^{page 177 note 1} The most important single study of this process is Hofstadter, Richard and Metzger, Walter P., The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States (New York, 1955)Google Scholar. More recently a number of studies of particular individuals, disciplines, and institutions have appeared, suggesting that there is a growing awareness of the general problem.

^{page 178 note 1} The most authoritative source on these matters is the first three volumes of Dorfman, Joseph The Economic Mind in American Civilization (New York, 1947–1949) passimGoogle Scholar; see also O'Connor, M. J. L., Origins of Academic Economics in the United States (New York, 1944)Google Scholar.

^{page 178 note 2} The Henry Carter Adams papers are in the Michigan Historical Collections, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Unless otherwise stated, all subsequent quotations are taken from Adams's letters to his mother. Individual letters will be identified in the text. The best account of Adams's life and thought is Joseph Dorfman's introductory essay to his edition of Adams's essays: Relation of the State to Industrial Action, and Economics and Jurisprudence (New York, 1954), pp. 1–55 (in subsequent footnotes this will be cited as ‘Dorfman, (ed.), Essays’)Google Scholar. The present writer is engaged on a biography of Adams, and has been generously assisted by the Adams family and the Department of Economics at the University of Michigan.

^{page 179 note 1} Ephraim Adams eventually became Superintendent of Home Missions in Iowa, and one obituarist claimed that ‘he was the real leader of our Congregational hosts in Iowa’. He was an effective administrator, spending two periods as financial agent of Grinnell College, and an active historian of the missionary movement. His book, The Iowa Band (Boston, n.d. [1st ed. 1870, 2nd ed. 1902])Google Scholar is a minor classic of nineteenth-century American protestantism. For background studies of the missionary movement see Goodykoontz, Colin Brummit, Home Missions on the American Frontier (Caldwell, Idaho, 1939)Google Scholar; Douglass, Trueman O., Pilgrims of Iowa (Boston, 1911)Google Scholar; Reed, Julius A., Reminiscences of Early Congregationalism in Iowa (Grinnell, 1885)Google Scholar; Magoun, George F., Asa Turner, A Home Missionary Patriarch and His Times (Boston, 1889)Google Scholar.

^{page 179 note 2} His mother, Elizabeth Douglass Adams, had been raised ‘in the literary atmosphere of Dartmouth’ and had probably met Ephraim Adams during his student days at Dartmouth College.

^{page 179 note 3} The founding of a college had been one of the original purposes of the Iowa Band. Cf. Nollen, John Scholte, Grinnell College (Iowa City, 1953)Google Scholar.

^{page 181 note 1} Although Adams's decision to enter Andover was obviously the result of an agreement with his parents, there is no correspondence bearing directly upon it. It was probably the outcome of family discussions at home.

^{page 182 note 1} Ephraim Adams expressed his fear that his son's decision stemmed from ‘an unwillingness to surrender some darling project or object that in your mind must be surrendered if you become a minister… If for self will we avoid doing God's will it will prove bitter in the end—This I say not to drive you to the Ministry for I don't know that it is God's will that you should be one…I want you to say to God I am there to follow what so far as you can see He would have you’ (8 June 1876).

^{page 183 note 1} Cf. Hawkins, Hugh, Pioneer: A History of the Johns Hopkins University, 1874–1889 (Ithaca, 1960)Google Scholar. For a recent general history see Veysey, Laurence R., The Emergence of the American University (Chicago, 1965)Google Scholar.

^{page 183 note 2} Quoted by Hawkins, op. cit. p. 68. See also Gilman, D. C., University Problems (New York, 1898), pp. 7–30Google Scholar.

