The archive.

Statistical evidence can bring wage theory closer to economic facts—but what can it actually establish? In this 1913 review of Henry L. Moore’s Laws of Wages, Joseph A. Schumpeter combines enthusiasm for statistical economics with precise limits on its claims. A strong correlation between wages and product value may support productivity theory without proving it; a weak correlation need not refute a causal relationship. His scrutiny sharpens when Moore links wage differences to workers’ ability: resemblance between distributions is not enough without an intelligible connection. This short review offers a concrete encounter with Schumpeter’s standards of empirical judgement, showing why he could defend an exploratory method while withholding assent from some of its conclusions.

Can a precise vocabulary of capital and income explain what makes capital yield a return? In this 1913 German review of the French translation of Irving Fisher’s work, Schumpeter admires Fisher’s “philosophy of bookkeeping” while questioning what its consistency proves. Distinguishing capital as a stock from income as a flow clarifies accounts; it does not, Schumpeter argues, explain the economic phenomena those accounts record. The same bookkeeping practices can support different theoretical interpretations. The review offers a compact encounter with Schumpeter’s critical method: he values conceptual discipline without mistaking it for explanation, and detects an implicit theory of interest beneath apparently neutral definitions. Its particular reward is this measured separation of practical usefulness, terminological clarity, and theoretical validity.

Discussing a slogan is not the same as showing how it distorts economic reasoning. That distinction drives Joseph A. Schumpeter’s brief 1913 review of James Bonar’s five lectures on obstacles to studying and teaching economics. Schumpeter wanted Bonar to trace how popular phrases enter the scholar’s study and shape judgments that cannot withstand scrutiny. He welcomes Bonar’s defense of theory against appeals to practice, yet objects when that defense misrepresents the wage-fund theory. His appreciative disappointment makes this review revealing: it shows the concrete demands he placed on methodological criticism—explain the mechanism of an error, preserve technical accuracy, and clarify whether an economic proposition holds over short or long periods.

Did Marx reverse his position on factory legislation, or has a change of emphasis been mistaken for a conversion? In this 1913 journal note, William Emmanuel Rappard tests the evidence behind the claim that Marx first opposed statutory protection for workers and later embraced it. The pivotal quotation turns out to be Engels’s, and its context distinguishes paternalistic regulation from legislation won by workers themselves. Rappard does not claim to prove Marx’s lifelong consistency: he separates the absence of explicit early opposition from positive evidence of support. His close reading offers a concrete way to reconsider the tension between revolutionary expectations and practical reform—and to see how mistaken attribution and neglected political context can distort an account of intellectual development.

Schumpeter’s originality gives Siegmund Feilbogen grounds to defend the Austrian School’s continuing vitality—but not to accept its younger theorist’s claims without resistance. In this 1913 French article, Feilbogen assesses Schumpeter’s books on theoretical economics and economic development, asking what equilibrium analysis leaves out and how credit-financed innovation transforms production. His objections are concrete: present interest payments carry the effects of past commitments, entrepreneurial combinations can yield profit, and economic change involves collective shifts as well as exceptional individuals. Feilbogen admires Schumpeter’s connection between development and crisis while resisting its elevation into an exclusive explanation. The article offers an early critical encounter with Schumpeter in which psychological valuation, time, and ordinary capital accumulation test the boundaries of his theoretical constructions.

If productive instruments derive their value from what they produce, why should the products be worth more than the instruments? This difficulty gives Feilbogen’s review of the third edition of Böhm-Bawerk’s Positive Theory of Capital its sharpest focus. A sympathetic interpreter of Austrian economics, Feilbogen explains subjective valuation while testing the precision needed to account for interest. His treatment of the dispute with Adolphe Landry makes the stakes concrete: comparing a house’s present price with undiscounted future rents can create a misleading surplus by silently changing valuation dates. For Feilbogen, Böhm-Bawerk’s distinction between present and future goods supplies the missing connection. The review shows how an apparently technical choice—when a value is assessed—can determine whether an explanation of interest succeeds.

