After his graduation, Veblen tried his hand teaching at Monona Academy in Madison, Wisconsin, but the atmosphere at this Norwegian school proved as oppressive as that of Carleton. Rent by theological disputes over predestina- tion, election, and strong church authority, subjects totally uncongenial to Veb- len, the school closed permanently at the end of the year. When one of his brothers, Andrew, father of the famous mathematician Oswald Veblen, decided to study mathematics at Johns Hopkins, Thorstein accompanied him to Balti- more, expecting to study philosophy. Thus began what Bernard Rosenberg has called "a torturous apprenticeship in academic maladaptation.''

When Veblen came East, his thoughts had already been shaped by the agrarian unrest and radicalism that had swept over the Midwest soon after the end of the Civil War. Moreover, when a German exile of the 1848 revolution had opened his library to him, Veblen became acquainted with Kant, Mill, Hume, Rousseau, Spencer, Huxley, and Tyndall--great intellects who had not been discussed in the lecture halls of Carleton. Egalitarian and radical in his outlook, Veblen once again felt alien in the leisurely culture of the South that prevailed in Baltimore and at Johns Hopkins. Lonely, homesick, and short of money, he was moreover intellectually ill-disposed toward the philosophy offerings of that school. He took three courses with George S. Morris but was not impressed by this Hegelian philosopher, who felt that conventional manners and morals might find an even better defender in Hegel than in pre- vailing Scottish Common Sense. Veblen attended a course in political economy with a young man, Richard T. Ely, who was to become one of the main repre- sentatives of the new reform-oriented economics. But neither man cared for the other. To judge from Veblen's later writings, the only man to have made some impact on him was a temporary lecturer in logic named Charles Sanders Peirce, who had already written a series of papers emphasizing that "the whole function of thought is to produce habits of action."

When Veblen failed to receive a scholarship at Johns Hopkins, he decided to transfer to Yale to study philosophy under its president, the Reverend Noah Porter. At Yale, as almost everywhere else, philosophy was still considered the handmaiden of theology, and Veblen, the agnostic, found himself among divinity students, most of whom were preparing to teach the gospel. As a means of defense, Veblen accentuated his sardonic attitudes and distance-creat- ing techniques, and he cultivated an air of complete aloofness and worldly- wise scepticism. Even those whom he managed to befriend later said that they found him trying, though stimulating.

At this time the intellectual atmosphere at Yale was charged by epic battles between its president, Noah Porter, a man still deeply steeped in the pieties of New England transcendentalism, and the sociologist William Graham Sum- ner, who preached the gospel of Herbert Spencer. Sumner relentlessly fought in the name of science and evolution, of Darwin and Spencer, against the theological features of the school. A month before Veblen left Yale, Sumner was victorious and the whole curriculum of Yale was revamped. Science won over religion.

Veblen found himself attracted to Sumner as he had never been attracted to any of his other teachers. In later years he was to dissect Sumner's conserva- tive economics in class, but, according to Dorfman, Sumner was "the only man for whom he expressed . . . a deep and unqualified admiration." What at- tracted him was not only Sumner's Spencerian and evolutionary thought, but his independence of mind, his refusal to go along with the crowd, his com- bative individualism. To be sure, the man who was to write withering attacks on the predacious characteristics of captains of industry was hardly impressed by the views of a teacher who saw in these men the flowers of civilization. Veblen could not accept Sumner's doctrine, but he loved the man and partly modeled himself after his image. He also managed to be on excellent terms with the Reverend Porter, under whom he did most of his work and who supervised his dissertation. Locally he was known as "Porter's chum." Porter esteemed Veblen's superior intelligence even though he must have been made uneasy by Veblen's conspicuous lack of reverence.

Veblen specialized in work on Kant and the post-Kantians, his first aca- demic paper being on Kant's Critique of Judgment. He was considered by Porter and some of his other teachers to be a highly intelligent, cultivated, though unconventional, young philosopher. But after he had received his doctorate, it became apparent that nobody was willing to give him an aca- demic position. College teachers, especially those in philosophy, were mainly recruited from the ranks of the divinity school. No faculty wanted a "Norskie," especially one around whom there seemed to hover a cloud of agnosticism or worse. After having spent two and a half years at Yale, Veblen returned home defeated and bitter. He now had a Ph.D. but no source of income or hope for a position.

