Project Gutenberg's Essentials of Economic Theory, by John Bates Clark

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Title: Essentials of Economic Theory
As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy

Author: John Bates Clark

Release Date: February 2, 2010 [EBook #31159]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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ESSENTIALS OF ECONOMIC THEORY

_AS APPLIED TO MODERN PROBLEMS OF INDUSTRY AND PUBLIC POLICY_

BY
JOHN BATES CLARK

PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

AUTHOR OF "THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH,"
"THE PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH,"
"THE PROBLEM OF MONOPOLY," ETC.

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1915

_All rights reserved_

COPYRIGHT, 1907,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1907. Reprinted
July, 1909; July, 1915.

PREFACE

In a work on the "Distribution of Wealth," which was published in
1899, I expressed an intention of offering later to my readers a
volume on "Economic Dynamics, or The Laws of Industrial Progress."
Though eight years have since passed, that purpose is still
unexecuted, and it has become apparent that any adequate treatment of
Economic Dynamics will require more than one volume of the size of the
present one. In the meanwhile it is possible to offer a brief and
provisional statement of the more general laws of progress.

Industrial society is going through an evolution which is transforming
its structure and all its activities. Four general changes are going
on within the producing organization, and the resultant of them, under
favorable conditions, should be an enrichment in which all classes
would share. Population is increasing, capital is accumulating,
technic