INTRODUCTION 3 



now regard as of prime economic importance. In England the classic 

 writers gave but scant attention to these ideas of the physiocrats. 

 Adam Smith refuted the "agricultural system" in about one- tenth 

 the space which he devoted to demolishing the arguments of mercan- 

 tilism. He is interested primarily in the division of labor, the employ- 

 ment of capital, and kindred topics, and, from his day on, the run of 

 attention in Britain was toward trade and the new industrialism. 

 Nor was it long before the growth of industrialism in America gave to 

 our economic discussions a setting not dissimilar to that which com- 

 manded the attention of European thinkers, and the men of the new 

 American school owe more to English and Teuton inspiration than 

 to a direct descent from the earlier native writers. Neo-classicism 

 naturalized (and shall we say improved ?) amidst our new industrial 

 surroundings the system that English writers from Smith to Mill had 

 deduced from a similar but earlier period in the life of our British 

 cousins. Specific productivity was the American elaboration of the 

 germinal idea of marginal utility developed by Jevons and the Aus- 

 trians. The more specialized this development became, the more did 

 it depart from agricultural sources of inspiration, the more did it con- 

 cern itself with the solving of problems of factory wages, interest upon 

 funded' capital, and the profits of industrial entrepreneurship, and the 

 less pertinent did its discussions become to the problems of the organi- 

 zation of farming and of the farmer's income. Should we take Pro- 

 fessor Clark as typical of this movement, it seems evident that his 

 mind has not been filled with contemplation of rural life and the 

 economic activities of country folk. Though Clark took his cue from 

 a suggestion of Henry George concerning agricultural utilization of 

 land and labor 1 and from von Thunen's 3 analysis of rural enterprise, 

 his own elaboration of the specific productivity doctrine seems dis- 

 tinctly to be based upon conditions of incorporated capital, minute 

 division of labor, and wire-edge competition in entrepreneurship and 

 hence an imputation of productivity not dreamed of by the farm 

 proprietor. 



In view of the fact that several of the recent writers seem definitely 

 to have turned their eyes away from agricultural data, it appears all 



* Clark, Distribution of Wealth, p. vii. 



2 Ibid., footnote, pp. 321-24. Those who do not find themselves in agreement 

 with the specific productivity theory might feel that the very fact that von Thunen 

 was analyzing an agricultural situation was what saved him from going to the 

 lengths to which Clark went. 



