142 ECONOMIC ESSAYS IN HONOR OF JOHN BATES CLARK 
or ali lira 
menting) deductive methods with historical studies, and in favor 
of state activity vs. laissez-faire, without any essential change 
in the old conceptions of the economic factors and shares in dis- 
ribution. This is well illustrated by H. C. Adams, R. T. Ely, 
nd many others besides Clark. The more difficult question to 
nswer is: Why did Clark ever, and why did he alone, break 
through this crust of conventional ideas, and in 1888 advance 
the views, received as complete novelties, with which his name 
as ever since been linked. 
he important eras of human thought, we are assured by 
hilosophers, rarely, if ever, are initiated by entirely new ideas, 
ut by the rediscovery and restatement of old ones. Therein con- 
ists the more effective originality. It has been said, perhaps 
xtremely, that the first time a new thought is expressed or an 
invention is made, the world simply pays no attention to it. Not 
until it is repeated independently and rediscovered a hundred 
imes, and then only under peculiarly favoring conditions, does 
he world look up and say: yes, there is something in it, but 
nothing original—indeed it is very old. Until the world has 
cceived an idea in this way, its rediscovery for the hundredth 
ime is as original as its discovery the first time, and its mere 
estatement by one aware of its earlier origin and rejection, calls, 
or that very reason, for as great vigor of thought, and for faith 
nd conviction. 
pa 
1. Effects of the Single Tax Agitation 
The probable source from which immediate stimulation came to 
Clark was the contemporary single tax discussion. Started in 
1379 by the publication of Henry George's book on Progress and 
Poverty, it gained within a few years the most remarkable vogue 
in popular interest. It attracted at once the attention of leading 
sii Professor W. G. Sumner attacked it in 1881 in 
magazine articles.” Professor Francis A. Walker, who seems to 
have been stirred to indignant protest particularly by George's 
proposal to confiscate land values, made it the subject of a series 
of lectures at Harvard in 1883, published under the title of Land 
and its Rent. But Clark, until after the publication of his first 
1 See Dr. A. N. Young, The Single Tax Movement in the United States 
(1916), ng Prof. R. T. Ely noticed it in his Recent American Social- 
ism in 1885.