worms are only
made to preserve the Worms of the Spindle and Nut from wearing
each other out the faster; for if the whole stress of a Pull should bear
against the Sholder of a single Worm, it would wear and shake in the
Nut sooner by half than if the stress should be borne by the Sholders
of two Worms; and so proportionably for three, four, five Worms, &c.
But the reason why four Worms are generally made upon the
Spindle, is because the Diameters of the Spindle are generally of
this propos’d size; and therefore a convenient strength of Mettal may
be had on this size for four Worms; But should the Diameter of the
Spindle be smaller, as they sometimes are when the Press is
designed for small Work, only three Worms will be a properer
number than four; because when the Diameter is small, the
thickness of the Worms would also prove small, and by the stress of
a Pull would be more subject to break or tear the Worms either of the
Spindle or Nut.
And thus I hope I have performed the promise here I made at the
latter end of Numb. 2. Whither I refer you for the breadth, and reason
of the breadth of the Worm.
¶. 13. Of the Bar marked B in Plate 8.
This Bar is Iron, containing in length about two Foot eight Inches and
an half, from a to b, and its greatest thickness, except the Sholder,
an Inch and a quarter; The end a hath a Male-Screw about an Inch
Diameter and an Inch long, to which a Nut with a Female-Screw in it
as at C is fitted. The Iron Nut in which this Female-Screw is made,
must be very strong, viz. at least an Inch thick, and an Inch and three
quarters in Diameter; in two opposite sides of it is made two Ears,
which must also be very strong, because they must with heavy blows
be knock’t upon to draw the Sholder of the square shank on the Bar,
when the square Pin is in the Eye of the Spindle close and steddy up
to the Cube on the Spindle. The square Pin of the Bar marked c is
made to fit just into the Eye, through the middle of the Cube of the
Spindle, on the hither end of this square Pin is made a Sholder or
stop to this square Pin, as at d. This Sholder must be Filed exactly
Flat on all its four insides, that they may be drawn close and tight up
to any flat side of the Cube on the Spindle; It is two Inches square,
that it may be drawn the firmer, and stop the steddyer against any of
the flat sides of the said Cube, when it is hard drawn by the strength
of the Female-Screw in the aforesaid Nut at C. The thickness from d
to e of this Sholder is about three quarters of an Inch, and is Bevil’d
off towards the Handle of the Bar with a small Molding.
The substance of this Bar, as aforesaid, is about an Inch and a
quarter; but its Corners are all the way slatted down till within five
Inches of the end: And from these five Inches to the end, it is taper’d
away, that the Wooden-Handle may be the stronger forced and
fastned upon it.
About four Inches off the Sholder, the Bar is bowed beyond a right
Angle, yet not with an Angle, but a Bow, which therefore lies ready to
the Press-man’s Hand, that he may Catch at it to draw the Wooden-
Handle of the Bar within his reach.
This Wooden-Handle with long Working grows oft loose; but then it is
with hard blows on the end of it forced on again, which oft splits the
Wooden-Handle and loosens the square Pin at the other end of the
Bar, in the Eye of the Spindle: To remedy which inconvenience, I
used this Help, viz. To weld a piece of a Curtain-Rod as long as the
Wooden-Handle of the Bar, to the end of the Iron Bar, and made a
Male-screw at the other end with a Female-screw to fit it; Then I
bored an hole quite through the Wooden-Handle, and Turn’d the
very end of the Wooden-Handle with a small hollow in it flat at the
bottom, and deep enough to bury the Iron-Nut on the end of the
Curtain-Rod, and when this Curtain-Rod was put through the Hollow
in the Wooden-Handle and Screwed fast to it at the end, it kept the
Wooden-Handle, from flying off; Or if it loosened, by twisting the Nut
once or twice more about, it was fastned again.
¶. 14. Of the Hose, Garter, and Hose-Hooks.
The Hose are the upright Irons in Plate 8. at a a, They are about
three quarters of an Inch square, both their ends have Male-screws
on them; The lower end is fitted into a square Hole made at the
parting of the Hose-Hooks, which by a square Nut with a Female-
screw in it, is Screwed tight up to them; Their upper ends are let into
square Holes made at the ends of the Garter, and by Nuts with
Female-Screws in them, and Ears to turn them about as at l l are
drawn up higher, if the Plattin-Cords are too loose; or else let down
lower if they are too tight: These upper Screws are called the Hose-
Screws.
The Garter (but more properly the Coller) marked b b, is the round
Hoop incompassing the flat Groove or Neck in the Shank of the
Spindle at e e; This round Hoop is made of two half-round Hoops,
having in a Diametrical-line without the Hoop square Irons of the
same piece proceeding from them, and standing out as far as g g,
These Irons are so let into each other, that they comply and run
Range with the square Sholders at both ends, wherein square Holes
are made at the ends of the Hose. They are Screwed together with
two small Screws, as at h h.
The four Hose-Hooks are marked i i i i, They proceed from two
Branches of an Iron Hoop at k encompassing the lower end of the
Spindle, on either Corner of the Branch, and have notches filled in
their outer-sides as in the Figure, which notches are to contain
several Turns of Whip-cord in each notch, which Whip-cord being
also fastned to the Hooks on the Plattin, holds the Plattin tight to the
Hooks of the Hose.
¶. 15. Of the Ribs, and Cramp-Irons.
The Ribs are delineated in Plate 8. at E, they are made of four

