Against real assets of some $682,000,000, almost twice that amount of stocks and bonds were issued — at a capitalization cost of $150,000,000, all of which was paid for by public investors. So there was justification for Veblen's scorn of the American entrepreneur.
However, he greatly underestimated the ability of American democracy to correct these abuses. None of Veblen's later works received the acclaim of his two earlier books. He remained a skeptic as he probed society's problems, and typical of his thinking is his Imperial Germany. Although the book is so critical of Germany that, at one time, the U.S. government wanted to use it for propaganda, the post office, for a time, barred it from the mails because it was uncomplimentary towards Great Britain and the United States. Veblen's Higher Learning in America (1918) was the strongest criticism ever leveled at the American university system. In the book, Veblen charged that the U.S. centers of learning were being transformed into centers of football and high-powered public relations. While given to extremes, Veblen retained his value by utilizing anthropology and psychology as better tools with which to study society than the impersonal and theoretical laws of economics.
