ABSTRACT
Joseph Schumpeter observed the process of American conversion at Harvard, where the students, already apprised of the new doctrine, had to await copies of The General Theory to see what Keynes really said. Some of them were so eager that they ordered copies directly from England. Keynes had been moving almost simultaneously into the environs of The General Theory and the councils of the United States. His personal contacts included two acquaintances of the Paris Peace Conference: Walter Lippmann, since 1931 the most influential American columnist, and Felix Frankfurter, then a professor at Harvard Law School, both progressive-minded supporters of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal. The General Theory was too difficult a work, even for economists, to achieve its effects on its own. While Joan Robinson and Richard Kahn were important, they added little that was new.
