ABSTRACT
Edmund Wilson in 1932 described Stuart Chase as "perhaps the vividest writer of the liberal camp; he has an unusual knack of making statistics take shape as things and people." Among US economists, Stuart Chase has a reputation for being the best story teller of the lot. Paul Douglas described Chase as "at once accountant and artist. Like so many amateur "economists" of the 1930s, Stuart Chase was educated as an engineer, but unlike the others he abandoned engineering for his father's profession and became a certified public accountant. Launched on a career as a social critic, Chase became involved with the Technical Alliance, a group of engineers inspired by Thorstein Veblen who sought the elimination of waste through industrial coordination, and the Labor Bureau. Chase complained that the purchasing power of the nation was not increased by advertising and that it, in fact, drew workers away from productive employment.
