148 TWELFTH REPORT. 



To one thinkiug as the writer does, Professor Fisher, wliile criticising 

 others for iiiakiDg questiou-begging- assumptions, has made his own state- 

 ment of the case one-sided bv a simihir error. Bv slightiuff costs and 

 objective limitations his "time preference" becomes a mere assumption ; 

 and lie takes income for granted when he criticises cost theories [Rate of 

 Int&>-egt, pp. 33, 44, 46). 



Quite different from the foregoing are the views of Professor T. N. 

 Carver, who perhaps best represents the great body of the less 

 radical of the American economists. In his Disttihutlon of Wealth 

 (1904) he calls a halt to the one-sided emphasis of psychology and points 

 to the economic environment factor. The book contains a noteworthy 

 restatement of the law of diminishing returns and an able criticism of the 

 Austrian ideas on interest, which is ai>plicable in a great degree to Fisher 

 and Clark. He makes the law of diminishing returns universal and not 

 confined to land only. If to a limited quantity of any factor increasing- 

 quantities of other factors are added a time will come when the return 

 diminishes relatively to the quantity added. As to the interest question. 

 To Carver the question is, '"Why is the income more than sufficient to 

 keep the supply of capital intact, or to replace it * * *?" Cost and 

 productivity are synthetized as in the case of value determination. Un- 

 less the supply of capital was in some way limited its marginal produc- 

 tivitj' would disappear and these limits are the cost of making capital 

 goods and the sacrifice of waiting, including an element of incalculable 

 risk. 



There is a sense. Carver holds, in which rent does not enter i)rice as 

 wages do; for laud is separable from the owner and does not have to 

 be persuaded to work by any offer of advantage < p. 207). 



Furthermore, Professor Carver lays more emphasis upon the Mal- 

 thusian theory of population in connection ^vith the theory of wages than 

 do the preceding writers. 



III. 



When one turns from an extended reflective examination^ of the 

 numerous recent treatises on Economics one feels like raising the ques- 

 tion, whither are we tending? — and is tempted to make some generaliza- 

 tions along that line. Yielding to this temptation the writer would con- 

 clude with a few rather hasty generalizations, hoping that they may at 

 least provoke discussion. 



1. Looking back some fifty years, there appears to be a tendency to 

 return to a general, "pui'e" Economics. Beginning say with J. S. Mill 

 there came a tendency to bring in all manner of social and ethical data. 

 Later, a mass of technical data has been worked over; and, on the other 

 hand, psychological and philosophical nmterials have been heavily 

 drawn upon. But now Political Science and Government, and Sociology 

 are splitting off; and with technical courses springing up, and Ethics 

 enriched by economic infusions, we are ready for a more well-rounded 

 body of pure economic principles. 



2. It seems not unlikely that there is and will be a concomitant 

 growing distinction between public and private economics. The growth 



^It has not seemed well to include in the preceding observations the detail and repetition 

 which would be involved in making them the fall basis for the following generalizations. 



