Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/697

 THE NEW THEORY OF INTEREST IN [884 Dr. BShm-Bawerk, then a professor in the University of Innsbruck, published an elaborate examination and criticism of the various theories of interest on capital, and in 1889 ap- peared the full statement of his own theory. I do not think it too much to say that these two books have put their writer along- side the greatest living economists. Last year I had the honour of translating and editing an English version of the former under the title Capital and Interest (Macmillan). Within the last few weeks the latter, The Positive Theory of Capital, has appeared. As translation is twice blessed, in that it compels one man, to a great extent, to see through another man's spectacles, it may not be presumptuous in me to attempt a short account of Dr. BShm- Bawerk's theory of interest,--I)remising, however, that, in the short space at my disposal, I must draw only in outline, and leave the intelligent reader with many a question on his lips. The striking aspect which interest presents when one's critical attention is first drawn to it is, that it is an income got apparently from simple possession of wealth. There seems some reason why rent should be paid:. is it not the price of the 'original and indestructible powers of the soil,' from whence must come all food and raw materials ? There is even stronger ground for I)aying wage :--does not labour involve sacrifice of time, brain,' and body, and is there not a visible return to the labour of every man who can put a spade into the earth ? But that the owner of wealth, whose tangible property, perhaps, consists in a few securities locked away in a safe, should be able for all time to draw an income without work and, practically, without risk--this is a phenomenon which has aroused the wonder and the wrath of men from earliest times. In the Mosaic law the Jew was allowed to take interest from a stranger because he was a stranger. In modern times the most renowned writer on art and morals finds in it the canker of industrial life. Up till the present, it will be admitted, the number and diver- xx2