Stigmatizing thorstein veblen: A study in the confection of academic reputations

International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society

Volumn 14, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 363-400

  Bartley, Russell H ^a   Bartley, Sylvia Erickson ^a  

^a Noyo Hill House   (United States)

Author keywords

Biography; Dorfman; Reputation; Veblen

Indexed keywords

EID: 15944417731     PISSN: 08914486     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1026650826354     Document Type: Article

References (170)

1. Max Lerner, ed., The Portable Veblen (NY: Viking, 1967), p. 10.
2. Quoted in Chester McArthur Destler, Henry Demarest Lloyd and the Empire of Reform (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1963), p. 372.
3. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Culture of Contentment (Boston, NY and London: Houghton Mifflin, 1992), p. 81 n. 2.
4. For a full account of this episode, see Russell H. Bartley and Sylvia E. Bartley, "In Search of Thorstein Veblen: Further Inquiries into His Life and Work," International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 11:1 (Fall 1997): 137-41. HEREAFTER CITED AS: "Further Inquiries."
5. See, for example, obituaries by John Maurice Clark and Wesley C. Mitchell reproduced in Thorstein Veblen, Essays, Reviews and Reports. Previously Uncollected Writings. Edited with an Introduction, "New Light on Veblen," by Joseph Dorfman (Clifton, NJ: Kelley, 1973), pp. 595-614.
6. HEREAFTER CITED AS: Dorfman, Essays: obituaries. Subsequent references to Dorfman's introduction CITED HEREAFTER AS: "New Light."
7. Joseph Dorfman, Thorstein Veblen and His America (NY: Viking, 1934). All subsequent references are to the 7th revised edition, reprinted by Augustus M. Kelley (Clifton, NJ, 1972).
8. Paul T. Homan, "Thorstein Veblen." In American Masters of Social Science. Edited by Howard W. Odum (NY: Holt, 1927), pp. 231-270;
9. Paul T. Homan, idem, Contemporary Economic Thought (NY and London: Harper, 1928), pp. 107-192.
10. Homan, "Thorstein Veblen," p. 234;
11. Homan, idem, Contemporary Economic Thought, p. 108.
12. Homan, Idem, Contemporary Economic Thought, p. 109.
13. Homan, Contemporary Economic Thought, p. pp. 110-12.
14. Homan, Contemporary Economic Thought, p. pp. 112, 114.
15. Rick Tilman, Thorstein Veblen and His Critics, 1891-1963. Conservative, Liberal, and Radical Perspectives (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 129.
16. Homan, Contemporary Economic Thought, p. 115.
17. Tilman, p. 123. Tilman provides a generally accurate assessment of Homan's views on Veblen, yet overlooks important details that would have refined that appraisal. While noting Homan's contribution to the Odum volume on American Masters of Social Science (1927), he ignores the chapter on Veblen in Homan's Contemporary Economic Thought (1928), perhaps assuming that it was simply a reprint from the Odum book. Citing the earlier essay, Tilman portrays a harsher Homan who, while finding Veblen's thought "stimulating and enlightening," nonetheless considered it "often far-fetched and prejudiced, and at times merely absurd."
18. Thorstein Veblen and His Critics, p. 124. In the revised and expanded chapter on Veblen published the following year, however, Homan replaced these barbed descriptors with a more measured critique of Veblen's work. To find fault with Veblen's methods and conclusions, Homan wrote, means only that Veblen was not "superman" enough to solve all the problems that he posed. "His blindness perhaps lies in attempting so heroic a role. Yet it is in this field that he displays much of the acuteness and originality of his mind." With remarkable acumen, Veblen had endeavored "to explain economic behavior, current and past, in terms of the human nature and the institutional situations which have conditioned it…. That many of his views are debatable reflects the curious range of learning on which they are based, not possessed by his readers, and reflects as well his flair for sweeping, if dubitable, generalizations. That he seems at times manifestly absurd is to admit that he is very, very human. With nothing less than omniscence," Homan concluded, "could Veblen have carried his method through to generally acceptable conclusions."
19. Contemporary Economic Thought, pp. 185-86.
20. Homan, Contemporary Economic Thought, p. 192.
21. Carlton Qualey was the first scholar to question Dorfman's interpretation of Veblen, especially with regard to Dorfman's erroneous premises about the defining cultural influences of Veblen's youth. Even so, he accepted some of Dorfman's false assertions about the private Veblen, e.g., that Veblen "refused to permit his [first] wife to have a child." See Qualey's introduction to Thorstein Veblen. The Carleton College Veblen Seminar Essays. Edited by Carlton C. Qualey (NY: Columbia University Press, 1968), pp. 1-15.
