When John Bates Clark held lectures on the theory of distribution at Johns Hopkins University in autumn 1892, he was also holding down two academic jobs in Massachusetts where he was Professor of Political Science and History at Smith College and Professor of Political Economy at Amherst College.
One presumes what he taught in his Hopkins course were his papers “The Law of Wages and Interest” (Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1890) and “Distribution as Determined by a Law of Rent” (Quarterly Journal of Economics, April 1891) as well as his response to Walker’s criticism (QJE, July 1891) published as “The Statics and the Dynamics of Distribution” (QJE, October 1891).
Source: John Bates Clark: A Memorial. Privately printed, p. 10. For Smith College, see the faculty list in Smith College, Official Circular, No. 19 (1892), p. 50.
______________________
If you find this posting interesting, here is the complete list of “artifacts” from the history of economics I have assembled thus far. You can subscribe to Economics in the Rear-View Mirror below. There is also an opportunity for comment following each posting….
_____________________________________
[Amherst College Catalogue for 1892-93]
POLITICAL ECONOMY.
A topical analysis of the subject, with references to important authorities, is made the basis of the work. In the class-room the course is carried on by means of recitations, discussions, lectures, abstracts, essays, and frequent examinations. A syllabus of the results attained is placed in the hands of each student daily.
First Term: four hours a week. — Economic Theory. An analysis of industrial society, the aim of which is thorough acquaintance with the Principles of PoliticalEconomy and correct methods of analysis. — Mill, Walker, Clark, Marshall.
Second Term: four hours a week. — The Silver Question; the Problem of Distribution; the Principles of Taxation, with especial reference to the Tariff Question; Theories of Free Trade and Protection; the History of Tariff Legislation in the United States; the Existing Tariff; Public Credit.
The work of this term is open to those only who have taken the first term.
Third Term: four hours a week. — The Theory of Distribution; the Labor Question; Socialism; Social Reform; Immigration.
The work of this term is open to those only who have taken the first term.
Source: Catalogue of Amherst College for the Year 1892-93, pp. 31-32.
_____________________________________
[Abstract of a course of lectures before the students in History and Politics, Oct.-Nov., 1892.]
On the Theory of Distribution. By John B. CLARK.
It was the object of the course to demonstrate the working of the forces that apportion the income of society among various claimants. To most men the gaining of a personal income presents itself as a process in distribution. A man does not keep the things that he himself produces, but secures for his own use a share of the things that others produce. The amount of the income appears to vary according to the terms that the recipient is able to make with those with whom he deals. That some law governs those terms is generally believed; but an accepted theory of distribution is lacking.
The course tried to make it clear that the law that is sought connects distribution with production. It causes the share of the social income that one recipient would receive, if conditions were quite normal, to correspond with the amount that he has contributed toward the creation of that income. Under natural law a man consumes things that other people make; but he gets and uses the value, or abstract quantum of wealth, that he himself brings into existence. “To each his product” is the rule, under free exchange and perfect competition.
In studying the mechanism by which this effect is secured, it is necessary, first, to ascertain, not what income accrues to particular men, but what attaches to the performing of certain functions. A man may perform several: he may be a laborer, a capitalist and an employer of laborer and capital. A purely economic theory of distribution accounts for the gains secured by working, by furnishing capital or by employing men and capital. A further and more distinctly sociological study accounts for the merging of various functions in the same men, and gives a resulting social distribution of wealth. The two studies together account for the size of the incomes of different persons and of different social classes.
In practical life static forces and dynamic ones are in action together. There are influences at work that would continue to produce their effects if society were reduced to a stationary state. Other influences depend on progress; these act when the economic world is in a transitional condition, leaving behind it one position of static equilibrium and advancing toward another. In life the dynamic influences succeed each other perpetually, and the stationary condition is never reached; but the static forces operate throughout the progressive movement. Isolating these forces and separately examining them affords one key to success in a study of distribution. The division of gains that takes place between employer and employed in one industry is to be kept in its true relation to the general distribution of the income of society as a whole. The non-competing groups and sub- groups that constitute an industrial society have been studied, and thereby the sources of the wages and interest earned in different employments have been determined.
The law that fixes the amount of wages and that of interest, in the whole social field, has been revealed by the use of a formula that is commonly applied in determining the rent of land. The central principle of the theory is that of so-called “diminishing returns.” In its broader and more scientific use the principle causes labor to become less productive per unit when more of it is applied in connection with a fixed amount of capital; and it causes capital to yield less per unit when an increasing quantity of it is used in connection with a limited amount of labor.
The character and effects of the chief dynamic influences were examined, and some of the conditions of the future well-being of society as a whole and of different social classes were determined.
Source: The Johns Hopkins University. University Circulars. Vol. XII, No. 105 (May 1893), p. 83.
Image Source: The Amherst Olio ’96 (1894).