Simon Patten, Who Led the Wharton School During the Progressive Era

ne century ago this year, the Wharton lished work in which Patten foresaw such Maynard Keynes, the psychology of the School dismissed the most esteemed phenomena as the rise of economic fed- 18th century with the insight and challenge O and innovative theoretical economist eralism, the success of feminism, chang- of Freudian psychoanalysis, and the poli- who had ever passed through its doors. es in consumption habits and a general tics of Lincoln’s America and Bismarck’s Simon Patten, who was appointed rise in the standard of living, realign- Germany with the politics of the New Deal Wharton’s first professor of economics in ments of industrial and social control, and later periods.” Writing the year after 1888 and directed the school during its and future programs of taxation. John Patten’s 1922 death, Tugwell noted the fre- formative years from 1896 to 1912, was a Bates Clark, a pioneer of the marginalist quent prediction by his survivors that public intellectual whose breadth and revolution in economics (whose name Patten’s “reputation will grow with the originality left many of his contemporaries graces one of the field’s most prestigious years.” Sixty years later, in his definitive grasping for words to describe his insights, awards), once remarked that Patten 1982 history of the Wharton School, Steven which sometimes verged on the oracular. “anticipated all the later developments A. Sass judged him “perhaps the greatest Johannes Conrad, the eminent German in economics.” Patten is also credited mind in the history of the institution.” political economist under whom Patten with coining the term “social work,” and studied, was known to have said that he became a thought leader in debates learned more from Patten than he had about the roles of philanthropy and civic “ever learned from any one man.” Patten’s action in elevating the poor. student Rexford Tugwell W1915 Gr1922 “His thought,” biographer Daniel Fox Hon’71, who helped shape the New Deal summarized in 1967, “connected the world as a member of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s of John Stuart Mill with the age of John original “Brain Trust,” called him a “bril- liant mind” whose “prophetic power” was demonstrated by a sprawling body of pub- Simon Patten, who led the Wharton School during the Progressive Era, was a pioneer of the economics of abundance, theorist of the second industrial revolution, and intellectual godfather of the New Deal. His descent into obscurity poses provocative questions about how the field has evolved. By Trey Popp PROPHET OF PROSPERITY 48 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE Nov|Dec 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY DOUGLAS JONES Nov|Dec 2017 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE 49 Yet Patten today has fallen into almost Exceeding six feet in height by his 14th total obscurity. birthday, Patten seems to have been des- His books, long out of print, molder in tined to stand apart wherever he went. remote storage at Penn Libraries’ offsite Tugwell described him as “overgrown facility. His name is absent from encyclo- and awkward, with enormous hands and pedias of economics. The analysis of feet which he was never certain how to political economy and industrial eco- dispose of”: a country boy in the city, yet nomics that distinguished both Patten one who felt “alien among his people” in and Wharton during his tenure has van- rural Illinois. ished not only from the classrooms of “Patten carried a high pressure, long Huntsman Hall, but from Anglo-American unreleased, of idealistic steam,” Tugwell economics writ large. And according to reflected. “He longed to reconstruct the Richard Gelles, the former dean of the SIMON PATTEN world, to liberate the oppressed, to carry School of Social Policy and Practice: “As the truth to the unenlightened—in short, best as I can determine, most social work- hay. William, like Simon’s mother Betty, to expend the unlimited intensities of his ers today have no idea that a Wharton exemplified the American homesteader energy in the service of his fellow-men.” professor developed the term social work.” ideal. They were god-fearing Presbyterians Such ambitions were incompatible with It is not much of a stretch to presume who struck out westward and transformed a life spent behind the plow. Yet the very that Gelles’s observation applies equally what was widely (though erroneously) con- notion that the world could be reconstruct- to the vast majority of present-day sidered poor land into a cradle of abun- ed was deeply enmeshed with Simon’s Wharton students and alumni. And dance. William became a church elder and upbringing on the farm. Patten “knew therein lies a suggestion of what is so served in the state legislature, where he what it was to swing the scythe,” Tugwell fascinating about Simon Patten, and why voted for Abraham Lincoln in the momen- noted, but he came of age amid the dizzy- he is worthy of rediscovery—especially tous Lincoln-Douglas 1958 senatorial race. ing spread of mechanical mowers, reapers, right now, when the United States is Stephen Douglas’s narrow victory