The Yale Review (Volume 81) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1912 Excerpt: ... feature of his work. This does not mean that the theoretical part of the subject has been neglected or relegated to a secondary place. He has given ample space to it and has not failed to incorporate in his exposition all the new and improved ideas. Though he cannot be said to have contributed any new inventions along this line, he has furnished some very searching criticisms of current views. Conspicuous examples of this appear in what he has to say of the new law of diminishing returns, which is made to apply to all industries as well as to agriculture, of the inclusion of all appropriated natural resources in capital, and of the idea that capital has a specific product of its own to be distinguished from the product of labor. While his treatment of theory is thus adequate and on the whole satisfactory, it is not this part of the work which will attract most attention or be read with the greatest profit. It is the effort which has everywhere been made to fit the theoretical principles to the concrete facts of the business world which constitutes its distinguishing characteristic. The author has not always succeeded in doing this in a way to satisfy that intelligent and educated person for whom he says in his preface he is writing. It is not obvious after the most painstaking exposition of the concepts of "total utility" and "consumer's surplus," just how they explain anything of importance in modern industry; and it is nearly as difficult for the uninitiated to make use of the principle that "wages are determined by the discounted marginal product of labor," in trying to account for the different level of wages in different countries. But the author never fails to put the theoretical principles to this test of explaining actual conditions, even when the r...