The archive.

How could Vienna’s relatively small grain futures market exert influence far beyond the exchange? In this 1901 article on the Austrian inquiry of 1900, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen follows published quotations into provincial transactions, where farmers under pressure to sell confront merchants armed with an authoritative price. Writing as an economist and participating expert, he argues that prevailing trading practices depress grain prices, while acknowledging the limits of statistical proof. His response is not blanket prohibition: genuine delivery and useful hedging must be distinguished from speculative wagers. The article offers a concrete encounter with the politics of market design—how grain standards, contractual enforceability and exchange governance distribute bargaining power—and with an agrarian conception of national welfare that challenges the assumption that cheaper grain necessarily benefits everyone.

What political claims can income-tax figures support in a nationally divided society? In this 1901 article, Friedrich von Wieser uses Bohemia’s tax assessments to challenge population numbers as the measure of German and Czech political standing. His German-national perspective turns evidence of enterprise, skilled work, and taxable income into an argument for German influence. Yet the measurements exclude most low earners, while assigning wealth to national groups requires estimates, especially in mixed cities. Prague sharpens the tension: its growth as a Czech intellectual and organizational centre complicates any simple equation between German wealth and political power. The article offers a concrete case of economic statistics becoming political advocacy—and of the gap between what fiscal records measure and what an economist asks them to justify.

A cash payment for taxes or a loss through theft tests what double-entry bookkeeping actually explains: not every entry can be understood as an exchange of one value for another. In this jointly authored reply to Seidler’s criticism of their Bilanz und Steuer, Richard Reisch and Josef Clemens Kreibig defend two coordinated series of accounts—one recording the components of wealth, the other net wealth and results. Their central puzzle is why an increase appears as a debit in some accounts and a credit in others. Through concrete disputes over expenses, capital, and losses, they show why balanced postings require more than a rule of paired entries. The reply offers a focused way to examine how bookkeeping connects movements of assets with changes in wealth and profit.

Admiration for a scholar’s method need not imply agreement with his theory. In this 1901 review, reprinted in 1977, Frank Albert Fetter praises Böhm-Bawerk’s history and criticism of interest theories while questioning the priorities of its revised German edition. His concrete test is revealing: counting authors in an index says little about how seriously their arguments are considered. Fetter weighs the attention given to different writers and finds Fisher and Clark nearly overlooked while familiar positions receive extensive rebuttal. The review offers a compact encounter with a critic who values Böhm-Bawerk’s analytical discipline yet believes economic thought is moving beyond his conception of capital. Its interest lies in how Fetter turns an assessment of scholarly coverage into a challenge to theoretical authority.

Does money’s influence on freedom and personal life require a philosophy beyond economics? In this short review of Georg Simmel’s Philosophy of Money, Carl Menger challenges the boundary on which Simmel’s project rests. He argues that Simmel mistakes the limitations of historical economics for those of economic science: monetary theory already investigates psychological causes, while economic and socialist writings examine money’s effects on human relations and even imagine worlds without it. Menger credits Simmel with stimulating, sometimes new insights but denies that these amount to a systematic advance in monetary theory. The review offers a compact encounter with Menger’s expansive conception of economics—and his distinction between intellectual ingenuity and theoretical contribution.

Bostedo had claimed that saving, as commonly understood, has no influence whatever on the formation of capital; this reply, read here in an English rendering of Böhm-Bawerk's 1901 text whose German original remains unidentified, sets out to show why the denial mistakes money phenomena for real industrial relations. Saving, he argues, has two sides rather than two meanings: the negative act of not consuming, and the positive consequence as banks channel deposits into mortgages, railroads, factories, and machines. Against Bostedo's claim that universal thrift must contract production, Böhm-Bawerk insists that a fall in present consumption is not a fall in production generally, only a shift of demand from immediate enjoyment toward capital goods and longer, roundabout processes. Deferred consumption, illustrated by Crusoe's stored provisions and by the law of large numbers, becomes the capital structure through which later enjoyment is made possible.

