The archive.

An apprentice’s legal wage could disappear into a training fee—or the apprentice could be dismissed as soon as her skills justified payment. These evasions give Eugen Peter Schwiedland’s commentary on New Zealand’s act of 21 October 1899 its concrete focus: when does instruction become productive employment carrying a right to remuneration? Comparing New Zealand with Victorian experience, he defends wage protection while acknowledging that minimum wages can favor more capable recruits and encourage mechanization. His distinction between vocational apprenticeship and sewing lessons for household use sharpens the difficulty of regulating work presented as education. Read alongside the appended German text of the statute, the commentary shows why wage minima alone were insufficient: bans on premiums and procedures for recovering unpaid earnings mattered to making the entitlement real.

Why should a house count as capital when rented out, but cease to count when its owner moves back in? In this 1900 journal article, Frank Albert Fetter uses such inconsistencies to challenge definitions that separate productive goods from consumption goods and manufactured wealth from land. Engaging critically with Böhm-Bawerk, John B. Clark, and Irving Fisher, he proposes that capital is economic wealth expressed in a common unit of value—not a special class of objects distinguished by their origin or use. His concrete examples expose how ownership arrangements can be mistaken for economic differences, and how legal claims can be counted twice. The article offers a focused way into the stakes of economic definition: what changes when houses, machines, and natural agents are valued on the same conceptual footing?

Capital is economic wealth whose quantity is expressed in a general value unit.

Manufacturers who resisted government intervention on behalf of striking miners demanded it when mine-owners raised the price of coal. This reversal sharpens Eugen von Philippovich’s contemporary report on the January–March 1900 strike in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia. He follows a struggle for shorter hours and better pay that mobilized at least 60,000 workers but ended in exhaustion, failed mediation, and weakened labour leadership. Sympathetic to the miners yet critical of leaders who prolonged a struggle they believed unwinnable, Philippovich also examines the limits of solidarity among employers. His account connects the defeat at the pits with the subsequent conflict over coal prices, showing how control of an indispensable fuel made a wage dispute a question of public regulation.

More vacant dwellings need not mean less overcrowding: households may crowd into smaller rooms because better accommodation remains beyond their means. This tension anchors Eugen Philippovich von Philippsberg’s 1900 essay on Austrian urban housing, with Vienna at its centre. Bringing census evidence into conversation with land valuations, rents and reform initiatives, he asks what makes accommodation a usable, secure home rather than merely an addition to the building stock. Kitchens, shared lavatories, bed lodgers and termination notices give concrete substance to that distinction. His critique of workers’ housing tax exemptions shows how incentives can reward landowners while leaving occupancy conditions untouched. Readers can discover both the limits of contemporary housing statistics and the practical standards by which Philippovich judged reform: adequate space, domestic facilities and security of tenure.

Can wages come from capital without being constrained by a rigid wage fund? In this brief 1901 review of Camillo Supino’s Il capitale salari, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen identifies a dynamic alternative: the capital available for wages is itself produced by labour and changes with productivity, accumulation, and profits. The technical question leads to a sharper social tension—the worker must sell labour, while the employer need not buy it. Schullern reports Supino’s resulting condemnation of the economic system but explicitly withholds agreement, without developing his objections. His qualified appreciation makes the review useful as a compact encounter with an economic argument whose value, for its reviewer, lies in reopening questions about wage formation and unemployment rather than securing assent to its conclusions.

A history of interest theories can also be a defence of one theory against its rivals. In this brief 1901 review of the second edition of Böhm-Bawerk’s historical and critical volume, Carl Menger keeps those purposes distinct. He welcomes the expanded treatment of John Rae and the appendix on recent theories, while observing that Böhm-Bawerk is now chronicling a debate his own work helped provoke. Menger admires the force of the replies to critics such as Marshall and Walker, but withholds a final verdict until the revised second volume appears. The review offers a precise instance of appreciation without theoretical assent: historical scholarship and incisive criticism do not, by themselves, establish an explanation of capital interest.

Criticism can do greater justice to a thinker than discipleship: this is Schullern’s striking judgement on Bernhardi’s treatment of Adam Smith in his brief 1901 review of Fritz Demuth’s monograph. Schullern welcomes Demuth’s recovery of an economist often named but seldom studied, stressing the connection between Bernhardi’s theoretical doctrines, historical understanding, and social-policy views. His interest is not merely retrospective. The significance of different sizes of landed property, he argues, has become a pressing question again, giving researchers a concrete reason to reconsider Bernhardi. The review offers a compact account of why Schullern regarded this recovery as useful to economic inquiry, rather than simply a correction to a neglected scholar’s reputation.

International trade can increase wealth without making unrestricted competition indispensable: this distinction drives Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen’s 1901 review of Heinrich Dietzel’s Weltwirtschaft und Volkswirtschaft. Respecting Dietzel’s intellectual force, Schullern nevertheless rejects free trade as a universally valid doctrine. His criterion is the nation’s capacity for independent economic and cultural development, not enrichment alone. Scientific and technical change, he argues, can alter what a country is fitted to produce; international price equalization can favour rich countries at poorer producers’ expense. This compact polemic makes clear why Schullern’s defence of tariff protection is not a rejection of foreign commerce: the disputed question is how much protection preserves national agency without cutting off useful exchange.

A theorist may deserve attention even when his theories fail to convince. In this brief 1901 review, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen praises J. H. Curran’s account of Francis A. Walker for combining clear exposition with criticism rather than homage. He declines to judge Walker’s doctrines himself, focusing instead on how well Curran makes their reasoning accessible. His particular welcome for Curran’s recognition of Mangoldt’s work on entrepreneurial profit adds a pointed concern: scholarly contributions can fall into undeserved neglect. By closing with Curran’s verdict that Walker’s theories merit gratitude even for inviting refutation, Schullern gives readers a compact case of critical reception in which intellectual usefulness and theoretical adequacy remain distinct.

Could cooperative organization keep Belgian cottage industries alive under worsening market and wage conditions? This practical concern gives Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen’s brief review of the Belgian Office du travail’s second volume its particular interest. He praises the centuries of legislative history assembled in the study of Flemish wool weaving, but his sharpest judgement concerns straw plaiting: without extensive cooperative organization, especially consumer associations, he expects its disappearance. In domestic shoemaking, he sees more cautious grounds for hope in cooperatives already taking shape. The notice offers a compact glimpse of a reviewer weighing statistical and historical evidence against the possibilities of collective action, rather than treating industrial decline as inevitable.

A reliable record of labour legislation can also document how little is changing. In this brief 1901 review of the Belgian Labour Office’s yearbook for 1899, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen praises its coverage of worker protection and insurance but finds legislative development stalled in most states. His attention to the yearbook’s explanation of Germany’s revised invalidity-insurance law contrasts with his pointed complaint about Austria’s legislative sterility. The notice offers a compact encounter with Schullern’s reformist expectations: accurate documentation earns his approval, but a succession of minor regulations does not satisfy his demand for substantive change.

What does it mean to call income distribution a natural law? In this brief 1901 review of John Bates Clark’s The Distribution of Wealth, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen singles out a crucial qualification: Clark’s law describes a static tendency, not an unconditional account of actual incomes. Schullern places Clark’s marginal-productivity theory near the Austrian school, while noting that fuller engagement with Böhm-Bawerk appears reserved for a projected work on dynamic distribution. Explicitly declining detailed criticism, he offers a compact theoretical orientation rather than a verdict. The notice lets readers see how a contemporary reviewer located Clark’s account of wages and interest within an ongoing debate over production, value, and the distinction between capital and capital goods.