MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 143 



SOME OBSERVATIONS ON RECENT AMERICAN ECONOMIC 

 THINKERS AND THEIR THOUGHT. 



LEWIS H. HANEY. 



From the beginning the peculiar environmental eoudition>5 met with 

 in America have given a characteristic set oi' tendencies to American 

 economic thought.^ In the first place the point of view tends to be op- 

 timistic. The country is young and the resources boundless. It has been 

 in the ''advancing state'' of the old economists. In accordance with this 

 general tendency, from early times to Patten there has been another 

 tendency to deny the validity of the classical law of diminishing 

 returns, and yet another to attack the Malthusian doctrine of popula- 

 tion. 



Being in a progressive or "advancing" state characterized by speculat- 

 ing fluctuations in price, etc.. the dogma of equalized wages and profits 

 has functioned little as a premise in American thouglit. The great varia- 

 tions in expenses and prices as between different points within the vast 

 area of the United States, especially in earlier times, must likewise have 

 operated in this same direction. - 



Again the fact that farms have been ''carved out" of the wilderness 

 before our very eyes has suggested the question, is land not capital? 

 The abundance of land, moreover, has, in connection with a democratic 

 jieople, begotten a system of land ownership which h^is made the dis- 

 tinction between land and capital less obvious than in a country like 

 England. Accordingly we find Carey holding heterodox views on this 

 point, and a strmig tendency in a similar direction appears today. Ameri- 

 cans have been forward in applying the differential idea to labor and 

 capital as well as land. 



The relative scarcity of labor and capital which has existed well down 

 to date has also found its expression in certain theoretical peculiarities, — 

 in addition to furthering the one just noted. For one thing the necessity" 

 for and importance of the management factor has been accentuated. 

 Invention, too, has been stimulated and its importance emphasized. 

 This has fostered a point of view in which change and progress are re- 

 garded as normal. 



But most interesting of all is the suggestion that the common 



acceptance of the marginal productivity theory of distribution may 

 be an offspring of a national psychology engendered by these con- 

 ditions. Where labor, for example, is scarce and relatively independent 

 the wages fund doctrine would hardly be suggested, while it would be 

 easy to conceive a relationship between productivity and income. 

 Some of the assumptions in Professor Clark's theorizing have been 

 actualities in America. There has lieen a great deal of free, no-rent land, 

 upon which the settler put his labor. If he could get it, hired labor was 



^See Sherwood, "Tendencies in American Economic Thought," Johns Hopiiins University 

 Studies. 1897. 



^See Leslie, Essays in Pol. and Moral Philos., p. 137f. 



