[Letter] March 7,1889,Smith College [to F.H. Giddings]

March 7, 1889, Smith College.

Dear Friend,
       I hasten to say
we are all right. My
boys have wholly recovered.
I am to take a five mile
walk this PM. so that I
claim to be in good
athletic condition, though
I have a little cold just
now. I am letting up
on work also. The book
of Prof v. Böhm-Bawerk is
perfectly delightful reading;
but it can hardly be
regarded as light; and as
a letter from Prof. Munroe
Smith asks me to make the
review short, I shall do some
skipping of non-essential
parts in order to have the
thing completed by Apr. 15th
as they desire. There are
two volumes to be
covered in some way, and
as I told you I read
slowly, though rather easily.
I hope to have a composed
in a semi-popular form of
my theory as to the three
generic shares of the social
income in the Sept. No.
of the Pol. Sci. Quarterly. I
mean the shares of the
furnisher of pure capital,
the laborer, and the
entrepreneur. It is a fusion
of some of the Capital monograph
with the paper on wages, and
some new material about
the entrepreneur's share.
 I rejoice that you are
easing up the lecture work
and hope to see you in
right good health this summer.
What would you say to a
bicycle trip with me along
the Eastern coast to Mt.
Desert? I think I can secure
a good safety bicycle here
for such a trip at a
moderate rental. You would
have to practice about a
month before you would be
equal to such a trip on the
wheel; then I think it would
be a delight to you. About the
B. Bawerk review a queer
coincidence happened. I rec'd
a few days ago from Vienna a
postal stating that Prof. B. Bawerk
is to review my monograph on
Capital in the next Jahrbücher.
One issue has come since the
postal was received, not containing the notice, so that the
report may not be wholly well
founded, still I think it
probable that it was based on
information coming from him,
and that the notice may
appear in what is now the
next issue. He sent me
his book on Capital and
Interest. I am wondering what
tone his review will take; for
he speaks very slightingly of
people who "reduce capital to
an abstraction," and in general
of those who "dematerialize
economic elements in
order to go around
difficulties." I am not
conscious of having done that;
but I do insist that
our necessary way of viewing
capital is as a fund.
While this view for the
time loses sight of the form
in which the fund is
embodied, it does not ignore
in any way the fact of
material embodiment. Prof. B. B.'s
tone is quite opposed to
this whole view; and I do not
think the question can fairly
be tried till the action of
this fund as an element in
production and distribution
is thoroughly analyzed. It
seems to me to be directly
essential in a wages and
interest theory. It is such a
point as this that I
hope to cover in some
fashion in the Quarterly
article.
 Don't fail to take the
bicycle scheme into genuine
and serious consideration.

        Yours Very Truly,
             J. B. Clark