Literature.—See also [Free Trade]; [Protection]; [Tariff]; [Commercial Treaties]; [Trusts]; [Money]; [Finance]; &c. The bibliography of economics as a whole would include a history of all the writers on the subject, and is beyond our scope here; see the numerous articles on economic subjects throughout this work. The article by Dr J.K. Ingram in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica is still a valuable historical account. It is only possible to mention here a few of the more recent text-books. The most important general work published in English is Marshall’s Principles of Economics, vol. i. (1st edition, 1890; 4th edition, 1898). J. Shield Nicholson’s Principles of Political Economy (3 vols.) not only gives a survey of economic principles since Mill’s time, but contains much suggestive and original work. The writer of this article is much indebted to the works of Schmoller, particularly his Grundris der allgemeinen Volkswirtschaftslehre (1900), and Adolph Wagner, particularly his Grundlegung der politischen Ökonomie. On the history of economic theory, Cannan’s History of the Theories of Production and Distribution (1776-1848) is an admirable criticism, from a purely objective standpoint, of the works of the English classical writers. The most important English works published in recent years on general English economic history are W. Cunningham’s Growth of Industry and Commerce, and W.J. Ashley’s Economic History, while Vinogradoff’s Villenage in England and The Growth of the Manor, as well as Maitland’s Domesday Studies, are of great importance to the student of early economic institutions. D’Avenel’s Histoire économique de la propriété, &c. (1200-1800), is a monumental work on the history of prices in France. Other books dealing with special subjects are likely to take a very high place in economic literature. We may mention particularly Charles Booth’s Life and Labour of the People in London, B.S. Rowntree’s Poverty, Sidney and Beatrice Webb’s History of Trade Unionism and Industrial Democracy, and Dr Arthur Shadwell’s Industrial Efficiency (1906). These books are generally regarded as typical of the best English work of recent years in economic investigation. We may also mention Schloss’s Methods of Industrial Remuneration, a most important contribution to the study of the wages question; C.F. Bastable’s works on International Trade and Public Finance; George Clare on the Money Market and the Foreign Exchanges; and A.T. Hadley’s Economics: An Account of the Relations between Private Property and Public Welfare (1896). Studies of particular questions, both concrete and theoretical, in foreign languages are too numerous to specify, and much of the best modern work is to be found in economic periodicals.
(W. A. S. H.)
ECONOMY, a township and a village of Beaver county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on the E. bank of the Ohio river, 17 m. N.W. of Pittsburg. Pop. of township (1900) 1062; (1910) 860. The village is served by the Pennsylvania system. It was owned until 1904, when it was sold to a land company, by the Harmony Society (see [Communism]), commonly called the Economites, Harmonists or Rappists. The founder, George Rapp, after living with his would-be primitive Christian followers at Harmony, Butler county, Pennsylvania, in 1803-1814, and in 1815-1824 in New Harmony (q.v.), Indiana, which he then sold to Robert Owen, settled here in 1824 and rapidly built up a village, in which each family received a house and garden. The culture of silk, flax, grapes (for wine-making) and fruits and cereals in general, and the manufacture of flour and of woollen, flannel and cotton fabrics, were carried on under a rule requiring every adult to labour 12 or 14 hours each day in field or mill. Celibacy had been adopted in 1807 as the rule of the community. New members were received after a half-year’s probation, and members who left received their original investment. Three hundred thus separated from Rapp in 1833, with $105,000 as their share of the communal property, to build the millennial kingdom of New Jerusalem at Phillipsburg (now Monaca), Beaver county, Pennsylvania, under the lead of Bernhard Müller, who had come to Economy in 1831 as a fellow religionist, and was called Count Maximilian de Leon (or Proli); in 1833 Leon went, with his followers, to Louisiana, and established a religious colony 6 m. from Natchitoches. After his death his wife until 1871 was head of a similar community at Germantown in Webster parish. The Harmonists at Economy flourished under the rule of a tradesman, R.L. Baker, or Romelius Langenbacher, after the death of Rapp in 1847, and during the Civil War had about $500,000 buried away. Their numbers were for a time kept up by the addition of fresh converts, but the employés who were not Harmonists soon greatly outnumbered the members of the community, the basis of which was always religious. Baker died in 1868, and his successor, John Henrici, in 1892, when John S. Duss became first trustee. In 1907 there were only two or three members in the society. In 1851 the township of Harmony was set apart from Economy.
See Morris Hillquit, History of Socialism in the United States (New York, 1903); William A. Hinds, American Communities (revised edition, Chicago, 1902); John L. Bole, The Harmony Society (Philadelphia, 1904); Charles Nordhoff, The Communistic Societies of the United States (New York, 1875); and among several excellent monographs in German, Karl Knortz, Die christlichkommunistische Kolonie der Rappisten (Leipzig, 1892), and J. Hanno Deiler, Eine vergessene deutsche Colonie: eine Stimme zur Verteidigung des Grafen de Leon (New Orleans, 1900).
ECONOMY, a word ranging in application from the careful thrift of an individual to the systematic arrangement of an organization. It is derived from the Gr. οἰκονομία, the management (νέμειν, to control) of an οἶκος or house, extended in meaning to the administration of a state. Of its original sense, the art or science of managing a household, the expression “domestic economy” survives, but the principal use in this sense is confined to the thrifty management of the financial resources of a household or of an individual. It is thus used as equivalent to “saving,” not only of money, but of time, labour or effort, and, generally, of the least expenditure of means to attain a required end. It is on the principle of “economy” that many phonetic changes occur in the development of languages, and, in aesthetics, the name has been applied to a principle or law that effects are pleasant in proportion to the smallness of the effort made, and of the means taken to produce the result. The phrase “economy of truth” is due to an invidious application of the use, in patristic theology, of the word οἰκονομία for the careful presentation of such doctrine as would be applicable to the hearer (see J.H. Newman, History of the Arians of the 4th Century). “Economy” is also used in theology in such expressions as “Mosaic” or “Christian economy” as a synonym of “dispensation,” for the administration of the world by God at particular times or for particular races. From the meaning of organization or administration of a house or state the word is applied more widely to the ordered arrangement of any organized body, and is equivalent almost to “system”; thus the “economy” of nature or of animal or plant life may be spoken of. The most common use, however, of the word is that of “political economy,” the science dealing with the production, distribution and consumption of wealth (see [Economics]).
ECSTASY (Gr. ἔκστασις, from ἐξίστημι, put out of its place, alter), a term applied to a morbid mental condition, in which the mind is entirely absorbed in the contemplation of one dominant idea or object, and loses for the time its normal self-control. With this there is commonly associated the prevalence of some strong emotion, which manifests itself in various ways, and with varying degrees of intensity. This state resembles in many points that of catalepsy (q.v.), but differs from it sufficiently to constitute it a separate affection. The patient in ecstasy may lie in a fixed position like the cataleptic, apparently quite unconscious, yet, on awaking, there is a distinct recollection of visions perceived during this period. More frequently there is violent emotional excitement which may find expression in impassioned utterances, and in extravagant bodily movements and gesticulations. Ecstasy usually presents itself as a kind of temporary religious insanity, and has frequently appeared as an epidemic. It is well illustrated in the celebrated examples of the dancing epidemics of Germany and Italy in the middle ages, and the Convulsionnaires of St Medard at the grave of the Abbé Paris in the early part of the 18th century, and in more recent times has been witnessed during periods of religious revivalism. (See also [Insanity] and [Neuropathology].)