LIST, (GEORG) FRIEDRICH

born Aug. 6, 1789, Reutlingen, Wrttemberg died Nov. 30, 1846, Kufstein, Austria German-U.S. economist who advocated tariff protection to stimulate national industrial development. Largely self-educated, List rose to prominence as founder and secretary of an association of middle and south German industrialists that favoured abolition of the tariff barriers dividing the German states. Exiled in 1825 for his liberal views, List went to the United States, where he became editor of a German-language newspaper in Reading, Pa. In 1827 he published his Outlines of American Political Economy, in which he argued that a national economy in an early stage of industrialization requires tariff protection. The costs of a tariff, he maintained, should be regarded as an investment in a nation's productive potentialities. After becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen, List returned to Germany and was U.S. consul at Leipzig in 1834. While serving there, he involved himself in the building of a rail line between Leipzig and Dresden, in 1837. Despite its success, the undertaking fell short of List's financial and personal expectations and he went to France in despair. There he wrote his most remembered book, The National System of Political Economy (1841). List was perennially plagued with financial difficulties, which, coupled with other problems, finally drove him to suicide.