The archive.

Mercantilist habits of thought persist, Schullern observes, even among readers unwilling to judge mercantilism fairly. His brief review of Emilio Cossa’s study welcomes an explanation of precious-metal accumulation not as wealth hoarding for its own sake, but as a response to the monetary needs of expanding exchange. In Cossa’s account, policies later condemned by economists become intelligible within the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Schullern’s interest lies in this recovery of historical rationale, yet his approval stops short of accepting every defence: Cossa’s enthusiasm, he suggests, occasionally overshoots its mark. The review offers a compact instance of the distinction between explaining why an economic policy made sense in its circumstances and endorsing its claims without reservation.

A tax on rising urban land values may have a coherent fiscal rationale yet leave its social consequences unsettled. In this 1909 review of Fabrizio Natoli’s study, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen makes that distinction decisive: could the levy itself raise building-site prices and produce social harm? He credits Natoli’s systematic treatment but finds this question left unanswered. His reservations also concern taxable capacity: against Natoli’s general emphasis on wealth, Schullern argues that income ordinarily provides the relevant measure, while accepting a marginal-utility account of tax sacrifice. This brief review offers a precise encounter between fiscal reasoning and social-policy scrutiny, showing why a justification for collecting a tax does not by itself establish the desirability of its effects.

Must the state know before it acts—and refrain from regulating labour whenever it does not? In this brief 1909 review, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen singles out that demand in Herman Schoolmeesters’s argument against an eight-hour law, prompted by proposed working-hour limits for Limburg’s future coal mines. Schullern carefully translates the pamphlet’s conditions for legitimate state action without endorsing them. His closing judgement is pointed but qualified: the argument seems strangely out of place in contemporary literature, yet he concedes that he may not fully understand it. The review offers a compact encounter with a restrictive justification of nonintervention and a reviewer’s effort to combine fidelity with intellectual distance.

A useful survey need not yet warrant a settled judgment: that distinction shapes Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen’s brief review of Marco Fano’s study of note-issuing banks. Schullern identifies Fano’s comparative framework—a movement from monopoly through banking plurality and freedom to renewed restrictions and monopoly—but reserves fuller assessment because the study is a preliminary chapter of a larger work on exchange mechanisms. Readers gain a concise account of Fano’s organizing idea and a precise sense of the reviewer’s qualified approval, including his particular notice of the discussion of the Austro-Hungarian Bank.

A socialist movement’s leadership need not mirror its working-class constituency. In this brief 1909 review of R. Michels’s study of Italian socialism, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen singles out its university connections, predominantly urban intellectual leadership, and shortage of agrarian leaders. He reports Michels’s estimate that some sixty Italian university teachers openly belong to the Socialist Party and another eighty sympathize. Writing for specialists already familiar with the earlier German studies, Schullern offers a selective notice rather than a sustained critique. His emphases show what he finds instructive in Michels’s proposed analytical history of political parties: concrete evidence connecting a movement’s social composition with its development.

Money raised for war is not yet a means of defence: the distance between fiscal policy, treasury receipts and military expenditure gives this brief collective review its focus. Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen assesses three studies by Luigi Einaudi and Giuseppe Prato on Savoyard finance during the War of the Spanish Succession, distinguishing historical analysis from the accounting needed to trace how revenues were spent. His concrete interests range from tobacco and spirits taxation to the difficulty of calculating war costs. Rather than testing individual findings, Schullern uses the studies’ complementary methods to defend detailed historical research against those who discount its relevance to contemporary economic policy. The review offers a compact statement of what he values in fiscal history: documentary care joined to an account of how state finance actually works.

When do production costs govern exchange ratios—and what happens when competition is restricted? In this brief 1911 review of Augusto Graziani’s Problemi speciali di valore di scambio, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen singles out the conditions behind that theoretical claim: continuous production and competition unrestricted both legally and practically. His appreciation centres on Graziani’s historical treatment of the barriers that prevent those conditions from being fully realized. The review offers a compact account of why apparently settled value theory still leaves substantive questions open, while distinguishing Graziani’s positions from Schullern’s assessment of their interest. Its particular value lies in the reviewer’s attention to the distance between a general economic proposition and the circumstances under which it holds.

Credit substitutes can reduce the frequency of monetary fluctuations while making them more severe: this is one of the claims Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen singles out in his 1911 review of Camillo Supino’s study of the international money market. His brief, appreciative notice foregrounds a concrete analytical tension—how an account of money’s value grounded in precious-metal costs accommodates credit, circulation, and changing demand. Schullern reports Supino’s positions rather than developing an alternative theory, and his allowance for disagreement comes without a specific objection. The review offers a compact view of what he finds worth attending to in Supino: credit’s influence on monetary needs and the relationship between money’s normal and current exchange value.

A textbook’s usefulness changes when it crosses a national border. In this brief 1911 review of the revised second edition of Giorgio Loris’s Elementi di legislazione rurale, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen distinguishes its role in Italian technical education from its value abroad as a reference on Italian agrarian law. He praises its clarity and coverage of essentials, but closes with surprise that Italy’s technical institutes should require such detailed legal instruction. The notice offers a compact example of how a reviewer could judge a legal manual both as a practical reference and as an indication of the demands placed on students.

What distinguishes workers’ resistance to employers from their organization of cooperative economic activity? In this brief 1911 review of Giuseppe Goria’s study of Italian workers’ cooperation, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen highlights that distinction through examples such as cooperative tenancies and producer, consumer, and credit cooperatives. He singles out Luigi Luzzatti’s preface, with its attack on both revolutionary and conservative hypocrisy, but grounds his own praise in Goria’s factual material and careful institutional history. The review offers a compact glimpse of Schullern’s evaluative priorities: political candour matters, while documentary substance and attention to the development of particular cooperative forms establish the book’s value.

Increasing specialization makes cooperation between economics and sociology more necessary—but does recognizing that need actually produce an economic sociology? In this brief 1911 review of René Maunier’s L’Économie politique et la Sociologie, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen highlights that gap between aspiration and achievement. He commends Maunier’s careful classification of economic facts and historical learning, while reporting the author’s view that disciplinary boundaries divide an intrinsically unified social reality for convenience alone. Schullern’s particular praise for the treatment of law and morality gives his favorable assessment a concrete focus: the review shows which conceptual links he found useful in an attempt to bring specialized inquiries into closer relation.

A national economy, on this account, is no mere sum of households but an organism of interdependent economic units bound by territory, law, and language. Conceived as a study aid for German-speaking universities, this compendium moves from the anatomy of needs and goods through a long historical survey, Greek and Roman antiquity, mercantilism, physiocracy, Adam Smith and the classical school, socialism from Owen to Marx, and the cooperative movement, before building its theoretical core on subjective value and marginal utility (Grenznutzen). Schullern-Schrattenhofen follows Menger in deriving money from the needs of exchange rather than from legislation, defends metallic currency against token theories, treats price as the meeting of subjective valuations, and closes on credit. Objective in method, yet frank about its own commitments.

Aus dem Gesagten dürfte sich wohl ergeben haben, daß jede von den aufgezählten Besitzkategorien ihre bestimmte Aufgabe zu erfüllen, daß aber die wichtigsten die den mittleren Gruppen angehörenden sind.

English translation: “From what has been said, it should be evident that each of the enumerated categories of property has its particular task to fulfill, but that the most important are those belonging to the middle groups.”