square Irons the length of the Wooden-Ribs and End-Rails, viz. four
Foot five Inches long, and three quarters of an Inch square, only one
end is batter’d to about a quarter of an Inch thick, and about two
Inches and an half broad, in which battering four or five holes are
Punch’t for the nailing it down to the Hind-Rail of the Wooden-Ribs.
The Fore-end is also batter’d down as the Hind-end, but bound
downwards to a square, that it may be nailed down on the outer-side
of the Fore-Rail of the Wooden-Ribs.
Into the bottom of these Ribs, within nine Inches of the middle, on
either side is made two Female-Duftails about three quarters of an
Inch broad, and half a quarter of an Inch thick, which Female-Duftails
have Male-Duftails as at a a a a fitted stiff into them, about an Inch
and three quarters long; and these Male-Duftails have an hole
punched at either end, that when they are fitted into the Female-
Duftails in the Ribs, they may in these Holes be Nailed down the
firmer to the Wooden-Ribs.
Plate 9.
These Ribs are to be between the upper and the under-side exactly
of an equal thickness, and both to lye exactly Horizontal in straight
lines; For irregularities will both Mount and Sink the Cramp-Irons,
and make them Run rumbling upon the Ribs.
The upper-sides of these Ribs must be purely Smooth-fil’d and
Pollish’d, and the edges a little Bevil’d roundish away, that they may
be somewhat Arching at the top; because then the Cramp-Irons Run
more easily and ticklishly over them.
The Cramp-Irons are marked F in Plate 8. They are an Inch and an
half long besides the Battering down at both ends as the Ribs were;
They have three holes Punched in each Battering down, to Nail them
to the Planck of the Coffin; They are about half an Inch deep, and
one quarter and an half thick; their upper-sides are smoothed and
rounded away as the Ribs.
¶. 16. Of the Spindle for the Rounce, described in Plate 9. at a.
The Axis or Spindle is a straight Bar of Iron about three quarters of

