REVIEWS AND NEW BOOKS

General Works, Theory and Its History

CL.-J. Herbert, Essai sur la Police Générale des Grains sur leurs Prix et sur les Effets de l'Agriculture (1755). Edited, with Introduction, by EDGARD DEPITRE. (Paris: Librairie Geuthner. 1910. Pp. xliii, vii, 166.)

A notable phase of recent economic study is the reprinting under competent editorship of important economic classics. Even before Adam Smith's time, Foulis in Edinburgh struck off attractive reprints of interesting texts-Law, Child, Gee, and Berkeley. Many years later came J. R. McCulloch's serviceable volumes of Scarce and Valuable Tracts, now become, as has very properly been observed, hardly less scarce and valuable than the original pamphlets. Thereafter the Collection Guillaumin in France and the Scrittori Classici in Italy were followed by single pieces of editorial work-Higg's Cantillon, Lamond's John Hales, Hull's Petty, Oncken's Quesnay. More recently, Brentano and Leser projected a Sammlung of German economic reprints, and Ashley began a similar series in England. Both undertakings languished after a period, and this lapse was responsible for the inception of the reprint of economic tracts', since carried on by the Johns Hopkins Press.

With that alert interest in doctrinal history which has always distinguished French economic study, the group of scholars associated in the newly established Revue d'Histoire des Doctrines Economiques et Sociales are now collaborating in the reissue of the writings of early French authors and translators of significance in the history of economic doctrines. The series will consist of some fifty volumes, of which five or six are to appear each year, under the general title Collection des Économistes et des Réformateurs Sociaux de la France, with the imprint of Librairie

Paul Geuthner.

Four carefully edited volumes of the series have heretofore appeared-Dupont de Nemours (Dubois), Baudeau (Dubois), Le Mercier de la Rivière (Depitre), Morelly (Dolléans) and a fifth, Herbert's Essai sur la police générale des grains, edited by Professor Depitre, is before us. Graslin, Dupont de Nemours and Petit are in press, sixteen other works are already announced by

title to follow, and, most interesting of all, promise is made that the Ephémérides du Citoyen is to be issued as a supplement to the Revue.

Herbert's Essai while not an economic introuvable is yet like so many other pre-physiocratic writings not to be had for the asking. The book was a notable one and the extent of its circulation is suggested by the fact that the reviewer's own copy of the original edition has an ex-libris of one Alexander Hamilton. The present impression, to which Montaudouin de la Touche's Supplément has been added, has all the excellences of the series of which it forms part an apparently trustworthy text, a facsimile title page, and a guide to original pagination. An index (Table Analytique) has been added, for which there does not seem to be the same occasion. Professor Depitre's editorial work is admirable. His introduction is distinguished by the ease and certainty of intimate scholarship, without being at any point ponderous.

It is not too much to say that this Collection makes possible for the first time adequate study by the ordinary student, of the development of French economic thought in the eighteenth century.

Johns Hopkins University.

JACOB H. HOLLANDER.

The Common Sense of Political Economy. By PHILIP H. WICKSTEED. (New York: The Macmillan Company. 1910. Pp. xi, 702. $4.25.)

Mr. Wicksteed's earlier books on economics were slender volumes, compact in style. The present work is not only large, but diffuse. Eschewing mathematics (except for a number of wellplanned and well-executed diagrams), the author has sought to infuse life into his system of economic theory, by describing in its terms a host of common and simple economic relations. All this is done with remarkable literary skill. But despite the charms of Mr. Wicksteed's style, the book is one that few will care to read through. One feels, indeed, that facile phrase-making and wellcontrived and ingenious exposition of details have been pushed so far that there is little to arrest and hold the reader's attention at the critical points of the discussion. There is also, it must be said, an undue amount of repetition, and especially of re-phrasing. But all in all the book deserves to be ranked among the most important productions of recent years.

Mr. Wicksteed is an avowed disciple of Jevons, and his book is the first systematic treatment of economics from the viewpoint of the analysis of margins that may be said to have a distinctly English, rather than an Austrian genesis. It contains, however, few new departures on specific points of theory. Its distinguishing feature is really the tenacity with which the marginal analysis is carried into almost every nook and cranny of human experience. And on the whole it is convincingly done, even though the reader may suspect that this systematizing becomes in places a tour de force, and that a more elastic and more eclectic method would have been better adapted to some of the concrete problems discussed.

But Mr. Wicksteed may congratulate himself on having given a rather more convincing exhibit of the varied possibilities of the study of margins than one will find anywhere else. At every point, too, he arms himself against the possible misconstructions of the hostile critic. Nowhere else is there so clear a (non-mathematical) explanation of the meaning of "marginal significance" as a limiting ratio, or so effective a refutation of those writers who have thought that the existence of "indivisible goods" puts insurmountable difficulties in the way of the marginal analysis.