Back on the farm, Veblen claimed that he was ill and needed special care. His brothers were inclined to believe that he was just plain loafing--a sin not lightly forgiven among Norwegian farm folk. In the meantime, Veblen read everything he could lay his hands on, roamed the woods, indulged in desultory botanical studies, did some hack writing for Eastern papers, and seemed to drift into a life of permanent dilettantism.

In 1888, Veblen married Ellen Rolfe, the daughter of one of the leading families of the Middle West. Her father, a grain-elevator and railroad magnate, was appalled that his daughter was marrying a shiftless atheistic son of Norwe- gian immigrants. But he made the best of it and allowed the young couple to settle on one of his Iowa farms. Veblen now made a few half-hearted attempts to gain a teaching position, but all these moves proved to be of no avail. In the meantime he and his wife followed news of the radical agrarian movement that swept the Middle West with passionate concern. Together they read Edward Bellamy's socialist utopia, Looking Backward , which had just been published. Ellen Rolfe wrote later that "this was the turning point in our lives." In his Iowa retreat, Veblen immersed himself deeply in the study of economics, both the orthodox and the heterodox variety. Looking at the passing scene of agrarian and labor unrest, of increasing radicalization among farmers and workmen alike, he began to feel that economics might provide answers to the crisis. After ten years of frustration and idle drifting, Veblen finally decided to return East to study economics, registering at Cornell in the winter term of 1891.

The professor in charge of economics at Cornell, J. Laurence Laughlin, was sitting in his study when an anemic-looking man wearing a coonskin cap and corduroy trousers entered and announced: "I am Thorstein Veblen." Laughlin became so impressed with Veblen that he secured a special university grant for him, even though all regular fellowships had already been filled. Heartened by this modest encouragement, Veblen now began to get down to the business of serious writing. His first paper in economics, "Some Neglected Points in the Theory of Socialism," adumbrated his later interest. It was an attempt to use Spencerian evolutionary method while arguing against Spencer that without the abolition of private property and free competition the crisis of the current industrial order could not be overcome. Several fairly technical papers for The Quarterly Journal of Economics followed in short order. Veb- len's mentor, Laughlin, thought so highly of them that he arranged for a fellowship for Veblen at the new University of Chicago, where Laughlin had just been appointed head professor of economics.

The University of Chicago, where Veblen stayed from 1892 to 1906, provided the most congenial academic setting he was ever to find. The aggres- sive president, William Rainey Harper, had managed in a few years to attract a most distinguished faculty, and Veblen found a number of colleagues with whom he could engage in lively interchange. John Dewey in philosophy, William I. Thomas in sociology, Jacques Loeb in physiology, to name just a few, influenced him deeply and in turn were stimulated by him. Veblen later wrote a venomous portrait of Harper as a prime example of those "captains of erudition" who prostitute genuine scholarship in their drive for competitive standing in the academic world. There was much truth in what Veblen said, but it must be acknowledged that, no matter how autocratic his administra- tion, no matter what questionable methods Harper may have used to extract ever increasing funds from the University's founder, John D. Rockefeller, he attracted a first-rate faculty to Chicago and so made it possible for Veblen to enjoy the company of peers and colleagues that he could genuinely respect.

This is not to say that Veblen's Chicago career was without difficulties. Al- though he soon took over the editorship of The Journal of Political Economy, which Laughlin had founded soon after their arrival, Veblen was not originally a member of the faculty, but only a tutor. It was not until three years after coming to the University that he was promoted, at the age of 38, to instructor. His promotion to assistant professor had to wait another five years. There were a number of reasons for this academic neglect. Veblen was unorthodox in his thinking, in his teaching, and in his love life.

Veblen now wrote profusely, but his many brilliant contributions to The Journal of Political Economy were scarcely of a sort to please the more staid members of his academic audience. They were, in fact, fierce assaults upon prevailing utilitarian and classic doctrine in economics, and upon the custom and use of capitalist enterprise in the United States and elsewhere. Ranging widely over the fields of history, anthropology, sociology, and economics, Veblen proceeded with mordant wit and sarcasm to undermine the received wisdom of economic theory. Whether reviewing books by Sombart or Schmol- ler, by Marx or Labriola, whether writing a fundamental paper such as the one entitled "Why Is Economics Not an Evolutionary Science?" Veblen was single- minded in his iconoclastic enterprise of demolishing conventional ideas in economics and the social sciences generally.

