Preface 
 
Here I attempt to set the record straight but another objective is 
more important: to illustrate what sort of scholarly communication 
the internet may be well-suited for.  On the one hand, this is a 
small matter unworthy of paper publication.  On the other, it does 
concern a widely used reference work, a paper publication we have 
more than the usual interest in correcting.  Other reference works, 
such as bibliographies of complete works of particular economists, 
may also be good (or even better) examples. 
 
As usual for internet, this item does not measure up to formal 
standards for paper publications.  For example, references are 
incomplete.  Also as usual, some e-mail conventions are used. 
One is the __leading and trailing__ underlines used to indicate 
highlighted text, but I find that inadequate to highlight more 
than a few words, so another is CAPITAL LETTERS for the same 
purpose.  There is also a personal style for block quotations 
and for underscoring some paragraph breaks (====). 
 
I welcome your suggestions. 
 
----Paul Wendt 
 
 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 
 
CORRECTION: New Palgrave `stationary state' 
                                                         Paul Wendt 
                                                          21 Jun 96 
 
"Stationary state," by Frank W. Taussig, is an entry in __The New 
Palgrave Dictionary of Economics__, reprinted from Old Palgrave. 
 
Here are two corrections, regarding Smith and Ricardo. 
 
==== 
Smith on the stationary state 
 
Taussig: 
 
"James Mill simply followed the hints in the __Wealth of Nations__, when in 
__Commerce Defended__ (1808) he remarked that in a stationary country wages 
are at `the lowest rate which is consistent with common humanity' (ch 6, 
p87)." 
 
Fact: 
 
Except for the initial definite article, Smith uses this distinctive 
phrase twice in the chapter "Of the Wages of Labour" of __The Wealth of 
Nations__.  His first use occurs in the same context as that Taussig cites 
in Mill.  Indeed, it is Smith's first discussion of "stationary" 
circumstances and the very paragraph Taussig quotes to open his article: 
"Adam Smith mentioned the `stationary state' . . . ."!  Here I quote the 
paragraph at sufficient length to include both the phrase that Taussig 
attributes to Mill and interprets as "following Smith's hint" and the 
description of the stationary state that Taussig attributes to Smith. 
 
"[Smith]: Though the wealth of a country should be very great, yet if it 
has been long stationary, we must not expect to find the wages of labour 
very high in it. . . . If in such a country the wages of labour had ever 
been more than sufficient to maintain the labourer, and to enable him to 
bring up a family, the competition of the labourers and the interest of the 
masters would soon reduce them to THIS LOWEST RATE WHICH IS CONSISTENT WITH 
COMMON HUMANITY.  China has been long one of the richest . . . countries in 
the world. It seems, however, to have been long stationary. . . . It had 
perhaps, even long before [Marco Polo's] time, acquired THAT FULL 
COMPLEMENT OF RICHES WHICH ITS LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS PERMITS IT TO ACQUIRE. 
[I:viii.24 Glasgow ed. __WN__ (UChi ppb p80)]" 
 
Smith's second use occurs a few pages later. 
 
"There are many plain symptoms that the wages of labour are nowhere in this 
country regulated by THIS LOWEST RATE WHICH IS CONSISTENT WITH COMMON 
HUMANITY.  [I:viii.28 (UChi 83)]" 
 
==== 
Ricardo on the stationary state 
 
Taussig: 
 
"Ricardo, while he did not mention the stationary state in so many words, 
yet made the conception more definite." 
 
Fact: 
 
Ricardo does use the term at least once.  The chapter "On wages" in 
__Principles__ (1817/21) closes with a withering discussion of the Poor 
Laws, and the stationary state is named in the last sentence of that 
discussion and of the chapter. 
 
"Ricardo: Happily these laws have been in operation during a period of 
progressive prosperity . . . when an increase of population would be 
naturally called for.  But if our progress should become more slow; if we 
should attain the STATIONARY STATE, from which I trust we are yet far 
distant, then will the pernicious nature of these laws become more manifest 
and alarming; and then, too, will their removal be obstructed by many 
additional difficulties. [ch 5, last line]" 
 
Yet: 
 
There may be some justice in Taussig's plain inaccuracy on Ricardo, and 
some evidence supporting a hypothesis of Piero Sraffa.  In "James Mill's 
Contribution," a section of his introduction to Ricardo's __Principles__, 
Sraffa observes that Mill's "touch can also be recognised in the polished 
wording of the Preface and in the long passage on the `pernicious 
tendency' of the poor laws (105-09)" [Sraffa, xxi].  That "long passage" 
is the final four pages of the chapter "On wages," closing with the short 
passage quoted here.  Perhaps Mill, not Ricardo, did write the one 
explicit 
reference to the stationary state in Ricardo's __Principles__. 
 
==== 
    Paul Wendt, Watertown MA