an Inch square, and is about three Inches longer than the whole
breadth of the Frame of the Ribs, viz. two Foot two Inches: The
farther end of it is Filed to a round Pin (as at a) three quarters of an
Inch long, and three quarters of an Inch in Diameter; the hither end is
filed away to such another round Pin, but is two Inches and a quarter
long (as at b); at an Inch and a quarter from this end is Filed a
Square Pin three quarters of an Inch long, and within half an Inch of
the end is Filed another round Pin, which hath another Male-Screw
on it, to which is fitted a square Iron Nut with a Female-Screw in it.
On the Square Pin is fitted a Winch somewhat in form like a Jack-
winch, but much stronger; the Eye of which is fitted upon the Square
aforesaid, and Screwed up tight with a Female-Screw. On the
straight Shank of this Winch is fitted the Rounce, marked e.
The round ends of this Axis are hung up in two Iron-Sockets (as at c
c) fastned with Nails (but more properly with Screws) on the outside
the Wooden Frame of the Ribs.
The Girt-Barrel marked d is Turned of a Piece of Maple or Alder-
wood, of such a length, that it may play easily between the two
Wooden Ribs; and of such a diameter, that in one revolution of it,
such a length of Girt may wind about it as shall be equal to half the
length contained between the fore-end Iron of the Tympan, and the
inside of the Rail of the Inner-Tympan; because two Revolutions of
this Barrel must move the Carriage this length of space.
This Barrel is fitted and fastned upon the Iron Axis, at such a
distance from either end, that it may move round between the
Wooden Ribs aforesaid.
¶. 17. Of the Press-Stone.
The Press-Stone should be Marble, though sometimes Master

Printers make shift with Purbeck, either because they can buy them
cheaper, or else because they can neither distinguish them by their
appearance, or know their different worths.
Its thickness must be all the way throughout equal, and ought to be
within one half quarter of an Inch the depth of the inside of the
Coffin; because the matter it is Bedded in will raise it high enough.
Its length and breadth must be about half an Inch less than the
length and breadth of the inside of the Coffin: Because Justifiers of
Wood, the length of every side, and almost the depth of the Stone,
must be thrust between the insides of the Coffin and the outsides of
the Stone, to Wedge it tight and steddy in its place, after the Press-
man has Bedded it. Its upper-side, or Face must be exactly straight
and smooth.
I have given you this description of the Press-Stone, because they
are thus generally used in all Printing-Houses: But I have had so
much trouble, charge and vexation with the often breaking of Stones,
either through the carelesness or unskilfulness (or both) of Press-
men, that necessity compell’d me to consider how I might leave them
off; and now by long experience I have found, that a piece of
Lignum-vitæ of the same size, and truly wrought, performs the office
of a Stone in all respects as well as a Stone, and eases my mind, of
the trouble, charge and vexation aforesaid, though the first cost of it
be greater.
¶. 18. Of the Plattin marked d in Plate 9.
The Plattin is commonly made of Beechen-Planck, two Inches and

an half thick, its length about fourteen Inches, and its breadth about
nine Inches. Its sides are Tryed Square, and the Face or under-side
of the Plattin Plained exactly straight and smooth. Near the four
Corners on the upper-side, it hath four Iron Hooks as at a a a a,
whose Shanks are Wormed in.
In the middle of the upper-side is let in and fastned an Iron Plate
called the Plattin-Plate, as b b b b, a quarter of an Inch thick, six
Inches long, and four Inches broad; in the middle of this Plate is
made a square Iron Frame about half an Inch high, and half an Inch
broad, as at c. Into this square Frame is fitted the Stud of the Plattin
Pan, so as it may stand steddy, and yet to be taken out and put in as
occasion may require.
The Stud marked d, is about an Inch thick, and then spreads wider
and wider to the top (at e e e e) of it, till it becomes about two Inches
and an half wide; and the sides of this spreading being but about half
a quarter of an Inch thick makes the Pan. In the middle of the bottom
of this Pan is a small Center hole Punch’d for the Toe of the Spindle
to work in.
¶. 19. Of the Points and Point-Screws.
The Points are made of Iron Plates about the thickness of a Queen
Elizabeth Shilling: It is delineated at e in Plate 9. which is sufficient to
shew the shape of it, at the end of this Plate, as at a, stands upright
the Point. This Point is made of a piece of small Wyer about a
quarter and half quarter of an Inch high, and hath its lower end Filed
away to a small Shank about twice the length of the thickness of the
Plate; so that a Sholder may remain. This small Shank is fitted into a
small Hole made near the end of the Plate, and Revetted on the
other side, as was taught Numb. 2. Fol. 24. At the other end of the
Plate is filed a long square notch in the Plate as at b c quarter and
half quarter Inch wide, to receive the square shank of the Point-
Screws.
The Point-Screw marked f is made of Iron; It hath a thin Head about
an Inch square, And a square Shank just under the Head, an Inch
deep, and almost quarter and half quarter Inch square, that the
square Notch in the hinder end of the Plate may slide on it from end
to end of the Notch; Under this square Shank is a round Pin filed
with a Male-Screw upon it, to which is fitted a Nut with a Female-
Screw in it, and Ears on its outside to twist about, and draw the Head
of the Shank close down to the Tympan, and so hold the Point-Plate
fast in its Place.
¶. 20. Of the Hammer, described at h, and Sheeps-Foot