Veblen's teaching methods were even more unorthodox than his writings. He seemed to make a deliberate effort to discourage students from taking his courses. His lectures were wide ranging, and he usually presented the material in a rambling and unorganized manner. As a result, his audience never quite knew what to expect next. One of his former students describes his teaching thus:

He would come into the classroom with a half-dozen books under his arm, sit down bashfully behind his desk, and commence mumbling through his whiskers the characteristic economic blasphemies for which he was famous. His inimitable wit played over the field and made what might have been a rather dreary exercise something to chuckle over. Judged by con- ventional standards, he was the world's worst teacher. He seldom knew at the beginning of the hour what he would say or where he would arrive at its end. . . . I felt that these mumbling lectures were a good deal of a bore to him except for the opportunity they afforded him for flashes of wit and irony, and he took little interest in the question of whether his students were reading lessons and doing work in the course or not.

Veblen found the task of evaluating students or grading papers pro- foundly distasteful and as a consequence usually gave the whole class, as the spirit moved him, either a C or a B. When students tried to pin him down and asked him to say in plain language what he meant by his oracular and illusive pronouncements, he usually brushed them off with a sardonic smile and a witty remark. When pressed hard, he would say: "Well, you know, I really don't think I quite understand it myself."

Despite all these calculated maneuvers to rebuff student interest, Veblen acquired some of his most distinguished followers--among them, Wesley Mitchell, Robert Hoxie, and H. J. Davenport--in the Chicago days. These and a few others learned not to be put off by his manners and quirks and to reach down to the serious core of his teaching. But the bulk of his students couldn't make sense of his lectures, especially when their quest for certainty was met with Veblen's studied elusiveness. Wesley Mitchell has written that Veblen "took a naughty delight in making people squirm." As a result, his classes were large for the first few days, but soon only a handful remained. Students were not an audience that Veblen appreciated.

Veblen was unorthodox in his teaching and in his writing, but what shocked the university administration and many older colleagues profoundly was his unorthodox love life. Women were much attracted to him, and stories about his affairs and escapades soon were bandied around in scandalized fac- ulty gatherings. Mrs. Veblen was much perturbed by these affairs and threatened to leave him. Matters were not made easier by his habit of leaving in his pockets the letters he received from his female admirers. In all these affairs, Veblen was more the pursued than the pursuer. "What is one to do when a woman moves in on you?" he once complained. He remarked, some- what later, that "the president doesn't approve of my domestic arrangements. Nor do I." Nevertheless, his amatory escapades, even more than his scholarly unorthodoxy and his unconventional teaching, made him an outcast in the university's inner circles and eventually led to his dismissal.

In the Chicago days, Veblen pursued a kind of double-barreled strategy: he would alienate most students and faculty while at the same time building a close intellectual companionship with a chosen group of congenial colleagues. When his first and still most widely read book, The Theory of the Leisure Class, was published in 1899, the influence of such Chicago men as Jacques Loeb, Franz Boas, and William I. Thomas could be traced on virtually every page.

The Theory of the Leisure Class helped bring Veblen to the attention of a broader public than he had enjoyed so far. It brought him a circle of admirers who hailed the book as an epoch-making achievement. Lester Ward, the dean of American sociology, praised it highly, as did William D. Howells, the dean of American letters. Veblen was now an intellectual force to be reckoned with. His next book, The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904), perhaps his most systematic critique of American business, received a somewhat less enthusiastic response. Conservative critics complained about his destructiveness, his amor- alism, and his lack of appreciation for the virtues of free enterprise. Many radicals, appreciative of his critique of capitalism, were nevertheless unhappy about his rejection of Marxism. Others complained about his involuted style and lack of clarity. Yet critics and admirers seemed to agree that Veblenian doctrine was now an established feature on the intellectual scene.

