Nota bene: I have blogged about this puzzle before: see here. Below, however, is a revised and corrected excerpt from Chapter 3 of my forthcoming book with Salim Rashid, Das Adam Smith Problematic? Ethics, Economics and Society. (“Cole 1958 refers” to Arthur H. Cole’s classic 1958 paper “Puzzles of the “Wealth of Nations”, Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 1–8.)

Arthur H. Cole was an economic historian at Harvard and the head librarian of the Harvard Business School. [For more information about Cole’s life and work, see here (Wikipedia) and here (Irwin Collier’s archive).] In 1958, he wrote a paper titled “Puzzles of the ‘Wealth of Nations.’” Although Professor Cole’s paper refers to puzzles (plural), the author ends up identifying only one puzzle, but it is a big one. Was Adam Smith a misanthrope?

To this end, Cole (1958, p. 3) shows how “Smith gives much evidence of a pretty low opinion of mankind in general.” Among others, Smith calls out “the usual idleness” of apprentices (WN, I.x.a.8) and the “sneaking arts” of underling tradesmen (IV.iii.b.8). The Scottish scholar also castigates “weak and wondering travellers” (V.i.d.17) and “stupid and lying missionaries” (ibid.). Smith rebukes “the absurd prescriptions” of doctors (II.iii.31) as well as “[l]uxury in the fair sex” (I.viii.37); and he is unable to “reckon our soldiers the most industrious set of people among us” (I.viii.44).

But Smith reserves his greatest invective for politicians, i.e. “that insidious and crafty animal” (IV.ii.39), and for merchants and manufacturers, whose “avidity” (IV.viii.4), “clamour and sophistry” (I.x.b.25), and “mean rapacity” (IV.iii.c.9) impede the progress of commerce. Cole’s conclusion is that Smith had bad things to say about almost everyone. Well, almost everyone. By comparison, Smith has good things to say about the “judicious operations” of English bankers and the “delightful art” of gardening. He commends “the wholesome and invigorating liquors of beer and ale,” and he also praises the “chairmen, porters, and coalheavers in London” as well as “those unfortunate women who live by prostitution” as “the strongest men and the most beautiful women perhaps in the British dominions ….” [WN, I.xi.b.41, quoted in part in Cole 1958, pp. 7-8.]

Cole’s puzzle is therefore this: what are we to make of this Smithian pattern of general condemnation sprinkled with such limited praise? Or in the words of Arthur Cole:

One lesson seems sufficient: when some specially vigorous judgment is quoted from the great Scotsman—that a politician is an “insidious and crafty animal,” or tradesmen are capable of “sneaking arts”—it will be appropriate to reflect that this thorn came from a bouquet full of rather thorny roses. Whether Adam Smith deliberately put such prickly blossoms there—for literary effect—or in his premature cantankerousness didn’t realize that such barbs were being placed all through the book—this question each admirer of the Scotsman may answer for himself. (Cole 1958, p. 8)