ECONOMIC SCIENCE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 



BY ADOLPH CASPAR MILLER 



[Adolph Caspar Miller, Flood Professor of Political Economy and Commerce, 

 University of California, b. January 7, 1866, San Francisco, California. 

 A.B. University of California, 1887; M.A. Harvard University, 1888; Post- 

 graduate, Harvard, 1888-90; Paris and Munich, 1895-96. Associate Profes- 

 sor of Political Economy and Finance, Cornell University, 1891-92; Professor 

 of Finance, University of Chicago, 1892-1902. Member of American Economic 

 Association. Advisory editor of Journal of Political Economy.} 



THE part assigned to me in the programme of this Congress is 

 an historical review of the science of economics in the nineteenth 

 century; more particularly, as I conceive it, such a review as may 

 serve to set forth the progress that has been made by the science in 

 that time. To compress a century's history of any active science 

 into a fifty-minute discourse is no easy task. But the task of the 

 historian of economics is especially great, for economics has had its 

 troubles in the nineteenth century. It has come by no short and 

 easy path to its present position, whatever this position may be 

 defined to be. And it has left the record of its troubles and wander- 

 ings in a literature of unusual extent and vast variety. Of activity 

 at least there has been no end. Economics has made a history for 

 itself if it has not made progress. So much, at least, is certain. 

 But the history of a science must not be confused with its progress. 

 Much that has a place in the history has little relation to progress. 

 Since our interest lies with the progress of economics, it is my purpose 

 to review the history only so far as it seems necessary for an appre- 

 ciation of its progress. And all that is requisite for this purpose is to 

 take a straight cut through the history, following the line that seems 

 most competent to exhibit those features of the past development 

 that are significant for the understanding of the successive phases 

 that make up the life-history of the science. But what shall be the 

 line of view? 



This question is the more difficult to answer because of the absence 

 of a tolerable consensus of opinion among economists as to the 

 proper character and constitution of the science. The Mclhoden- 

 streit has not issued in a common understanding. I cannot agree with 

 Professor Marshall that we have "worked our way through con- 

 troversy to the extinction of controversy," if that is to be taken to 

 mean a rapprochement on the fundamental question of the constitu- 

 tion of the science. If less is said about this question than formerly, 

 it is rather because controversy has taught the futility of controversy 

 and that economists have taken to doing things instead of talking 

 about them. For one has only to compare the procedure of two 



