DINNER IN HONOR OF PROFESSOR JOHN BATES CLARK 361
utility,” or of Wieser’s concept of “marginal utility”; but when we realized
what Professor Clark was driving at, we saw that he had a larger idea than
‘hose men had and that it was destined to be regarded as more fundamental.
There soon appeared his brilliant analysis of capital. He pointed out the
distinction between concrete materials in which capital values are invested
and which he called “concrete capital,” and capital proper, or “pure capital,”
that can be turned in any direction desired. From this study Professor
Clark went on to take up in like manner the question of distribution; and
there, instead of simply accepting the so-called Austrian view of marginal
value, he fixed upon a concrete phase and showed us that what counts is
marginal productivity, the productivity, namely, of the marginal invest-
ment, of the marginal day’s labor, of the marginal hour’s labor, in the
productive process. On the basis of this analysis he constructed a theory
of distribution which I think all economists who have mastered it realize
did not previously exist. It was not a mere abstraction. It was discovery
by a man who perceived that production is a differential process and that
marginal changes are the ones that count.
I shall never be able to express to Professor Clark or to anyone else my
indebtedness to him. If I have been able to achieve something along the
line of work that I have followed, it was to Professor Clark and one other
man, a friend of his, to whom I have been most indebted. It was to
Professor Clark that I owed my interest, which continues to this day, in
economic problems and in economic theory, and it was the lamented
Herbert B. Adams of the Johns Hopkins University, to whom I listened
when I decided to give most of my attention to sociology. That was
his advice.
I wish to say in conclusion that in all of my relations with this very
dear friend, he has always been unselfish, he has always thought of others
hefore himself, and he has rejoiced in nothing so much as in the achieve-
ments of those to whom he has been helpful and who have been indebted
to him for that help. I hope that I have expressed a very deep sense of
personal reverence, affection and gratitude to one of the great men whom
it has been my privilege to know.
The Chairman
In the history of economic thought in this country there have been two
stages. After the war with England, and when we had our earliest really
important industrial and business crisis, the thinkers of this country for the
first time began to turn their attention to economic topics. From 1817 on,
the different colleges of the day devoted some attention to this new subject,
although most of the topics that engaged public attention at that time
related to the new-fangled institution called banks, as well as to the
development of the money power and the little understood industrial and
transportation development.
Half a century later, after the great Civil War, when the gradual dis-
appearance of our free land caused the emergence in this country for the
first time of the problems which we had thought peculiar to the old world,