described at i in Plate 9.
The Hammer is a common Hammer about a quarter of a Pound

weight; It hath no Claws but a Pen, which stands the Press-man
instead when the Chase proves so big, that he is forced to use small
Quoins.
The Figure of the Sheeps-Foot is description sufficient. Its use is to
nail and un-nail the Balls.
The Sheeps-Foot is all made of Iron, with an Hammer-head at one
end, to drive the Ball-Nails into the Ball-Stocks, and a Claw at the
other end, to draw the Ball-Nails out of the Ball-Stocks.
¶. 21. Of the Foot-step, Girts, Stay of the Carriage, Stay of the
Frisket, Ball-Stocks,
Paper-Bench, Lye-Trough, Lye-Brush, Lye-Kettle, Tray to wet
Paper
in, Weights to Press Paper, Pelts, or Leather, Wool or Hair, Ball-
Nails or Pumping-Nails.
The Foot-Step is an Inch-Board about a Foot broad, and sixteen

Inches long. This Board is nailed upon a piece of Timber about
seven or eight Inches high, and is Bevil’d away on its upper-side, as
is also the Board on its under-side at its hither end, that the Board
may stand aslope upon the Floor. It is placed fast on the Floor under
the Carriage of the Press. Its Office shall be shewed when we come
to treat of Exercise of the Press-man.
Girts are Thongs of Leather, cut out of the Back of an Horse-hide, or
a Bulls hide, sometimes an Hogs-hide. They are about an Inch and
an half, or an Inch and three quarters broad. Two of them are used
to carry the Carriage out and in. These two have each of them one of
their ends nailed to the Barrel on the Spindle of the Rounce, and the
other ends nailed to the Barrel behind the Carriage in the Planck of
the Coffin, and to the Barrel on the fore-end of the Frame of the
Coffin.
The Stay of the Carriage is sometimes a piece of the same Girt
fastned to the outside of the further Cheek, and to the further hinder
side of the Frame of the Carriage. It is fastned at such a length by
the Press-man, that the Carriage may ride so far out, as that the
Irons of the Tympan may just rise free and clear off the fore-side of
the Plattin.
Another way to stay the Carriage is to let an Iron Pin into the upper-
side of the further Rail of the Frame of the Ribs, just in the place
where the further hinder Rail of the Carriage stands projecting over
the Rib-Rail, when the Iron of the Tympan may just rise free from the
Fore-side of the Plattin; for then that projecting will stop against the
Iron Pin.
The Stay of the Frisket is made by fastning a Batten upon the middle
of the Top-side of the Cap, and by fastning a Batten to the former
Batten perpendicularly downwards, just at such a distance, that the
upper-side of the Frisket may stop against it when it is turned up just
a little beyond a Perpendicular. When a Press stands at a convenient
distance from a Wall, that Wall performs the office of the aforesaid
Stay.
Ball-Stocks are Turn’d of Alder or Maple. Their Shape is delineated
in Plate 9. at g: They are about seven Inches in Diameter, and have
their under-side Turned hollow, to contain the greater quantity of
Wool or Hair, to keep the Ball-Leathers plump the longer.
The Lye-Trough (delineated in Plate 9. at k) is a Square Trough
made of Inch-Boards, about four Inches deep, two Foot four Inches
long, and one Foot nine Inches broad, and flat in the Bottom. Its
inside is Leaded with Sheet-Lead, which reaches up over the upper
Edges of the Trough. In the middle of the two ends (for so I call the
shortest sides) on the outer-sides as a a, is fastned a round Iron Pin,
which moves in a round hole made in an Iron Stud with a square
Sprig under it, to be drove and fastned into a Wooden Horse, which
Horse I need not describe, because in Plate aforesaid I have given
you the Figure of it.
The Paper-Bench is only a common Bench about three Foot eight
Inches long, one Foot eight Inches broad, and three Foot four Inches
high.
The Lye-Brush is made of Hogs-Bristles fastned into a Board with
Brass-Wyer, for durance sake: Its Board is commonly about nine
Inches long, and four and an half Inches broad; and the length of the
Bristles about three Inches.
To perform the Office of a Lye-Kettle (which commonly holds about
three Gallons) the old-fashion’d Chafers are most commodious, as
well because they are more handy and manageable than Kettles
with Bails, as also because they keep Lye longer hot.
The Tray to Wet Paper in is only a common Butchers Tray, large
enough to Wet the largest Paper in.
The Weight to Press Paper with, is either Mettal, or Stone, flat on the
Bottom, to ly steddy on the Paper-Board: It must be about 50 or 60
pound weight.
For Pelts or Leather, Ball-Nails or Pumping-Nails, Wool or Hair,
Vellom or Parchment or Forrel, the Press-man generally eases the
Master-Printer of the trouble of choosing, though not the charge of
paying for them: And for Paste, Sallad Oyl, and such accidental
Requisites as the Press-man in his work may want, the Devil
commonly fetches for him.
¶. 22. Of Racks to Hang Paper on, and of the Peel.
Our Master-Printer must provide Racks to hang Paper on to Dry.

