Gayer, Rostow, and Schwartz on the British Economy

Extract

More than a decade ago, Arthur Gayer, W. W. Rostow, and Anna Jacobson Schwartz completed their remarkable work of collaborative scholarship. Preoccupation of the authors with other usks during and after the war was, it is stated, the main cause for the delay in publication; but one may surmise that with a study of such full-bodied proportions as was originally put together, the ever-rising cost of publication was also a factor. Fortunately, the surviving authors (Mr. Gayer died in 1951) have not been too reverent of the arduous fullness of their well-planned product. They have accepted the expedient of microfilming to meet their purpose of making unpublished parts accessible to other scholars. How generous their prewar intentions were is indicated by the list, occupying nearly seventeen pages in Volume II, of full texts of several sections and of tables of monthly data on prices of stocks and commodities, as well as other basic matter, which will be available through the Columbia University Council on Research in the Social Sciences, which has fostered the study virtually from the conception of the project by Mr. Gayer twenty years ago.