Business & Economics Books

Foreword   Some two thousand years ago the greatest teacher who ever walked the earth advised the people of Judea not to build their houses on the sand. What he had in mind was that they were looking too much to the structure above ground, and too little to the spiritual forces which must be the foundation of any structure which is to stand. Following the war we enjoyed the greatest prosperity this... more...

INTRODUCTION We are told every day that great social problems stand before us and demand a solution, and we are assailed by oracles, threats, and warnings in reference to those problems. There is a school of writers who are playing quite a rôle as the heralds of the coming duty and the coming woe. They assume to speak for a large, but vague and undefined, constituency, who set the task, exact a... more...

CHAPTER I CHOOSING A PLACE TO LIVE Blessed indeed are they who are free to choose where and how they shall live. Still more blessed are they who give abundant thought to their choice, for they may not wear the sackcloth of discomfort nor scatter the ashes of burned money. Most of us have a theory of what the home should be, but it is stowed away with the wedding gifts of fine linen that are cherished... more...

CHAPTER I. Introductory. I venture to call this Essay 'Lombard Street,' and not the 'Money Market,' or any such phrase, because I wish to deal, and to show that I mean to deal, with concrete realities. A notion prevails that the Money Market is something so impalpable that it can only be spoken of in very abstract words, and that therefore books on it must always be exceedingly... more...

I. COMMERCIAL TERMS AND USAGES HERE is a distinction between the usage of the names commerce and business. The interchange of products and manufactured articles between countries, or even between different sections of the same country, is usually referred to as commerce. The term business refers more particularly to our dealings at home—that is, in our own town or city. Sometimes this name is used in... more...

INTRODUCTION AND PLAN OF THE WORK. The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations. According, therefore, as this produce, or what is purchased with it, bears a... more...

HEGEL The Philosophy of History Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born on August 27, 1770, at Stuttgart, the capital of Würtemburg, in which state his father occupied a humble position in government service. He was educated at Tübingen for the ministry, and while there was, in private, a diligent student of Kant and Rousseau. In 1805 he was Professor Extraordinarius at the University of Jena, and in... more...

I was born near Ottawa, Illinois, January 6th, 1852, of Scotch-Irish descent. My great-great-grandfather Johnston was a Presbyterian clergyman, who graduated from the University of Edinburg, Scotland. My mother's name was Finch. The family originally came from New England and were typical Yankees as far as I have been able to trace them. My father, whose full name I bear, died six months previous... more...

Lastsummer, when we reached California for a year's sojourn, we had the good fortune to secure a house with a splendid garden. A few weeks ago, after the early warm days of a California February had opened up the first blossoms of the season, our little five-year-old discovered that the garden furnished a fine outlet for her enterprise, and she soon produced two gorgeous—I will not say... more...

It is no foolish desire to make a vain display of citations, that induces us, at the beginning of this essay, intended to point out the results of the application of a new method to the study of Political Economy, to invoke the authority of a poet and moralist, of a jurisconsult and of a philosopher. The writer finds in the words just quoted the loftiest expression of the thought which dictates these... more...