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Stuart Chase (1888-1985) Born in Somersworth, New Hampshire was an American economist and engineer trained at MIT. His writings covered topics as diverse as general semantics and physical economy. His hybrid background of engineering and economics places him in the same philosophical camp as R. Buckminster Fuller. It has been suggested that he was the originator of the expression a New Deal , which became identified with the economic programs of American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He had a cover story in The New Republic entitled "A New Deal for America," during the week that FDR gave his 1932 acceptance speech promising a new deal, but whether FDR speechwriter Samuel Rosenman saw the magazine is not clear. He was a member of the Technical Alliance, and involved with the Technocracy movement. In The Economy of Abundance Chase suggests that Technocracy Incorporated may turn out to be a cult, but the facts of Technocracy remain more important than whether Howard Scott was a real engineer or not. His 1938 book The Tyranny of Words was an early (perhaps the earliest, predating Hayakawa) and influential popularization of Alfred Korzybski's general semantics which can still be read with profit.
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