29 AUGUST 1931, Page 22

Mr. L. L. Price's Short History of Political Economy in

England (Methuen, 6s.) has been a familiar book for many years. To the fourteenth edition now issued the author has added a substantial new section on the distinguished econo- mists who have passed away since the work first appeared in 1891. His estimates of the economic historians, Dr. Cunning- ham, Sir William Ashley, Mrs. Knowles and Professor Unwhr, of the statisticians, Sir Charles Booth and Sir Robert Giffen, and of the theorists, Marshall, Sidgwick, Nicholson and Edgeworth, are one and all judicious and illuminating. Mr. Price does not disguise his distrust of much modern theorizing ; he would not admit that "we are all Socialists now," and maintains, on the contrary, that the individual still counts in business, even in the largest combines. He notes the tendency of Socialists to prefer public trusts managed by a few experts to State-controlled enterprises. But Mr. Price is a dispassionate and kindly commentator, and his new chapters add very greatly to the value of his excellent book.