Guy Stevens Callender

Background

Guy Stevens Callender was born on November 9, 1865; the ninth of ten children of Robert Foster and Lois (Winslow) Callender, both emigrants from New England to the Western Reserve.

Education

His teaching career began at the age of fifteen in the district schools of Ashtabula County. By the savings of several winters of teaching, supplemented by summer earnings, he paid for a college preparatory course at New Lyme Institute. At the age of twenty-one he was ready for Oberlin College. "With the money earned in haying and harvesting he bought himself a suit of clothes, and with $40 in his pocket he said goodbye to his family. When asked how he expected to get through, he replied with tears in his eyes that he didn't know, but he was going just the same. " With the same pluck and ability which had characterized his earlier struggle he put himself through Oberlin, graduating in 1891. For a year his choice of a career was undecided, and he spent the time traveling through the Middle West in the interests of a publishing house. But his thirst for knowledge proved still unsatisfied and in 1892 he entered the senior class of Harvard College, where he remained as undergraduate, graduate student, and finally as instructor in economics until 1900.

Career

In 1900 Callender was called to Bowdoin College as professor of political economy, but remained there only until 1903 when he accepted a professorship in the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University which he held until his death.

The daily grind of drilling large classes of undergraduates and the administrative work accompanying the teaching deprived him of the time and energy which he longed to devote to historical research. Selections from the Economic History of the United States 1765-1860 (1909) was practically his only published work, but it was enough to establish him as the leading authority in his field. Always intolerant of loose thinking and of verbosity, he compressed into the masterly introductory essays which he prefixed to each chapter his entire theory of the progress of the United States from the beginnings of colonization until the Civil War. In his view economic history should not be a chronological recital of events of industrial and commercial importance, but an explanation by the principles of economic science of the economic and social development of communities. He insisted that the economic historian must not shirk the vital task of interpretation of his facts. He himself was master of a surprisingly wide range of facts from which he drew conclusions which have illumined the colonial and early national periods of United States history.

Achievements

• His analysis of the part played by economic factors in the adoption of the Federal Constitution and his discussion of the economic basis of slavery in the South were two of his outstanding contributions.

Works

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  • Selections From the Economic History of the United States, 1765-1860: With Introductory Essays (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Selections From the Economic History of the ...)

  • The Early Transportation And Banking Enterprises Of The States In Relation To The Growth Of Corporations (1902)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

Personality

As a boy on his father's farm in Hartsgrove, Ohio, he showed the active mind, intellectual curiosity, retentive memory, and fondness for argument which characterized his later life and work. "He devoured the contents of all the books he could get hold of, especially history. He was always ready for discussion with his friends or his elders. In an argument he was outspoken, without regard for the feelings of his opponent. " The human qualities which later endeared him to his small circle of intimate friends were also evident.

Just at the beginning of his work he had a complete nervous breakdown from which he never entirely recovered.

Quotes from others about the person

• "He was an outstanding man among our graduate students of his time, " writes Professor Taussig. "His high intellectual quality, and the independence and originality of his work, impressed us from the start. "

Connections

On June 14, 1904, he was married to Harriet Rice in Cambridge, Massachussets

Father:

Robert Foster Callender

Mother:

Lois (Winslow) Callender

Spouse:

Harriet Rice