Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Alexander del Mar, Political Economist (1836-1926)


Commenter David brought my attention to this fellow from U.S. history.  I have never heard of him before.  Quite an interesting career and sounds like interesting publications.

Here is his wiki page.  Excerpt:
Del Mar received no scientific or academic recognition from contemporaries, and as a result from this his prescient views were totally excluded from the history of economics.
Although this looks like it may have been an unfortunate development:
Upon his death, he donated his private library of 15,000 volumes to the American Bankers Association.
Uh oh!

3 comments:

David said...

Matt,
I wonder which is more likely: that the American Bankers Association profited greatly from the knowledge contained in del Mar's library or that the books were just allowed to just molder away in some basement vault.

Seriously, though, I think you would get a kick out of del Mar's books. I especially like this one.

beowulf said...

"Upon his death, he donated his private library of 15,000 volumes to the American Bankers Association

Yeah, for a monetary reformer, that's kind of like Charles Darwin donating his papers to the Southern Baptist Convention.

Matt Franko said...

Ha! :) Good one!