Henry 'H.C' Cutting (April 3, 1870 – ?) was a California entrepreneur, engineer, school official and amateur economist. Initially attaining a mining degree in Nevada and serving several years as superintendent of the state's schools, he moved in 1903 to San Francisco, where he launched a mining company. In 1904, Cutting developed the inner harbor of Richmond, California, into a major commercial venture. He was able to secure federal appropriations for the harbor in 1914. Cutting spent his last decades focused on questions of monetary economics. He advocated various reforms, including the end of the

gold standard A gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is based on a fixed quantity of gold. The gold standard was the basis for the international monetary system from the 1870s to the early 1920s, and from the l ...

and regulation of financial institutions. His 1921 book, ''The Strangle-Hold'' received wide attention and the author

Upton Sinclair Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American writer, muckraker, political activist and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for governor of California who wrote nearly 100 books and other works in sever ...

referred to it as "the best book extant for an understanding of our banking system". Cutting ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination to represent Alameda county in Congress in 1922. Cutting Boulevard is a major thoroughfare in Richmond named after him.

Life

Henry Cutting was born in

Iowa Iowa () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to th ...

on April 3, 1870, to George and Jean Cutting. He graduated from Nevada University in 1894, as a member of its first graduating class. He was elected state superintendent of schools of Nevada in 1894. In 1903, Cutting moved to

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

, where he organized the San Francisco and Tenepah Mining Exchange. Upon his first visit to Richmond, then a small town in the east bay, he fixed upon the potential of its harbor, which he believed could "make a big city". In 1904, he founded the Port Richmond Canal and Land Company, of which he was the president for several decades, for the purpose of developing the harbor. This company played an important role in the Richmond economy, up to that point dominated by Standard Oil. Cutting won federal appropriations for it in 1914. By 1922 he was living in Oakland and launched an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination for congress in that district. Cutting favored unification of all the cities on the San Francisco Bay, under the name San Francisco, and publicly advocated this goal."Meeting of Citizens of Stege, Rust and Pullman Decides for Annexation", ''San Francisco Call'', Vol. 110, No. 68, August 7, 1911

Economic advocacy

In 1932, Cutting professed that he had devoted "twenty years of study" to economic thought.''Liquefied Wealth: A Cure for Financial Racketeering'', Henry Cutting, 1932, Oakland, opening dedication In 1921 he published ''The Strangle-Hold'', his major work on the subject. Primarily an attack on the gold standard as "a Straight-jacket on Industry, the Strangle Hold on Progress and a Killer of Prosperity", the book advocated a system of public credit and the regulation of banks as "public utilities" which would nonetheless remain in private hands. Cutting's work was praised by Upton Sinclair as "The

Uncle Tom's Cabin ''Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly'' is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in two volumes in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U ...

of finance". Sinclair also declared the work "the best book extant for an understanding of our banking system". Cutting believed that the bank failures, deflation and the long duration of the Great Depression beginning in 1929 vindicated his criticisms of the banking system and gold standard.

Reception

Like the amateur economist

Henry George Henry George (September 2, 1839 – October 29, 1897) was an American political economist and journalist. His writing was immensely popular in 19th-century America and sparked several reform movements of the Progressive Era. He inspired the eco ...

forty years earlier, also from the San Francisco area, Cutting received a chilly reception from academic economists, as his lack of credentials prevented him from attaining standing with the profession. Despite the similarity of his argument to the views of more famous economists of the nineteen-twenties and -thirties such as Irving Fisher,

Ralph Hawtrey Sir Ralph George Hawtrey (22 November 1879, Slough – 21 March 1975, London) was a British economist, and a close friend of John Maynard Keynes. He was a member of the Cambridge Apostles, the University of Cambridge intellectual secret society. ...

Gustav Cassel Karl Gustav Cassel (20 October 1866 – 14 January 1945) was a Swedish economist and professor of economics at Stockholm University. Work Cassel's perspective on economic reality, and especially on the role of interest, was rooted in British n ...

and

John Maynard Keynes John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in ...

, he received little notice or credit. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 instigated a number of reforms similar to those that Cutting had proposed, though it is unclear whether his work had any influence on the legislation. Cutting is memorialized by a prominent street in Richmond, California, but he remains an obscure figure. His works have been out of print for many years.

Works

''The Strangle-Hold'', 1921
''Liquified Wealth'', 1932

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cutting, H. C. 1870 births Year of death missing People from Iowa University of Nevada alumni American economists