They are made of Deal-board Battens, square, an Inch thick, and an
Inch and an half deep, and the length the whole length of the Deal,
which is commonly about ten or eleven Foot long, or else so long as
the convenience of the Room will allow: The two upper corners of
these Rails are rounded off that they may not mark the Paper.
These Racks are Hung over Head, either in the Printing-House, or
Ware-house, or both, or any other Room that is most convenient to
Dry Paper in; they are hung athwart two Rails an Inch thick, and
about three or four Inches deep, which Rails are fastned to some
Joysts or other Timber in the Ceiling by Stiles perpendicular to the
Ceiling; These Rails stand so wide assunder, that each end of the
Racks may hang beyond them about the distance of two Foot, and
have on their upper edge at ten Inches distance from one another,
so many square Notches cut into them as the whole length of the
Rail will bear; Into these square notches the Racks are laid parallel
to each other with the flat side downwards, and the Rounded off side
upwards.
The Peel is described in Plate 9. at l, which Figure sufficiently shews
what it is; And therefore I shall need say no more to it, only its
Handle may be longer or shorter according as the height of the
Room it is to be used in may require.
¶. 23. Of Inck.
The providing of good Inck, or rather good Varnish for Inck, is none
of the least incumbent cares upon our Master-Printer, though
Custom has almost made it so here in England; for the process of
making Inck being as well laborious to the Body, as noysom and
ungrateful to the Sence, and by several odd accidents dangerous of
Firing the Place it is made in, Our English Master-Printers do
generally discharge themselves of that trouble; and instead of having
good Inck, content themselves that they pay an Inck-maker for good
Inck, which may yet be better or worse according to the Conscience
of the Inck-maker.
That our Neighbours the Hollanders who exhibit Patterns of good
Printing to all the World, are careful and industrious in all the
circumstances of good Printing, is very notorious to all Book-men;
yet should they content themselves with such Inck as we do, their
Work would appear notwithstanding the other circumstances they
observe, far less graceful than it does, as well as ours would appear
more beautiful if we used such Inck as they do: for there is many
Reasons, considering how the Inck is made with us and with them,
why their Inck must needs be better than ours. As First, They make
theirs all of good old Linseed-Oyl alone, and perhaps a little Rosin in
it sometimes, when as our Inck-makers to save charges mingle
many times Trane-Oyl among theirs, and a great deal of Rosin;
which Trane-Oyl by its grossness, Furs and Choaks up a Form, and
by its fatness hinders the Inck from drying; so that when the Work
comes to the Binders, it Sets off; and besides is dull, smeary and
unpleasant to the Eye. And the Rosin if too great a quantity be put in,
and the Form be not very Lean Beaten, makes the Inck turn yellow:
And the same does New Linseed-Oyl.
Secondly, They seldom Boyl or Burn it to that consistence the
Hollanders do, because they not only save labour and Fewel, but
have a greater weight of Inck out of the same quantity of Oyl when
less Burnt away than when more Burnt away; which want of Burning
makes the Inck also, though made of good old Linseed-Oyl Fat and
