CLARK'S REFORMULATION OF THE CAPITAL CONCEPT 139
(from Rieardo, J. S. Mill and Sydney Webb) and in three
approving, (A. Smith, S. N. Patten, and Clark's co-worker,
Giddings). The sources or the starting points of Clark’s own
thought must be sought more widely in the circumstances of his
life and of his surroundings.
The first possibility might seem to be close at hand in the
fact that Clark was an American. A scholarly study has recently
shown * that with few exceptions writers on economics in the
United States from Raymond in 1820 to Perry in 1877 (including
Phillips, Wayland, Vethake, M. Wilson, Cordoza, Tucker, Carey,
and Amasa Walker) defined capital as privately owned means of
production, emphasized its valuation or price aspect, and included
land among the concrete goods in which this value was embodied.
Some of the exceptions serve to prove the rule, for these exceptions
were men of English training or faithful disciples drawing their
ideas directly from Ricardian text books. Such unorthodox views
arose naturally in America where were lacking the artificial
feudal legal limitations upon the sale of land, and where land-
holders were not marked off socially from capitalist merchants as
a separate class. Here land was readily bought and sold and
was from the earliest settlement the chief object of investment
with a view to speculative profit. This environment had
prompted one American writer after another (apparently without
mutual influence) to develop conceptions radically different from
those of the English school. It might have likewise prompted
Clark quite independently to his very similar thought. And
there were particular circumstances at the time Clark was writ-
ing, namely, the active discussion of Henry George's single tax
proposal, which undoubtedly had directed Clark’s attention
strongly to this problem of the capital concept. Of this, more
later.
But if Clark got this thought either directly or indirectly from
American economists, it is not evident in his writings. The
generation of young economists who in the seventies and early
eighties brought a new spirit into American economic studies,
did not develop the indigenous traditions, but unfortunately
neglected them and turned to Germany for the new sources of
their inspiration. At the same time there was in some quarters
*J. R. Turner, The Ricardian Rent Theory in Early American Eco-
nomics, 1921.