JOHN BATES CLARK AS AN ECONOMIST
3
nels of publication, the older group of speculative thinkers to
whom the work of Roscher, Cliffe Leslie and Ingram seemed
amendatory rather than revolutionary drew to the fore. The
impulse took form in the founding of the Quarterly Journal of
Economics in 1886, with Dunbar’s fine inaugural on “The
Reaction in Political Economy” sounding the key-note. It
developed as controversial activity centering about the doctrinal
contributions of Marshall, Walker and somewhat later of Bohm-
Bawerk and the Austrian economists. Exhibiting every variety
of intellectual effort from stimulating analysis to hair-splitting
dialectic, the results of this sustained contest in relation to Ameri-
can economic thought were negative and disjointed. A construc-
tive unified philosophy was to proceed from another quarter.
Included in the younger group of the so-called “historical”
economists were a quota—John B. Clark, Simon N. Patten,
Franklin H. Giddings—inclined by habit of mind to deductive
reasoning. For a season their studies were integrated. Then
related areas drew off his associates while Clark continued to
extend his inquiries deeper into the field of economic philosophy.
The pace was deliberate and progress gradual. But a succession
of journal papers became so many milestones, until in 1899 The
Distribution of Wealth summarized with rare amenity of form
the speculations of a profound thinker and the lessons of an
inspiring teacher. Thereafter for a decade Clark’s doctrines
dominated economic philosophy in the United States, yielding
only with dawning uneasiness as to the prematurity of speculative
inquiries and with increasing resort to realistic studies.
This rescue of economic study in the United States from the
historical local inquiry into which it threatened to lapse and its
restoration to the traditional search for the uniformities under-
lying economic conduct seem to me Clark’s greatest service.
There may be question as to the full validity of his logical
procedure and uncertainty as to the outright permanence of his
conclusions. But the history of our science warns off from coun-
sel of perfection. “A body of principles grows like a living body;
it is not ‘builded as a city that is compact together’ ’—a sage
reminds us.
What Clark did, as the great masters had done before him,
was to face a changed economic world, to slough off the conven-
tional formule current in the closet and in the market place
