ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Marshall's Principles and Gissing's New Grub Street participate in the theoretical and cultural works of creating and defining the new profession of business. It argues that Marshall's ideal businessman becomes the standard bearer for all professions. The businessman was so new during Marshall's time that it was not clear to him how the processes of supply and demand would determine his wages. Throughout Principles, Marshall maintains a distinction between "business" and what he calls the "learned professions". In the late nineteenth century, Alfred Marshall and others who came to be known as neoclassical economists distinguished their approach to economics from that of classical political economy by developing theories of marginal utility. Within neoclassical economics, individuals came to be defined by and valued for their insatiable desires as consumers instead of their labor potential.
