WILLIAM SMART

    THE father of Professor Smart was Mr. Alexander Smart, senior partner of the great Mile-end thread making firm of John Clark, Jun., & Co. Dr. Smart was born in 1853 and educated at Glasgow High School and University, where he graduated M.A. in 1872. He then entered his father's business, where he passed through all the departments necessary to a complete training as a manufacturer and merchant, and was afterwards the commercial partner till the absorption of his firm in the great "Thread Combine" in 1884. These years of experience as a large employer of labour, in an arduous and highly organised industry, were no unfitting preparation for the theoretic study of Political Economy. In 1886 he was appointed Lecturer on this subject in University College, Dundee, and in Queen Margaret College, Glasgow, posts which he retained respectively till 1887 and 1896. From 1892 till the latter year he also lectured on Political Economy in Glasgow University, and in 1896, when the Adam Smith Chair was founded there, he received the first appointment to it. At the same time the University conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Three years earlier he had received the degree of LL.D. from the University of St. Andrews.
    In addition to many papers and pamphlets on various branches of his science, Dr. Smart served his academic apprenticeship by translating the two monumental works of Böhm-Bawerk, "Capital and Interest," and "The Positive Theory of Capital." His original works are "An Introduction to the Theory of Value" (Macmillan), "Studies on Economics" (Macmillan), "The Distribution of Income" (Macmillan), "The Taxation of Land Values and the Single Tax" (Maclehose). His latest book, published in 1904, is "The Return to Protection" (Macmillan), written during the universal discussion which accompanied and followed Mr. Chamberlain's propagandism of Preferential Tariffs and Mr. Balfour's advocacy of Retaliation.
    Apart from the work of his Chair, Professor Smart has long taken strong interest in the social problems of city life, and especially in the question of the housing of the poor. On this subject he has vigorous and sane views, advocating a combination of personal influence and force majeure for the regeneration of the slums. Largely through his efforts much improvement has been made in the housing of the Glasgow poor. He also attracted much attention a few years ago as one of the fourteen professors of political economy who signed the protest against Mr. Chamberlain's propaganda of Fiscal Reform.

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