SELECTIONS AND DOCUMENTS IN ECONOMICS EDITED BY WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, PH.D. PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, HARVARD UNIVERSITY SELECTIONS AND DOCUMENTS IN ECONOMICS TRUSTS, POOLS AND CORPORATIONS TRADE UNIONISM AND LABOR PROBLEMS By John R. Commons, Professor of Political SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL PROGRESS SELECTED READINGS IN PUBLIC FINANCE By Charles J. Bullock, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Economics, Harvard University RAILWAY PROBLEMS By William Z. Ripley, Ph.D., Professor of SELECTED READINGS IN ECONOMICS By Charles J. Bullock, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Economics, Harvard University ECONOMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED By Guy Stevens Callender, Professor of Political EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, PH.D. ROPES PROfessor of ECONOMICS, HARVARD UNIVERSITY REVISED EDITION GINN AND COMPANY PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION There are two substantial reasons for recasting this collection of reprints originally made up in 1907. The first is that the rapid course of events, legislative and economic, in the United States, especially in the field of transportation, has rendered the old collection obsolete the later developments having since been described either officially in documents or else in the files of the economic journals. The second, and by no means less important reason to me, as an instructor in the subject forced constantly to face the problem of providing solid reading matter for large classes, is the completion of a systematic treatise upon the subject with which these selections may be closely correlated. Certain chapters of my own in the first edition, having been revised and brought up to date, are now transferred to my Railroads Rates and Regulation or will appear in the second volume, Railroads: Finance and Organization. Others, like Taussig's classic on the theory of rates, have been so completely incorporated in the text of the former of these volumes, with such amendment as the progress of economic science permits, as to render their separate appearance unnecessary. And certain other chapters on legislation then incomplete, are now, in my judgment, preferably described in a more extended account of such matters in the above-named systematic treatises. In place of these omissions, a number of substantial additions have been made. The admirable account of early conditions in Pearson's American Railroad Builder is too good to be lost on the shelves of general biography; yet it is impracticable on grounds both of time and expense to place the entire volume in the hands of each student. A number of significant recent opinions of the Interstate Commerce Commission have been added, because of the light they throw upon the radically changed economic and legal conditions since 1905. The admirable description by Theodore Brent of the complexities of railroad rate making and regulation, prepared for the late Robert Mather, president of the Rock Island system, affords an illustration of the manner |