SELECTIONS AND DOCUMENTS

IN ECONOMICS

EDITED BY

WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, PH.D.

PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

SELECTIONS AND DOCUMENTS

IN ECONOMICS

SELECTED READINGS IN ECONOMICS
By Charles J. Bullock, Ph. D., Professor of
Economics, Harvard University

SELECTED readingS IN PUBLIC
FINANCE (Second Edition)

By Charles J. Bullock, Ph. D., Professor of
Economics, Harvard University

ECONOMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED
STATES. 1765-1860

By Guy Stevens Callender, late Professor of
Political Economy, Yale University

SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL PROGRESS

By Thomas N. Carver, Ph. D., Professor of
Political Economy, Harvard University

TRADE UNIONISM AND LABOR
PROBLEMS (Second Series)

By John R. Commons, Professor of Political
Economy, University of Wisconsin

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOCIAL

POLICY

By James Ford, Ph. D., Associate Professor of Social Ethics, Harvard University RAILWAY PROBLEMS (Revised Edition)

By William Z. Ripley, Ph. D., Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University TRUSTS, POOLS AND CORPORATIONS (Revised Edition)

By William Z. Ripley, Ph. D., Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University SELECTED READINGS IN INTERNATIONAL TRADE AND TARIFF PROBLEMS

By Frank W. Taussig, Henry Lee Professor of Economics, Harvard University

READINGS IN SOCIAL PROBLEMS

By Albert Benedict Wolfe, Professor of Economics, University of Texas

WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, PH.D.

NATHANIEL ROPES PROFessor of ECONOMICS, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

COPYRIGHT, 1905, 1916, BY

WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

324.4

The Athenæum Press GINN AND COMPANY PRO PRIETORS BOSTON U.S.A.

IN

PREFACE

THE preface to the first edition of this collection of reprints in 1905 the distinction between its purpose and that of such predecessors as Dunbar's "Laws Relating to Currency, Finance and Banking" and Rand's " and Rand's "Economic History" was pointed out. This volume, according to its announcement, was intended for use especially as a textbook rather than for handy reference or as a collection of original documents. Similarly, it is hoped, this present enlarged edition is in no sense a rival, but rather complementary to such recent volumes as Stevens' "Industrial Combinations and Trusts" (1913) and Gerstenberg's "Materials of Corporation Finance (1915). Each of these may greatly enrich instruction by affording a convenient store of well-chosen illustrative material. But this volume is intended to accomplish something more. It is a deliberate attempt to apply the case system, so successfully evolved in the Harvard Law School, to the study of economics. A systematic textbook, supplemented by lectures, is expected to provide the background so essential to a complete understanding of each selected case. But, this being done, most of these chapters purport to deal with a single, definite, typical phase of the general subject of industrial combination.

The primary motive is to further the interests of sound economic teaching, with especial reference to the study of concrete problems of great public and private interest. A difficulty in the substitution of present-day social and economic studies for the good old-fashioned, linguistic ones, or for the modern sciences, a difficulty especially peculiar to descriptive economics as differentiated from economic theory, has always been to secure data sufficiently concrete, definite and convenient to form a basis for analysis, discussion and criticism. The lecture system has its