Beyond the Principles

In 1892 Marshall, ever the educator, published another book, the Elements of Economics of Industry. In a letter dated 2 May 1910 to a Japanese correspondent, he said it was ‘made rapidly chiefly by scissors and paste out of my Principles’,1 and elsewhere he characterised it as an attempt to abridge the longer book in such a way as to adapt it ‘to the needs of junior students’.2 A new chapter on trades unions was provided but otherwise the nature of the simplification was excision, Marshall taking the view that ‘the difficulty of an argument would be increased rather than diminished by curtailing it and leaving out some of its steps.’3 The title was poorly chosen as it positively invites confusion with the very different book that is the Economics of Industry of 1879 (a confusion that much more likely by virtue of the fact that both books carry the same title — Economics of Industry — on their spines). Regardless of the title, the popularisation was a commercial success, running to three further editions (1896, 1899, 1913) and selling a total of 81 000 copies in all: degrees were being started in the burgeoning discipline, educated laymen were less and less regarding industry and trade as unacademic and dismal, and the time was clearly right not merely for the Principles but for an introduction to the Principles as well.