154 ECONOMIC ESSAYS IN HONOR OF JOHN BATES CLARK
various related questions of rent, capitalization, etc. He declares
repeatedly: “capital is capitalized income,” and makes use almost
exclusively of a valuation concept in that sense. Professor J. R.
Turner too makes use * consistently of an advanced valuation
concept of capital. These views and those of the writer * are in
large measure in accord.
Ely as early as 1893 * began with a dual capital concept as
“every product which is used or held for the purpose of producing
or acquiring wealth,” but almost immediately speaks of capital
from the individual standpoint as “any economic good” (not
merely products) held “for the purpose of gaining wealth.” Later
editions, though repeating old definitions, give increasing emphasis
to the individual, valuation conception, which finally becomes
the only one actually used. “The business world . . . speaks
of the total investment—the amount of money ‘tied up’ in a
business unit—as its capital. This is the better and more common
usage.” *
Professor Fred M. Taylor ° speaks approvingly of “one new
way of conceiving of capital” as “a fund of value . . . rather
than things themselves”; and adds: “Even those who doubt the
soundness of this distinction are almost compelled to use it more
or less on account of the ambiguities in which current controver-
sies have involved the word capital.”
Professor Bye ® in his formal definition follows Fisher: “a
stock of wealth in existence at a given time,” including land
I~ JE
==
! Introduction to Economics, 1919.
2 As developed in various places; see, among others, Quarterly Journal
Economics, Vol. 15 (1900), pp. 1-45, “Recent Discussion of the Capital
Concept”; “The Relations Between Rent and Interest,” paper read at the
New Orleans meeting, with discussion, Publications of the American Eco-
nomic Association, 3rd series (1904), Vol. 5, pp. 176-240; The Principles
vf Economics (1904) ; American Economic Review, Vol. 4 (1914), pp. 68-92;
Economic Principles (1915), p. 267: “Capital is a person’s investment
power as expressed in terms of money, being a person’s property rights to
income, estimated, as to amount, with reference to market conditions.”
The definitions given in the references dating 1900 to 1904 followed in part
Clark’s and Fisher's leads in conceiving of capital more nearly as the
valuation expression merely of (material) wealth. In developing after 1904
2» more adequate capitalization and “interest” theory, the writer returned
with clearer convictions to the concention of capital that he had glimpsed
before 1900.
2 Qutlines of Economics.
¢ Outlines of Economics, 4th revised edition (1923), p. 206; see also
p. 103 et passim.
® Principles (1913), p. 69.
3 R. T. Bve. Principles of Economics, 1924.
