ABSTRACT
This Part is to cover the history of analytic work from about 1870 to 1914. For justification of the first date I invoke a fact that few economists will deny, namely, that it was around 1870 that a new interest in social reform, a new spirit of ‘historicism,’ and a new activity in the field of economic ‘theory’ began to assert themselves; or, that there occurred breaks with tradition as distinct as we can ever expect to observe in what must always be fundamentally a continuous process. The justification for the second date is the thesis that the First World War was an ‘external factor’ powerful enough for its outbreak to be made a terminal point, though the influences that were to put an end to that epoch of economic analysis and to usher in another were all clearly visible before and though they did not conquer until another decade or so had elapsed.
