Richard Ely (1854-1943) is considered the dean of American economics for his development of political economic theory. As an instructor at several major universities, he became a popular writer and lecturer. His students included Woodrow Wilson, sociologist Albion W. Small, economists John R. Commons and Edward A. Ross, and historian Frederick Jackson Turner.

Richard Theodore Ely was born on April 13, 1854, in Ripley, New York, the eldest of three children of Ezra Sterling and Harriet Gardner (Mason) Ely. Soon after Ely's birth, his father moved the family to a 90-acre farm near Fredonia, New York, where Ely would spend the next 16 years. The elder Ely was a self-taught engineer and lacked the skills and knowledge to farm successfully, relying too heavily on popular, sometimes erroneous, information he obtained from farm magazines. Although harsh weather and fluctuating market prices provided further hardship to the family, Ely credited his early farm...