As his fame outside the university grew, his life inside it became well nigh impossible. When Veblen returned from a trip to Europe in 1904, during which he had been accompanied by a female companion who was clearly not his wife, he was asked by the university authorities to sign a paper declaring that he would have no further relations with the woman involved. He replied that he was not in the habit of promising not to do what he was not ac- customed to doing. His days at Chicago were now numbered. He made efforts to secure a variety of appointments, among others to the Library of Congress, but all these efforts failed. Finally, Stanford University offered him an Associ- ate Professorship at a relatively high salary, and he joined its staff in 1906.

Veblen stayed at Stanford a little more than three years. His style of life, of morality, and of expression continued to be as unconventional as it had been in Chicago. His wife, who had left him for a time, returned to him in Palo Alto, but the marriage was clearly on the rocks. Matters were not made easier when one of his Chicago admirers wrote him that she wanted to be the mother of a great man's children. Mrs. Veblen left him again. When his amatory adventures could no longer be covered up, the administration forced him to resign in December 1909.

Veblen did not make the close intellectual friends at Stanford that he did at Chicago. The major elements of his "system," if such it can be called, had been set down in the Chicago days. His subsequent books, beginning with The Instinct of Workmanship (1914) on which he was working at Stanford, are, with one exception, only elaborations of previous lines of thought. Veblen probably was therefore less eager for intellectual stimulation than he had been earlier. He was as distant and aloof at Stanford as he had been at Chicago, but apparently made less of an effort to gather around himself a chosen few intel- lectual peers.

After having been forced to resign at Stanford, Veblen applied for a posi- tion at various schools. But the known circumstances of his severance from Stanford led every administration that was approached to recoil. Veblen was a marked man. To have offended the academic proprieties twice in a row was just too much. Finally, a former student, H. J. Davenport, came to the rescue and persuaded the president of the University of Missouri to offer Veblen a position in its School of Commerce, of which Davenport was dean. Ellen Rolfe Veblen now secured a divorce and, as a result, the president of Stanford, in a recommendation to make the temporary appointment permanent, wrote to the president of the University of Missouri that he saw no reason why Veb- len should not be retained since he had now straightened out his matrimonial affairs. In 19I4 Veblen married his second wife, Anne Fessenden Bradley, a divorcee whom he had known at Chicago and Stanford. The new Mrs. Veb- len, far less educated than the first, did all his typing, washed all the laundry and sewed all the clothes for her two daughters from an earlier marriage. She seems to have been totally devoted to Veblen, and being a radical like him, she was wholeheartedly in favor of "the movement," forever discussing the virtues of Socialism with the conventional faculty wives. She was also in full agree- ment with her husband's rather original ideas in regard to household duties. For example, the making of beds was considered a useless ceremonial; the covers were merely turned down over the foot of the bed so that they could be easily drawn up at night. Dishes were washed only when the total supply was exhausted; then they were stacked in a tub, a hose turned on them, and, after the water had been drained off, they were left to dry. Veblen also advocated, though he stopped short of practicing, the making of clothes out of discardable paper.

Although Veblen was coddled and indulged by a number of his former students now on the staff of the University of Missouri, he lacked the wider intellectual companionship he had enjoyed at Chicago and, to a degree, at Stanford. Neither faculty nor students at the University of Missouri were of the quality that Veblen had been accustomed to; as a result, he withdrew even more. As his health grew poorer and he began to feel the weight of years, his courses became even less organized than before, and his contempt for his stu- dents deepened. The university authorities were flattered to have attracted a man of his reputation, but they felt he was not contributing fully. As a result, he never got a permanent position and remained a lecturer, whose appoint- ment had to be renewed annually, during the entire seven years of his stay. His Stanford salary had been $3000; at Missouri he was paid under $2000 in his first few years and received only $2400 in 1917, just before he left.

While at Missouri, Veblen completed his third book, The Instinct of Workmanship, and soon after the beginning of World War I, he published his Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution, one of his more important works. Soon after, there followed, An Inquiry into the Nature of the Peace (1918), a less significant and more ephemeral book. In the same year, he finally published his savage onslaught on the structure and operation of the American university, The Higher Learning in America, most of which had been put to paper in the Chicago days. The books that followed were either collections of previously published papers or restatements usually in somewhat more high-flown language, of points he had made before. These books included The Vested Interests and the Common Man (1919), The Place of Science in Modern Civilization (1919), The Engineers and the Price System (1921) and Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times (1923).

From Coser, 1977:278-285.