Essentials of Economic Theory As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy

_Simple Cases of Charging "What the Traffic will Bear."_--The value of a study of primitive carriers and their policy lies in the fact that it illustrates principles which apply...

The state needs an authoritative mode of determining what rate of pay is "reasonable." This duty is often imposed on boards of arbitration, for whose guidance no definite princi...

Functional distribution controls personal incomes since each man who gets, in a normal way, any income at all performs one or more productive functions, and his total income is...

Thus far we have been dealing with what we have called natural forces. The phenomena which we have studied have not been caused by any conscious and purposeful action of the peo...

One may hire many things besides land and pay what is commonly called rent for them. No one would think of calling by any other term the amount paid for the use of a building, a...

The more serious perversions of the economic system which we have encountered have all been traceable to some working of the principle of monopoly, and it is important to know w...

In all stages of social development the economic motives that actuate men remain essentially the same. All men seek to get as much net service from material wealth as they can....

quick stroke of a single die, the machine that carried this armature would do the work of perhaps twelve knives handled by that number of skillful workmen. If the original numbe...

The creation and the use of wealth are everywhere governed by natural laws, and these, as discovered and stated, constitute the science of Economics. Some of them come into oper...

Of all the various clubs used by trusts for attacking rivals and driving them from the field, the first in order is the one which depends on getting special rates for transporta...

In the absence of an unusually great increase in the consumption of an article the improvement which reduces the cost of it tends to displace labor. The first thing that will oc...

_The Equilibrium of Industrial Groups._--The different industrial groups are in equilibrium when they attract labor and capital equally, and that occurs when these agents produc...

_Passive Capital Goods._--Labor spends itself on materials, and these, in their rawest state, are furnished by nature herself. They "ripen" as the work goes on. Every touch that...

The essential fact about production, as it is carried on by all society, is that it is a synthetic operation, by which a grand total is made up by the contributions of different...

What an economist wishes first to know concerning the organization of labor is whether it is a natural phenomenon which should be welcomed and left to itself. Does it help to es...

When we try to establish a standard to which wages generally tend to conform, the question arises how much of the earth we have in view. Is there a rate at which the pay of labo...

_Labor Saving and Capital Concentrating._--There is a common impression that whatever saves labor usually requires an increase of capital in the industry where the economy is se...

_Dynamic Qualities of Money._--The question concerning money which, for the purposes of the present treatise, it is most important to answer is whether general prosperity can be...

Since the optimistic conclusion reached in the preceding chapter is contingent on an increase of wealth which is not neutralized by an increase of population, it remains to be s...

_The Term "Rent" as Historically Used._--The word _rent_ has a striking history. The science of political economy first took shape in a country in which direct employers of labo...

Adam Smith and many others have noticed that the growth of capital varies with the intelligence and the foresight of a population. It should therefore increase in rapidity as in...

Perpetual change is the conspicuous fact of modern life. So revolutionary are the alterations which a few decades make in the industrial world as to raise the question whether t...

_The Efficiency of Static Forces in Dynamic Societies._--The static state which has thus far been kept in view is a hypothetical one, for there is no actual society which is not...

We have now before us a few principles of so general a kind that they apply to the economy of the most primitive state as well as to that of the most advanced. It is not necessa...

_How the General Unification of Methods of Production Calls at First for an Increased Exportation of Capital from the Central Area and Checks the Immigration of Laborers._--A st...

When free from the taint of monopoly, trade unions, as has been shown, help rather than hinder the natural forces of distribution. Collective bargaining is normal, but barring m...

_Natural Supply._--We have attained a law of market value, which determines the price at which a given amount of any commodity will sell, and have taken a quick glance at the in...

_The Possibility of a Law of Technical Progress._--It might seem that inventions were not subject to any influence that can be described under the head of a law. Genius certainl...

The product of the final unit of labor--an amount which in practice is measured without any tracing of the previous growth of the working force--sets the standard of the rate of...

_Perpetual Change of the Social Structure._--We confine ourselves to that economic society _par excellence_ which we have called the industrial center of the world. In this regi...

_Displacement of Labor and Capital by Inventions._--Inventions are "labor-saving." Employers are engaged in a race with each other in reducing the outlays involved in producing...

The profits of a monopoly are not transient, but are likely to be both long-continued and large, and it might seem that they would constitute a larger source of addition to capi...