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