Stuart Chase

Stuart Chase (March 8, 1888 – November 16, 1985) was an American economist (MIT), social theorist and writer. His writings covered topics as diverse as general semantics and physical economy. Chase's thought was shaped by Henry George, by economic philosopher Thorstein Veblen, by Fabian socialism, as well as by the Communist social and educational experiments being conducted in the Soviet Union around 1930. Chase spent his early political career supporting "a wide range of reform causes: the single tax, women's suffrage, birth control and socialism." Chase's early books, The Tragedy of Waste (1925) and Your Money's Worth (1928), were notable for their criticism of corporate advertising and their advocacy of consumer protection.

Chase was born in Somersworth, New Hampshire, on March 8, 1888, to public accountant Harvey Stuart Chase and Aaronette Rowe. His family had been living in New England since the seventeenth century. He attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1907 to 1908 and graduated from Harvard University in 1910 as a public accountant. After graduating, Chase became part of his father's accounting firm in Boston. Chase married Margaret Hatfield in 1914 and had two children. He and Margaret were divorced in 1929, and one year later he married Marian Tyler. Chase died in Redding Connecticut on November 16, 1985, at the age of 97.

In 1917, Chase left accounting and took a position with the Food Administration of the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C., along with his former classmates, journalist Walter Lippman and John Reed and poet T.S. Eliot. In this commission, Chase conducted investigations on waste and corruption, one of them being the meatpacking industry with Upton Sinclair.

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