ECONOMIC THESIS PRIZES

Professor J. Lawrence Laughlin of the University of Chicago has announced the following contest offering opportunities to students of economics:

In order to arouse an interest in the study of topics relating to commerce and industry, and to stimulate an examination of the value of college training for business men, a committee, composed of Professor J. Lawrence Laughlin, University of Chicago, chairman, Professor J. B. Clark, Columbia University, Professor Henry C. Adams, University of Michigan, Horace White, Esq., of New York City, and Hon. Carroll D. Wright, Clark University, has been enabled, through the generosity of a business firm of Chicago, to offer again in 1908 four prizes for the best studies on any one of the following subjects:

1. An examination into the Economic Causes of Large Fortunes in this Country.

2. The History of One Selected Railway System in the United States.

3. The Untouched Agricultural Resources of America.

4. Resumption of Specie Payments in 1879.

5. Industrial Combinations and the Financial Collapse of 1903.

6. The Case Against Socialism.

7. Causes of the Rise of Prices since 1898.

8. Should Inequalities of Wealth be Regulated by a Progressive Income Tax.

9. The Effect of the Industrial Awakening of Asia upon the Economic Development of the West.

10. The Causes of the Recent Rise in the Price of Silver.

11. The Relation of an Elastic Bank Currency to Bank Credits in an Emergency.

12. A Just and Practicable Method of Taxing Railway Property.

A first prize of $1000 and a second prize of $500 in cash are offered for the best studies presented by Class A, composed exclusively of all persons who have received the bachelor's degree from an American college in 1896, or thereafter; and a first prize of $300 and a second prize of $150 in cash are offered for the best studies presented by Class B, composed of persons who, at the time the papers are sent in, are undergraduates of an American college. No one in Class A may compete in Class B, but any one in Class B may compete in Class A. The Committee reserves to itself the right to award the two prizes of $1000 and $500 to undergraduates if the merits of the papers demand it.

The ownership of the copyright of successful studies will rest in the donors, and it is expected that, without precluding the use of these papers as theses for higher degrees, they will cause them to be issued in some permanent form.

Competitors are advised that the studies should be thorough, expressed in good English, and although not limited as to length, they should not be needlessly expanded. They should be inscribed with an assumed name, and, whether in Class A or Class B, the year when the bachelor's degree was or is likely to be received, and accompanied by a sealed envelope giving the real name and address of the competitor and the institution which conferred the degree, or in which he is studying. The papers should be sent on or before June 1, 1908, to J. Lawrence Laughlin, University of Chicago, Box 145, Faculty Exchange, Chicago, Illinois.