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UMI University Microfilms International A Bell & Howell Information Company 3 00 Nortfi Z eeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 Order Number 9011133 Sudden leaps: The young Alfred Marshall Butler, Robert William, Ph.D. The Ohio State University, 1989 Copyright © 1 9 8 9 b y Butler, Robert William. All rights reserved. UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 SUDDEN LEAPS: THE YOUNG ALFRED MARSHALL DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Robert William Butler, B.A., M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 1989 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Dr. Martha M. Garland Dr. Mansel G. Blackford Adviser Dr. Alan D. Beyerchen Department of History Copyright by Robert William Butler 1989 In memory of my parents 11 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS No one begins, much less completes, a project of this size by themselves. Over the years I have been helped by many people, and it is a pleasure to be able to thank them at last. Pride of place must go to my adviser, Martha Garland, whose scholarly wisdom, warm friendship, and constant encouragement have been irreplaceable. Mansel Blackford arranged for library materials and gave me the benefits of his insight on earlier drafts of this work. Alan Beyerchen made several fruitful suggestions for the context of Marshall's world. It has been a privilege to work with all of them. I owe Giacomo Becattini (University of Florence) and Barbara Reeves (Ohio State University) a large debt of gratitude for long discussions of Marshall's early life. During my year in England, Alan Heesom and Donald Ratcliffe (both of the University of Durham) guided my research and arranged for invaluable help from Durham's Department of History. Finally, I would like to thank T. W. Heyck (Northwestern University) under whose Xll guidance I first discovered the world of Alfred Marshall. The Ohio State University has generously supported my work, by appointing me a Teaching Associate in the Department of History, and by awarding me a Presidential Fellowship. The Rotary Foundation's award of a Rotary Fellowship made possible my research abroad and gave me a wonderful appreciation of the texture of England. I have been much blessed with the warm love of a close family. My parents, Robert and Winifred, always encouraged me to pursue my dream. Though they did not live to see it come true, my sister Brigid and her husband Jeffrey, my brother Michael and his wife Jane, and my sister Mary Ellen continued to urge me onward. They believed in me when I did not, and I am eternally gra t e f u l . I cannot even begin to name the friends who have helped me over the years. Some I have known since high school; others I have met only this year. They are, by now, scattered across America and England. All of them have kept me on an even keel by reminding me of what is truly important in life: the love and warmth of family and friends. I thank you all. IV VITA May 27, 1955 ........... Born - Charleston, West Virginia 1 9 7 7 ..................... B.A. with Departmental Honors, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 1977-1979............... Teaching Associate, Department of History, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1 9 7 9 ......... ........... M.A., The Ohio State University, Coluiobus, Ohio 1979-1983............... Canvascraft, Inc. 1983-1988............... Teaching Associate, Department of History, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1986-1987............... Rotary Fellow, University of Durham, Durham, England 1988-1989............... Presidential Fellow, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Modern British History Professor Martha M. Garland Early Modern British History Professor R. Clayton Roberts Modern European History Professor John A. M. Rothney Ottoman Empire and Successor States Professor Carter V. Findley TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS..........................................iii VITA .......................................................... V INTRODUCTION.................................................1 CHAPTER I: THE YOUNG SCHOLAR.............................9 CHAPTER II: CREATING THE ECONOMIST.................... 77 CHAPTER III: THE TOUR OF AMERICA ......................156 CHAPTER IV: CONSIDERING THE EVIDENCE................. 220 CHAPTER V: A CHANGING PERSPECTIVE.................... 276 CHAPTER VI: THE CAREER BEGINS ......................... 317 CHAPTER VII: EPILOGUE .................................. 350 BIBLIOGRAPHY.............................................. 362 VI INTRODUCTION Through you, British economists may boast among their foreign colleagues that they have a leader in the great tradition of Adam Smith and Ricardo and Mill, and of like stature. Royal Economic Society to Alfred Marshall, on his eightieth birthday In the summer of 1922, at the age of eighty, Alfred Marshall was feted by the Royal Economic Society he had helped found thirty years earlier. Marshall was in retirement by then, though he still continued to write and publish; a new book. Money Credit and Commerce, was nearly ready for the publisher. His great opus. Principles of Economics, had just been reprinted for the eighth time. He was the acknowledged leader of the English-speaking economic world. His support for the classical economics of laissez-faire and individual competition, and especially his admiration for the "chivalric" entrepreneur, had been communicated to generations of students at Cambridge. Marshall appeared to be the perfect epitome of the Victorian age: from his bushy moustache and sideburns to his scholarly agnosticism and disdain for women students, he seemed as solid and unchanging as the pre-war world itself. But the young Alfred Marshall had been quite a different man. Whereas the mature scholar lauded the individual entrepreneur, the young Marshall concerned himself with the working class. The older Marshall had voted against granting women Cambridge degrees in 1896; the younger, a generation earlier, had helped direct the first university education for women. The younger Marshall had been a firm Christian throughout his undergraduate career, not an agnostic; having lost his faith and his vocation to the priesthood, he spent several years reading philosophy before deciding to become an economist. The younger Marshall, in short, was a very different man from the older. Alfred Marshall is known to students of the nineteenth century as the foremost economist of the Victorian age. Born in London in 1842, he attended Cambridge where he studied mathematics and planned to become an ordained priest in the Church of England. Shortly after graduation, however, he suffered a loss of faith which radically changed his attitude toward the world. In searching for a new vocation, Marshall became involved in several reform movements and investigated philosophy, ethics and psychology before finally settling on economics and a career in the university. He taught briefly at Bristol and Oxford before returning to Cambridge as the professor of political economy in 1885. Once settled again in Cambridge, he set about creating a field of economics and establishing its standards for the coming generation. Marshall's Principles of Economics (1890) became the standard textbook of universities throughout Britain, the empire, and the United States. He served as a member of numerous parliamentary committees, and helped shape government policy toward trade unions by his work for the Royal Commission on Labour. He founded the Royal Economic Society in 1890 in order to create a professional body for economists. In 1903 he established the Economics Tripos at Cambridge, thus giving the subject a home of its own. After retirement in 1908 he published two more books, and continued to answer inquiries from undergraduates and cabinet ministers on economic questions. For thirty years his pupils— John Maynard Keynes among them— graduated from Cambridge