22. Eighteen years later, Rick Tilman and a University of Nevada-Las Vegas colleague, Vernon Mattson, alluded to flaws in Dorfman's Veblen biography in an endnote to their article "Thorstein Veblen, Frederick Jackson Turner, and the American Experience," Journal of Economic Issues 20:4 (December 1986): 232 n. 6.
23. Tilman explores these flaws at greater length in his later book, Thorstein Veblen and His Critics (1992), pp. 4-10.
24. Stephen Edgell was the first scholar to question Dorfman's work based on an internal analysis of Thorstein Veblen and His America;
25. see his "Thorstein Veblen: Man from Mars or Marginal Man? An Exercise in the Sociology of Biography." Paper presented at the Inaugural Conference of the International Thorstein Veblen Association, New School for Social Research (NY, 4-5 February 1994);
26. also Stephen Edgell, "Rescuing Veblen from Valhalla: deconstruction and reconstruction of a sociological legend," British Journal of Sociology 47:4 (December 1996): 627-642.
27. For fuller critiques of the Dorfman biography, see Russell H. Bartley and Sylvia E. Yoneda, "Thorstein Veblen on Washington Island: Traces of a Life," International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 7:4 (Summer 1994): 589-613;
28. Bartley and Bartley, "Further Inquiries," pp. 129-173;
29. Bartley and Bartley, idem, "In the Company of T. B. Veblen. A Narrative of Biographical Recovery," International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 13:2 (Winter 1999): 273-331;
30. and Elizabeth Watkins Jorgensen and Henry Irvin Jorgensen, Thorstein Veblen. Victorian Firebrand (Armonk, NY and London, England: M. E. Sharpe, 1999).
31. Contemporary Authors. A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Authors and Their Works, vols. 45-48. Edited by Clare D. Kinsman (Detroit: Gale Research, 1974), p. 132.
32. Irving Howe, World of Our Fathers. The Journey of East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made. With the assistance of Kenneth Libo and a new preface by the author (NY: Schocken Books, 1989), pp. 252-53.
33. United States Census for 1920, vol. 17, enumeration district 30, sheet 9, line 13;
34. Polk's Portland City Directory (Portland, OR: R. L. Polk and Co., 1910, 1914, 1925); "Autobiographical Sketch of Joseph Dorfman," Joseph Dorfman Papers (1890-1983), Box 3: Uncataloged correspondence (A-H). Butler Library, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University (New York, NY). HEREAFTER CITED AS: Dorfman Papers.
35. As the ultimate badge of immigrant success, Dorfman was proud to note that Thorstein Veblen and His America and his five-volume The Economic Mind in American Civilization (NY: Viking, 1949-1959) "were among the books selected for a permanent White House Library." "Autobiographical Sketch," Dorfman Papers.
36. Bartley and Bartley, "Further Inquiries," p. 130.
37. Edgell, "Thorstein Veblen: Man from Mars or Marginal Man?," p. 33.
38. Michael Hudson to Russell and Sylvia Bartley, Forest Hills, NY, 30 August 1999, p. 2.
39. Dorfman, Thorstein Veblen and His America, p. 7.
40. Dorfman, Thorstein Veblen and His America, pp. 11, 13.
41. Joseph Dorfman to Andrew Veblen, [NYC, 5 March 1930], fols. 6r-6v. Andrew A. Veblen Papers, Box 7: Correspondence between Joseph Dorfman and Andrew A. Veblen (1925-1932). Minnesota Historical Society (St. Paul, MN). CITED HEREAFTER AS: AAV-Dorfman correspondence, MHS.
42. In his second Veblen volume, Dorfman cites Hans Otto Storm's recollection of Veblen having told him that "he was twelve years old before he learned to speak English," which, even if accepted at face value, would contradict Dorfman's assertion that he had not yet mastered English by the time he entered Carleton five years later. Dorfman, "New Light," p. 190 n. 222.
43. Howe, World of Our Fathers, pp. 226-27.
44. J. R. Christianson, "Thorstein Veblen: Ethnic Roots and Social Criticism of a 'Folk Savant'," Norwegian-American Studies 34 (1995): 3-32.
