Frank Albert Fetter, An Appeal to “The Sober Reader” (1916)

Fetter’s journal rejoinder answers H. J. Davenport’s extensive review of Economic Principles. Its immediate purpose is to correct alleged misrepresentations rather than settle the underlying theoretical disputes. Across discussions of value, utility, production cost, and interest, Fetter argues that criticism becomes unreliable when a reviewer substitutes his own definitions for an author’s or separates statements from their explanatory context.

The whole structure of his adverse criticism is built upon the assertion that I have confused my definitions, especially those of value and price.

Fetter distinguishes individual choice, or subjective value, from the commercial sphere of price. What Davenport presents as terminological instability, Fetter describes as a deliberate movement between analytical perspectives. The dispute concerns not simply which definitions are preferable, but whether the reviewer has followed the definitions governing the argument under examination.

The discussion of utility extends this objection into the history of economic language. Fetter rejects the identification of utility with mere desire, associating that usage with Benthamite influence. His preferred meaning concerns effectiveness for survival and welfare independently of an individual’s knowledge or wishes. For particular applications of goods, he instead employs the more concrete term use. This differentiation supports his answer to the charge that he has discarded utility without providing a replacement.

But with this distinction made, a great mass of traditional confusion can be cleared away, much of which, unhappily, still finds lodgment in the reviewer's mind.

A terminological argument addresses English renderings of Austrian economics. Fetter maintains that translations can obscure the distinction between a concrete use and the value attributed to a good. His reconstruction of Davenport’s equivalents exposes what he considers the resulting circularity:

Taking Davenport’s equivalents as above, this would be translated: The subjective worth of a good is determined by the amount of its subjective worth; or, if you prefer, the marginal utility of a good is determined by its marginal utility.

The charge is substantive as well as linguistic: collapsing distinct concepts removes the explanatory relation a theory is supposed to establish.

On production cost, Fetter objects that Davenport has converted a description of ordinary business usage into an endorsement of money outlay as the fundamental meaning of cost. Restoring the context, he argues, shows that he had characterized that usage as superficial. His own account places business decisions within choice and psychic income, rather than restricting them to comparisons of alternative market prices. An alternative employment can redirect a productive agent when it offers greater value, but its price does not exhaust the determinants of that agent’s value to an entrepreneur. Some agents lack alternative uses; in other cases, an alternative price inadequately represents the value another employment could yield. Fetter thus defends a value-equilibrium account of entrepreneurial action against Davenport’s reconstruction of it as an alternative-price theory.

The treatment of interest makes the sequence of exposition part of the defense. Fetter reserves interest for a contractual money-loan price and distinguishes it from the broader subjective problem of time-preference. Economic Principles accordingly moves from time-preference through money and capitalization to saving, borrowing, and loan interest. On Fetter’s account, Davenport mistakes preliminary analysis for the completed explanation by relying on passages from earlier stages of that sequence. The distinction is historical as well as logical: time-preference and capitalization precede contractual interest, and their analysis supplies the basis for explaining it.

The closing discussion turns from economic concepts to scholarly conduct. Fetter professes confidence in Davenport’s honesty while connecting the review’s hostility to his own earlier criticism of The Economics of Enterprise. His sarcasm complicates the appeal to sober judgment, since the defense of fair interpretation itself becomes pointedly personal. Nevertheless, he presents scholarship as collective work: his earlier objection concerned Davenport’s dismissal of contemporary economists and modern theory, not insufficient recognition of Fetter individually.

The rejoinder links conceptual precision to interpretive responsibility. Definitions, expository sequence, and the difference between reporting common usage and endorsing it become criteria of fair criticism. Its invitation to consult Economic Principles directly follows from this argument: readers should assess the theory through its own conceptual organization rather than accept the reviewer’s reconstruction.