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

The printers at Business Press also liked the cover and the whole idea of the magazine and they turned out a perfect job for us.

The first issue of the Journal finally came out in October 1941. All of us involved waited eagerly for the reaction. One of the first and important reactions came from Thomas F. Woodlock, editorial page columnist for the Wall Street Journal and public relations counsel to J. P. Morgan, then the leading figure on Wall Street. He wrote a column in which he spoke about our project as "this excellent magazine." I asked him to amplify his remarks and he wrote an article we published in Volume 1, Number 3, in April 1942 under the title "Issues in the Quest for Synthesis in the Social Sciences," and we all enjoyed his continued praise.

In all we had what we considered an overwhelming response but I was really not immensely surprised because here was a project endorsed by two of the world's great philosophers at that time, John Dewey, the philosopher of Instrumentalism, and Lord Russell, Bertrand Russell, the philosopher of Rational Inquiry.

Many American economists and sociologists welcomed the new journal, illustrating how willing American scientists are to accept new approaches in their fields. This we found very heartening.

As a matter of fact, soon after the first issue came out we began to receive articles not only from American but from foreign scholars as well and it became clear that it wasn't going to be a great problem getting articles. Actually, because the leaders in the fields of economics and sociology were submitting so many articles, if I had accepted them all much of the Journal's available space would have been taken up. Therefore, believing that younger people and minorities weren't going to get a chance to build a publication record that would help them get permanent jobs, after some thought I made a rule that we were going to give younger and minority scholars preference in allotted space. I explained the rule to the veteran scholars and none of them argued.

Early on Lord Russell had told me that if I were ever in need of articles I could use anything he had written unless he was co-author and then he would try to get the other author to agree. His permission was comforting although since we were having much less trouble than we had anticipated I did not want to take advantage. I was still editing Francis Neilson's writings and had used an article from one of his published books in the issue. However, I knew that he was the only cultural sociologist we had practicing in the United States and that anything he wrote would add a dimension to the Journal so I asked him for new essays. For a long time he would not hear of it because he had had a very unpleasant experience in his collaboration with Albert Jay Nock when they were both working on the old Freeman and he was leery of any possible repetition.

After the first issue came out Neilson had sent me a check for $2,500 for the Journal and told me that another check for the same amount would be sent in six months. I had sent the check back, telling him that what I needed from him was not money but the contribution of articles, that after the first issue had come out we had received a number of new subscriptions and so we no longer had to worry right then about covering publishing costs.