45. For additional details, see our article "In Search of Thorstein Veblen," pp. 129-36 ff.
46. As noted by William C. Melton, Ed Veblen's caustic characterization of Thorstein as "queer," "lazy," and "a loafer" probably reflects a deep-seated resentment over his erudite brother's inability to assist with farm work at a time when all the heavy chores fell by default on Ed, the last of the Veblen boys to remain at home. He could not forgive Thorstein, even in later years it seems, for having returned to Nerstrand from Yale debilitated by malaria, a malady whose symptoms were perhaps not always apparent. Melton, personal conversation, Edina, MN, 15 August 1999.
47. Andrew Veblen to Joseph Dorfman, Los Angeles, 13 March 1930, pp. 3-4. AAV-Dorfman correspondence, MHS.
48. Marginal notes penciled by Emily Veblen Olsen in February 1935 in her copy of Dorfman's Thorstein Veblen and His America, pp. 7-13. Minnesota Historical Society (St. Paul, MN).
49. Edgell, "Thorstein Veblen: Man from Mars or Marginal Man?," p. 24.
50. Dorfman, Thorstein Veblen and His America, pp. 12, 29, 252-53.
51. Bartley and Bartley, "Further Inquiries," pp. 133-34.
52. Dorfman, Thorstein Veblen and His America, pp. 66, 120-21, 502-503, 252-53.
53. Edgell, "Rescuing Veblen from Valhalla," p. 631.
54. Dorfman, Preface to Thorstein Veblen and His America, Columbia University, September, 1934.
55. Dorfman related to one correspondent how Mitchell had pulled him "through more than one trying situation, not simply intellectual," and had stood by him "under circumstances that would have found most men wanting." Mitchell "had a strong faith" in him that could "hardly be explained in terms of the modern canons of worldly wisdom." A good deal of his "patience and tenacity," he wrote, stemmed from his feeling that the Veblen book had to justify Mitchell's favorable opinion of him, "an opinion which he publicly expressed to doubters." Joseph Dorfman to Mrs. [Sadie Hardy] Gregory, NYC, 24 January 1935, fol. 1. Miscellaneous Archives Collections: Thorstein B. Veblen Papers, Box "V," folder 1. Department of Special Collections, Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago (Chicago, IL). HEREAFTER CITED AS: Veblen Papers, Regenstein Library.
56. Dorfman, Preface to Thorstein Veblen and His America.
57. Max Lerner, Foreword to Pioneer's Progress. An autobiography. By Alvin Johnson (Lincoln, NB: Bison/University of Nebraska Press, 1960), p. x.
58. Homan, Contemporary Economic Thought, p. 382. Homan offers a helpful caveat regarding the formative influences which shaped Mitchell's mind that applies equally to Veblen: "In just what way [particular] intellectual influences… combined to shape Mitchell's thinking represents an aspect of the undiscoverable personal equation [emphasis added]. It seems merely worth while to mention them in passing, in order to indicate the circumstances under which he worked, which were peculiarly favorable to the development of an independent and emancipated viewpoint (p. 383)."
59. Homan, Contemporary Economic Thought, p. p. 414.
60. Homan, Contemporary Economic Thought, p. p. 409.
61. Wesley C. Mitchell to Mrs. Sigurd Olsen, NYC, 22 December 1926. Dorfman Papers, Box 1 (A-M): catalogued correspondence.
62. Wesley C. Mitchell to Joseph Dorfman, Oxford, 7 October 1931. Dorfman Papers, Box 1 (A-M): cataloged correspondence. For documentation on Dorfman's teaching appointment, see in this same box: Mitchell to Dorfman, NYC, 27 January and 7 April 1931.
63. Wesley C. Mitchell, Introduction to What Veblen Taught. Selected Writings of Thorstein Veblen. Edited by Wesley C. Mitchell (NY: Viking, 1936; reprinted by Augustus M. Kelley, 1964), p. x.
64. Mitchell to Mrs. Sigurd Olsen, Dorfman Papers.
65. Wesley C. Mitchell to Mrs. Sadie Gregory, NYC, 23 March 1934. Courtesy of Daniel P. Gregory; donated to the Carleton College Archives (Northfield, MN), 9 February 1997. HEREAFTER CITED AS: DPG/CCA.
