Galbraith John Kenneth - John Kenneth Galbraith: his life, his politics, his economics

THE SUMMER SUN had risen shortly after five that early September morning, and by seven the sky already promised both faint warmth and a fine New England day. Out in Cape Cod Bay, the S.S. Acadia, a coastal steamer of the old Merchant & Miners line, was cutting northward through calm waters on her regular two-day run from Baltimore to Boston. She was due to dock in less than three hours, and at the rail of her upper deck a lanky young passenger was peering carefully westward at the low Massachusetts coastline off her port side.

Hed been up since dawn, as the ship passed through the Cape Cod Canal; now he watched as the gray rocky shore slid by, its beaches backed with green pine and oak, the treeline broken here and there by occasional houses and compact little villages and towns. A crew member had paused momentarily to point out Plymouth, where the Pilgrims had landed three centuries earlier and hed thanked the man politely, then continued to watch as fishing boats made their way out from small harbors in search of the days catch in the quiet bay. He noticed that a few other of the Acadias passengers were up now, too, strolling the decks, ready to start their own day.

Several of his fellow passengers, as they passed, took note of the young man, as they had casually ever since they sailed: at six feet eight inches, after all, he quickly and naturally stood out among them. At dinner the night before, hed chatted pleasantly with his table companions and, in response to their questions, told something about himself.

He was an economist, theyd discovered, with a freshly minted Ph.D. from the University of California, awarded that June. Just twenty-five years old, hed been in Washington for the summer, working for one of President Roosevelts new alphabet agencies, something called the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. His listeners, all East Coast city dwellers, werent quite sure what the year-old Triple A did exactly, but they understood that now, in 1934, with America mired deep in the Depression, the one out of three Americans who still farmed were in desperate need of helpand were a priority for the New Deal.

Hed worked, theyd learned, on the question of abandoned, tax-delinquent farmlandsa very large problem, he assured them, involving millions of acres across the country. At issue, he saidand here a couple of his Republican tablemates had wincedwas the possibility of their takeover by the federal government. His companions seemed calmed and duly impressed, however, when the young man explained that he was now sailing to Boston to begin teaching at Harvard University. Harvard, they must have felt, would surely shield him from further exposure to the dangerous and radical currents then flowing in Washington.

Something about the young man would have struck them, though. He was very confident, clearly intelligent, and over the course of their leisurely evening meal, able to range across a wide variety of topics having to do with the countrys immense economic crisis. His tan summer suit, slicked-back chestnut hair, horn-rimmed glasses, and polished brown shoes all bespoke attentiveness to the academic style of the day. Handsomely attractive in a rugged way, with strongly drawn features, he projected great vitality and ambition, making him appear the sort of man Harvard valued. There was this troublesome issue of his working for Roosevelt, and his obvious admiration for the new President and his policies, but Harvard would no doubt smooth that out with time, settle him down, point him in the right direction.

As they finished their coffees and made their good nights, several at the table might even have guessed that this young fellow would be going places, someone who with good luck and time would leave a mark.

CELEBRITY, IN MODERN AMERICAN LIFE, is a transient, ephemeral thing, bestowed almost randomly nowadays by the media, especially the omnivorous cyclops lens of television. Sitcom stars, popular singers, athletes, accident victims, lottery winners, successful (or disgraced) politicians all race past us in an unending cavalcade, forgotten the next week or next year, displaced by whatever new face has been chosen to replace them.

True fame is something different. The ancient Greeks understood it to reflect character, and mere celebrity had nothing to do with it. To them, character was a tapestry woven of innate abilities and virtues, imprinted with the stamp of experience and with destiny. Unlike celebrity, it rightly marked only a few and endured much longer.

Todayseventy years after that voyage, and more than a half century since his writing first won him widespread acclaimthe Harvard professor John Kenneth Galbraith remains the worlds most famous living economist. The author of four dozen books and more than eleven hundred articles, recipient of nearly fifty honorary degrees, former president of the American Economic Association as well as a former ambassador and presidential adviser, he has continued writing, traveling, and lecturing into his nineties. And as his dinner-mates instinctively understood that night aboard the Acadia, he has in innumerable ways left his mark upon his times.

In the late summer of 1934, though, striding down the gangplank of the Acadia after she docked at Bostons Commonwealth Pier, Ken Galbraith (as he has always preferred to be known) was just a young, unknown university instructor. To be sure, he was going to be teaching at Americas premier university, but he was one of several hundred young men like him, just then pouring into Cambridge as others like them had for years, young men full of promise but still untested for real achievement. Yet as we look back at the scene now, seven decades later, we can see that three defining influences on Galbraiths later, mature character were already evident, influences that would mark his subsequent Harvard career, his relation to the larger world of economics, and his ultimate fame.

The first revealed itself in the way he got to Cambridge. Unlike most of the other faculty and students arriving to begin their fall classes, Galbraiths choice of the Acadia set him apart. Choosing to come by ship wasnt happenstance; the Baltimore & Ohio Raid Roads overnight train from Washington would have been faster and cheaper, hence more efficient, a notion almost sacred to most economists then as now. But to this young economist, efficiency alone was already only one criterion among many worth considering, and he had wanted something distinctive to mark his first coming to Cambridge as memorable. Because hed never seen the Atlantic Ocean, the choice of ships travel had thus been an easy one. The leisurely voyage, for which he paid $18 (berth and meals included), offered plenty of time for contemplation of expansive sea vistas and, not surprisingly, had filled his mind with a sense of lifes vast possibilities. Harvard itself, he realized even then, promised to be the start of a future rich with opportunity.