Today’s artifact is a sample short biography of an American economist that I found in The New International Encyclopaedia (eds.: F.M. Colby, H.T. Peck, and D.C. Gilman) that was published in New York City, 1902-04. This encyclopaedia looks like a convenient source of brief mid- and late-career assessments of the movers-and-shakers of economics at a time when their moves were still shaking (at least their students) that I shall return to from time to time.
For much more on the life and career of this University of Pennsylvania economist, Simon N. Patten, links can be found at the page dedicated to him at The History of Economic Thought website. Cf. Rexford G. Tugwell. “Notes on the Life and Work of Simon Nelson Patten.” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 31, no. 2, 1923, pp. 153–208.
__________________
PATTEN, Simon Nelson (1852—[1922]).
An American economist, born at Sandwich, Ill. He was educated at Jennings’s Seminary (Ill.), Northwestern University (Ill.), and at the University of Halle, Germany, and received the degree of Ph.D. in 1878. During the next ten years he taught in the public schools of Iowa and Illinois. In 1888 he was elected professor of political economy at the University of Pennsylvania. His principal works are: Premises of Political Economy (1885); The Consumption of Wealth (1889) [2ndedition, 1901]; The Economic Basis of Protection (1890); The Theory of Dynamic Economics (1892); The Theory of Social Forces (1896); Development of English Thought (1899); The Theory of Prosperity (1902); Heredity and Social Progress (1903). Professor Patten ranks as one of the most brilliant and original of American economic writers. His chief contributions to economics are his analyses of dynamic forces in economic life, of monopoly elements in value, and of the bearing of the laws of consumption upon distribution. A large part of his work is rather sociological than economic.
Source: The New International Encyclopaedia, (eds. F. M. Colby, H. T. Peck, and D. C. Gilman) New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. (1903), Vol. 13. p. 797.
Image Source: American Society for the Extension of University Teaching. Supplement to the The University Extension Bulletin. Vol. I, No. 8. Philadelphia: May 10, 1894. Copy found in Box 2 of Franklin Henry Giddings Papers, Columbia Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Folder “Photographs”.