682 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 



been organic and spontaneous ; in India it is mechanical and from without. 

 Economic transition in Europe is, and has always been, evolutionary : in India, at 

 present, it is revolutionary. Bailways constitute one solvent of disparity — they 

 affect local prices, disorganise and readjust local production, and widen markets 

 for Indian labour. The same has been true in Western countries, but in India 

 the solvent is drastic, sudden, and abrupt. The transition is, therefore, marked 

 by contrast and antagonism between the wholly novel and the immemorially old. 

 This antagonism is seen in the resistance of caste and custom in the domains 

 of capital development and labour organisation, and is illustrated in_ the working 

 of the factory system in the few industrial centres. The only period in which 

 Europe offered even faint analogies to modern India was that of the industrial 

 revolution, but that was not nearly so sweeping as economic changes now in 

 operation in India. 



The result is really temporary dislocation and disorder. The rapidly accumu- 

 lating results of Western education, superadded to more sudden introduction of 

 new economic organisation, is really the root of Indian unrest. Had India been 

 a European country or under the later rule of native princes, the result would have 

 been chaos. The present great desideratum for India is, therefore, a period of 

 rest in which to adjust herself leisurely and gradually to new conditions not of 

 her own seeking, but imposed on her from without. 



FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2. 

 The following Papers and Report were read : — 



1. The Measurement of Profit. By Professor W. J. Ashley, M.Gom. 



Profit is the one share in the distribution of wealth not, until very recently, 

 subjected to statistical measurement, owing to the dearth of exact information. 

 This information is now being furnished in increasing abundance, as a result of 

 the adoption by business enterprise of the limited-liability joint-stock company 

 form of organisation. Accordingly during the last decade considerable attention 

 has been directed in Hungary and Germany to the statistical problem of the 

 Rentabilitat (profitableness) of investments; and finally in 1908 the Imperial 

 Statistical Office was charged with the duty of reporting annually on ' The Busi- 

 ness Results of German Joint-Stock Companies.' It was the purpose of this paper 

 to give an account of the various attempts of Continental statisticians — beginning 

 with the epoch-making work of Korosi — to define Oewinn ((jain or profit) from 

 the two points of view of (a) the companies and (b) the shareholders, and to 

 disentangle the pertinent figures from company ba.lance-sheets. It was shown 

 that questions of statistical method are necessarily in this matter bound up with 

 questions of economic principle. The paper ended with some observations as 

 to the relation between the statistical results so far obtained and the doctrine of 

 an average or usual rate of profit. 



2. The Meaning of Income. By Professor Edwin Cannan, M.A., LL.D. 



As commonly conceived, income is undoubtedly a sum of money; and here, 

 as frequently elsewhere, economists have been a little too hasty in transferring 

 the name from the sum of money to what they supposed to be the 'real' 

 things which the sum of money only indicated. 



In ordinary life, ' income ' is commonly taken to mean something different 

 from the total receipts in money of the income-receiver during a given period 

 of time : both additions an3 subtractions are made. 



The annual value of a house inhabited by its owner is treated as a part of 

 his income almost invariably; the annual value of free board and lodging 

 and services sometimes is and sometimes is not so treated ; no estimate of the 

 annual val-ue of services rendered by the State and paid for out of taxes is ever 

 included. 