^{page 185 note 1} On 17 March 1879, he confided to his Berlin diary: ‘The difficulty is one cannot always be satisfied with his work. I am beginning to lose faith in myself and my studies…The news of the engagement of Mollie and Clara has had something of an unsettling effect on me—probably because I am not [a] dead hand at anything this week. It is not that I cared for either of them though they are both splendid girls, but the thought brings me to my age and the fact that the world is moving. Am I being left behind it ? All such questions are signs of weakness, but to myself they may be confessed. I look up at my books in their black binding, Nationalökom, Finanzwissenschaft, Völkerrecht, Socialism, German and French grammars and dictionaries. I look into my drawer, there are my lectures, plans for articles, notes, half-finished definitions and an immense amount of other rubbish. I look away across the ocean, there are my friends settling down to contented happy useful private lives, with the love of the world in their hearts because of the love for one above all others… Love and ambition are always at war, and I am not strong enough to say damn ambition or to cut the love.’ In contrast to Adams's frustration, other American expatriates experienced a profound sense of emotional release during their German student days. For example, see Hall, G. Stanley, Life and Confessions of a Psychologist (New York, 1923), pp. 219, 223Google Scholar.

^{page 186 note 1} As he wrote to D. C. Gilman on 15 December 1878, ‘I have learned so much actually new economy from the simple study of old subjects under new relations that I am quite anxious to repeat the experiment in France’ (Gilman Papers, Johns Hopkins University Library, Baltimore).

^{page 186 note 2} It appeared in the Penn Monthly, 04 1879, pp. 285–94Google Scholar, and was his first published article.

^{page 187 note 1} Below, pp. 188–90.

^{page 187 note 2} White was then on leave from Cornell as United States Ambassador to Germany, and needed a substitute to teach his history course at Cornell. Their correspondence suggests that White was tactful enough to conceal his mistake.

^{page 188 note 1} To Herbert Baxter Adams, 13 and 23 April 1883. (In Johns Hopkins University Library.)

^{page 188 note 2} Goodstein, Anna Shafer, Biography of a Businessman: Henry W. Sage, 1814–1897 (Ithaca, 1962), esp. pp. 223–4, 230, 233–5Google Scholar

^{page 188 note 3} To Herbert Baxter Adams, 13 and 23 April 1883, loc. cit.

^{page 188 note 4} After quoting from a report of Adams, 's lectures, the editor of the Kansas City Journal (01, 1884)Google Scholar added: ‘We think it about time the professor should be bounced from his position. The man who preaches such doctrines is an enemy to society, and unworthy of being countenanced by any honest man.’ The cutting, with others, is in a scrapbook in the Adams Collection. Two years earlier Henry had informed his mother: ‘One disadvantage of a State institution cropped out the other day. The President spoke to the Regents about a permanent appointment for me here. It came out that every one of the Regents had received [a] complaint that I was a free trader. They happened to be all protectionists. Dr. Angell said that this was the first time that a question had ever come to their meeting of a political character. I still feel a boy. These little incidents come up now and then to show me that I am doing the work and exerting the influence of a man’ (14 January 1882). Two weeks later he added: ‘I do not think there was anything serious in the inquiry of the Regents about my principles upon Free Trade. At least I do not think it was sufficient to endanger my position. If so, I should gladly go, for I don't want to be anywhere with a rag over my mouth. There are plenty of things I could do. I could go to New York City and in a year have a good position on some paper…So don't fret about that.’ (30 January 1883.)

^{page 189 note 1} Quoted by Adams in his Scrapbook, which contains a copy of his address, and the comment: ‘The effect of this essay upon myself was: to learn that what I said might possibly be of some importance.’

^{page 189 note 2} Like John R. Commons, Adams ‘interpreted the labor movement as a historical institution striving to give proprietary significance to job rights’. It was an integral part of the evolution of industrial democracy, and in this Adams anticipated the recent idea of ‘countervailing power’. Cf. Perlman, Mark, Labor Union Theories in America, Background and Development (Evanston, 1958), esp. pp. 162–3, 168, 208–10Google Scholar.

^{page 189 note 3} This is quoted from an Ithaca newspaper report dated 26 April 1886, in Adams's scrap-book. The Adams Collection also includes an unidentifiable newspaper article ‘What do these strikes mean?’, dated 25 March 1886. His Cornell address was eventually published in the Scientific American Supplement, 22 (21 08 1886), pp. 8861–3Google Scholar. Sage replied in the same magazine on 28 August 1886, p. 8877. See also Adams's article, ‘Shall we muzzle the anarchists?’, The Forum, i (07 1886), pp. 445–54Google Scholar, which contains some interesting reminiscences of the ‘detestable system’ of ‘police surveillance’ in Germany.

