Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/541

 RECENT CONTRIBUTIONS TO ECONOMIC HISTORY IN GERMANY 519 written at the instance of the Society for Improving the System of Poor Law Administration.' The lion's share emanates from the Society for Promoting Social Reforms. 2 For instance, from the data supplied by French, English, and Italian reports, a very clear and impartial account has been compiled by Reitzenstein the recently deceased Nasse, and Eheberg, of the agrarian situation at the present day in France England, and Italy (1884, 1886). Besides this, the same Society has instituted the com- pilation of reports on'Rural Usury' (1887), on 'Labour Repre- sentatives' (1890), on ' Germm Domestic Industries' (1889, 1890) 'Strikes and Boards of Arbitration,' with an Introduction by Brentano, volumes of which have alread. y been. issued. In this connection there have appeared two nterestng works by Stieda on 'Boards of Arbitration and Conciliation' (Gewer- begericht), and 'German Domestic Industry.' These remarks may have sufficed to show the feverishly active development which political economy in Germany is undergoing in the direction of historical and descriptive analysis, in the efforts to bring the past to light and to enlarge the knowledge of pre- sent conditions. Several causes have combined to bring this about: the ascendency of the principles of the Historical School; the various problems of economic and social life, to solve which the need is felt of a sound basis supplied by a rich store of h!storic and descriptive materials; and last, not least, the vgorous incentive inspired by professors in German universities, notably by Professors Schmoller, of Berlin, Knapp, of Sirass- burg, and Conrad, of Halle. In this way a little army of scientific forces is being organized, without which the completion of the 'Dictionary of Political Science,' the second volume of which has just been published, would be an impossible under- taking, but which under actual conditions may be considered more or less as the most concentrated manifestation of scientific life in German political economy. Finally, I may add that the completion of the third edition of SchSnberg's Text-book of Political Economy may shortly be looked for. ' Vcrein fllr Armenpflege und Woltdtigkeit.  Verein ftlr Sozia12o!itik. W. HASBACH