There is an understanding among economists, dating at least as far back as Adam Smith, that, in economic science and discussion, the ordinary terms of the industrial world are to be used in the sense generally attached to them in that industrial world. In many respects this has been unfortunate: the science is bound for ever to a loose nomenclature. It is particularly unfortunate for English political economy, which has not the possibility, so enviable in German science, of combining a new predicate with an old stem in such a way that the combined word is exact and yet not unfamiliar. Hence very many terms in economics have a long and chequered history attached to them, according as economis…
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