66. Alvin Johnson, Pioneer's Progress (1960), p. 205.
67. Alvin Johnson, Pioneer's Progress (1960).
68. Max Eastman has provided the classic account of Veblen's comportment at such social gatherings. See his Love and Revolution. My Journey through an Epoch (NY: Random House, 1964), pp. 66-67.
69. Each of these professions appears as a discrete topic under "Johnson, Alvin," in the index to Johnson's autobiography. See Pioneer's Progress, pp. 408-409.
70. Pioneer's Progress, p. 44. That it should occur to Johnson to bring Veblen into an account of his own youthful study of botany reveals how challenged he actually felt by Veblen's intellectual accomplishments.
71. Pioneer's Progress, pp. 274-75.
72. Alvin S. Johnson, Introduction to Economics (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1909). A previous volume on rent failed to elicit even passing mention in Johnson's autobiography, where he records his varied publications with no little vanity.
73. See Alvin S. Johnson, idem, Rent in Modern Economic Theory: An Essay in Distribution (NY: Macmillan; London: Sonnenschein, 1903).
74. Alvin S. Johnson, Idem, Introduction to Economics, pp. 376-81.
75. Alvin S. Johnson, Idem, Pioneer's Progress, p. 205.
76. Vol. 15 (NY: Macmillan, 1936), pp. 234-35.
77. Alvin Johnson to A. A. Veblen, NYC, 11 February 1930. Andrew Veblen Papers, MHS. HEREAFTER CITED AS: AAV Papers.
78. Alvin Johnson to A. A. Veblen, NYC, 5 March 1930. AAV Papers. We have found no indication in the available archival sources that consideration was ever given to any but a commercial publisher. Indeed, Johnson had visions of Dorfman's Veblen study becoming a Book of the Month Club selection and there even appears to have been thought of a possible Pulitzer award. See Johnson to Mitchell, NYC, 25 April 1932; and Mitchell to Dorfman, Greensboro, VT, 16 July 1934. Dorfman Papers, Box 1. Moreover, academic presses had not yet occupied the predominant position in scholarly publication they would hold following the Second World War, and it was still the norm for major works of scholarship to be published by commercial houses. All of Veblen's books were issued by commercial publishers, as were most of Alvin Johnson's.
79. Johnson to A. A. Veblen, NYC, 11 February 1930, AAV Papers.
80. Mitchell to Gregory, NYC, 23 March 1934, DPG/CCA.
81. Mitchell to Dorfman, Greensboro, VT, 28 July 1933. Dorfman Papers, Box 1.
82. Mitchell, "Thorstein Veblen." Introduction to What Veblen Taught, p. xiii n. 8.
83. Mitchell, What Veblen Taught, p. x.
84. Mitchell, What Veblen Taught.
85. p. xlviii.
86. Thorstein Veblen, "The Intellectual Pre-eminence of Jews in Modern Europe," Political Science Quarterly 34 (March, 1919): 33-42.
87. Thorstein Veblen, Political Science Quarterly pp. xvi-xvii.
88. Joseph Dorfman, "Background of Veblen's Thought." In Qualey, ed., Thorstein Veblen, p. 111;
89. Dorfman, Essays: obituaries, p. 607.
90. Mitchell, "Thorstein Veblen," What Veblen Taught, p. xlix.
91. Mitchell, What Veblen Taught, pp. xvii-xviii.
92. Mitchell, What Veblen Taught, pp. xxi-xxiii, xlviii.
93. Dorfman, Essays: obituaries, p. 611.
94. Qualey, ed., Thorstein Veblen, p. 2;
95. David Riesman, Thorstein Veblen. A Critical Interpretation (NY: Scribner's, 1960), p. 3;
96. Bernard Rosenberg, The Values of Veblen. A Critical Appraisal. Forward by Max Lerner (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1956), p. 1;
97. Melvin D. Brockie, "The Cycle Theories of Veblen and Keynes Today." In Thorstein Veblen. A Critical Reappraisal. Lectures and essays commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Veblen's birth. Edited by Douglas F. Dowd (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1958), p. 114 n. 3;
98. John P. Diggins, The Bard of Savagery. Thorstein Veblen and Modern Social Theory (NY: The Seabury Press, 1978), p. 215;
99. Robert L. Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers. The lives, times, and ideas of the great economic thinkers, 5th edition (NY: Touchstone/Simon and Schuster, 1980), p. 240.
