ABSTRACT
It used to be fashionable for every economist of standing to produce a work on “Principles” at some stage or other of his career. This fashion is dying out, and there are many eminent Professors now living who not only have not written a systematic treatise, but apparently intend never to do such a thing. There are advantages in such a change of custom. The old stately tomes usually contained much improperly-digested matter on which the author was not an authority and in which he was not interested, but which had to be included to preserve the internal proportions of the book. Much of such matter—especially chapters on Production and Exchange—was presented in almost identical terms in a wide range of books. As a consequence, the original thoughts of an author on a subject in which he had specialized, were often obtainable only in conjunction with many unoriginal and unwanted thoughts on other subjects—a very undesirable case of Joint Supply.
