A Perilous Progress: Economists and Public Purpose in Twentieth-Century America.

• Author: Nelson, Robert H.
• Position: Book Review

By Michael A. Bernstein Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001. Pp. 376. $39.50 cloth.

In A Perilous Progress, Michael Bernstein reminds us of the importance of the Progressive era in setting the stage for the twentieth-century history of government in the United States. Progressive intellectuals preached the scientific management of American society, as orchestrated by the federal government. The federal managers of society would be part of a new "meritocratic order--a network of new social relationships premised on educational achievement, professional accomplishment, and adherence to ethical codes of conduct" (p. 12). Professional groups, such as economists, would be the vital repositories for expert knowledge and would provide the specialist personnel to guide the modern state. As Bernstein comments, the "American century" was "first and foremost, an era of professional accomplishment and perquisites" (p. 13).

Progressivism, as Samuel Hays once characterized it, was a "gospel of efficiency" (see Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920 [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959]). If age-old conflicts over material resources could be abolished by means of the enormous productivity of a modern economic system, the prospect lay in store for the arrival of a new heaven on earth. Because the path to earthly salvation would follow an economic route, the most important of the professional groups would have to be economists. Indeed, as Bernstein argues, by the end of the twentieth century, economics had emerged as the "preeminent academic discipline," resulting in "the displacement of almost all other social scientists in significant and influential political and bureaucratic positions" (p. 3).

If Bernstein is correct, the actions of American economists are of basic interest to the political history of the United States. The story of economics becomes much more than an account of the successes or failures of twenty thousand modern academics. Rather, as Bernstein argues, "the agendas and methodologies of contemporary economists speak directly to the manner in which Americans go about their daily affairs, [and] understand the world around them.... Rethinking the history of the American economics profession is ... very much tied up with rethinking the history of modern American culture itself" (p. 3).

A number of books cover the creation of the American Economic Association in 1885 and the...