100. Dorfman's portrayal of Veblen was accepted as well by Henry Steele Commager, The American Mind (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950), pp. 235-43;
101. Alfred Kazin, On Native Grounds (NY: Raynal and Hitchcock, 1942), pp. 130-42;
102. and Charles A. Madison, Critics and Crusaders (NY: Holdt, 1947), pp. 308-339, among other chroniclers of American intellectual history.
103. See Lerner, ed., The Portable Veblen, p. 10;
104. and John Kenneth Galbraith, "A New Theory of Thorstein Veblen," American Heritage 24:3 (April, 1973): 33-40.
105. Lerner's reservations are implicit in his observations about the real source of Veblen's institutional difficulties but blurred by his explicit praise of Dorfman's 1934 volume as "a work of major importance in which one will find practically every fact one could ask for about Veblen and his writings and his time" (The Portable Veblen, p. 630).
106. John Kenneth Galbraith to Russell H. Bartley, Cambridge, MA, 8 July 1996. In another communication to a Veblen descendant, Galbraith observed that "the legend of Veblen's impoverished boyhood has been greatly overdone-and is, indeed, wholly false. Thorstein's parents, at the end of their lives, must have been considerably more affluent than almost any farm proprietors in Norway. I would certainly estimate that they were far more affluent than the Canadian Galbraiths." John Kenneth Galbraith to Paul Veblen, Cambridge, MA, 1 June 1972. Copy courtesy of Paul Veblen, Santa Barbara, CA.
107. Diggins, Bard, p. 215;
108. Riesman, Critical Interpretation, p. 212.
109. Heilbroner, Worldly Philosophers, 335.
110. Diggins, Bard, pp. 162, 208.
111. Dorfman, Thorstein Veblen and His America, p. 295.
112. Dorfman, "New Light," pp. 296-97.
113. Richard Gilman, "Dos Passos and the Many Lives of 'U.S.A.'," The New York Times Book Review (16 March 1997): 35.
114. John Dos Passos, The Big Money (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946), p. 107.
115. John Dos Passos, The Big Money pp. 106-117.
116. Dorfman's version had Veblen living in a tent in the Davenports' basement, which he supposedly accessed "through a [basement] window." See his Thorstein Veblen and His America, p. 305. It was a version negated by Updegraff's recollections, as well as by the physical arrangement of the Davenport house, which yet today stands on its original location.
117. See our article, "In the Company of T. B. Veblen." It strikes us that this is precisely the kind of "bizarre intimate episode" that would have tickled Alvin Johnson's fancy.
118. Robert Heilbroner to Russell Bartley, Bridgehampton, NY, 10 August 1996.
119. Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers, pp. 215-16.
120. Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers, pp. 216-17.
121. Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers, pp. 220, 225, 238.
122. Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers, pp. 240-41.
123. As noted above, many of the particulars of Veblen's life and personality as depicted by Dorfman, Heilbroner, et al. have been misconstrued or are simply wrong. For a fuller critique of those accounts see our "In Search of Thorstein Veblen;" and
124. Dorfman, Heilbroner, et al. have been misconstrued or are simply wrong. For a fuller critique of those accounts see our "idem, "In the Company of T. B. Veblen."
125. Heilbroner to Bartley, 10 August 1996.
126. Robert Heilbroner, Teachings from the Worldly Philosophy (NY and London: Norton, 1996), pp. 247-63.
127. Robert Heilbroner, Idem., Worldly Philosophers, p. 215.
128. Riesman, Critical Interpretation, pp. iii, 3, 211.
129. David Riesman, "The Social and Psychological Setting of Veblen's Economic Theory," The Journal of Economic History 13:4 (Fall 1953): 450.
130. David Riesman, Idem., Thorstein Veblen. A Critical Interpretation, pp. 7-8.
131. David Riesman, Thorstein Veblen. A Critical Interpretation, p. 41.
132. David Riesman, Idem., "The Social and Psychological Setting of Veblen's Economic Theory," p. 453.
133. David Riesman, Idem., Thorstein Veblen. A Critical Interpretation, p. 27.
134. David Riesman, Thorstein Veblen. A Critical Interpretation, p. 26.
135. David Riesman, Thorstein Veblen. A Critical Interpretation, p. 186.
136. David Riesman, Thorstein Veblen. A Critical Interpretation, p. 34.
137. David Riesman, Thorstein Veblen. A Critical Interpretation, p. 11.
138. Tilman, Thorstein Veblen and His Critics, pp. 164-65.
139. For further insights into Riesman's academic career, see his autobiographical essay "Becoming an Academic Man." In Authors of Their Own Lives: Intellectual Autobiographies by Twenty American Sociologists. Edited with an introduction by Bennett M. Berger (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 22-74.
