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• Preface
• Introduction
• Book I: Systematic and Constructive
• Chapter I: Introductory: Administration of Resources and Choice Between Alternatives. Price and the Relative Scale
• Chapter II: Margins. Diminishing Psychic Returns
• Chapter III: Economical Administration and Its Difficulties
• Chapter IV: Money and Exchange
• Chapter V: Business and the Economic Nexus
• Chapter VI: Markets
• Chapter VII: Markets ( Continued ). Interest. Tools. Land
• Chapter VIII: Markets ( Continued ). Earnings
• Chapter IX: Distribution. Cost of Production
• Book II: Excursive and Critical
• Chapter I: Margins and Their Diagrammatic Representation
• Chapter II: On the Diagrammatic Method of Representing Areas of Satisfaction and Marginal Significances 13
• Chapter III: On the Nature of Curves of Total Satisfaction
• Appendix to Chapters II. And III.
• Chapter IV: Buyer and Seller. Demand and Supply
• Chapter V: The Theory of "increasing and Diminishing Returns"
• Chapter VI: The Diagrammatic Exposition of the Law of Rent and Its Implications
• Chapter VII: Banking. Bills. Currency
• Book III: Analytical and Practical
• Chapter I: Samples of Analysis
• Chapter II: Some Further Analyses
• Chapter III: Conclusion

TIBI
CONJUNX ADJUTRIX
NECNON ET ALIIS QUIBUSDAM
URBI FORSITAN ET ORBI PAENE IGNOTIS
TIBI SALTEM ET MIHI
FAMILIARISSIMIS
LIBRUM HUNC QUALEMCUNQUE
DEDI DEDICAVI

Preface

This book is intended primarily as a popular but systematic exposition of the "marginal" theory of Economics. The Introduction will make it clear that the author makes no claim to originality or priority with respect to anything that it contains. It is not a history; and the question it is concerned with is not who first made any given application of the "marginal" theory to Economics, but what are the main applications of that theory inevitably demanded by the facts. The general absence of references or acknowledgments, therefore, must not in any case be regarded as an implied claim on the author's part to a special property in the argument or illustration in question.

But whereas this general explanation will, I hope, clear me from the charge of ingratitude, or worse, with reference to the great masters and the published works on Economics, it cannot absolve me from the duty of registering some few of the personal obligations under which I have from time to time been laid during the many years over which the direct and indirect preparations for this work have extended.

To Mr. Graham Wallas, to Mr. H. H. Cunynghame, and to several members of my own family, I owe criticisms or suggestions which they may well have forgotten, but which have been of decisive importance to the development of my own thought. To very many friends, of whom I will only mention Mr. H. T. Gerrans of Worcester College, Oxford, Professor Kuenen of Leiden, Mr. James Rigg of the Royal Mint, Mr. H. R. Beeton of the Stock Exchange, and Mr. S. H. Davies of York, I owe help and information ungrudgingly given on special points. To Professor Foxwell I am grateful for encouragement and support that have never failed since I first began the study of Political Economy, and to Professor Steffen of Gothenburg I owe a like debt of almost as long standing. To Professor Lees Smith I have to offer my very special thanks for his kindness in reading the manuscript of the First Book and giving me valuable suggestions about it. I need hardly add that not one of these gentlemen is either directly or indirectly responsible for any arguments or conclusions contained in this work.

Other obligations, not less deeply felt, I am, for one cause or another, precluded at present from expressly acknowledging.

The Common Sense of Political Economy

We are all doing it; very few of us understand what we are doing.