The archive.

Separating the entrepreneur from the capitalist changes not only the definition of profit but also the assignment of responsibility for unjust distribution. In this brief 1902 review of Eteocle Lorini’s Il profitto, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen singles out the theoretical stakes of treating profit as specifically entrepreneurial income rather than rent. He recognizes Lorini’s independence while withholding detailed judgment on arguments that a short notice cannot adequately test. The review offers a compact encounter with a pointed claim: Lorini locates the contemporary obstacle to just distribution in the entrepreneur, not capital itself. Schullern’s measured account lets readers distinguish the interest of that conceptual shift from an endorsement of its conclusions.

Austria’s new personal income tax met government forecasts yet yielded strikingly less than its Prussian counterpart. In this brief review, Carl Menger assesses Friedrich von Wieser’s attempt to explain the gap without treating aggregate receipts as self-evident measures of wealth, administrative competence or tax morale. Menger welcomes Wieser’s effort to account for differences between the taxes, but presses two concrete reservations: the burden of yield taxes operating alongside income tax, and the need to compare the systems at similar stages of implementation. His qualified endorsement offers a compact example of his standards for fiscal comparison: before drawing conclusions about taxpayers, examine the institutions and assessment periods that produced the figures.

German agricultural cooperatives offer a promising model for Italian Tyrol’s fragmented farms—but what makes a cooperative different from any other business association? In this 1902 review of Giovanni Lorenzoni’s two-volume study, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen links that practical prospect to a precise conceptual disagreement. Against Lorenzoni’s adoption of Pantaleoni’s account, he argues that members’ social position and shared purposes constitute a historically distinctive organization, not incidental variations on a common form. His approval remains discriminating: Germany’s achievements in rural credit do not establish that cooperatives can meet every agricultural credit need. The review lets readers examine how legal structure, economic purpose, and social membership shape the case for cooperative reform—and why its usefulness must be assessed rather than assumed.

What could unite France’s revolutionary socialist groups when participation in government and the admission of trade unions and workers’ cooperatives remained contentious? In this brief 1902 review of the official proceedings of the Lyon congress, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen singles out the proposed party’s founding principles: international worker solidarity, proletarian organization, the conquest of power, and socialization of production and exchange. He acknowledges substantial disagreements without detailing them, and distinguishes these shared commitments from organizational rules shaped by French circumstances. The review offers a compact view of the programmatic basis of socialist unity—and of what Schullern chooses to leave outside that account.

Comparative economic history promises insight, but when does comparison outrun knowledge of local conditions? In this brief review of W. J. Ashley’s Surveys historic and economic, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen pairs appreciation with methodological restraint. He finds Ashley’s discussions of settlement history especially instructive, yet notes their limited engagement with current controversies and cautions against premature, detailed parallels between France, England, India, and Japan. His selective judgments distinguish material that stimulates further inquiry from conclusions readers might too readily draw. The review offers a compact example of critical reception: an economic historian welcoming international evidence while insisting on closer study of particular circumstances.

When the state reserves an industry to itself, are its earnings simply another tax? This distinction anchors Carl Menger’s review of Otto Gerlach’s revision of the fifth edition of Wilhelm Roscher’s System der Finanzwissenschaft. Menger welcomes the edition’s greater practical usefulness but challenges Gerlach’s classification of state monopoly receipts as indirect taxes. Excluding private enterprise, he argues, secures returns for the state through a mechanism distinct from taxation—even when a monopoly also facilitates tax surcharges. His qualified defence of Roscher makes this more than an assessment of editorial improvements: the review shows why the source of public income matters, and how apparently tidy fiscal categories can obscure the economic arrangements that generate it.

The state, in this 1902 lecture to the Gewerbeverein, is no fixed machine standing above society but the highest form of human association, itself in constant movement because it springs from human nature. Social policy, Inama-Sternegg argues, must therefore begin from concrete observation — population, institutions, associations, parties, public moods — yet cannot be made scientific by measurement alone: where exact mass observation fails, the statesman's intuitive, historically trained judgment must take its place. Society is not passive material but a field of organized forces with their own pressure and inertia. Modern life, he insists, has outgrown individualist assumptions; transport, cartels, unions, and class consciousness demand a collectivist orientation. Politics becomes applied social ethics — cultivating associations, decentralization, and self-government while subordinating parties themselves to the state as the highest cultural and moral value.