Smeary, and hinders its Drying; so that when it comes to the Binders
it also Sets off.
Thirdly, They do not use that way of clearing their Inck the
Hollanders do, or indeed any other way than meer Burning it,
whereby the Inck remains more Oyly and Greasie than if it were well
clarified.
Fourthly, They to save the Press-man the labour of Rubbing the
Blacking into Varnish on the Inck-Block, Boyl the Blacking in the
Varnish, or at least put the Blacking in whilst the Varnish is yet
Boyling-hot, which so Burns and Rubifies the Blacking, that it loses
much of its brisk and vivid black complexion.
Fifthly, Because Blacking is dear, and adds little to the weight of
Inck, they stint themselves to a quantity which they exceed not; so
that sometimes the Inck proves so unsufferable Pale, that the Press-
man is forc’d to Rub in more Blacking upon the Block; yet this he is
often so loth to do, that he will rather hazard the content the Colour
shall give, than take the pains to amend it: satisfying himself that he
can lay the blame upon the Inck-maker.
Having thus hinted at the difference between the Dutch and English
Inck, I shall now give you the Receipt and manner of making the
Dutch-Varnish.
They provide a Kettle or a Caldron, but a Caldron is more proper,
such an one as is described in Plate 9. at m. This Vessel should hold
twice so much Oyl as they intend to Boyl, that the Scum may be
some considerable time a Rising from the top of the Oyl to the top of
the Vessel to prevent danger. This Caldron hath a Copper Cover to
fit the Mouth of it, and this Cover hath an Handle at the top of it to
take it off and put it on by. This Caldron is set upon a good strong
Iron Trevet, and fill’d half full of old Linseed-Oyl, the older the better,
and hath a good Fire made under it of solid matter, either Sea Coal,
Charcoal or pretty big Chumps of Wood that will burn well without
much Flame; for should the Flame rise too high, and the Oyl be very
hot at the taking off the Cover of the Caldron, the fume of the Oyl
might be apt to take Fire at the Flame, and endanger the loss of the
Oyl and Firing the House: Thus they let Oyl heat in the Caldron till
they think it is Boyling-hot; which to know, they peel the outer Films
of an Oynion off it, and prick the Oynion fast upon the end of a small
long Stick, and so put it into the heating Oyl: If it be Boyling-hot, or
almost Boyling-hot, the Oynion will put the Oyl into a Fermentation,
so that a Scum will gather on the top of the Oyl, and rise by degrees,
and that more or less according as it is more or less Hot: But if it be
so very Hot that the Scum rises apace, they quickly take the Oynion
out, and by degrees the Scum will fall. But if the Oyl be Hot enough,
and they intend to put any Rosin in, the quantity is to every Gallon of
Oyl half a Pound, or rarely a whole Pound. The Rosin they beat
small in a Mortar, and with an Iron Ladle, or else by an Handful at a
time strew it in gently into the Oyl lest it make the Scum rise too fast;
but every Ladle-full or Handful they put in so leasurely after one
another, that the first must be wholly dissolv’d before they put any
more in; for else the Scum will Rise too fast, as aforesaid: So that
you may perceive a great care is to keep the Scum down: For if it
Boyl over into the Fire never so little, the whole Body of Oyl will take
Fire immediately.
