It's true, as Anne Mayhew writes, that Veblen idealized engineers; and Hoover was an engineer. However, as Sec. of Commerce and President Hoover acted the way Veblen saw lawyers and tycoons acting, to train the incapacity of American business, with his program of "associationism", a model for the NRA of the Moley period of FDR. I haven't read the Mayhew-Knoedler article cited, but I'd be interested to know how they handled this antinomy, if Prof. Mayhew will oblige. Mason Gaffney