SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC THEORY
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standard rate of tax in 1922-8 was 4-28 times the
amount of the rate in 1912-13. If business in 1912-13
yielded a profit of Y per cent., and that percentage
included the tax which had to be paid thereon, then on
the theory that those in control of the business will not
carry on unless they receive the same net reward for
their efforts during the period of much higher taxation,
when the rate of tax was 5s. in the £ the gross rate of
profit on turnover would require to rise to 1-25 times
Y per cent., or an increase on the original return of
23/90ths of its value. This increase, to be effective in
its object, would require to be realized throughout the
whole range of the dispersion, and the tables and graphs
presented in the memorandum offer no evidence in sup-
port of any such increase. On the contrary, the earnings
of the industry for these seven groups as a whole, before
payment or deduction of income-tax, when related to the
unit of the pound of, turnover are practically the same
in 1912-18 and 1922-3, notwithstanding the increase
in the standard rate of income-tax by 828 per cent.
The whole of a large inquiry which I have very briefly
summarized, is worthy of close study by economists and
statisticians.
VII. The Curriculum of the University.
As raw material accumulates and as detailed results
are co-ordinated, with recognized apparatus and outside
support, the new students who are to advance the science
must be increasingly directed along the appropriate lines
if they are to help in establishing economics as a quantita-
tive science. ‘In so far as they accomplish this aim’,
says Mitchell, ‘they will in transforming the subject make
obsolete not only the qualitative work of Dr. Marshall
and others, but also the crude beginnings of quantitative
work which their elders are producing.’
He foresees that the new literature will be numberless
papers and monographs, and books will pass out of date
more rapidly. No one will get the prestige of Mill and
