Arthur Latham Perry (February 27, 1830 – July 9, 1905), born in Lyme,

New Hampshire New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the nor ...

, was a prominent American economist and advocate of

free trade Free trade is a trade policy that does not restrict imports or exports. It can also be understood as the free market idea applied to international trade. In government, free trade is predominantly advocated by political parties that hold ...

. He graduated from

Williams College Williams College is a private liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a colonist from the Province of Massachusetts Bay who was kille ...

in 1852 and was Orrin Sage Professor of history and political economy there from 1853 to 1891, when he became professor emeritus. His book ''Political Economy'' (1865) went through 22 editions during his life, and his ''Introduction to Political Economy'' (1877) went through five editions. His final statement came in 1891 with his ''Principles of Political Economy''.

Free Trade philosophy

For several years he toured the country during his summer holidays, giving lectures on the principle of free trade for The American Free Trade League. In 1868–69, he publicly debated this question with

Horace Greeley Horace Greeley (February 3, 1811 – November 29, 1872) was an American newspaper editor and publisher who was the founder and editor of the '' New-York Tribune''. Long active in politics, he served briefly as a congressman from New York, ...

in Boston and New York. His basic case against

protectionism Protectionism, sometimes referred to as trade protectionism, is the economic policy of restricting imports from other countries through methods such as tariffs on imported goods, import quotas, and a variety of other government regulation ...

was that it benefited the rich at the expense of the poor, the industrialists at the expense of farmers and others, as is indicated in the title of his widely circulated pamphlet, "Foes of the Farmers" (1874).

Other works

He was also a local historian, and wrote extensively on this topic. His best-known works were two, massive histories of the town he lived in: * ''Origins in Williamstown'', published in 1894. * ''Williamstown and Williams college'', published in 1899. He also wrote a genealogy of his Perry family.

Legacy

Though he was the "most widely read American economist of his time", with his texts taking only third place in sales behind those of Adam Smith and J.S. Mill, his name does not appear in most histories of economics, such as that of

Joseph Schumpeter Joseph Alois Schumpeter (; February 8, 1883 – January 8, 1950) was an Austrian-born political economist. He served briefly as Finance Minister of German-Austria in 1919. In 1932, he emigrated to the United States to become a professor at H ...

. The reason for this later neglect may lie in the general decreased reputation for the scholarship of the

French Liberal School The French Liberal School, also called the Optimist School or the Orthodox School, is a 19th-century school of economic thought that was centered on the Collège de France and the Institut de France. The '' Journal des Économistes'' was instrume ...

Frédéric Bastiat Claude-Frédéric Bastiat (; ; 30 June 1801 – 24 December 1850) was a French economist, writer and a prominent member of the French Liberal School. A member of the French National Assembly, Bastiat developed the economic concept of opportu ...

, the general approach of which Perry carried on.Rothbard, Murray N., "Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics," Center for Libertarian Studies: Occasional Paper Series #3, 1977, p. 31. Perry conceived of economics as the "science of Buying and Selling," or, as

Richard Whately Richard Whately (1 February 1787 – 8 October 1863) was an English academic, rhetorician, logician, philosopher, economist, and theologian who also served as a reforming Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin. He was a leading Broad Churchman, ...

earlier termed it, catallactics.

Personal life

He married Mary Brown Smedley, with whom he had five sons,

Bliss BLISS is a system programming language developed at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) by W. A. Wulf, D. B. Russell, and A. N. Habermann around 1970. It was perhaps the best known system language until C debuted a few years later. Since then, C bec ...

, Arthur, Walter, Carroll, and Lewis, and a daughter, Grace.

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Perry, Arthur Lantham 1830 births 1905 deaths Williams College alumni People from Lyme, New Hampshire Economists from New Hampshire