I believe that Bradley Bateman's criticism of Peter Boettke misses or understates some important points. He may be using the term "laissez faire" differently from its originators and early champions. 1. R.T. Ely, like many young economists of the era, trained in Germany. German training was the acme of prestige in those years. Germany was Bismarckian. German education aimed at training men to enter the civil service. The German historical school did not track the English classical school closely, if at all. Friedrich List, of course, was a noted protectionist who explicitly rejected the English school. 2. U.S. policy, like German, was heavily protectionist, quite the opposite of laissez faire. It was also dirigiste, exemplified by the r.r. land grants, The Desert Land Act of 1877, etc. As to domestic trade, the U.S. Treasury supported the Federal government mainly from excise taxes, exactly what Quesnay et al., who coined the term laissez faire, opposed. Few academics took a strong stand for free trade, either internationally or domestically. Non-academic Henry George, who did, was traduced and sneered down by the academics. 3. A few isolated quotes from Dunbar or Walker do not make a case about the general run of thinking. Walker was quite bombastic and prone to overextend himself. Spencer, whom an earlier commenter quoted, was not an American, and extreme and polar, rather than typical, in his views. He makes a good foil, but not an example. 4. After 1891 there was a strong current of Thomist economics at work on American Catholics. It was ignored within the closed circle of the academic-economic subculture, but since there are many more Catholics than economists, this may have been a strategic miscalculation. Certainly FDR could count, and he incorporated it in his Wagner Act, price controls, NRA-AAA, etc. This strain of thought has its own life, independent of Keynes, although occasionally meshing with him. 5. Bateman seems to incorporate some of the above in his closing, but his main argument seems to point the other way, which is confusing (to me, anyway). None of that is to excuse Krugman's overstatement of Keynes' relative importance; but I think Boettke is just trying to save us from overreacting to the overstatement, and deserves a more sympathetic hearing. Mason Gaffney