Principles of Political Economy, Vol. II

Page 1 of 340

PRINCIPLES

POLITICAL ECONOMY

WILLIAM ROSCHER,

PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG, CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE, PRIVY COUNSELLOR TO HIS MAJESTY, THE KING OF SAXONY.

FROM THE THIRTEENTH (1877) GERMAN EDITION.

WITH ADDITIONAL CHAPTERS, FURNISHED BY THE AUTHOR, FOR THIS FIRST ENGLISH AND AMERICAN EDITION, ON

PAPER MONEY, INTERNATIONAL TRADE, AND THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM;

AND A PRELIMINARY

ESSAY ON THE HISTORICAL METHOD IN POLITICAL ECONOMY

(From the French)

BY L. WOLOWSKI,

THE WHOLE TRANSLATED BY

JOHN J. LALOR, A. M.

VOL. II.

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NEW YORK: HENRY HOLT & CO. 1878.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year eighteen hundred and seventy-eight,

BY CALLAGHAN & CO., In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

DAVID ATWOOD, STEREOTYPER AND PRINTER, MADISON, WIS.

WILLIAM H. GAYLORD, ESQ.,

_COUNSELOR AT LAW_, OF CLEVELAND, OHIO,

TO WHOSE BROTHERLY CARE IT IS LARGELY DUE THAT I LIVED TO TRANSLATE THEM,

THESE VOLUMES

ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.

BOOK III.

DISTRIBUTION OF GOODS.

CHAPTER 1.

INCOME IN GENERAL.

SECTION CXLIV.

RECEIPTS.--INCOME.--PRODUCE.

The idea covered by the word receipts (_Einnahme_) embraces all the new additions successively made to one's resources within a given period of time.[144-1] Income, on the other hand, embraces only such receipts as are the results of economic activity. (See Secs. 2, 11.) Produce (_Ertrag_, _produit_) is income, but not from the point of view of the person or _subject_ engaged in a business of any kind, but from that of the business itself, or of the _object_ with which the business is concerned, and on which it, so to speak, acts.

Income is made up of products, the results of labor and of the employment and use of resources. These products, the producer may either consume himself or exchange against other products, to satisfy a more urgent want.[144-2] Hence, spite of the frequency with which we hear such expressions as these: "the laborer eats the bread of his employer;" "the capitalist lives by the sweat of the brow of labor;" or, again, a manufacturer or business man "lives from the income of his customers,"[144-3] they are entirely unwarranted. No man who manages his own affairs well, or those of a household, lives on the capital or income of another man; but every one lives on his own income, by the things he has himself produced; although with every further development of the division of labor, it becomes rarer that any one puts the finishing stroke to his own products, and can satisfy himself by their immediate consumption alone. Hence we should call nothing diverted or derived income except that which has been gratuitously obtained from another.[144-4]

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