60 NATURE OF CAPITAL AND INCOME [Crar. IV
nition of the time principle here propounded. The “capital
account” of a railway, for instance, gives the condition
of the railway at a particular instant of time, and the ““income
account’ gives its operation through a period of time.
$5
It has been objected that the proposed definition does
not conform to established usage. So far as economic precedent
is concerned, we have already seen that there is no
established usage.! Moreover, in the immense literature
on the subject there is no lack of precedent for the defini-'
tion here proposed. Turgot? employed the term capital
in practically the sense of a stock of wealth. J. B. Say?
Courcelle-Seneuil,* and Guyot * followed. Edwin Cannan,®
among present economists, reintroduced it, and in a very
tlear and explicit way. To-day it is used in five or six
standard works,” as well as in some minor writings. Many
economists have orally expressed their approval of the proposed
definition.
Others virtually or approximately adopt it, as, for instance,
Knies,® Clark ® Pareto,® Giffen,’ De Foville,”® Flux,
1 For a fuller statement of this fact see the writer’s “Precedents
for Defining Capital,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, May, 1904.
2 Formation and Distribution of Riches, § 58, Ashley’s translation
(Macmillan, New York), pp. 50-59.
3 See Tuttle, “The Real Capital Concept,” Quarterly Journal of
Beonomics, November, 1903, p. 83; but cf. Bohm-Bawerk, Positive
Theory, English translation, p. 59, n.
4 Traité théorique et pratique d’ Economie Politique, 1867, tome I, p. 47.
5 Principles of Social Economy, English translation, p. 50.
® Theories of Production and Distribution, London, 1894, p. 14.
" Among them are Cannan’s History of Theories of Distribution,
Hadley’s Economics, Smart’s Distribution of Income, Daniels’s Finance,
Fetter’s Principles of Economics, Seligman’s Principles of Economics.
8 See “What is Capital?” loc. cit.
® In his Growth of Capital.
In his “Wealth of France and of Other Countries,” English
translation, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 1894.
1 Economic Principles, London (Methuen), 1904, pp. 16-18.
