Knowledge that Transforms

V OLUME ONE is dedicated to 'Four Generations of Students in Columbia College, and nonappearance of a proposed third volume was perhaps due to Harry Carman's added duties after he became, in preconfrontation days, very popular Dean of College. The reappearance of his History is a welcome event and offers an occasion to reflect on changes since its publication in American economic history. Even in their day these volumes did not purport to be economic history in strict sense. The title reads 'Social and Economic, and addition of Intellectualr would have been entirely appropriate. There was already a substantial corpus of professional work in American economic history. Guy Stevens Callender's Selections from Economic History of United States, 1765-1860, with its still unsurpassed analytical introductions, had appeared as early as 1909. The first edition of Harold Underwood Faulkner's American Economic History was published in 1924 and its second in 1931. Edward C. Kirkland's admirably written History of American Economic Life came out first in 1932. Of major texts written by economists, Ernest L. Bogart's Economic History of United States, with its particularly clear analyses of trade relationships, appeared in 1930. Although Chester W. Wright did not bring out his text until 1941, most of its material, including a wealth of statistical tables and his analyses of standard of living at various periods, was available to his students at Chicago as early as 1920. These books, indeed, and numerous monographs cited at ends of Carman's chapters, show how much of factual knowledge of American economic development, if not its theoretical analysis, was already at hand in early 1930s. With this background Carman book describes various sectors of economic activity with a full knowledge of techniques and processes, with a wealth of human detail drawn from contemporary sources, and with a firm grasp of geographic and economic determinants of regional specialization. The chapter on The Colonial Farmer is particularly brilliant. Much of work is devoted to play of economic forces in political life. Two chapters are given to American Revolution and a third to making of Constitution. Mercantilist restrictions are regarded as foremost among causes of Revolution, and in both these struggles, Carman follows Beard in discerning a sharp cleavage between propertied-business men and common people. Similarly, two chapters are devoted to Civil War and the sectional rivalry leading to that * Harry J. Carman. Social and Economic History of United States, volume I, From Handicraft to Factory, 1500-1820; volume II, The Rise of Industrialism, 1820-1875. New York: D. C. Heath & Co., 1930, 1934. Reprinted New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1968. Pp. xii + 616; x + 684, 2 vols. $47.50.

ion, he very much doubted that abstraction could provide either understanding of the real world or, by itself, safe guidance for the legislator or statesman. Although Smith failed to absorb some of the valuable analytical contributions of Hume, the physiocrats, and Turgot, he repeatedly amended his major works by bringing into his discussion some neglected variable, some fresh observation of fact, some new objective. He resorted profusely to qualifications, and his models were therefore not rigorous. is arguable, however, by those who, if forced to choose, prefer realism, or at least the pursuit of it, to rigor and elegance of analysis, that both of his major works are on the whole made better by the qualifications he sprinkled in their pages and that he would have made them still better, although still untidier, if he had used even more qualifying adjectives or phrases [28, p. 327]. It is difficult to exaggerate the intellectual stimulus to be derived from reading this and the numerous other provocative bibliographical articles published in the En-

I am grateful to Meghnad Desai, Harry G. Johnson, Marcus H. Miller, Marc Nerlove, R. D. Terrell, J. J. Thomas, and the editors of this journalfor comment and discussion during the preparation of this paper. Although not explicitly referred to in the text, the more theoretical survey article on distributed lags by Griliches [28] also clarified my thoughts in a number of places. Errors of omission and comnmission are, as usual, my own responsibility.

AMPHLETS pose bibliographical problems. The system of scholarly production and consumption is geared easily and smoothly to books and articles, but pamphlets fall between. for example, are reviewed, and articles may be the subject of published comment, reply, rejoinder, final comment and the like. Pamphlets live on after their appearance mainly in footnote citation-which the scholarly apparatus has yet to measure and weigh. An occasional professional periodical like the Economic Journal will list pamphlets by title under Recent Periodicals and Books, and even include a sentence or two of description in 6-point type. Paul Einzig reviewed essays by A. K. Swoboda and F. H. Klopstock on Euro-dollars (Nos. 64 and 65 in Essays) in the Economic Journal for March 1969. But this is rare. For the most part pamphlets are left to drop into the pool of scholarship and swim by themselves if they can. To repair a little of this neglect, this review article addresses the Princeton Essays (plus Studies, Special Papers and Reprints) in International Finance, not to call attention to them, since they are well known, but to celebrate the appearance of the 75th Essay in a series going back to 1943, and perhaps the 40th or 41st in the last 8Jl years under the brilliant editorship of Professor Fritz Machlup. There is far too much to talk about in 3,000 words or less-changing the gold price, seigniorage in international asset creation, crawling pegs, bands, forward exchange, foreign aid, liquidity and the rest. If one went back to the 1950s, one would find more trade, and somewhat less finance, but oil, merchant-marine policies, international cost-sharing and agriculture price policy. There are too many memorable essays; to cite only a few is invidious but inescapable. This exercise is accordingly addressed mainly to bibliographical or bibliophilic issues raised by the series, and only tangentially to substance. Pamphlets are expensive for librarians. They must be accessioned (should the phrase be acceded to?) and catalogued at an average cost of several dollars an item, much higher a rate per page of scholarship than books, because of the lumpiness of the process. This is because they are not indexed with joumal articles. In a curriculum vitae pamphlets belong under articles, in the library apparatus under books. But not all retrieval apparatus will cope with pamphlets on the same basis as books: the AEA Periodical Index will do well to include the standard series of pamphlets, such as the Essays, Studies, Special Papers in its special volume for lost literature-an index of articles in Festschriften, symposia, conference proceedings. The library problem aside, what of the scholar? Should he file his Essays alphabeti cally by author in the vertical files housing reprints in his outer office, or shelve them in the inner sanctum with books? A survey