The archive.

Can agricultural protection best serve farmers by taking other occupations’ interests into account? In this brief 1899 review of the second edition of Adolf Buchenberger’s Grundzüge der deutschen Agrarpolitik, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen endorses precisely that position. He singles out the expanded discussions of protective tariffs and grain futures trading for their objectivity and freedom from slogans, rather than rehearsing their proposals. The review offers a compact statement of Schullern’s criterion for sound agrarian policy: lasting agricultural benefit should be compatible with broader social and economic aims. His praise sharpens into a warning against sectional demands and preconceived doctrines that can pass from daily political conflict into legislation.

A promise to reconcile private property with society’s rights meets a reviewer unwilling to mistake ambition for achievement. In this 1899 review of Alessandro Garelli’s La proprietà sociale, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen acknowledges independent thinking while questioning the proposed synthesis of rival economic schools. His skepticism takes concrete form in a query about Austrian income taxation: does Garelli’s example refer to a tax already abolished? Yet Schullern’s objection is not simply doctrinal. He argues that excessive length and terminology obscure ideas potentially useful to public finance. This brief, pointed review shows how he separates intellectual promise from effective exposition, without claiming to have refuted the system as a whole.

An international collection of labour laws gives Schullern occasion to judge both documentary practice and Austrian legislative inertia. In this brief 1899 review of the Belgian Labour Office’s first Annuaire, covering 1897, he welcomes French translations of legal texts accompanied by accounts of parliamentary debates and preparatory inquiries. Yet he defends selective coverage of regulations: completeness would add bulk without equivalent value for readers abroad. Austria’s sparse representation prompts a sharper judgement, which he attributes to stagnation in its social and economic legislation. The review offers a compact example of how a practical reference work could serve both the need to follow foreign worker-protection measures and criticism of policy at home.

Does public borrowing burden future generations, or does that question obscure what the state does with the funds? In this brief 1899 review of Antonio De Viti de Marco’s Saggi di economia e finanza, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen singles out the essay on public loans for its theoretical precision. He reports De Viti de Marco’s contention that borrowing is less burdensome than extraordinary taxation and does not make later generations contribute, then highlights its connection to the productivity of public expenditure and value through time. Schullern offers endorsement rather than sustained criticism. His selective account shows why the borrowing essay, rather than the collection’s studies of mercantilism and state property, commanded his attention.

Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen’s brief review turns a study of Italian associations before the commune into an argument about national persistence. Reading Arrigo Solmi’s research through the contrast between Gothic accommodation and Lombard resistance to Roman institutions, Schullern treats nations as enduring forces shaping law and social organization. He explicitly acknowledges that Solmi did not set out to demonstrate this claim. That gap between the book’s purpose and the reviewer’s interpretation is the review’s distinctive interest: it shows how praise for detailed source scholarship can serve a national-organic account of institutional change. Schullern’s reservation about Solmi’s apparent lack of unpublished archival evidence also qualifies his endorsement of the book as a guide to research on communal origins.

Impartial judgment of the stock exchange need not mean withholding moral criticism. In this brief 1899 review of Camillo Supino’s La borsa e il capitale improduttivo, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen welcomes a distinction between capital that serves production and capital whose gains, in Supino’s account, come at the expense of public prosperity. His précis identifies a concrete analytical hinge: credit instruments make present or future goods transferable but are not themselves those goods. Schullern’s endorsement reveals what he wants from economic criticism—not blanket praise or condemnation of the exchange, but an account of its useful mechanisms capable of identifying and censuring harmful activity.

When wages cannot support a family and insure it against misfortune, what responsibility falls to the state? In this short 1899 review of Carlo Francesco Ferraris’s report on workplace accidents and legislation, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen sets aside legislative detail to examine the case for compulsory workers’ insurance. He endorses Ferraris’s argument that inadequate earnings and unreliable private provision require public intervention without a radical reconstruction of the economy. His approval is pointed: he welcomes both Ferraris’s refusal to blame employers alone and his selective adaptation of foreign legislation to Italian conditions. The review offers a compact statement of Schullern’s reformist commitments, showing where he locates a defensible alternative to economic liberalism and socialist doctrine.

Agricultural progress and economic distress coexist in Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen’s 1899 review of Eduard von der Hellen’s lecture on Italy’s economy. Endorsing Hellen’s broad diagnosis, Schullern nevertheless questions what declining harvests prove: restrictions on rice cultivation may protect public health, while vine disease can depress wine yields. His praise for northern Italy’s private agricultural initiative sharpens his attack on taxation and administration that, he argues, squander its gains. The review’s revealing tension lies in the remedy: confidence in productive initiative accompanies an explicitly authoritarian demand for strong central government, even empowered to expropriate large landowners. This short intervention shows how discriminating attention to agricultural evidence can coexist with sweeping political judgments about parliamentary government and Italy’s relations with France.

Profit-sharing may be defensible in economic theory without being workable in every enterprise. That distinction anchors Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen’s 1899 review of Émile Waxweiler’s study of remuneration. Schullern welcomes Waxweiler’s challenge to theoretical objections but values his refusal to turn reported gains in productivity and workers’ income into a universal prescription. His attention to the examination of business accounts gives the assessment a concrete administrative focus: sharing profits also requires arrangements for establishing what those profits are. Although he faults Waxweiler for omitting recent evidence, Schullern endorses his conditional conclusions. This brief review shows precisely where a sympathetic critic places the limits of a contested wage reform.

Consumption can express the outcome of economic activity without being the foundation from which all economics must be derived. This distinction anchors Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen’s brief 1899 review of Emilio Cossa’s Del consumo delle ricchezze. Schullern welcomes Cossa’s attention to a neglected subject, singling out the relation between available goods and the relative importance of needs, and the argument that needs are satisfied in culturally shaped combinations rather than one after another. His endorsement rests on clarity and the identification of questions deserving further inquiry, not on a detailed defence of every proposition he reports. The review offers a compact account of why consumption merits analysis alongside production—and why its patterns cannot be reduced to isolated acts of using goods.

An argument can be logically sharp yet struggle to reach its opponents. This tension shapes Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen’s 1899 review of Giovanni Pinnaferrà’s Orientazioni sociologiche della Sardegna. Schullern praises its forceful defence of economic liberalism but faults its compressed style and dependence on earlier writings. He highlights Pinnaferrà’s charge that socialism improperly turns economic problems into questions of ethics and justice, alongside his conception of competition as a voluntary race rather than a battle. Yet Schullern expressly leaves open whether these philosophical weapons are methodologically appropriate. The brief review offers a precise distinction between advocating an argument’s wider circulation and endorsing its method, while showing how language, location and exposition can limit its reach.

Does a wage purchase labour, or the worker’s share of a future product? This precise objection interrupts Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen’s otherwise favourable 1899 review of the J–Z volume of Ludwig Elster’s Wörterbuch der Volkswirtschaftslehre. Schullern questions whether the wage entry’s definition supports its treatment of labour as a commodity, while acknowledging its clarity. His Austrian perspective supplies a second test: a useful economic dictionary should look beyond German legislation, especially on matters such as itinerant trades that bear directly on Austrian debates. The review offers a compact encounter with his standards for reference writing—conceptual consistency, geographical breadth and practical accessibility—and shows why he could recommend the dictionary despite these reservations.