Best of all, Mr. Wicksteed breaks consciously and, I think, effectively, with Jevons' hedonism. As he views the case, economic activities are not necessarily determined by the felt promptings of pleasure and pain. Every impulse, instinct, or habit that forces men to make the choices they do make between the maze of alternatives open to them has to be taken into the reckoning. But whatever be the promptings of our picking and choosing, we pick and choose, says Mr. Wicksteed, at the margin. Possibly the most interesting part of the book is an attempt to do away with the old assumption that "economic motives" are essentially egoistic. The argument is too subtle to bear condensation, but an extract will illustrate its trend:

We enter into business relations with others, not because our purposes are selfish, but because those with whom we deal are relatively indifferent to them, but are (like us) keenly interested in purposes of their own, to which we in our turn are relatively indifferent. "Business," then, is primarily a vast network of organizations by which any person or combination of persons can direct their resources and their powers to the accomplishment of their purposes, without the necessity of a direct relation, hard and often impossible to secure, between the objects sought and the faculties and materials directly at command. [p.179].

Mr. Wicksteed's theory of interest embraces one element which is, so far as I know, new (as a part of interest theory). The "irrational" habit of undervisualizing the intensity of future wants is not made the chief corner stone of the theory, although it is not neglected. Instead, it is pointed out that the expenditure of a large sum of money at one time for a durable good involves cutting into one's other lines of expenditure pretty deeply, and thus occasions a greater subjective loss than if the expenditure were apportioned through a period of time. Consequently, in a purely quantitative sense, discount of the future being eliminated, the present command of a sum of purchasing power may often be worth more than the command of the same amount apportioned through a period of time.

The book includes much interesting discussion of monetary theory. Mr. Wicksteed can hardly be called a "quantity theorist" of the really orthodox line, for he insists that a commodity standard of value is indispensable to any conceivable monetary system. ALLYN A. YOUNG.

Stanford University.

Die Entwicklung der wirtschaftspolitischen Ideen im 19. Jahrhundert: Sechs Vorträge. By EUGENE VON PHILLIPOVICH (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr. 1910. Pp. viii, 144.)

It would be difficult to find in English a counterpart, in scope and in dignity, to this stimulating little volume of six lectureessays upon the development of economic ideas in the nineteenth century.' Given originally as a course of lectures before a semipopular audience in Berlin and later in Vienna, they are now published with a bibliographical supplement for the benefit of a wider circle. The economic life of the past century, Professor von Phillipovich declares, has been shaped by five distinct forces: liberalism, conservatism, socialism, social reform and agrarianism. To each one of these topics a separate chapter is devoted, and a final chapter reviews "the present situation." The addresses as a whole are characterized by the satisfying qualities of so much that Professor von Phillipovich has written-philosophical grasp that never becomes metaphysical abstraction; and intimate knowledge that is removed from economic minutiae. Perhaps the best example of this is afforded by the chapter on socialism. Here within the compass of some twenty-five pages is given a review of the

origin and progress of socialism far superior to anything comparable which the present reviewer can recall. All in all, the brochure is a model example of the manner in which an economic scholar can properly minister to the educational requirements of "the general reader."

Johns Hopkins University.

NEW BOOKS

JACOB H. HOLLANDER.

BRUILHET, C. Le conflit des doctrines dans l'économie politique contemporaine. (Paris: Alcan. 1910. 1910. Pp. viii, 306. 8.50 fr.)

To be reviewed.

FABIAN SOCIETY. What to read on social and economic subjects. 5th ed. (London: King. 1910.)

The revision has been made by Mr. Sidney Webb. The book is interleaved and is in serviceable form.

GRUNZEL, J. Grundriss der Wirtschaftspolitik. 4. Handelspolitik. (Vienna: Holder. 1910. Pp. vi, 148.)

HARPER, J. W. The social ideal and Dr. Chalmers' contributions to Christian economics. (Edinburgh: Macniven and Wallace. 1910. Pp. ix, 377.)

To be reviewed.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY. A guide to reading in social ethics and allied subjects. By Teachers in Harvard University. (Cambridge: Harvard University. 1910. Pp. 266.)

The classification embraces five main groups: Social philosophy, Social institutions, Social service, Ethics of modern industry, and Social aspects of religion. These rubrics are further subdivided under forty-two minor headings. Each topic is prefaced by brief, but carefully prepared, instructions as to the nature of the sources. Each title has an annotation. The selection has been carefully made and the sifting done so thoroughly that only the really helpful books find a place in the list; for example, under Unemployment, there are only thirteen titles. The reader, therefore, is not confused by a mass of material, much of which is of little service, save for the advanced specialist. Nearly a thousand books in all are referred to. Altogether the bibliography is a model guide.

HAYMEN, H. Essai sur le droit de propriété et ses limites. (Paris: A. Rousseau. 1910. Pp. vii, 448. 8 fr.)

HORSON, J. A. The industrial system: an inquiry into earned and unearned income. New and rev. ed. (New York: Scribner. 1910. Pp. xx, 338.)

To be reviewed.

LESEINE, E. AND SURET, L. Introduction mathématique à l'étude de l'économie politique. (Paris: Alcan. 1910. 8 fr.)