From Thesis to Book

While he was working at the Radiation Laboratory, Samuelson sent the final draft of Foundations of Economic Analysis to Harvard University Press. When it was published in 1947, this was to cement his reputation as the leading econ­omist of his generation.

Fifty years after the book's publication, Samuelson provided his own account of the problems encountered in turning the thesis into a book and why it took so long.

Alas, World War II came to U.S. shores via Pearl Harbor. Nights and Sundays, while working on radar and mathematical fire control at the Radiation Laboratory, I toiled over revisions and expansions. By 1944 I handed in the finished draft.¹

He claimed that the manuscript then sat in the Economics Department, which had to give approval because it was appearing in a series sponsored by the department, gathering dust, owing to the long-time department chair's lack of enthusiasm for those who engaged in economic theory before the age of fifty.^a

a. Elsewhere, Samuelson attributed Department Chair Burbank's aversion to him as anti­Semitism; see chapter 15 this volume.

Burbank, Samuelson claimed, also tried to sabotage the book by ordering too few copies and destroying the type:

Less lucky was the department chairman’s decision to have a first print­ing of only 500 copies. I objected. We compromised on 750 copies. But he had the last word. His orders were to destroy all that beautiful mathematical type after the first run.^[48]

However, Samuelson’s memory of these events, colored by his attitude to Burbank, was not completely accurate.^b

Samuelson had defended his thesis soon after his move to MIT. The examination took place on December 4, 1940, the examiners being Wilson, Chamberlin, and Taylor, with Schumpeter as the chair.

Samuelson’s thesis was a natural candidate for the Wells Prize, awarded each year to the best PhD thesis in economics, and which carried with it the promise of publication by Harvard University Press. However, the Harvard Corporation ruled that, having been examined so late in the year, Samuelson’s thesis could not be considered for publication by the Prize Committee in 1941, but had to wait until 1942. On learning this,⁶ Wilson advised Samuelson to take advantage of the delay by rewriting it: though he or other mathematical economists might not benefit from such rewriting—they could understand it in its current form—it would make the book far more valuable to econo­mists who were less mathematically inclined. He explained that there were “too many formulas which would scare them off” and that expanding the text would “help them to appreciate the value of rigorous mathematical econom­ics of which not a few of them are rather skeptical.”⁷ Alluding to the precept of Alfred Marshall that Samuelson had criticized so strongly in the opening pages of his thesis, Wilson explained that he thought Samuelson should give more illustrative examples and turn as much of the mathematics as possible into English.

Writing to Harris, chair of the Wells Prize committee, expressing relief that the thesis could not be considered for another year, Wilson named some of the economists whom he thought that Samuelson could reach by writing in a different style.

The important thing, however, is to get this book out in such a form that it won't be too difficult reading for men like Taylor and Chamberlin and Frank Knight or J. M. Clark or other of our first-class economic theorists who are not particularly trained in mathematics. [Such economists] ought to know what [Samuelson's] results are in order to avoid certain confusions which might otherwise arise.⁸

He pointed out that Samuelson implied as much in certain passages of the thesis. Wilson's view of Samuelson's thesis followed from his belief that the potential audience for works in mathematical economics was very limited. Given that Chamberlin and Taylor had been among the examin­ers, Wilson's remark that they would not understand it was probably well founded.

Writing to Chamberlin, Wilson opined that the 284 pages of the the­sis should be expanded with around 100 pages of additional text. And in addition to providing illustrations of “actual economic problems,” he recom­mended that there should be “many more references to the standard trea­tises on economics like Marshall's [Principles of Economics]” and that where he did refer to such works, detailed page references were needed.⁹ He made it even clearer to Chamberlin than he had to Samuelson that he disagreed with Samuelson's treatment of Marshall:

Samuelson quotes Marshall's remark that you ought to be able to translate your mathematical economics into English composition and he quotes it with disapproval, I would quote it with approval. I real­ize fully that a complete translation may not be possible but I further realize that in our day and generation theoretical economists will not be highly trained in mathematics and that it is of the greatest impor­tance to do all the translating one can and make the translation just as readable and effective as one can.

