(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.
(Excerpt from New Aspects of Politics
All of these lead t...)
Excerpt from New Aspects of Politics
All of these lead to lowered productivity and lowered good feeling, each of which affects the oth er in making up the sum of human well-being.
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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
(
Charles Merriam is scarcely read today, and even among ...)
Charles Merriam is scarcely read today, and even among scholars he is probably more often cited than read seriously. His ambiguous position in the study of American democracy is unfortunate. Between the two world wars, Merriman was the doyen of American political science. This was a period when the most formative characteristics of academic social sciences were taking shape, characteristics that were to dominate the remainder of the century. During this period, "science" and "progress" became virtually synonymous in the social sciences. Between the two world wars, the liberal progressive critique of America's founders, a critique that included scholars such as Woodrow Wilson, Charles Beard, and others, became the orthodoxy of a new political science. The heart of that critique, insofar as it turned on methodological questions of how to study American government, was very much the work of Charles Merriam. Anyone who seeks to understand why that period was so pivotal in the interpretation of American democracy must necessarily study Charles Merriam and his influence. His work represents the first comprehensive effort by a scholar in the liberal-progressive tradition to survey the entirety of American political thought.
To read Merriam's political essays and writings is to read a political theory that the behavioral tradition would come to label as "normative." His essays included insightful interpretations of Hobbes and Rousseau in European political philosophy as well as an earlier work tracing American political thought from the founding to the Civil War. This is a fundamental work for scholars working in the liberal-progressive tradition.
The Village Reader: Designed for the Use of Schools
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This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
A History of American Political Theories (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from A History of American Political Theories
A ...)
Excerpt from A History of American Political Theories
A study of American political theories may appropriately begin with an examination of the ideas of the colonists who laid the foundations upon which the national structure now rests. In view of the fact that the Puritan ideals, political and moral, have been so potent a force in the development of American national characteristics, attention will first be directed to the Puritan political tenets.
About the Publisher
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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Merriam Genealogy In England And America: Including The "genealogical Memoranda" Of Charles Pierce Merriam, The Collections Of James Sheldon Merriam, Etc.
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
Genealogical Memoranda Relating to the Family of Merriam (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Genealogical Memoranda Relating to the Famil...)
Excerpt from Genealogical Memoranda Relating to the Family of Merriam
Although in 1638, when Robert, George and Joseph Merriam, the sons of William Merriam, of Hadlow, in Kent, emigrated, and settled at Concord in Massachusetts, there were living at several places in Kent, as is shown by these evidences, a number of people bearing the name, it has now, as far as is known, quite died out in that county, and as regards the English branch, altogether in England.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
(
This work has been selected by scholars as being cultura...)
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Charles Edward Merriam was an American political scientist, social science administrator, and government policy adviser.
Background
Charles Edward Merriam, Jr. was born on November 15, 1874, in Hopkinton, Iowa. He was the son of Charles Edward and Margaret Campbell Kirkwood Merriam. His brother, John Campbell Merriam, became an important paleontologist, science administrator, and conservationist. The Merriams, a family prominent in Iowa politics, had migrated from Princeton, Massachusetts, in the 1850's to join a new community of Scottish Covenanters. C. E. Merriam was a merchant and the town postmaster during Republican administrations and trustee of the town's academy, Lenox College.
Education
Merriam graduated Lenox College in 1893. Merriam did not fulfill his father's ambition for him, a career in politics. The year he spent preparing for a law degree at the State University of Iowa (B. A. 1895) turned him away from a field he considered too little concerned with principle and toward the field that his teacher Issac Loos was helping to transform from the political economy into political science. Merriam enrolled at Columbia University in 1897 in order to study with John W. Burgess, William A. Dunning, and the remarkable assemblage of public policy academicians gathered there. Columbia President Seth Low's mayoralty campaign in 1897 gave Merriam his first taste of what became a lifelong interest, big city politics. He spent the then-requisite year in Germany (1899), where he studied under Otto von Gierke and Hugo Preuss, then returned to Columbia to complete his dissertation, A History of the Theory of Sovereignty Since Rousseau (1900), under Dunning's direction.
Career
Merriam began his academic career in 1900 at the University of Chicago. His title "docent" characterized not only the Germanic influence at Chicago but also the lowly state of those who bore the burdens of teaching undergraduates while struggling to produce the scholarship sufficient to move them up the academic ladder. Merriam was the university's first designated political scientist. Among those who formed the American Political Science Association in 1903, he was conspicuous for his commitment to the new field. Although American Political Theories (1902) continued his identification with Dunning, Merriam was already moving toward the empirical interest for which he is best known. Primary Elections (1908) was the result of Merriam's involvement in Chicago reform politics directed toward that particular innovation. By 1909 he was even more involved in the reform movement, having been elected alderman. He became a professor in 1911, the year he lost the mayoralty campaign, but the race drew national attention and made him one of the leaders of the urban Progressive movement the "Woodrow Wilson of the West, " as Robert La Follette called him. World War I and the transformation of Progressivism from a political movement to an administrative reform movement ended Merriam's political career, although he stayed close to Chicago politics for the rest of his life. His 1911 campaign manager had been Harold L. Ickes, and their friendship had great influence on his later career. He published American Political Ideas: 1865-1917 (1920) and moved rapidly to leadership in the field, becoming president of the American Political Science Association (1924 - 1925). Merriam's founding of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) in 1923 indicated a breadth of interest extending well beyond the domain of his discipline; he served as its first president from 1924 to 1927. Funds from the Rockefeller Foundation formed the nucleus of philanthropic resources that placed him and the committees of the SSRC among the leading promotional sources of the expansion of the social sciences through the 1920's and 1930's.