^{page 190 note 1} In 1890 Cornell offered Adams a full professorship, but he rejected it—a decision that doubtless gave him some satisfaction.

^{page 190 note 2} At the time of his negotiations with Angell, Adams had published about twenty articles, comments, etc., in a variety of periodicals and newspapers, in addition to his doctoral thesis, Taxation in the United States, 1789–1816 (Baltimore, 1884)Google Scholar and his Outlines of Lectures upon Political Economy (Ann Arbor, 1881, 1886)Google Scholar. His important monograph, Relation of the State to Industrial Action, first appeared in 1886 as a pamphlet issued by the New York Constitution Club, and subsequently in the Publications of the American Economic Association, i, no. 6 (January 1887). Adams had been elected first vice President of the Association in 1885; Francis Walker was its President. It is worth noting that some of Adams's early writings represented journalistic work of a type then common among aspiring young social scientists. However, there were few purely scholarly journals, and a man could usefully supplement his income, pay off his debts, and enhance his academic reputation, while contributing to the solution of current economic and social problems.

^{page 190 note 3} On 10 June 1885, shortly before White resigned as President of Cornell, Angell had written asking what had been decided about Adams. ‘Is he like the baby before Solomon to be [in a] divided state, or dropped? He has such merits and such limitations that I confess I hardly know whether we want him permanently or not.’ A year earlier he had written that the University was ‘too impecunious’ to employ Henry for more than six months (17 July 1884) (in J. B. Angell papers, Michigan Historical Collections, Ann Arbor).

^{page 191 note 1} Adams to Angell, 25 March 1886, in Angell papers. This was a reply to Angell's letter of 19 March 1886, in Adams papers.

^{page 191 note 2} Adams to Angell, 15 March 1887, in Angell papers. This long letter is reproduced in full in Dorfman, (ed.), Essays, pp. 37–42Google Scholar. It is a reply to Angell's letter of 12 March 1887, in Adams papers.

^{page 191 note 3} Angell to Adams, 26 March 1887, in Adams papers.

^{page 192 note 1} Ibid.

^{page 192 note 2} Adams did not stand in awe of University Presidents, possibly because once, during his Grinnell days, he was brought into intimate contact with President Magoun of Grinnell. After visiting ‘Uncle Lane’, a member of the Iowa Band, he confided to his diary: ‘Miserable old Prex. Magoun was there and I wished myself anywhere but there. To clap the climax I had to sleep with the old coon. The only consolation I found was that the bed was wide’. However, the next day his opinion rose, for Magoun gave a splendid sermon and ‘even walked to church with me—after dark—and talked with me about England and his tour abroad’ (15 January 1871, italics in original). Magoun had succeed Ephraim Adams as minister of the First Congregational Church in Davenport, Iowa, Henry's birthplace.

^{page 192 note 3} Angell's attitude was not, of course, Adams's sole asset. Apart from his own academic reputation, the University of Michigan was widely regarded as the leading State University and it enjoyed an unusually strong position vis-à-vis the state, and a tradition of non-interference with faculty affairs. For a more general view of the influences on academic freedom cases, see Hofstadter and Metzger, op. cit. p. 176.

^{page 192 note 4} Ibid. chap. IX.

^{page 193 note 1} Adams to C. O. Pauley (of Cornell College, Iowa), 28 February 1899 (in Adams collection). Henry took an active interest in subsequent academic freedom cases involving economists, and his own free trade views were again vigorously attacked in the local and national press early in 1889. Yet his conviction that freedom of teaching and expression was greater in state than in private institutions remained unshaken. It is not, however, supported by later writers. Cf. Hofstadter and Metzger, op. cit.

^{page 194 note 1} Adams to Angell, 15 March 1887 (in Angell papers).