in threshing machines, and other powerful wrestling over the benefits and draw- that contest derived partly from what multipliers of agricultural productivity. backs of free trade, protectionism, and might be called the original “October sur- “Working beside his father,” observed monopoly power more contentiously prise,” when he received an eleventh-hour Simon’s biographer Daniel Fox, “he had than in perhaps any era since Patten’s endorsement from John Crittendon, a learned that poor land could be made pro- own. For Patten’s disappearance cannot former Kentucky governor, senator, and ductive by hard work and the application be explained purely as a function of his US attorney general who had joined the of scientific techniques, that these tech- accomplishments and failures as an American “Know Nothing” Party. The elec- niques enabled poor land to increase in economist. It is also a consequence of toral outcome was a last gasp for a fragile fertility more rapidly than rich land, [and] how the field itself has evolved over the political alliance between slavery accom- that fertility was a function of the variety past century—to a present that finds this modators, free-traders, and anti-immi- of crops produced on a piece of land.” nation and many others mired in dis- grant nativists. Two years later Lincoln This knowledge, Patten would soon dis- agreement about the legacy and future defeated Douglas to win the presidency, cover, ran contrary to some of the central promise of laissez-faire, globalization, on a Republican Party platform that premises of classical economic theory—and and other aspects of orthodox economic opposed the expansion of slavery, advo- therefore posed a challenge to the free- thought in our age of extremes. cated freedom of immigration and full trade orthodoxy that flowed from it. citizenship rights for immigrants, PRODIGY OF THE PRAIRIE demanded a free homestead policy, and THE GERMANOPHILE called for protective tariffs in the service Simon Patten was born in 1852 and reared of industrial development and “secur[ing] AND THE QUAKER on the northern Illinois prairie. His to the working men liberal wages.” In 1876, after a year and a half at North- father, William, had acquired a parcel That ethos, fused with a staunch com- western University, Patten joined one of there under the Preemption Act of 1841, mitment to what would come to be called the first waves of collegiate Americans to which permitted squatters to buy federal the Protestant Ethic, shaped Simon seek a variety of intellectual enrichment land at a discount. He transformed it into Patten’s passage into adulthood—which abroad that had proved elusive at home. a farm where shorthorn cattle, hogs, and came late enough for him to elude the At the University of Halle in Germany he horses grazed amid fields of oats, corn, and carnage of the Civil War. encountered Johannes Conrad, an influ- 50 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE Nov|Dec 2017 Joseph Wharton demanded that the “fungus” of free trade economics be stamped out in ential professor of political economy who the classrooms of his new school. challenged the dominant British school of classical economics and had begun to chart an alternative. Whereas David “established himself in the image of a Ricardo and Thomas Malthus held up the German professor,” introducing the first concepts of diminishing returns and pop- research seminar in the University’s his- ulation growth as natural laws that con- tory, titled the “Seminary for Political demned men to lives of scarcity and hard- and Economic Science.” Soon a dispro- ship, Conrad marshalled economic data portionate number of faculty had the to demonstrate that the long-term trend University of Halle on their résumés. was in the other direction. Phenomena After returning to Illinois Patten wrote like birth control, crop diversification, a volume titled The Premises of Political technological advances, and the growth Economy, which won him a faculty of world markets promised to propel appointment in 1888, as a professor of mankind into an age of abundance. But political economy. only—as Patten would go on to argue—if It did not take long for Patten to prove developing countries, and especially the his value to Wharton as “the only leading United States, unshackled themselves academic economist to defend the doctrine JOSEPH WHARTON from British economic orthodoxy. of protection,” as Sass recounted. Patten’s Back across the Atlantic, another man next major work, The Economic Basis of was thinking along the same lines. Joseph trators with explicitly civic-minded val- Protection (1890), “gave the policy perhaps Wharton was a savvy Quaker who had ues. Whether they chose to “serve the its most sophisticated and interesting parlayed his early training in chemistry community … in offices of trust” or man- theoretical defense” to date and “immedi- into an industrial empire stretching from age private enterprises according to ately established Patten as the nation’s fertilizer and zinc oxide works to Bethle- “sound financial morality,” they would leading academic champion of the tariff.” hem Steel.

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