Stephen Dubner

You write in your book that the wealth of nations became the origin point of the science of political economy in the United States and that Smith was both revered and criticized.

Sketch that out for me, both the reverence and the criticism.

What I'm really trying to get a sense of is how concretely or prominently did Adam Smith's ideas shape the U.S.

political economy early on?

So his writing wasn't treated like a religious text, more like a blueprint, perhaps.

Glory Liu writes in her book that Alexander Hamilton actually cribbed bits of Adam Smith in his own report on national banks.

And thus, the moral philosopher from Kirkcaldy, Scotland, began to be woven into the fabric of the American experiment.

By the mid-19th century, political economy was an established academic discipline.

And Smith, himself dead by now for several decades, was considered its founder.

American statesmen and attorneys would study Smith in preparation for their careers.

In Congress, meanwhile, there were vigorous debates about trade policy and tariffs.

And Adam Smith became the wedge with which to fight the wedge issue.

was powerful.

Smith continued to be cited by politicians and others throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Some used Smith to argue in favor of unbridled commerce and to rail against regulation.

Others went the opposite direction.

As the organized labor movement grew, for instance, the progressive economist Richard Ely argued that Adam Smith would have been firmly on the side of the unions.

If you know even a little bit about Adam Smith's reputation today, it may surprise you to learn this, that Smith was used in service of such progressive causes because Smith's reputation today runs conservative or at least libertarian.

So where did that reputation come from?

In her book, Glory Liu says it mostly came from the University of Chicago.