Jacob Harris Patton
Jacob Harris Patton (1812-1903) was born on May 20, 1812, in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. He was the son of Thomas and Anna Harris Patton. He received his bachelor’s degree from Jefferson College, graduating in the class of 1839. In the following year, Patton became the principal of the Marshall Academy, a private college preparatory school, in Mississippi at the age of twenty seven. As principal of the academy, Patton’s conduct was described as “gentle and persuasive” and “of the strictest moral character.” Patton held this position for one year, before becoming a tutor at the University of Nashville, Tennessee, a position he would occupy from 1840 to 1843. He would then enroll at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where he graduated in 1846. In the same year, Patton also received his license to preach from the Presbyterian Church, but decided to return to his teaching career instead. He then became a principal at a private classical school in New York, a position he held for thirty-six years.
Patton eventually retired in 1882, and afterwards devoted his time to private instruction and to the authoring of books and other literary works. In 1884, he received his PhD. from the Washington and Jefferson College. It was around this time that Patton turned to the subject of political economy. His first work on the subject was a ninety-page booklet commissioned by the American Protective Tariff League entitled Our Tariff: Why Levied and Why Continued. This booklet was hugely popular with the entire run of 10,000 copies having been placed in circulation. It even caught the eye of the Republican campaign committee who circulated it as part of Benjamin Harrison’s 1888 presidential campaign. In 1888, Patton published his next work entitled Natural Resources of the United States, which sought to survey and provide “a concise narrative of the resources of [the United States], in all their numerous forms.”
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The most important of Patton’s economical works would appear in 1892. This was his textbook entitled Political Economy for American Youth. The purpose of this work was to provide a clear and concise textbook written from an American Protectionist perspective for the instruction of young students of political economy. The only other texts of this nature were Robert Ellis Thompson’s Political Economy for High Schools and Academies, and George M. Steele’s Rudimentary Economics for Schools and Colleges. In addition to his writings on political economy, Patton also wrote lengthy works on other subjects, including on politics, literature, American history, and Christianity. Jacob Harris Patton died on November 24, 1903, at the age of ninety-two.