JOHN BATES CLARK AS AN ECONOMIST 
Jacob H. Hollander 
THE appraisal of scientific place is never easy. In politics 
and in affairs there is definite service that can be evaluated in 
relation to positive phenomena. Not so with stuff of the mind. 
Ordered knowledge grows by assembly, with, at best, “a master 
builder” from time to time giving new direction or changed 
emphasis. The years lend perspective and engender piety, and 
the historian of thought perforce ventures judgments. But of the 
living there is likely to be either adulation or hypercriticism. 
This is why we have no real history of political economy but 
only surveys of economic doctrines. No one has set forth with 
finality the contributions of Ricardo or of Malthus or of John 
Stuart Mill. Even one hundred and fifty years after, the com- 
memorative addresses lately given in this country and abroad 
present widely different estimates of the achievement of Adam 
Smith. Sometimes a gifted student has surveyed the life and 
work of his teacher and been able to salvage objectivity from 
gratitude and affection. But the gift is not common. If English- 
speaking economists have been remiss in estimating their living 
great, it is because of the intricacy of the task rather than of the 
grudge of indifference. 
The real work of John B. Clark as an economist lies within the 
thirteen years from 1886 to 1899. There were earlier path-finding 
papers in The New Englander, and a rich bibliography attests 
the mental vigor of later years. But The Philosophy of Wealth 
first presented in something approaching systematic form Clark’s 
basic ideas, and with The Distribution of Wealth the exposi- 
tion of his philosophy in all but its related phases and its specific 
applications may be regarded as complete. 
These thirteen years make up an important epoch in the 
development of American economic thought. The association