Sidney Armor Reeve: Engineer, Inventor, Progressive, and Underappreciated Utopian

Journal title HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND POLICY
Author/s Charles R. McCann Jr., Luca Fiorito
Publishing Year 2022 Issue 2022/1
Language English Pages 44 P. 83-126 File size 176 KB
DOI 10.3280/SPE2022-001005
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

Sidney Armor Reeve, professional engineer and amateur historian, economist, and sociologist, writing during what has been described as the Progressive Era, at-tacked the very foundations of the existing economic and social orders. He explic-itly criticized the dominant commercialism of the capitalist society as being a can-cer, a major cause of inequality and unemployment, offering instead a program of reform that, while some reviewers characterized it as consistent with the program of the socialists, presented something of an alternative vision, one recognizing the primacy of the Ultimate Consumer. His remedy, favoring as it did the central con-trol of the economy, shared at least commonalities with the reforms advocated by the socialist writers of the period, even as he himself rejected the label, unequivo-cally stressing points of fundamental disagreement.

Keywords: Sidney A. Reeve, Progressivism, Utopianism, Social energetics, Social convulsion, Competition, Social and economic planning.

Jel codes: B15, B25, B31, B41

  1. Babson R. W. (1916). What is the Solution of Our Industrial and International Problems?, Sagamore Sociological Conference, Ninth Meeting, Sagamore Beach, MA, June 27, 28, 29: 8-15.
  2. Bancroft H. H. (1875). The Native Races of the Pacific States of North America, vol. II: Civilized Nations, New York, D. Appleton and Co.
  3. Bellamy E. (1888). Looking Backward, 2000-1887, Boston, MA, Ticknor and Co.
  4. Bellamy E. (1897). Equality, New York, D. Appleton and Co.
  5. Bourne H. E. (1933). Review of The Natural Laws of Social Convulsion, by Sidney A. Reeve, Political Science Quarterly, 48(4): 614-616.
  6. Bulletin of Yale University (1942). Obituary Record of Graduates of Yale University Deceased During the Year 1940-1941, Series 38(1): 172.
  7. Daly H. E. (1980). The Economic Thought of Frederick Soddy, History of Political Economy, 12(4): 469-488.
  8. Edwards L. P. (1934). Review of The Natural Laws of Social Convulsion, by Sidney A. Reeve, American Journal of Sociology, 39(4): 537-538.
  9. Fisher I. (1907). The Rate of Interest: Its Nature, Determination and Relation to Economic Phenomena, New York, Macmillan.
  10. Galbraith J. K. (1952). American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power, Boston, Houghton Mifflin.
  11. Galbraith J. K. (1998 [1958]). The Affluent Society. 40th anniversary edition, Boston, Houghton Mifflin.
  12. Georgescu-Roegen N. (1971). The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.
  13. Gleason A. (1921). Workers’ Education: American and Foreign Experiments, New York, Bureau of Industrial Research.
  14. Hollander J. (1914). The Abolition of Poverty, Boston, Houghton Mifflin.
  15. Horn M. (1979). The Intercollegiate Socialist Society, 1905-1921. Origins of the Modern Student Movement, Boulder, CO, Westview Press.
  16. Hutt W. H. (1940). The Concept of Consumers’ Sovereignty, Economic Journal, 50(197): 66-77.
  17. Kass I. M. (1942). Sidney Armor Reeve, Social Energetist, Land and Freedom, 42(1): 21.
  18. Lee A. (1919). The Story of the Rand School, in The Case of the Rand School., New York, Rand School of Social Science.
  19. Marx K. (1887 [1996]). Capital, vol. 1. Translated by S. Moore and E. Aveling, edited by F. Engels. (Volume 35 of Karl Marx Friedrich Engels Collected Works), New York, International Publishers.
  20. Mitchell W. C. (1923). Letter to Sidney Reeve, 5 May. Wesley Clair Mitchell Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
  21. “Modern Economic Tendencies” (review of Modern Economic Tendencies, by S. A. Reeve). 1921. The Commercial and Financial Chronicle, 112(May 14): 2019-2020.
  22. Reeve S. A. (1897). The Entropy-Temperature Analysis of Steam-Engine Efficiencies, New York, Progressive Age Publishing Co.
  23. Reeve S. A. (1903). The Thermodynamics of Heat-Engines, New York, Macmillan.
  24. Reeve S. A. (1906). The Cost of Competition: An Effort at the Understanding of Familiar Facts, New York, McClure, Phillips and Co.
  25. Reeve S. A. (1909). Energy: Work, Heat and Transformations, New York, McGraw-Hill.
  26. Reeve S. A. (1916). Takes Issue with the Address [of Roger Babson], Sagamore Sociological Conference, Ninth Meeting, Sagamore Beach, MA, June 27, 28, 29: 18.