I simply direct attention to the other side of the process, to the positive consequences of the negative first step, which is the not-consuming.

If utility explains value, why should economists still define capital by the labor that produced it and reserve rent chiefly for land? In this 1901 proceedings paper, reprinted in 1977, Frank Albert Fetter argues that marginal value theory has left the inherited categories of distribution unreformed. His distinctive move is to connect their logical inconsistencies with commercial practice: natural resources represented by shares and bonds, public franchises, and corporate monopoly gains strain the old division between land and capital. Rather than offer a finished replacement system, he identifies where reconstruction must begin. Readers can discover why redefining capital, rent, and interest is, for Fetter, not merely a terminological exercise but a test of whether economic theory can explain returns across different kinds of wealth.

Rent appears in a business’s accounts as an expense; why should economic theory insist that it does not enter production costs? In this 1901 article, Frank Albert Fetter presses that tension against Alfred Marshall’s treatment of rent, arguing that its newer insights undermine the inherited distinction between land and capital. His distinctive test is consistency of standpoint: an owner’s income remains a user’s expense, and a claim about nature’s gifts cannot silently become a claim about market prices. Cultivated land, transport improvements, and competition between crops give the dispute concrete substance. Readers can discover how apparently technical definitions conceal shifts in perspective—and why Fetter locates the relevant production margin where an entrepreneur just covers all expenses, rather than where rent supposedly disappears.

Delivered as a rectorial address that turns Adolf Exner's plea for political education into a wider sociology of power, this lecture denies that public life can be decoded from legal formulas or liberal slogans. Wieser's target is contract theory: the state, he argues, begins not in voluntary agreement but in domination, command, and the discipline that binds scattered persons into a public body. His organizing concept is 'mass technique' — the selection, leadership, and routine that render unwieldy crowds capable of action, so that even anti-authoritarian movements reproduce hierarchy the moment they become parties. From army and election to custom, class, genius, and the modern press, he charts the layered social powers that govern a people, closing with the moral task of subordinating industrial and military force to culture, rights, and education.

Der Staat ist Herrschaft, und die Herrschaft ist nicht durch Verträge in die Welt gekommen.

English translation: “The State is dominion, and dominion did not come into the world through contracts.”

Officials and legislators must judge economic questions without necessarily possessing specialist knowledge—or knowing where to find it. In this 1901 newspaper review, Carl Menger assesses economic encyclopedias against that practical difficulty. His praise for the revised Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften centres on its organization of expertise: scholars and practitioners write on subjects they know closely, combining accessible consultation with substantial explanation. Menger writes as both reviewer and contributor, responsible himself for the article on money. His attention to Austrian participation adds a concrete test of comprehensiveness: does a German reference work adequately represent Austrian institutions and conditions? The review offers a view of Menger concerned less with expounding economic theory than with the editorial arrangements that make specialized knowledge usable in public life.

Agreement about economic ills need not imply agreement about their cause. In this short review of Adolphe Landry’s study of private property, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen brings that distinction into focus through a comparison with Wilhelm Neurath: both economists identify conflicts between private profitability and social productivity, yet reach opposing conclusions about abolishing private ownership of productive goods. Schullern respects Landry’s thoroughness while questioning the move from criticism of existing arrangements to confidence in socialism. Especially telling is his attention to Landry’s own concession that socialist organization might bring disadvantages of its own. The review offers a compact examination of what an economic diagnosis establishes—and what remains unproved when it becomes a proposal for institutional replacement.

Can an account of production and consumption remain economics if it excludes human purposes? In this short German review of the first published part of Arthur H. Gibson’s Natural economy, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen acknowledges Gibson’s precision but questions what his abstractions leave to investigate. An economy governed solely by physical laws, Schullern argues, scarcely exists in human life; even as a theoretical construction, it would belong to natural science rather than economics. Gibson’s frequent comparisons with the economy of bees give the objection a concrete setting. The review draws a pointed distinction between defining an object rigorously and establishing that it belongs to economic inquiry.