Preface

ROM THE PRIVATE LIBRARY OF

REID I. CRANE

ALBIA, IOWA

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Right welcome thou shalt be

To read, to ponder, not to lend
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THE THEORY OF
BUSINESS ENTERPRISE

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THE THEORY OF
BUSINESS ENTERPRISE

BY

THORSTEIN VEBLEN

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THB
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
NW Sy OR Ne a ae = » i- 1916

COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER’'S SONS

Published September, 1904

PREFACE

Ty respect of its point of departure, the follow-
ing inquiry into the nature, causes, utility, and
further drift of business enterprise differs from
other discussions of the same general range of
facts. Any unfamiliar conclusions are due to
this choice of a point of view, rather than to
any peculiarity in the facts, articles of theory, or
method of argument employed. The point of view
is that given by the business man’s work, — the
alms, motives, and means that condition current
business traffic. This choice of a point of view
is itself given by the current economic situation, in
that the situation plainly is primarily a business
situation.

A much more extended and detailed examina-
tion of the ramifications and consequences of busi-
ness enterprise and business principles would be
feasible, and should give interesting results. It
might conceivably lead to something of a revision
(modernization) of more than one point in the

current body of economic doctrines. But it should
My

vi PREFACE

apparently prove more particularly interesting if it
were followed up at large in the bearing of this
modern force upon cultural growth, apart from
what is of immediate economic interest. This cul-
tural bearing of business enterprise, however, be-
longs rather in the field of the sociologist than in
that of the professed economist; so that the pres-
ent inquiry, in its later chapters, sins rather by
exceeding the legitimate bounds of economic dis-
cussion on this head than by falling short of them.
In extenuation of this fault it is to be said that
the features of general culture touched upon in
these chapters bear too intimately on the economic
situation proper to admit their being left entirely
on one side.

Of the chapters included in the volume, the fifth,
on Loan Credit, is taken, without substantial
change, from Volume IV of the Decennial Publi-
cations of the University of Chicago, where it
appears as a monograph.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER