Excerpt from Modern Business: A Series of Eighteen Texts, Especially Prepared for the Alexander Hamilton Institute Course in Accounts, Finance and Management It is only during the last few decades that business has been recognized as a science worthy the attention Of specialists. Many doctrinaire political economies have been written, but these in the main have sought to ex plain, not the actual phenomena of the business world, but the phenomena Of an imaginary, hypothetical world in which all men were supposed to be actuated solely by economic or material considerations. Such classic writ ers as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill performed a great service for humanity, for they called attention to certain truths which must always pre vail so long as human nature is unchanged; but their service lies largely in the field Of pure economics rather than in that of applied or practical economics. Our great economists did not seek to explain the actual phe nomena of every-day life. Their interests lay, not in the science Of business, but in social or national econ omy. As a result their works, although possessing great scientific value, seem far removed from the affairs which interest the practical business man. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.