Veblen, born of immigrant Norwegians in Wisconsin, grew up in a pioneer Norwegian community in Minnesota. His austere childhood reflected the drab farm life. He grew up remote and aloof, an alienated, enigmatic man whose chief pattern of behavior was nonconformist. At the age of seventeen, Veblen's family sent him to study religion at a pious Lutheran college, where he promptly threw the faculty into an uproar when it came his turn to suggest a way of converting the heathens. He titled his method "A Plea for Cannibalism." To add to his apostate behavior, he converted the niece of the college president to agnosticism and, several years later, married her.
Bad luck tagged Veblen. He found no immediate success in his teaching career. His first job lasted a year, and then the academy closed. He enrolled at Johns Hopkins on the expectation of a scholarship, which never materialized. After transferring to Yale, he received a Ph.D. in 1884. Returning home, he read, loafed, and buried himself in political science, economics, sociology, and anthropology. By normal standards, he was lazy and unassertive. He refused to make his bed, and when the dishes were dirty, he hosed them down. His eccentricity extended to his disdain for the telephone. His isolation continued for seven years until at the age of thirty-four, he yielded to family pressure to resume graduate studies.
His appearance at the office of the economics department of Cornell in 1891 must have shocked the conservative department chairman, for Veblen was wearing corduroy pants and a coonskin cap. Still, his learning impressed the older man, and Veblen received a fellowship. The following year, he accompanied the head of the department when the latter moved to the University of Chicago.
At the age of thirty-five, with a salary of $520 a year, Veblen earned a reputation among his students for refusing to take roll and assigning the grade of "C" to all students, although he upgraded the "C" to an "A" when a student needed to qualify for a scholarship. Veblen felt that there were too many students. The fewer he had, the better. Nevertheless, in spite of his rambling, mumbled lectures, his immense knowledge led to an annual salary of $1000 by 1903.
