ABSTRACT
By the end of the 1890s professional status and security competed with ideological and methodological considerations as values for economists. Even more important, the profession had developed the will, the influence, and the machinery to defend its own. Along with advances in scholarship and an increasing homogeneity of experiences, a real need for collective security had made it possible—even essential—for unity and discipline to grow. The profession was national, hierarchically organized, and dominated by senior, mostly eastern economists in major universities. Standardized professionalization procedures gave the leading professors a large measure of control over the mobility and advancement of junior scholars. Managed by a powerful professional elite, the academic freedom cases had isolated unacceptable practices and underscored areas of consensus on doctrine, method, mission, and protocol which economists had reached in the 1890s. The numerous dismissals and resignations at Stanford generated a crisis in professional discipline.
