74 RICHMOND MAYO-SMITH— SELIGMAN. [MBMOIE fvoL. T xm 



tinction, writes, he was one of the old reliables, efficient in whatever he undertook and faithful 

 to the last degree. As his father was a prominent car manufacturer, the natural inference 

 was that young Richmond would enter the same business, but his interest in history and 

 economics, under the inspiration of Prof. John W. Burgess, led him into other paths. At 

 the instigation of Prof. Burgess, he went to Europe, after graduating from Amherst in 1875, 

 and spent two years at the universities of Berlin and Heidelberg, prosecuting his studies in eco- 

 nomics and social science. In 1877 he was called to Columbia as instructor in history and 

 political science, in 1878 he was made adjunct professor of political economy and social science, 

 and finally, in 1883, he was promoted to the full professorship in the same department. When 

 the School of Political Science was organized in 1880, he became one of the five original instruc- 

 tors, retaining at the same time his seat in the faculty of the School of Arts, as the college was 

 then called. At the time of the reorganization of the university and the inception of the Council 

 in 1890 he was made a member of that body, and continued as the elected delegate of the faculty 

 of Political Science up to the beginning of 1901. 



So much for the bare facts of his lifelong connection with Columbia. To form an estimate 

 of his real influence it wall be necessary to consider him in the threefold aspects of scholar, 

 teacher, and citizen. 



As a scholar Prof. Mayo-Smith had acquired a position of high rank among the economists 

 of the country. He made numerous contributions to the scientific periodicals of America 

 and England, and wrote occasionally for foreign publications like the German Verein fur Social- 

 politik. He was one of the original board of editors of the Political Science Quarterly in 1886, 

 and almost every volume contained an article on some economic topic from his pen; he was 

 one of the founders of the American Economic Association, and always took a deep interest 

 in its welfare, attending its meetings regularly and almost invariably contributing a paper 

 or taking a leading part in the discussion. His writings on economics proper covered a wide 

 range of topics. Although he published only one volume on a special subject — the book 

 on "Immigration and Emigration," which still remains the model of its kind — his articles 

 and especially his numerous reviews of new books showed that he possessed a firm grasp on 

 the fundamental principles of the science. As an economist his chief characteristics were 

 thoroughness, unquestioned accuracy, open-mindedness, clearness of thought and expression, 

 and a rare sanity of judgment. 



It was, however, in the allied field of statistics — which has of recent years successfully 

 vindicated its claim to be considered a coordinate if not an independent science — that Prof. 

 Mayo-Smith won his greatest triumphs. He was indisputably the foremost American scientific 

 statistician. From the very outset of his professional career he appreciated the fundamental 

 importance of sound statistical methods in American public life, and he resolved to bend his 

 utmost energies to the task of placing American statistics on a thoroughly scientific basis. 

 His course on statistics was the first given in any American university, and for a long time 

 remained the only one. His publications on the subject soon began to attract the attention 

 of practical statisticians and won for him the admiration and friendship of such men as Presi- 

 dent Francis A. Walker and Carroll D. Wright. He became one of the founders of the rejuve- 

 nated American Statistical Association and before long was elected its vice president, a position 

 which he still occupied at the time of his death. His reputation at home had now spread to 

 such an extent that he was made a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a rare distinction 

 at a time when the academy was in such doubt as to whether economics or statistics was a 

 real science that it numbered only a single representative of those disciplines among its mem- 

 bers. Shortly afterwards he was elected to the International Statistical Institute, which then 

 had only half a dozen members in America. From this period date his wider international 

 reputation and the beginnings of his warm friendship with such eminent scholars as Bodio of 

 Italy, Levasseur of France, and Craigie and Edgeworth of England. He attended several 

 of the European meetings of the institute, notably those of Berne, Paris, and St. Petersburg, and 

 contributed occasionally to its Bulletin. The two volumes in which he summed up a part 