^{page 194 note 2} The following quotations are suggestive: ‘The United States taken as a whole…has nothing to do with the question of socialism at present, but if the men at the helm are wise, they will take care that conditions are not produced that will give rise to such an agitation as Germany is having and has been having this century’ (October 29 1878). ‘I am a socialist—to tell the truth—with the very characteristic exception of questioning their plan of reconstruction—and the study of the question has given me again a foothold on Political Economy’ (Diary, 7 December 1878). ‘He who properly understands the position of socialism in economic history holds the key to the great economic problem of the present day’. We must repudiate both ‘the centralizing tendency of German Economy’ and the ‘unrestrained activity of private enterprise…From this dilemma must arise an American Political Economy—an economy which is to be legal rather than industrial in its character’ (‘The position of socialism’, Penn Monthly, 04 1879, pp. 286, 294)Google Scholar. ‘As an economic idea, [socialism] is simply the opposite of individualism; as an economic system, it is a revolt against the doctrines of the Manchester school; judged from the standpoint of the organization of industries, it may be said to embrace all those plans for organization based upon the exercise by the state of the coercive power with which every state is clothed. A study of socialism must be historical, analytical, and critical’ (Outlines of … Political Economy (Ann Arbor, 1881), p. 73)Google Scholar. ‘Do you want to know what I am? I am a Socialist of the general Philosophy of Karl Marx… [I do not] think he has the true method of work and agitation but his criticisms upon our present society are just and true’ (to his mother, 7 November 1883). ‘The control of railways by Commissions is the truly conservative method of control. If it succeeds, we may look for a solution to all the vexed industrial problems in harmony with the fundamental principles of English liberty. If it fails, there is nothing for the future of our civilization but the tyranny of socialism’ (‘The Interstate Commerce Act: Discussion’, Publications of the Michigan Political Science Association, i (05 1893), p. 143Google Scholar.

^{page 195 note 1} His ‘Relation of the state to industrial action’ (in Dorfman (ed.), Essays) provides the best introduction to these matters.

^{page 195 note 2} The Adams family seem to have been adept at figures. Ephraim Adams spent two periods as financial agent of Grinnell College, and as Superintendent of Home Missions in Iowa it was his duty to collect ‘facts and statistics’ about the movement. In a letter written when Henry was at school, he gave him detailed instructions about keeping his accounts, thereby initiating a habit which his son eventually put to professional use in the I.C.C.

^{page 195 note 3} Dorfman, , The Economic Mind, vol, iii, p. 174Google Scholar; also Dorfman (ed.), Essays (introduction).

^{page 195 note 4} On this general movement see Fine, Sidney, Laissez-Faire and The General Welfare State, A Study of Conflict in American Economic Thought 1865–1901 (Ann Arbor, 1956, 1967)Google Scholar.

^{page 196 note 1} In a large, but unsatisfactory literature, see Adler, Felix, An Ethical Philosophy of Life (London, 1918)Google Scholar, which contains an autobiographical introduction; Salter, William McIntyre, Ethical Religion (London, 1905)Google Scholar; The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Ethical Movement, 1876–1916 (New York, 1926, no editor or author)Google Scholar; also the excellent critical bibliography in Smith, James Ward and Jamison, A. Leland (eds.), Religion in American Life, vol. iv (Princeton, 1961), pp. 264 ffGoogle Scholar.

^{page 196 note 2} Adams's reactions appear in his New York diary, as well as in his correspondence.

^{page 196 note 3} One of Adler's followers expressed views exactly in conformity with Adams's beliefs and experiences: ‘The plan of the undertaking is, that a number of thorougly educated men, who have studied at home and foreign universities on the subjects of political science and economics, sociology and ethics, comparative religion and the history of philosophy, should take up the great practical issues of the day and treat them from a broad, free, ethical standpoint. Thus far in our country no such platforms have existed. It is seldom, even in our universities, that our teachers are free, and doubtless it would cost many of them their official heads if they were to speak exactly what they think. But for want of such utterances society is in jeopardy. The public is coming to see that there is more danger from a restriction of free speech than from free utterance, where the utterance comes from educated minds. There will be no crude radicalism where there has been thorough education’ (Sheldon, W. L., Sketch of the History of the Ethical Culture Movement (St Louis, 1890) pp. 21–2)Google Scholar.