So bilden diese sozialen Massen immer auch Schranken der Politik, über die kein Staatsmann sich ungestraft hinwegsehen kann.

English translation: “Thus these social masses always constitute limits upon politics as well, which no statesman can disregard with impunity.”

A common customs frontier does not imply a common economic interest. In this 1902 article, Eugen von Philippovich examines tariff negotiations in a monarchy whose economic unity depends on a renewable agreement between Austria and Hungary. His revealing example is grain protection: Hungary’s agricultural exporters can benefit from import duties because the shared customs territory has become a net grain importer, leaving Austrian consumers to bear higher food costs. By tracing such conflicts through constitutional procedures and organised pressure on bureaucracies, Philippovich shows why tariff policy cannot be read simply from parliamentary decisions. Germany’s proposed tariff adds an external constraint, encouraging even export interests to support retaliatory bargaining measures. The article offers a concrete account of how internal distributional struggles can turn hopes of commercial cooperation into competitive protectionism.

In Victoria and New Zealand, colonies Schwiedland reads as freer than Britain from aristocratic ballast and therefore bolder in social experiment, a new type of wage rule was taking shape against the sweated trades. Victoria's wage boards delegate rate-setting to expert representatives of employers and workers under an impartial chairman; New Zealand instead channels disputes into compulsory conciliation and binding arbitration awards. Neither, he insists, sprang from abstract formulas of a living or family wage, but from concrete trade practice, often union standards. Evasion through double books and collusive underpayment does not refute the system; it proves that law needs organized labour behind it. The result is neither old maximum-wage policing nor doctrinaire socialism, but an authoritative lower boundary governed by Billigkeit, a public standard of fairness.

Dabei wetteifern beide Gebiete miteinander im socialpolitischen Fortschritt. Dessen höchste Blüte bilden derzeit die Maßnahmen zur Erhöhung unzureichender Löhne.

English translation: “Both regions vie with each other in socio-political progress. Its highest flowering at present consists in measures for raising insufficient wages.”

Compulsory association promises farmers a stronger public voice—but who bears its costs, and whose interests prevail? In this commentary on Austria’s 1902 law establishing agricultural occupational associations, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen supports collective organization while scrutinizing its safeguards. Smallholders must not be overwhelmed by large estates, nor compulsory members exposed to speculative losses. His distinctive expectation is that organization will both strengthen agricultural representation and moderate excessive agrarian demands by imposing practical responsibility. Credit, collective purchasing, and other services matter as foundations for this political capacity. The commentary shows how that ambition depends on unglamorous institutional choices: membership boundaries, contribution limits, trained officials, and provincial legislation that could either realize or weaken the national framework.

In a cramped Viennese cellar where piece-cutters sew eighteen hours a day and pawn their tools to survive, the old song still promises that the craftsman's trade has a golden foundation. The four acts turn that proverb bitterly ironic: the honest tailor Peter Wimmer rises to master only to risk becoming an exploiter himself, while the opportunist Tichtl climbs by discarding the mother of his child and preying on Wimmer's daughter Leni. When a murder is pinned on Tichtl, Wimmer is tempted to let a hated enemy hang for it. Twice forbidden the Vienna stage by the Statthalterei on grounds a review called plainly political, the Volksstück drew comparison with Hauptmann's Die Weber for its portrait of small craftsmen crushed by large capital.

I Stukschneider — dös is der noblichste Mensch von der Welt, a Heiliger, sag’ i Ihnen. Denn er lebt nur für Andere und für sich selber stirbt er.

English translation: “A piece-cutter — that's the noblest fellow in the world, a saint, I tell you. For he lives only for others, and for himself he dies.”

A company can pay dividends while its shareholders lose money. This discrepancy drives Felix Somary’s 1902 investigation of Austrian joint-stock enterprise: steam mills, for example, distributed dividends even as accumulated losses outweighed shareholder gains. Drawing on balance sheets, questionnaires, and liquidation records, Somary reconstructs returns for 1878–1899 rather than accepting published profits at face value. Reserves, capital reductions, and failed companies enter his reckoning; returns on original investment remain distinct from yields at market prices. His method gives concrete substance to a broader question: where does the joint-stock form work well, and where do apparently respectable payouts conceal weakness? Readers can discover how accounting choices alter judgments of corporate success—and why Somary’s generally favorable assessment of Austrian joint-stock enterprise coexists with sharp criticism of particular industries.