Such remarks, when taken together with his earlier doubts about Samuelson’s employability in most economics departments, show that Wilson failed to anticipate the extent to which the audience for mathematical economics would grow.

The Wells Prize for that year was awarded to Samuelson’s friend David McCord Wright for his thesis on “The Creation of Purchasing Power” and Samuelson’s thesis was considered at the beginning of 1942. A committee comprising Harris, Haberler, Hansen, and Leontief decided to award him the prize, a decision that was endorsed by the department on February 10, 1942.¹⁰ Burbank wrote to him of his good fortune on March 16, saying that one of the factors behind the award was “the condition of the essay relative to publication” and that he hoped a manuscript could be sent to Harvard University Press as soon as possible. As well as covering the costs of publica­tion, the prize included a payment of $500, but this could be paid only when the final manuscript was sent to the publisher, which did not happen until February 1945.¹¹

On May 29, 1942, David Pottinger, of Harvard University Press, requested a summary of the book and various biographical details so he could prepare some advance publicity.¹² In reply, Samuelson explained that he was undertaking “fairly extensive revisions” and that, because of his work as a consultant for the National Resources Planning Board, it was being delayed. He did not expect the manuscript to be finished in 1942. He explained that the book was very important: “the problems which it analyzes are not at all of an esoteric or narrow type, but rather are the fundamental ones under­lying all economic writings, literary or symbolical, theoretical or applied.” However, he warned Pottinger that the book would be mathematical. He hoped that nonmathematical economists would be able to learn from it, but he was not very optimistic about this.¹³ He then went on to summarize the book’s contents:

It is an attempt to elucidate the basic hypotheses common to value and price theory and modern business cycle theory.

The second principal hypothesis involves the assumption that the interactions of the schedules summarizing the behavior of different economic units are subject to certain “stability” conditions. This latter term presupposes a rudimentary implicit or explicit theory of dynam­ics. The second part of the book is concerned with developing a theory of dynamics and its relationship to the derivation of useful informa­tion about the statical properties of the system. These are illustrated by application to some of the more fundamental problems of economic theory and business cycles.¹⁴

This suggests that very early on, in 1941 or 1942, Samuelson had decided that the book should be expanded by being extended into business cycle theory, for though the thesis had mentioned this (there had been an analysis of the stability of the Keynesian system, and references to business cycle theory), such material was very limited. There is no indication that, at this point, he had the idea of writing a chapter on welfare economics.

As Samuelson anticipated, progress was slow. On July 8, 1943, Samuelson wrote to Abbott Usher, who was dealing with the press on behalf of the department, about his progress with the book.

This is just a line to let you know that I finally found the leisure neces­sary to prepare my dissertation for publication. The manuscript will be ready for the printer by the first of September. However, this is not a definite prediction as I may hit snags in the latter portions.¹⁵

Usher was encouraging Samuelson to finish the book quickly.

In April 1944, a fortnight after he started at the Radiation Laboratory, he told his friend Wolfgang Stolper that it was only with great difficulty that he could make any progress on “the remaining chapters of my own manuscript.”¹⁸ Unfortunately, he did not say which chapters he had already finished. Given his comment to Salant, a year earlier, that he was making only minor revisions and that he was “on the home stretch,” it is clear that at some point in 1943—44 he had decided to include new material.^c It is not known when he submitted the manuscript to the department. As he was still struggling to find time to finish it in April, it would seem unlikely to have been earlier than the summer of 1944, and it could well have been later in the year. The book was forwarded to Harvard University Press in February 1945, which means that the time it sat on Burbank's desk—pre­sumably because he had to find time to read it, possibly also consulting col­leagues, and give his approval—was probably at most six months, though if Samuelson and Marion had worked on it for a significant part of the time he was employed at the Radiation Laboratory, it might have been much less. Having submitted it, he was probably impatient to know that it had been sent to the press, and he may well have remembered the delay as being longer than it was.

