Economic essays

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1753623200

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136107

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Economic essays

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: viii, 368 S.; Ill., graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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DINNER IN HONOR OF PROFESSOR JOHN BATES CLARK 357 with international contacts, with the instruction of public opinion, with making ways and means for the interchange of ideas, of familiarities, of acquaintanceships between men and things of different speech and race and origin and religion and form of government. Another had to do with international law, with its evolution, its state- ment, its codification, its application to problems of the moment. The third had to do with economics and history. The purpose of the last division was to subject war to a new kind of analysis, a new sort of study, a new interpretation. There is an immense iterature on war in terms of military action, in terms of tactics and strategy, of armies and armor, of personal achievement, of courage, of vast under- takings strictly military and naval in character; but war as a human experience, a phenomenon, had never been subjected to what may be called a clinical study from the standpoint of the economist. What actually happens in war to the trade, the commerce, the industry, the finance, and food supply, the death rate, the birth rate, the thousand and one things which make up the subject matter of social and economic knowledge? It was felt by the trustees of the Endowment that if we could summon the intelligence of the world to that task, we might make a contribution that for all time would set a standard and reveal and interpret a vast series of phenomena that would give us a new understanding of war, that would add indefinitely to its terrors and its horrors. In seeking the country over for a leader and guide into the field, the trustees selected Professor Clark. Even you gentlemen, well-informed as you are, probably do not realize what he then proceeded to do and how important it was. He summoned to meet at Berne, Switzerland, in the summer of 1911, some eighteen or twenty of the leading economists of the world. If I were to go back over the records and recite their names, you would see that from Germany, from Italy, from Austria, from France, from Scandinavia, from England, from the United States, from Spain, from Latin-America, he summoned the acknowledged and undisputed leaders in economic thought. That group spent a week together in close converse and discussion, and they formulated a plan to be carried out cooperatively by them all, and by groups organized by them in their several countries, under the leadership of Professor Clark. That work was well planned, progress was made and a second conference was summoned to meet at Berne for the fifth day of August, 1914. Five of the economists had reached there before the blow fell. When the blow fell, it was of necessity a part of wisdom to await the arrival of the plentiful supply of new clinical material which the fates were about to provide. That task planned by Professor Clark, inspired by him, guided by him, is going forward at the hands of his pupil and friend and successor, Dr. Shotwell, with the cooperation of some three hundred historians and economists in every land. We venture to think that, when completed, it will give to scholars, students, men of letters and journalists, an accurate source of original information as to just what happens to the economic and social and industrial life and organization when the world goes to a great war.

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