On the Origins of The American Journal of Economics and Sociology: Its Purposes and Objectives

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, April, 2001 by Will Lissner

First, of course, I had to define the purpose of the journal. I defined it fairly early as a scientific journal publishing refereed reports, edited in consultation with leading specialists of empirical investigations. Later it was to become written in the first issue of the magazine in the Prospectus as:

The American Journal of Economics and Sociology has been founded by a group of specialists in the social sciences and in moral and social philosophy, in association with men of affairs, to serve as a stimulus to investigation of special types of problems in these fields and as a medium of publication of such studies. Its interests are confined to problems that gain recognition in the growing awareness of the scientist and the scholar of his added social responsibility in a time of world-wide cultural crisis.

The entire Prospectus as stated in that first issue is much more detailed but before that first issue came out there was much more to be done.

There was, naturally, the need to find and organize a group of scientists and scholars who would be willing to edit and write the articles that would go into the magazine. I chose to ask academicians who were either Georgists or friendly to Georgist ideas. Originally the group consisted of such notables as Harold Hotelling of Columbia University, Raymond Grist of the University of Illinois, Harry Gunnison Brown of the University of Missouri, John Dewey of Columbia University (who was to write the Introduction for the first issue), and Lancaster M. Greene and Mortimer J. Adler of the University of Chicago.

Professor Adler had at that time been researching the organization of an encyclopedia to succeed the Encyclopedia Britannica and an amusing story comes out of his participation with the Journal. He became so interested in getting articles and subscribers for me that he neglected his work on planning the new encyclopedia and several of his friends frantically wrote to me that they considered it a calamity and could I please do something about it. After considerable thought I composed a letter to Adler in which I told him how much I appreciated all he had done and that it was with deep regret that I accepted his resignation but understood that he had obligations of greater moment. I later heard that my letter confounded Adler since he could not recall offering his resignation which, of course, he hadn't, but my letter did get him back to what he should have been doing in the first place.

From the time I had first conceived the idea of founding a scientific magazine I had been going over in my mind what the name should be. I had not been able to decide. However, when Adolph Lowe's book Economics and Sociology came out in England, the book was referred to me by the Times' book sectional and as I began to read it I discovered that Lowe was making a detailed exposition of the interdisciplinary approach and a plea for cooperation in the social sciences. Up to that time economists had studied economic problems and sociologists had studied sociological problems. But I had always believed that Henry George's economics was sociological and that his sociology was economic. I also believed, as Adolph Lowe was arguing, that often a problem transcended the boundaries of just one discipline and had to be solved by an economist and a sociologist in cooperation. (I did not know Adolph Lowe then, He was at that time a refugee from the German Nazi regime, living in England. Later, when he emigrated to the Uni ted States and joined the University in Exile at the New School for Social Research where I had been a graduate student, I met him and we soon became fast friends.)