Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/324

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POLITICAL SCIENCE

I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION

By Professor Thomas Nixon Carver

Diagram: Economics or, The Art of Household Management

THE term Economics, as originally used by the Greeks, meant the art of household management, or the principles which govern the wise management of the household. Xenophon's treatise on this subject is a description of the management of a simple agricultural household where problems of revenue and expenditure, of business and home life, are not very sharply separated. In modern times, particularly in urban life, the business, or the source of income, is so sharply separated from the home, where the income is utilized, that we now have two distinct branches of the subject instead of one. To one branch we now give the name business economics, business management, or business administration. The other is known by such names as home economics, household economics, household