The SSRC provided President Herbert Hoover with Recent Social Trends in the United States (1933), an extensive report on social conditions in the United States and a milestone in the history of American social science. The Great Depression and the dramatic New Deal measures that followed eclipsed Hoover's innovation, but some of the ideas and many of the personnel were used. Wesley Clair Mitchell, a professor at Columbia University, was chairman of the committee, and Merriam the vice-chairman. Harold Ickes, who had been appointed secretary of the interior, moved both men into the New Deal as members of the group that ultimately was called the National Resources Planning Board (NRPB). From 1933 to 1943 the NRPB, under Merriam's leadership, provided a special form of planning, utilizing the academic community in the natural sciences as well as the social sciences to provide research and programs for public policy. Although it never fully achieved its promise Congress opposed it throughout its history and finally abolished it during World War II as "socialist" its seventy-odd reports and memoranda are a body of material unique in American history.
The peak of this phase of Merriam's career came with his appointment in 1936 to the President's Committee on Administrative Management. The committee's report in 1937 led to the reorganization of the presidency in 1939-1940 and to the establishment of the office in its modern form. Merriam's access to Rockefeller money was an important factor in his building of his department at Chicago into one of the nation's major political science departments. He also developed social science research throughout the university. The Social Science Research Building, opened in 1929, marked a new era; it was a building devoted entirely to research and to cooperative endeavors among the social sciences. Although Merriam is generally acknowledged as the father of the behavioral movement in political science, his own writings tended to be exhortations to research in that direction rather than research works themselves. New Aspects of Politics (1925), perhaps one of the most influential of his writings, is a collection of the hortatory comments he had been presenting to the profession since 1921, outlining the implications of new methods and interdisciplinary interests. Non-Voting (1924), written with Harold F. Gosnell, was a remarkable research project that utilized new statistical methods, some of them for the first time. Merriam's two most characteristic books, Four American Party Leaders (1926) and Chicago: A More Intimate View of Urban Politics (1929), were primarily shrewd and subtly philosophical observations of his own political experience. He died on January 8, 1953, at Rockville, Maryland.
Achievements
Charles Edward Merriam, Jr. was a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, founder of the behavioralistic approach to political science, a prominent intellectual in the Progressive Movement, and an advisor to several U. S. Presidents. Upon his death, The New York Times called him "one of the outstanding political scientists in the country. " The University of Illinois picks a distinguished academic to honor with the Charles E. Merriam Award for Outstanding Public Policy Research.
Merriam's return to political theory in the 1930's was prompted in some respects by the ideological crisis precipitated by Fascism and Communism, and led him back to his defenses of democratic theory. He sought to ally the realism he saw in the new social sciences with the idealism he continued to respect in the tradition from which he had come. Science was the servant of democratic politics, never its master; and his test of technological advance was always the same: whether it was more, rather than less, democratic. Political Power: Its Composition and Incidence (1934) was his most important work in this area. In effect he sought to do in his day what Alexis de Tocqueville had done a century earlier: to see democracy as the only form of government worthy of the nature of man, and American democracy as one of the crucial steps along the road to a genuine democratic society. Such a utopian concept did not preclude realistic appraisals of defects and errors. Indeed, such appraisals were the necessary precondition of cultural advance, and science was to be used in making them. Planning, to Merriam, was what Americans needed most to understand if self-awareness rather than the criticism of the past were to become the means to the future.
Views
Quotations:
"From the standpoint of modern political science the slave holders were right in declaring that liberty can be given only to those who have political capacity enough to use it, and they were also right in maintaining that two greatly unequal races cannot exist side by side on terms of perfect equality. "
"Rights are considered to have their source not in nature, but in law. "
"Chicago is unique. It is the only completely corrupt city in America. "
"The influence of the German school is most obvious in relation to the contract theory of the origin of the state and the idea of the function of the state. The theory that the state originates in an agreement between men was assailed by the German thinkers and the historical, organic, evolutionary idea substituted for it. "
"Rights do not belong to men simply as men, but because of the superior qualities, physical, intellectual, moral or political, which are characteristic of certain individuals or races. "
"In speaking of natural rights, therefore, it is essential to remember that these alleged rights have no political force whatsoever, unless recognized and enforced by the state. "
"It is denied that any limit can be set to governmental activity. "
"It not infrequently happens that persons without any other special qualification than the drama of their lives are precipitated into important political positions. "
Membership
a member of the Chicago City Charter Convention
Connections
On August 3, 1901, Merriam married Elizabeth Hilda Doyle of Constableville, New York; they had four children.
