Suchergebnisse

To those senior citizens and somewhat younger members of our guild who attended the 1949 annual meeting of the Association at Rutgers University, the death of Professor Ashton last September may revive memories of his lively participation in the program of that meeting. Others may have met him during his spring semester as visiting professor at Johns Hopkins in 1952, with side trips to some eastern campuses followed by a summer school stint at Columbia. Meanwhile the publisher's royalty statements indicate that tens of thousands of students in this continent and elsewhere yearly continue to buy his classic little volume The Industrial Revolution, 1760–1830 (1948).

I'm honored by this assignment: partly because I think after-dinner speeches are a necessary combination of regularizer and tranquilizer; also because it is a pleasure to share in our silver jubilee before silver vanishes from circulation. I wonder what the Association will do when the golden jubilee comes round. But the last two words of the title were not of my choosing, and when the program came I had to consult my dictionary. There I learned that "to evaluate" means "to ascertain the numerical value of"—which suggests I am to talk in digits. As for "reflective," the good book says "throwing back images, light, etc., as in a mirror." Of late years, since I gave up using a hairbrush and took to an electric razor, I haven't done much looking into mirrors; and when I do so my bifocals compel me to stand so close that the view is limited in area or to move far back and thereby get width and depth of vision.

We economic historians can sympathize fully with Professor Gerhard in his search for criteria that will help to cut political history into meaningful periods. Like him, we are fully aware that periodizing seems an artificial intellectual trick in face of the fact that life continues even in the midst of destruction. We would add, "So do human wants and the efforts that have to be made for their satisfaction."