If the Oyl be Hot enough to Burn, they Burn it, and that so often till it
be Hard enough, which sometimes is six, seven, eight times, or
more.
To Burn it they take a long small Stick, or double up half a Sheet of
Paper, and light one end to set Fire to the Oyl; It will presently Take if
the Oyl be Hot enough, if not, they Boyl it longer, till it be.
To try if it be Hard enough, they put the end of a Stick into the Oyl,
which will lick up about three or four drops, which they put upon an
Oyster-shell, or some such thing, and set it by to cool, and when it is
cold they touch it with their Fore or Middle-Finger and Thumb, and
try its consistence by sticking together of their Finger and Thumb; for
if it draw stiff like strong Turpentine it is Hard enough, if not, they
Boyl it longer, or Burn it again till it be so consolidated.
When it is well Boyled they throw in an Ounce of Letharge of Silver
to every four Gallons of Oyl to Clarifie it, and Boyl it gently once
again, and then take it off the Fire to stand and cool, and when it is
cool enough to put their Hand in, they Strain it through a Linnen
Cloath, and with their Hands wring all the Varnish out into a Leaded
Stone Pot or Pan, and keeping it covered, set it by for their use; The
longer it stands by the better, because it is less subject to turn Yellow
on the Paper that is Printed with it.
This is the Dutch way of making Varnish, and the way the English
Inck-makers ought to use.
Note, First, That the Varnish may be made without Burning the Oyl,
viz. only with well and long Boyling it; for Burning is but a violent way
of Boyling, to consolidate it the sooner.
Secondly, That an Apple or a Crust of Bread, &c. stuck upon the end
of a Stick instead of an Oynion will also make the Scum of the Oyl
rise: For it is only the Air contained in the Pores of the Apple, Crust
or Oynion, &c. pressed or forced out by the violent heat of the Oyl,
that raises the many Bubbles on the top of the Oyl: And the
connection of those Bubbles are vulgarly called Scum.
Thirdly, The English Inck-makers that often make Inck, and that in
great quantities, because one Man may serve all England, instead of
setting a Caldron on a Trevet, build a Furnace under a great
Caldron, and Trim it about so with Brick, that it Boyls far sooner and
more securely than on a Trevet; because if the Oyl should chance to
Boyl over, yet can it not run into the Fire, being Fenced round about
with Brick as aforesaid, and the Stoking-hole lying far under the
Caldron.
Fourthly, When for want of a Caldron the Master-Printer makes
Varnish in a Kettle, He provides a great piece of thick Canvass, big
enough when three or four double to cover the Kettle, and also to
hang half round the sides of the Kettle: This Canvass (to make it
more soluble) is wet in Water, and the Water well wrung out again,
so that the Canvass remains only moist: Its use is to throw flat over
the Mouth of the Kettle when the Oyl is Burning, to keep the smoak
in, that it may stifle the Flame when they see cause to put it out. But
the Water as was said before, must be very well wrung out of the
Canvass, for should but a drop or two fall from the sides of it into the
Oyl when it is Burning, it will so enrage the Oyl, and raise the Scum,
that it might endanger the working over
the top of the
Kettle
.
Having shewn you the Master-Printers Office, I account it suitable to

