ABSTRACT
While Thorstein Veblen gained his knowledge of business and of factory life at second hand, through the reports of the muckrakers and of various investigating commissions, he had grandstand seats for some of the most characteristic academic games of his time. Veblen's habit of dramatic abstraction which led him to write the world-history of predation, seeing in each age a different group of men notably gifted in exploit, or in the selling of specious but respectable intangibles. He worked his scheme of succession both forward and backward, describing for instance a period of Viking history as "An Early Experiment in Trusts", or painting the modern minister as the lineal descendent of shamans or Egyptian hieratic practitioners. Even when Veblen studied more traditional subjects, such as Scandinavian history, he did not fail to have a look at the disreputable items, such as illegitimacy rates, which more conventional historians had let lie.
