ABSTRACT
The scope of Professor John Bates Clark's economics is even more closely limited by concepts of distribution than many others, since he persistently analyses production in terms of value, and value is a concept of distribution. Since hedonism came to rule economic science, the science has been in the main a theory of distribution, distribution of ownership and of income. This is true both of the classical school and of those theorists who have taken an attitude of ostensible antagonism to the classical school. The normal economic community, upon which theoretical interest has converged, is a business community, which centers about the market, and whose scheme of life is a scheme of profit and loss. The maxim of 'charging what the traffic will bear' is only a special formulation of the generic principle of business enterprise. Business initiative, the function of the entrepreneur is comprehended under this principle taken in its most general sense.