For Hermann Schwarzwald, China’s monetary reform should make silver easier to weigh and trust—not make commerce dependent on foreign banks. This 1913 article connects the everyday injustice of debased small change with the political risks of a gold-exchange standard. Drawing on Eugen Dühring, Schwarzwald proposes unrestricted minting of full-value silver and gold, with no state-fixed exchange ratio between them. His criticism of G. Vissering’s rival proposal turns on a concrete question: would exchange-rate stability conceal minting profits and new financial dependencies? The article offers a sharply defined alternative to monetary centralization, while exposing its own reliance on the presumed reliability of metallic exchange. China appears here not as Europe’s monetary pupil, but as a possible challenger to its financial arrangements.

Spatial concentration does not necessarily make a city an economic community. In this 1913 review of René Maunier’s study of urban origins and functions, Joseph A. Schumpeter welcomes that distinction while testing what turns historical synthesis into explanation. He admires Maunier’s ability to bring evidence from different countries and periods into a common conceptual framework, but rejects the claim that this achievement establishes a distinct sociological method. His reservations become concrete where occupational solidarity is offered as an explanation of guild organization: might the supposed cause instead be an effect? This short review shows Schumpeter distinguishing the value of comparative description from advances in theory, without making either the sole measure of a study of cities.

Giving farmers greater independence need not make rural politics more democratic. This tension animates Emil Lederer’s 1913 chronicle of agrarian social policy in Germany, Austria and Hungary. Behind appeals to a common agricultural interest, he distinguishes estate owners seeking dependable workers, farmers seeking independent livelihoods, and laborers demanding rights of association. Cooperatives and land settlement could loosen aristocratic control while building a broader conservative constituency; workers’ organizations posed a different challenge to rural authority. The meat-price crisis makes these divisions especially concrete: groups divided over landownership could unite against imports demanded by urban consumers. Reading organizational reports and policy disputes together, Lederer shows why economic cooperation, wider ownership and political emancipation cannot be assumed to advance in step.

Industrial prosperity did not necessarily strengthen workers’ bargaining power. In this 1913 chronicle of labor relations in Germany and Austria during 1912 and early 1913, Emil Lederer asks why expanding industries and growing unions could coexist with disappointing wage gains and defeated strikes. His perspective joins economic conditions to the practical resources of organization: union treasuries, competing loyalties, employer associations, and control over industrial action. He treats the Ruhr miners’ defeat as a test of divided union strength, while Austrian settlements show how financial preparation could secure modest gains amid economic disruption. The comparison makes solidarity a concrete institutional problem rather than a slogan, revealing why membership totals and employment figures alone cannot measure labor’s capacity to act.

Relative industrial peace can conceal a shift in the balance of power. In this 1913 chronicle of German employers’ organizations, Emil Lederer examines how the merger of two national employer centers, strike insurance, and employment exchanges strengthened coordination against organized labor without necessarily provoking immediate confrontation. His perspective is institutional rather than confined to the tally of strikes won or wages gained: a settlement favorable to workers might still consolidate employers’ longer-term position. Especially pointed is his account of employer-friendly workers’ associations, whose apparent ability to secure concessions, he argues, depends on the independent unions they seek to weaken. Attentive to incomplete statistics and failures of employer solidarity, Lederer offers readers concrete ways to distinguish organizational strength from membership totals, and negotiated calm from reconciliation.

Measures designed to protect independent craftsmen and shopkeepers can change what their independence means. In this 1913 social-policy chronicle, Emil Lederer examines that tension through Mittelstand politics in Germany and Austria. Cooperative bidding for public contracts promises work for small workshops while potentially placing them under centralized technical direction; fixed-price branded goods offer retailers security while reducing their control over price and quality. Germany’s partial accommodation to industry contrasts with Austria’s stronger protectionist demands, but Lederer finds dependence beneath both programmes of preservation. His distinctive concern is the gap between representative claims and practical organizational capacity. The chronicle shows how state assistance, commercial coordination, and political alliances might sustain small proprietors precisely by transforming the autonomy they seek to defend.