Julius Friedrich Gans von Ludassy: Review of Emilio Cossa’s Primi elementi di Economia Agraria (1891)

Julius Friedrich Gans von Ludassy’s brief German review assesses Emilio Cossa’s agricultural-economics textbook, published in Milan in 1890. Its central judgment is that Cossa combines exceptional compression with clarity and systematic coverage. Comparing Emilio’s expository skill with that of his father, the economist Luigi Cossa, Ludassy makes economy of presentation the basis of his praise:

Wozu Andere Capitel verwenden, das findet bei E. Cossa, gleichwie in den Schriften seines Vorbildes, auf einer Seite dem Inhalte und der Form nach befriedigende Gestaltung.

English translation: What others devote chapters to receives in E. Cossa, just as in the writings of his model, a form satisfactory in content and in style within a single page.

The achievement is pedagogical as well as stylistic: a subject extensive enough to make a roughly 200-page treatment seem hazardous has become an accessible textbook. Ludassy therefore recommends a German translation and its use in agronomic teaching institutions. His account of the book’s organization explains that recommendation.

The first of Cossa’s three parts defines agriculture’s concept, scope, and limits, situating it among the disciplines of economics and establishing its importance for the national economy. The second examines agricultural production through the three fundamental factors of nature, capital, and labour. From these conditions it proceeds to the organization of production: intensive and extensive cultivation, cultivation methods and harvests, large and small enterprises, management systems, land value, and agricultural products. The third turns to institutions arising through state action or private initiative, covering credit, insurance, cooperation, customs, and taxation. Ludassy thus presents the book as moving from disciplinary definition through production to its institutional framework.

This approving survey ends with one substantive reservation:

Es ist vielleicht zu vermissen, dass Emilio Cossa die sociale Frage, obzwar sie sich in mannigfaltigen Rücksichten auf landwirthschaftliche Verhältnisse bezieht, ausser Acht gelassen und insbesondere der Stellung der landwirthschaftlichen Arbeiter seine Aufmerksamkeit nicht zugewendet hat, ein Mangel, welcher sich in künftigen Auflagen wohl beheben lässt.

English translation: It is perhaps to be regretted that Emilio Cossa has left the social question out of account, although in manifold respects it bears upon agricultural conditions, and that he has in particular not turned his attention to the position of agricultural labourers—a deficiency which may well be remedied in future editions.

The criticism marks a distinction between treating labour as a factor of production and examining agricultural workers’ social position. For Ludassy, systematic economic coverage remains incomplete without attention to the social question. Yet he regards this omission as correctable in later editions, not as grounds for withdrawing his endorsement. The review’s significance lies in this conjunction of pedagogical admiration and a demand for social breadth: agricultural economics should be concise and teachable while addressing the circumstances of those who work the land.