On February 27, 1945, Samuelson wrote to E. B. Wilson saying, “My Wells Prize dissertation has finally been handed to the University Press. That is a great relief.”¹⁹ When they received the manuscript, Harvard University Press immediately raised the question of how soon it should be published. There was a paper shortage, and given that the Economics Department had sent them another book to be published that year, they thought it unlikely that they could also proceed with Samuelson's.²⁰ Usher, who was dealing with the press, explained that although he did not expect the print run to be more than 750 copies, he would also like a quo­tation for printing 1,200 copies, so as not to prejudge the size of the edi­tion.²¹ However, the first problem the publisher encountered was that the Harvard University Printing Office said that because of the mathematics involved, they were unable to give an estimate of the cost, because much of the typesetting would have to be done by hand.²² Rather than proceed on a cost-plus basis, Usher asked the press to get estimates from printers who specialized in such work.²³ Faced with this, the Harvard Printing Office came up with a price that the press thought excessive.²⁴ Instead, the decision was made to use a Pennsylvania printer, Lancaster Press, on grounds that they had greater experience and were known to be reliable.²⁵

c. He did not mention what the new material was. A possible candidate, discussed later, is the chapter on welfare economics.

However, work did not begin, and in December 1945, Harvard University Press asked the printer to return the manuscript, as it would shortly be going into production, noting that in addition, Samuelson wanted to do some more work on it.^26,d

In April 1946, the press reported to Usher that Lancaster Press was so busy they would not be able to start work for another few months.²⁷ Later that month, Samuelson settled on what would be the book's final title, Foundations of Economic Analysis. The reasons he gave for this was that it was more accurate, given the new material he had added and that he thought it would be more popular—a change that Usher strongly approved.^[52] It was not until December, though, that Lancaster Press sent Harvard University Press the galley proofs of the first two chapters for approval.²⁸ That month they also learned that their supplier would begin producing suitable paper in January 1947.²⁹ Though Samuelson had to insist on the printer repro­ducing certain symbols precisely, and the printer had to have new type cast,³⁰ the book was ready for printing in June. A print run of 1,200 cop­ies was agreed—significantly more than the figure Samuelson remembered. Samuelson also negotiated an order for 100 offprints of the mathematical appendices.³¹

Once the plates were made, there was pressure to kill the type, coming entirely from the printer. In April 1947, Lancaster Press wrote to Alfred Jules, production manager at Harvard University Press, to say that they were getting close to being able to print the book and they did not want to hold the metal plates any longer than necessary.

The composing machine metal shortage is still acute and what metal is available is priced at almost double its normal cost. For these rea­sons we hesitate to tie up too many pages after a printing of a book is completed, and we have been wondering whether you would want to consider having us electrotype this book before this first printing and in that way have printing plates available for any subsequent issues that may be needed.³²

This letter went back and forth between Jules and the press's business man­ager. Jules asked, “OK to kill after presswork is complete?” and was told, “We'll have to get dept. OK.” Jules then wrote to Lancaster Press, explaining that “we cannot plate this book for obvious reasons, but I can well appreci­ate your metal situation and will do all I can to hasten the decision of the department.”³³ However, nearly two months later, a decision still had not been received. Lancaster Press asked Jules again whether the type could be killed, in a letter that was passed on to Smith, who then contacted Usher.³⁴ Jules wrote to Lancaster Press:

I have taken up with our business manager the matter of killing the type and hope to get a decision one way or the other today. It takes some time to get an approval from the department involved, as in most cases, they prefer to have the type held for a length of time. As they have no understanding of the type metal shortage, we are more or less helpless.³⁵

In July, Usher confirmed that the type could be killed.³⁶

Lancaster Press eventually shipped 887 copies of the book on October ι, 1947, and copies were distributed on October 10.³⁷ It appears that the shortage of paper was still a factor, for a letter from the press to Usher explained that it was expected that the War Production Board would soon revoke controls on the use of paper, when it would be easy to scale up pro­duction quickly.³⁸ Because costs had risen so much since the contract had been signed almost two years earlier, Lancaster Press was allowed to raise their price by 10 percent, though owing to the subsidy from the Wells Prize fund, the book could still be sold for $5, a price similar to that at which McGraw-Hill were to sell Samuelson’s introductory textbook.³⁹ As Samuelson had noted the previous year, the extended time from submission of the manuscript to publication had been caused primarily by the shortage of paper.⁴⁰