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 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,

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