As Michael points out, Davenport wrote the following:  
  
"Economics must cease to be a system of apologetics, the creed of the   
reactionary, a defense of privilege, a social soothing sirup (suc), a   
smug pronouncement of the righteousness of whatever is with the still   
more disastrous corollary of the unrighteousness of whatever is not."   
(Davenport: Economics of Enterprise, p. 528).  
  
In the chapter where the quote appears, Davenport tried to provide   
evidence that most of the property in the U.S. had been acquired through   
plunder and ethically questionable acts (including rent seeking).  The   
income acquired from the ownership of this property could be called an   
"unearned increment." He did not have a serious plan to rectify the   
situation, since the "evils" had already been done and since,   
anticipating the later Austrian central planning theorists, he believed   
it is practically impossible to identify the "unearned increment." An   
inheritance tax was his only proposal.  
  
He believed that the modern economists (that is, the reactionaries) were   
wrong to justify the existing distribution of wealth and income on the   
grounds that it had resulted from the contributions of the resource   
owners to consumer satisfaction. More to the point, they were wrong to   
justify capitalism on these grounds. But they were not wrong to develop   
the pure theory of distribution, since this is the start of a true   
understanding of what he called "the regime of price" (Chapter 2 and 3   
of EOE). Today, following Mises, we might call this the pure market   
economy. Or, following Knight, we might use the term "perfect, or pure,   
competition." (Of course, many economists had used concepts of this   
sort, including Pareto.)  
  
In my view, his insight into this theory is deeper than that of Mises   
and Knight in some respects. He is probably best regarded as one of the   
few who understood the true significance of the marginal productivity   
theory of distribution -- an economist who delved deeper into that   
theory than its founders, namely, Menger, Jevons, Walras, and Clark by   
developing the "entrepreneur view." His posthumously-published critique   
of Marshall is particularly telling with respect to the further   
development of microeconomics in the profession, although it is not easy   
to read.  
  
Now that I have had an opportunity to look at Samuelson's Nobel lecture,   
it seems evident that the idea of "a monopoly of the reactionaries" has   
a very different meaning to him. Samuelson was extolling the virtues of   
mathematical economics and Pareto optimality, particularly with respect   
to the new general equilibrium welfare economics, which was built on   
Pigouvian foundations, and public goods theory. The basis for these   
ideas, he believed, was the principle of maximization, which he had   
helped to develop through mathematical modeling. He also took pleasure   
in the idea that some these analytical techniques were being used in   
business. To help make the point that these "tools of economics" should   
be widely used, he reported on words that he seems to have recalled from   
Davenport. He writes:  
  
"H. J. Davenport, who was the best friend Thorstein Veblen ever had   
(Veblen actually lived for a time in Davenport's coal cellar), once   
said: 'There is no reason why theoretical economics should be a monopoly   
of the reactionaries.'" While the words apply to Samuelson's theme, the   
reference to professional economists has a completely different meaning.  
  
I have no idea why Samuelson used this reference to Davenport. In a   
broad sense, Davenport seems to have meant something entirely different.   
I suspect that he would have cringed over the use of Pareto optimality   
models to build justifications for market intervention. Yet this was a   
common theme of Samuelson.  
  
Pat Gunning