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.
Economics in the Rear-View Mirror will clip personal and departmental remembrances of Johnson’s own economics training and teaching days. This post shares a transcription of his impression of the sociologist Franklin H. Giddings and his experience with him as one of his doctoral examiners. Economist readers are gently reminded that at the turn of the twentieth century sociology was still regarded by many economists (and sociologists) as a subfield of economics.
Trigger warning: Giddings appears to have been both an academic bully and one who spoke fluent anti-semitic speech.
Previously posted Johnson observation: John W. Burgess.
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Other posts with
Franklin H. Giddings’ content
- Short biography of Franklin H. Giddings, 1899
- Alvin S. Johnson recounts to Joseph Dorfman his exam with Franklin Giddings, 1951
- Giddings’ readings for his graduate course in sociology at Bryn Mawr, 1893
- Encyclopedia article on teaching and university research in sociology. Tenney and Giddings, 1913
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Alvin Johnson reminisces
about Giddings
[p. 122] …Columbia men swore by Franklin H. Giddings as the greatest living sociologist. He was a large, genial man, with bluntly pointed red beard and a markedly dolichocephalic skull, of which he was very proud. In his view, all distinction in the world, all energy, all genius, were carried by the dolichocephalic blonds Aryans, we called them then. Other peoples might acquire merit by imitation.
“Look at the Jews,” he would say in the privacy of the Sunday evening meetings at his house. “They are middlemen in economic life and middlemen in the world of ideas.”
Down the corridor from Giddings’ office was the office of Franz [p. 123] Boas, anthropologist. Logically he belonged in the School of Political Science, and in scholarly attainment, originality, and intellectual leadership he ranked with the best of them. Years later, when I was a member of the faculty, I urged the annexation of Franz Boas, then recognized throughout the world as the foremost anthropologist. Giddings vetoed the idea with the vigor of a Gromyko. Anthropology was either a natural science, having no proper place in a School of Political Science, or an amateurish sociology we could not afford to recognize…
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[p. 137] … the doctoral examinations approached in the spring of 1901 …. We were to be examined on the entire literature of our major economics — and on the courses in the minors for which we had registered, in my case sociology under Giddings. It goes without saying that we hadn’t a chance to load ourselves up for the particular questions we might be asked in a three-hour oral examination. Still we boned manfully.
Our Columbia professors were as a rule very humane. If a student seemed to be floored by a question the examiner made haste to substitute another and easier question. I felt I was getting on very satisfactorily under the questioning of Seligman and Clark. But then Giddings pounced on me with blood in his eye. He was having a feud with Seligman at the time and meant to take it out of my hide. He did, and I resented it, for he was my friend.
After the examination I waited in the corridor to hear the results of the examiners’ deliberations. Soon Seligman came out and announced that I had passed with flying colors. Giddings followed, jovially slapped me on the back, and said, “Well, Johnson, I made you sweat. I knew it wouldn’t hurt you. Seligman would have bulled you through if you had flunked every question. But say, you knew more of the answers than I’d have known if I hadn’t loaded up for you.
So it was just good, clean fun, like pushing an absent-minded companion off an embankment…
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[pp. 163-164] … There was, to be sure, a certain amount of personal friction, particularly between Giddings and Seligman. It was aired in the offices, not at faculty meetings. Giddings would encounter Seligman in the Political Science Quarterly office, where I was working, and would roar out his discontent with some plan of Seligman’s. Seligman always remained imperturbably courteous.Once I asked Giddings what he really had against Seligman.
“What I’ve got against him? I can’t get under the skin of that infernal Christian. You know, Johnson, I sometimes think only Jews can really behave like Christians. The Jews created that religion, and it suits their temperament. It doesn’t suit the temperament of us Aryans.”…
Source: Alvin Saunders Johnson. A Pioneer’s Progress. New York: Viking Press, 1952.
Image Source: University and their Sons. History, Influence and Characteristics of American Universities with Biographical Sketches and Portraits of Alumni and Recipients of Honorary Degrees. Editor-in-chief, General Joshua L. Chamberlain, LL.D. Vol. II, pp. 453-5. Portrait colorised by Economics in the Rear-View Mirror.