Richard T. Ely and John R. Commons, had demonstrated that social power shaped markets, and they debunked the thinkers such as Herbert Spencer who pretended otherwise. Ely, who had led in the 1885 founding of the American Economic Association, was blunt about the laissez-faire economics his generation aimed to supplant. “This younger political economy,” Ely said, “no longer permits the science to be used as a tool in the hands of the greedy and the avaricious for keeping down and oppressing the laboring classes.” No one who claimed the mantle of science should advocate “doing nothing while
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