Mason Gaffney asks how Knoedler and I (in our article on "Veblen and
the Engineers") handled what he calls the "antinomy" created by Hoover's
support for "associationism" and his career as an engineer, which led
him to the overlap of his views on waste and efficiency with those of
Thorstein Veblen.  Janet Knoedler and I did not address this issue in
our article as we were primarily concerned with the way in which
Veblen's views on the engineers had been understood by historians of
economic thought. However, I would say that there is no necessary
conflict between Hoover's support for associationism and Veblen's views
on what the engineers might achieve.  Both Hoover and Veblen hoped for
more coordination among firms involved in the industrial system and less
use for pecuniary advantage of what Veblen called the "interstices"
created by business organization.  I think that William Barber makes a
pretty good case that this is how Hoover saw "associationism" when he
was Secretary of Commerce.  For more on this see my article on "How
American Economists Came to Love the Sherman Antitrust Act" in the HOPE
collection FROM INTERWAR PLURALISM TO POSTWAR NEOCLASSICISM edited by
Mary Morgan and Malcolm Rutherford.  Associationism looked like
something quite different at the end of the 1930s than it did when
Hoover first supported it. 


Anne Mayhew