Online Library of Liberty: Economics, vol. 2: Modern Economic Problems

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FOREWORD TO THE REVISED EDITION.

In this revised edition every chapter has been rewritten with reference to the momentous events that have filled the years since 1916, when the first edition of this work appeared. The statements of facts and figures have so far as possible been brought down to date. The materials formerly constituting the first two chapters have been distributed under other headings. New sections appear in every chapter, and new chapters have been added in the treatment of money, insurance, transportation, and socialism. Numerous charts have been added which, it is hoped, will be helpful to the reader. Most of these have been reproduced from charts prepared for the use of the author’s classes, and others have been taken from various sources. A brief list of references has been appended to each chapter.

The year 1921, in the depths of an industrial depression, does not mark the end of an era of normal economic changes in anything like the sense that did the year 1916. Rather it might be said that it is the half-way stage in another decade. After five years more the broader economic effects of the world war can be much better appraised. It is the author’s hope, however, that in its present form this volume will aid, in some measure, the earnest and open-minded reader to interpret the important changes now in progress.

The author makes renewed acknowledgment to those colleagues and other friends who assisted him in various ways in the preparation of the first edition. Thanks are due to the statistical officers of the Federal Reserve Bank of the Second District for permission to reprint diagrams that have appeared in the Monthly Review, and to others named specifically in notes to the charts and maps.

Princeton, N. J., Jan. 2, 1922.

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