Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T02:03:43.936Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

An Approach to the Study of Entrepreneurship: A Tribute to Edwin F. Gay

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Arthur H. Cole
Arthur H. Cole
Affiliation:
Harvard University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The first formal meeting of the Economic History Association after This death should not close without appropriate tribute to our initial president and the first real American economic historian, Edwin F. Gay. More than most members of the Association, I feel his loss, since in one capacity or another I had the good fortune to be associated with him for almost thirty-five years. And I am the more appropriate agent to render our common tribute, since, more than others, I am indebted to him. I realize that, without his instruction, encouragement, and stimulation, I should not be standing here as a successor to him in office.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 6 , supplement S1 , 1946 , pp. 1 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1946

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Gay, Edwin Francis, “The Rhythm of History,” Harvard Graduates' Magazine, XXXII (1923-1924), 12.Google Scholar

2 Moreover, when the “entrepreneur” had been adopted in English (and American) economic theory, he was a colorless personage, and he remained colorless and unchanged down to Marshall and Keynes, perhaps because economic theorists have known so little economic history, and economic historians have paid so little attention to economic theory.

3 Say, Jean-Baptiste, Catechism of Political Economy (London, 1816), pp. 28–29Google Scholar. The French edition appeared in 1815.

4 Under this concept, the problems posed by Ripley, Berle, Means, and Burnham become almost side issues. They relate to the pressures and strategies in corporate government-much as pressures and strategies in the sharing of public benefits relate to political government.

5 The responsibility of choice by entrepreneurship among possible innovations applies quite as much to technological changes as to others. After a choice is made, there is the need of adjusting new techniques into a pre-existing system of operation, with possible alterations in nearly all phases from wage scales to marketing.

15 The differentiation intended between “stages” and “longitudinal segments of change” is between a word that seems to mean action or conditions in specific periods of time, and a phrase which, it is hoped, conveys the sense of continuing action or conditions throughout a long river of time. Early forms often do not wholly disappear, but they become less wide currents in a stream of experience.

16 Gordon, Robert Aaron, Business Leadership in the Large Corporation (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1945).Google Scholar

17 By “ancillary” institutions, I have in mind those that are not directly concerned with the production of consumable goods and services: banks, insurance companies, labor exchanges, advertising agencies, machine builders, and so forth.

18 Barnard, Chester I., The Functions of the Executive (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938).Google ScholarPubMed

19 Cochran, Thomas C., “The Economics in a Business History,” THE TASKS OF ECONOMIC HISTORY (Supplemental Issue of THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY), V (1945), 54–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 The references here to Robert East and below to Chester Destler are to be found on pp. 16-27 and 28-49 respectively.

21 Baxter, William T., The House of Hancock; Business m Boston, 1724-1775 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1945), p. 159Google Scholar. Actually the years 1757-59 and 1762-64 are omitted because of insufficient data.

22 Lipson, E., A Planned Economy or Free Enterprise; The Lessons of History (London: A.&C. Black, 1944).Google Scholar

23 Ibid., p. 86.

24 Ibid., pp. 159, 129.