Rhetoric as Economics: Samuel Newman and David Jayne Hill on the Problem of Representation

Abstract

This article compares economic and rhetorical writings by examining two nineteenth-century American rhetorician-economists, Samuel Newman and David Jayne Hill. Both men directed both their rhetorical and their economic writings toward a common purpose—making citizens comfortable with new and uncertain instruments of (monetary and linguistic) representation. Considering the economic and rhetorical writings on representation, we come to understand how rhetoric (both theory and pedagogy) fits into the emerging and quickly morphing capitalism of industrializing and financializing America.