ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the "Works of George H. Mead" under consideration at the University of Chicago Press, and the so-called "Payne Fund Studies" at Macmillan Company. The University of Chicago Press was near the top of university press publishing throughout the period under investigation both in terms of its economic production and its prestige. Macmillan's huge successes through 1931 certainly made it a premier press for publication of the Payne Fund Studies, but also led to stringent requirements perceived as necessary to hedge against unprofitable scholarly projects. In early 1932 W. H. Short, who had become the director of the Motion Picture Research Council that organized the Payne Fund Studies, was in contact with Macmillan and other presses in order to negotiate publication. As Young's review indicates, the Payne Fund Studies became a focus of debates on the relation between scientific research and political and ethical reform precisely because of the overshadowing of the research by its popularization.