140. Bartley and Yoneda, "Thorstein Veblen on Washington Island," p. 610 n. 58.
141. John Kenneth Galbraith to Russell H. Bartley, Cambridge, MA, 29 March 1994.
142. Personal conversation, NYC, 4 February 1994.
143. Supra, p. 371.
144. Diggins, Bard, pp. 223-24.
145. Tilman, Thorstein Veblen and His Critics, p. 167.
146. Thorstein Veblen, La teoria della classe agiata. Studio economics sulle istituzioni. Translated by Franco Ferrarotti [Torino]: Einaudi, 1949;
147. reissued on the centenary of The Theory of the Leisure Class, with a new forward by Franco Ferrarotti, an introduction by Francesca Lidia Viano, and a translation of C. Wright Mills' introduction to the Mentor edition (1953) of The Theory of the Leisure Class (Torino: Edizionì di Comunita, 1999);
148. Franco Ferrarotti, Il pensiero sociologies da Auguste Comte a Max Herkheimer (Milan: Mondadori, 1974).
149. Ferrarotti, II pensiero sociologies, pp. 139-40.
150. Ferrarotti, II pensiero sociologies, pp 139-40, 144.
151. David Riesman, Thorstein Veblen. With a new introduction by Stjepan G. Meštrović (New Brunswick, NJ and London, UK: Transaction, 1995), pp. ix-x.
152. David Riesman, Thorstein Veblen. With a new introduction by Stjepan G. Meštrović p. x.
153. David Riesman, Thorstein Veblen. With a new introduction by Stjepan G. Meštrović p. xi.
154. David Riesman, Thorstein Veblen. With a new introduction by Stjepan.
155. Heilbroner, Worldly Philosophers, pp. 215-16.
156. Diggins, Bard, p. 33.
157. Diggins, Bard, pp. viii-xi.
158. Diggins, Bard, p. 321.
159. Diggins, Bard, p. 232.
160. Diggins, Bard, p. 169.
161. Ferrarotti, II pensiero sociologies, p. 147. The original reads as follows: "Al cancelliere Harper che gli fa compunto le sue rimostranze, owiamente preoccupato della salute morale delle mogli dei colleghi, la leggenda vuole che Veblen risponda molto lentamente e sottovoce, in piede davanti alia scrivania, in pantaloni di velluto e una spalla piu alta dell'altra: 'I've tried them all. They are no good.' (Le ho provate tutte; non valgono un bottone.)"
162. An earlier, widely circulated version of this same incident had Veblen on the Harvard campus as an invited speaker, where one of his university hosts allegedly inquired: "Mr. Veblen, you have the reputation of a womanizer. Should we worry?" To which Veblen was said to have replied: "I've seen your wives, and you have nothing to worry about." This version, a humorous put-down on faculty wives' looks, is consistent with Veblen's personal sense of humor as well as with Victorian-era attitudes toward gender relations. Michael Hudson to Russell and Sylvia Bartley, e-mail [Forest Hills, NY], 15 March 2000.
163. See Morris Janowitz's introduction to W. I. Thomas, On Social Organization and Social Personality. Selected Papers. Edited by Morris Janowitz (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1966).
164. Franco Ferrarotti to Russell and Sylvia Bartley, Rome, 10 October 1999.
165. Ferrarotti, Il pensiero sociologico, p. 147.
166. We should note that Ferrarotti did not question Dorfman's account of Veblen's life at the time he wrote Il pensiero sociologico. "In order to understand the thought of Thorstein Veblen," he asserted, "one must first understand the man." And for that purpose, "Joseph Dorfman's monumental biography is sufficient."
167. Ferrarotti has, however, applauded recent critiques of Dorfman and seems to be revising some of his earlier views of Veblen based on heretofore inaccessible documentary evidence now available in the scholarly literature.
168. Jack Diggins to Russell Bartley, NYC, 22 July 1996.
169. Diggins, Bard, p. 162.
170. John Patrick Diggins, Thorstein Veblen. Theorist of the Leisure Class (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. xxiii.