Simon Patten
Simon Nelson Patten (1852-1922) was an American economist and social theorist. He is credited with inventing the term social work. [1] and with first expression of the idea of a society of affluence or abundance later also developed by another economist, John Kenneth Galbraith. Patten argued that "poverty could be abolished if (people) would accept values and restraints appropriate to an age of abundance - and discard (ideas) developed through centuries of scarcity." [2] Industrialisation, according to Patten, ushered in a new age of abundance that he termed the "new basis of civilization" (the title of his best-known book). [3]
"Over the long run, he believed, economic advance would lead to cultural and spiritual uplife, as satiation with creature comforts and baser amusements would prompt the cultivation of higher aspirations and more refined tastes." [4] Patten was one of dozens of members of the founding generation of U.S. social scientists who studied in Germany in the 1870s and 1880s and became leaders in higher education in economics, sociology and other social sciences in the U.S. He studied at the University of Halle. He, like future colleagues John Bates Clark, Henry C. Adams and Richard Ely was strongly influenced by the group of economists known as the Younger Historical School . After several years of teaching at the elementary and secondary levels and following publication of his first book, Patten was appointed in 1887 as an economist in the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he remained until his anti-war stance forced his retirement in 1917.
From the 1890s to the 1920s, Patten made two types of contributions to social work: His teaching, articles and books pointing toward a social work practice of , and the education of a number of important future leaders of the field, including Frances Perkins, Edward T. Devine, Samuel M. Lindsey William H. Allen, and Benjamin Marsh. His central theme was that the goal of social action and the social work profession should be facilitating adjustment to a developing economy of abundance. Following his death in 1922, these ideas were increasingly downplayed in social work due to the growth of the Freudian psychoanalytic approach. They did not resurface again until the 1960s - and then from sources who had seldom heard of Patten.
Patten's ideas were bitterly attached by Mary Richmond, probably the most powerful social administrator of the time, and defended by Devine, Perkins, and Lillian Wald. Richmond and others in the Charity Organization movement favored individualized approaches emphasizing moral and individual causes of poverty. Patten's approach was heavily economic and broadly policy-oriented. [5]
- ↑ David M. French. Patten, Simon Nelson (1952-1922). 1970. In Encyclopedia of social work, ed. Robert Morris, 2:892-3. New York: National Association of Social Workers.
- ↑ ibid.
- ↑ Patten, Simon N. 1968. The new basis of civilization. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- ↑ Lindsey, Brink. 2007. The age of abundance : How prosperity transformed America's politics and culture. New York, N.Y.: Collins. p. 64.
- ↑ French, op. cit. 893
Additional references
Boswell, James Lane. 1934. The economics of simon nelson patten. Philadelphia,: Pub. by the author. Nearing, Scott. 1925. Educational frontiers : A book about simon nelson patten and other teachers. New York: T. Seltzer. Patten, Simon N. 1916. Culture and war. New York,: B. W. Huebsch. Patten, Simon N. and Rexford G. Tugwell. 1924. Essays in economic theory. New York,: A. A. Knopf. Patten, Simon N. 1909. Product and climax. New York,: B.W. Huebsch. Peterson, Houston. 1946. Great teachers, portrayed by those who studied under them. New Brunswick [N.J.]: Rutgers university press.