proper Method, to let you know how the Letter-Founder Cuts the
Punches, how the Molds are made, the Matrices Sunck, and the
Letter Cast and Drest, for all these Operations precede the
Compositers Trade, as the Compositers does the Press-mans;
wherefore the next Exercises shall be (God willing) upon Cutting of
the Steel-Punches.
MECHANICK EXERCISES:
Or, the Doctrine of
Handy-works.
Applied to the Art of
Letter-Cutting.
PREFACE.
LEtter-Cutting is a Handy-Work hitherto kept so conceal’d among the

Artificers of it, that I cannot learn any one hath taught it any other;
But every one that has used it, Learnt it of his own Genuine
Inclination. Therefore, though I cannot (as in other Trades) describe
the general Practice of Work-men, yet the Rules I follow I shall shew
here, and have as good an Opinion of these Rules, as those have
that are shyest of discovering theirs. For, indeed, by the appearance
of some Work done, a judicious Eye may doubt whether they go by
any Rule at all, though Geometrick Rules, in no Practice whatever,
ought to be more nicely or exactly observed than in this.
§. 12. ¶. 1. Of Letter-Cutters Tools.

The making of Steel-Punches is a Branch of the Smith’s Trade: For,
as I told you in the Preface to Numb. 1. The Black-Smith’s Trade
comprehends all Trades that use either Forge or File, from the
Anchor-Smith, to the Watch-maker: They all working by the same
Rules, though not with equal exactness; and all using the same
Tools, though of different Sizes from those the Common Black-Smith

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The Palgrave Companion to Chicago

Economics Robert A Cord

Edited by Robert A. Cord

ISBN 978-3-031-01491-8 ISBN 978-3-031-01775-9 (eBook)

Part I Themes in Chicago Economics 1

6 I nformation at Chicago 123

Part II Some Chicago Economists 149

12 J acob Viner (1892–1970) 275

Figure 34.1 Compensating price differential 875

Table 2.1 Doctoral dissertations in economic history relative to doctoral

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 3

debates, controversies and people. In order to make it easier to read, we have

2 The Department in the 1940s and 1950s:

ence in emphasis. For me, it was sufficient when working on an

mined in international markets. And the doings in this country

3 The Workshops System

5 Partial Versus General Equilibrium

6 Governance of the Department

just being on all those committees is a major contribution. In terms of

10 The “Chicago Boys”

an hour with Pinochet, he never advised the government. He added that

undergraduate work in Israel, either at Hebrew or at Tel Aviv. People

11 The Advantage of the Chicago Department

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 21

2 The Early Years, 1892–1906: Laughlin,

interventionist orientation, there were other economists with a distinctly his-

In contrast with the general waning of economic history in the United

3 Wright and the Functional Approach

4 Knight and Nef: Contrasting Views

Table 2.1 Doctoral dissertations in economic history relative to doctoral dissertations

correspondence that remain from the deliberations over finding a replace-

issues as to whether there was a significant historical dimension to the study

Knight thus stands at a fundamental turning point in political economy. He

An important issue for further consideration, then, is whether Knight’s

himself has been acknowledged as an important influence on the develop-

The attempt to establish historical interrelationships is inviting to the artistic

Nef acknowledged that economic history on the surface might seem to be

In a 1960 memo to a Rockefeller Foundation programme officer, Nef sum-

Tawney, not surprisingly, since he was his dissertation mentor, exerted a

¶. 1. The Worms for Printing-Press Spindles must be projected

¶. 13. Of the Bar marked B in Plate 8.

¶. 14. Of the Hose, Garter, and Hose-Hooks.

¶. 15. Of the Ribs, and Cramp-Irons.

The Ribs are delineated in Plate 8. at E, they are made of four

¶. 16. Of the Spindle for the Rounce, described in Plate 9. at a.

The Axis or Spindle is a straight Bar of Iron about three quarters of

¶. 17. Of the Press-Stone.

The Press-Stone should be Marble, though sometimes Master

¶. 18. Of the Plattin marked d in Plate 9.

The Plattin is commonly made of Beechen-Planck, two Inches and

¶. 19. Of the Points and Point-Screws.

¶. 20. Of the Hammer, described at h, and Sheeps-Foot

The Hammer is a common Hammer about a quarter of a Pound

The Foot-Step is an Inch-Board about a Foot broad, and sixteen

¶. 22. Of Racks to Hang Paper on, and of the Peel.

Our Master-Printer must provide Racks to hang Paper on to Dry.

Having shewn you the Master-Printers Office, I account it suitable to

LEtter-Cutting is a Handy-Work hitherto kept so conceal’d among the

§. 12. ¶. 1. Of Letter-Cutters Tools.

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Part I Themes in Chicago Economics 1

6 I nformation at Chicago 123

Part II Some Chicago Economists 149

12 J acob Viner (1892–1970) 275

Figure 34.1 Compensating price differential 875

2 The Department in the 1940s and 1950s:

3 The Workshops System

5 Partial Versus General Equilibrium

6 Governance of the Department

10 The “Chicago Boys”

11 The Advantage of the Chicago Department

2 The Early Years, 1892–1906: Laughlin,

3 Wright and the Functional Approach

4 Knight and Nef: Contrasting Views