  27. Reeve S. A. (1917). Congestion in Cities, The Geographical Review, 3(4): 278-293.
  28. Reeve S. A. (1921). Modern Economic Tendencies: An Economic History of America, New York, E. P. Dutton and Co, Inc.
  29. Reeve S. A. (1922). Cleansing New York Harbor, The Geographical Review, 12(3): 420-423.
  30. Reeve S. A. (1923a). Letter to Wesley C. Mitchell, 3 May. Wesley Clair Mitchell Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
  31. Reeve S. A. (1923b). Letter to Wesley C. Mitchell, 7 May. Wesley Clair Mitchell Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
  32. Reeve S. A. (1925a). Correspondence: Einstein’s Relativity, The Nation, 121(3133): 116-117.
  33. Reeve S. A. (1925b). The Rational Theory of Music, New York.
  34. Reeve S. A. (1927). Letter to Ida Tarbell. September 3. Allegheny College DSpace Repository. (The cover letter places the date as September 5, but the letter itself clearly identifies it as September 3.)
  35. Reeve S. A. (1933a). Ship Evolution and Social Evolution, The Geographical Review, 23(1): 61-76.
  36. Reeve S. A. (1933b). The Natural Laws of Social Convulsion, New York, E. P. Dutton and Co, Inc.
  37. Reeve S. A. (with Leonard Woolsey Bacon and Charlotte Holmes Crawford) (1938). Energetics: Volume I: Cosmic Energetics, Nyack, NY.
  38. Reeve S. A. (1939). Letter to Frederick Soddy, August 28. Special Collections, Bodleian Library, Oxford University.
  39. Reeve S. A. (with Leonard Woolsey Bacon and Charlotte Holmes Crawford). 1940. Energetics: Volume II, Section B: Social Energetics: Nyack, NY.
  40. Reeve S. A., and C. Holmes Crawford (1944). Reeve’s Plan for Economic Democracy, Brooklyn, N.Y.
  41. Roberts R. (2013). Saving the City: The Great Financial Crisis of 1914, New York, Oxford University Press.
  42. Ross J. (2015). The Socialist Party of America: A Complete History, Lincoln, NE, Potomac Books.
  43. Russell B. (1925a). The ABC of Relativity, London, George Allen and Unwin.
  44. Russell B. (1925b). The ABC of Relativity, The New Leader, 10(10-13), March 6, 13, 20, 27: 12, 10, 12, 12.
  45. Silber W. L. (2007). When Washington Shut Down Wall Street: The Great Financial Crisis of 1914 and the Origins of America’s Monetary Supremacy, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
  46. Simons A. M. (1906). Review of The Cost of Competition. An Effort at the Understanding of Familiar Facts, by Sidney A. Reeve, International Socialist Review, 7(2): 122-123.
  47. Sinclair U. (1906). The Cost of Competition, International Socialist Review, October, 7(4):199-208.
  48. Sinclair U. (1922). The Book of Life: Mind and Body, Girard, Kansas, Haldeman-Julius Company.
  49. Smith A. (1776). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, London, W. Strahan and T. Cadell (First edition).
  50. Soddy F. (1933). The Natural Philosophy of Revolutions (review of The Natural Laws of Social Convulsion, by Sidney A. Reeve), The New Atlantis, 4-6.
  51. Soddy F. (1934). The Role of Money: What It Should Be, Contrasted with What It Has Become, London, George Routledge and Sons, Ltd.
  52. Sorokin P. A. (1933). Review of The Natural Laws of Social Convulsion, by Sidney A. Reeve, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 169(September): 212-213.
  53. Spiekermann U. (2019). German-Style Consumer Engineering: Victor Vogt’s Verkaufspraxis, 1925-1950, in J. Logemann, G. Cross, and I. Köhler, eds. Consumer Engineering, 1920s-1970s: Marketing Between Expert Planning and Consumer Responsiveness, London, Palgrave Macmillan.
  54. Sprague O. M. W. (1915). The Crisis of 1914 in the United States, American Economic Review, 5(3): 499-533.
  55. Tarbell I. (1904). The History of the Standard Oil Company, New York, McClure, Phillips and Co.
  56. “The Power That Is to Be.” 1922. Collier’s: The National Weekly, 69(June 3): 14.
  57. Unsigned (1907). Review of The Cost of Competition. An Effort at the Understanding of Familiar Facts, by Sidney A. Reeve, The Independent, 63(December 5): 1371.
  58. Veblen T. B. (1907). Review of The Cost of Competition. An Effort at the Understanding of Familiar Facts, by Sidney A. Reeve, The Yale Review, 16(1): 92-95.
  59. Walsh R. J. 1922. Consumerism vs. Commercialism (review of Modern Economic Tendencies, by Sidney A. Reeve), The Nation, 114(March 15): 321-322.

Charles R. McCann Jr., Luca Fiorito, Sidney Armor Reeve: Engineer, Inventor, Progressive, and Underappreciated Utopian in "HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND POLICY" 1/2022, pp 83-126, DOI: 10.3280/SPE2022-001005