Alvin Saunders Johnson’s 1952 autobiography, A Pioneer’s Progress, provides us a treasure chest of granular detail regarding his academic and life experiences. This co-founder of the New School for Social Research in New York City went on to live another 19 years after publishing his autobiography to reach the age of 96. In his New York Times obituary that starts on page one of the June 9, 1972 edition one reads:
“When he retired from the New School, Dr. Johnson did not leave the academic world. He came to the school each morning, and served as its elder statesman.”
What a way to go!
Economics in the Rear-View Mirror will clip personal and departmental remembrances of Johnson’s own economics training and teaching days. This post includes his first encounter with the founder of the Columbia School of Political Sciences, John W. Burgess, together with a tiny capsule of Burgessian Weltanschauung.
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Earlier Posts dealing with
John W. Burgess
- A brief biography from 1893
- The 1880 Burgess plan for a school to prepare for the civil service at Columbia
- Burgess on political sciences at Columbia College in 1882
- W.E.B. DuBois writing in 1935 about Burgess’s “anti-negro thought”
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From Alvin S. Johnson’s Autobiography
[p. 120] … So here was I [in October 1898], a provincial, bound to Columbia for life by the calm magnificence of the Seth Low Library.
Entering, I met a janitor who directed me to the dean’s office on the third floor. The dean, John W. Burgess, looked classic too, with the classicism of highbred British stock, or rather, of the cavalier stock that first settled in Virginia. Though he had enlisted in the Northern cavalry from Tennessee, he was Virginian in his melodiously fluent speech. He treated even the rawest student or a janitor’s assistant with high courtesy and consideration….
I exhibited my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees [from the University of Nebraska] — the latter won without examination by the patriotic action of the state legislature, which voted the appropriate degrees for all volunteers who were approaching the conclusion of their requirements. He glanced at the diplomas and asked me what I wanted to study.
International relations, I said, political science, economics.
Then, he said, it would be best for me to major in economics, the strongest department. I’d need to make sociology one of my minors, according to the rules of the faculty. I could later decide what other minor I might like to take. He’d advise me to browse around freely the first year. Everybody ought to have some philosophy, and there was a famous course given by Professor Nicholas Murray Butler. Also, a course in literature might be useful.
He gave me some blanks to fill out, accepted them, and sent me to the bursar, who collected my semester’s tuition and minor fees for privileges I didn’t need.
So I was a registered graduate student in the School of Political Science. No question had been raised as to my antecedent scholarly preparation. Of course, I thought, the faculty would discover soon enough my ignorance of the field. They never did. I must have hidden it well…[p. 122] …The Columbia School of Political Science, under which I was to work for three years, was manned by professors too distinguished to be called anywhere, except to university presidencies or high administrative office. Naturally I could not work under all of them in my first year, but I could visit all their classes and judge for myself what men of top distinction were like.
Foremost stood the dean, John W. Burgess, gentleman and scholar, reputed first authority on American constitutional history and constitutional law. He was an imperialist. At the time the problems of war and peace occupied my mind, and I classified men’s positions accordingly. Burgess had a grandiose idea of a permanent coalition among the three vital nations, America, England, and Germany, to rule the world. The decadent Latin nations were to be thrust into the role of charming museum pieces; the colored peoples and the half-Tartar Slavs were to be ruled with the firmness and justice of British rule in India…
Source: Alvin Saunders Johnson. A Pioneer’s Progress. New York: Viking Press, 1952.
Image Source: John W. Burgess in Universities and their Sons, Vol. 2. Boston: R. Herndon Company, 1899, p. 481. Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.