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[[underlined]] The American Economic Scene: A Personal Interpretation [[/underlined]]

By Paul Studenski, Professor Emeritus of Economics

Talk before the Annual Dinner of the Economics Department of the School of Commerce, New York University, on November 15, 1958

I have been asked by your Committee on Arrangements to give you my impressions of some of the economic developments which I have witnessed or with which I may have been associated during the past almost fifty years of my life in this country; and also to give you my notion of the nature of the economic problems that may lie ahead. Fortunately, I have not been asked also to outline my solutions to these problems. But even with this dispensation, the order given me by your Committee is rather large. I must emphasize that these remarks are highly coloured by my personal experience and personal philosophy.

I came to this country in May 1911 when I was only 23 years of age, but when I already had back of me considerable and very varied life experience. I had acquired this experience first in Russia where I was born and grew up under a regime that was not particularly distinguished by its liberalism, and which country I left forever when I was still only 20 years of age; and next in France, whose political and social climate I found much more to my taste and where I spent three happy years.

I came to America in search of achievement and of adventure in a field very different from that in which I am engaged now. Moreover, I came here with the intention of staying only a short while. Three things changed my intentions and turned a temporary visit into a permanent one. First, I met here the girl of my dreams and, after a two-months courtship, threw my lot with hers for life.