SECTION E- PUBLIC FINANCE 



(Hall 1, September 21, 10 a. m.) 



SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR HENRY C. ADAMS, University of Michigan. 



PROFESSOR EDWIN II. A. SELIGMAN, Columbia University. 



RELATION OF THE SCIENCE OF FINANCE TO ALLIED 



SCIENCES 



BY HENRY CARTER ADAMS 



[Henry Carter Adams, Professor of Political Economy and Finance, University of 

 Michigan, since 1887. b. Davenport, Iowa, 1851. Graduate of Iowa College, 

 1874; Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University, 1878; LL.D. Iowa College, 1898. 

 Lecturer in Johns Hopkins University, 1880-82; in Cornell University and 

 University of Michigan, 1880-87; Director of the Division of Transportation, 

 Eleventh United States Census, 1887; Statistician, Interstate Commerce Com- 

 mission, 1887. Member (President) of American Economic Society. Author 

 of Outlines of Lectures on Political Economy; Public Debts; State in Relation 

 to Industrial Action; The Science of Finance; and other works and memoirs on 

 political economy and finance.] 



THE science of finance finds its place in the group of sciences to 

 which it pertains through the relation it bears to political organiza- 

 tion. This is true because of the nature of the task imposed upon 

 the public financier. He it is who provides for the support of the 

 state. Both public income and public expenditure are intrusted to 

 him. He is the business representative of the body politic regarded 

 as an active corporation. The particular form assumed at any 

 time by the political organization is of slight importance so far as 

 fundamental principles are concerned, but it is of great importance 

 when one undertakes to give formal expression to those principles in 

 a scientific treatise. The science of finance is before all else an analy- 

 sis and classification of those principles of conduct that the financier 

 finds it expedient to put in practice, from which it follows that as a 

 science not only does it borrow character from the nature of political 

 organization, but the scope of its investigation is limited by the 

 practical necessity of making pecuniary provision for the support 

 of that organization, and the relation which it bears to other social 

 sciences is determined by the manner in which these other sciences 

 affect the amount of money to be raised and the method by which it 

 is raised and expended. I am aware that this is not the philosophical 

 attitude in which the definition of the science of finance and its rela- 



