Carl Menger, Ein neues Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften (1890)

Carl Menger’s review assesses the emerging Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, edited by Conrad, Loening, Lexis, and Elster, through its first completed volume. It combines a qualified endorsement of encyclopedic scholarship with criticism of German economics’ theoretical condition and an assertion of Austrian scholarly standing. Moving from the project’s intellectual costs to its practical usefulness and Austrian participation, Menger makes the review both an appraisal of a reference work and a diagnosis of the discipline.

Menger opens by attributing an apparent slowdown in German economic and social-policy publishing to the concentration of leading scholars’ energies on the dictionary. Planned for six or seven volumes within three years, the enterprise absorbs effort otherwise available for books and journals. Its scale raises a question of intellectual opportunity cost:

Ob das Werk diesem Opfer an geistiger Arbeit der hervorragendsten deutschen Social-Schriftsteller entsprechen wird?

English translation: Will the work correspond to this sacrifice of intellectual labour by the most eminent German social writers?

This question establishes the review’s evaluative standard: the undertaking must justify not merely its usefulness but also its demands on scarce scholarly resources. Organizing existing knowledge is not equivalent to advancing research, especially when compilation occupies those capable of producing new investigations.

The dictionary’s scope explains both its demands and its promise. Menger distinguishes its actual program from the expectations its title might create:

Das Programm des Sammelwerkes, welches in so hohem Maße den Arbeitsfleiß der deutschen Volkswirthe und Social-Politiker in Anspruch nimmt, entspricht nicht ganz dem Namen desselben.

English translation: The programme of the collective work, which lays claim in so high a degree to the industry of the German economists and social politicians, does not quite correspond to its name.

Excluding formally constitutional and administrative legal matters, the work nevertheless extends beyond a conventional dictionary of political economy. It covers economic and social conditions across major countries, their historical development, legislation and statistics, and contemporary parliamentary and scholarly debate. Menger particularly values its legislative coverage, statistical material, and bibliographies as resources for officials, parliamentarians, practitioners, and scholars. His reservation concerns the relation between this descriptive abundance and the development of economic knowledge.

A further difficulty arises from the discipline’s unsettled intellectual foundations:

Dazu kommt, daß das Handwörterbuch, gleich dem unter dem Namen „Schönberg’s Handbuch der politischen Oekonomie“ bekannten Sammelwerke, aus einer Periode tiefer wissenschaftlicher Zerklüftung hervorgeht.

English translation: To this is added that the encyclopaedic dictionary, like the collective work known under the name of "Schönberg's Handbook of Political Economy," issues from a period of deep scientific fragmentation.

Collective scholarship necessarily reproduces these disagreements. Yet Menger does not make theoretical unanimity a prerequisite of practical value. Instead, he distinguishes forms of scholarly organization: a systematic handbook exposes inconsistencies among contributors more sharply than an alphabetically arranged dictionary. The latter’s limited claim to systematic coherence suits the heterogeneous material it assembles. Its descriptive achievement can therefore be acknowledged without confusing it with theoretical depth or a unified account of economic relations.

Practical necessity ultimately outweighs these reservations. Specialized literature has become increasingly difficult to master, while public responsibilities require people without extensive disciplinary training to decide complex economic, social, and financial questions. Reference works mediate between dispersed scholarship and urgent demands for informed action. Menger’s footnote surveying projects in France, Britain, Italy, America, and Switzerland places the German undertaking within an international expansion of such scholarly resources.

The review’s latter portion substantiates the dictionary’s authority through its contributors, especially Austrian academics, administrators, politicians, and statisticians. Their participation promises informed coverage of Austria-Hungary. Examples from the first volume connect expertise to concrete subjects: Steinbach on Austrian worker-protection legislation, Mataja on strikes and workers’ chambers, Philippovich on emigration, and Juraschek on joint-stock companies. Agriculture, insurance, poor relief, and working hours further illustrate the enterprise’s practical range.

Menger finally interprets Austrian participation as evidence of a changed intellectual relationship with Germany. Against Roscher’s disparaging characterization of Austria’s dependence on intellectual imports, he presents these contributions as signs of growing recognition for Austrian scholarship. The dictionary thus matters both as an instrument for making descriptive knowledge accessible to public life and as evidence of Austria’s scholarly standing. Neither achievement dissolves the review’s central distinction between collecting knowledge and deepening economic theory.