Co-author with J.A. Hobson of the Physiology of Industry (1889), Mummery was also a famous mountaineer who wrote a book on climbing in the Alps and the Caucasus and died in the Himalayas in 1895. According to Hobson’s own account (Confessions of an Economic Heretic, pp. 29–30), it was Mummery who set him on the path to intellectual heresy; considering that Hobson’s later economic writings may in many ways be regarded as a development of the theme established in the Physiology of Industry, this is a considerable achievement.

Mummery was a businessman who seems to have become acquainted with Hobson by chance while the latter was teaching in Exeter. He managed to convince Hobson, after considerable argument, that the economy contained a serious tendency to over-saving, and that depressions were the expression of this tendency. Unfortunately we do not know how far this idea had developed in Mummery’s mind before he met Hobson, or how much each contributed to the published version of the argument. Since Hobson subsequently became a prolific writer on economic matters, one suspects that the meat of the book was his work. It is not certain that Mummery had received much training in economics, and he may have contributed little more than the germ of the idea.

See Also

Selected Works

  • 1889. (With J.A. Hobson). The physiology of industry. London: Murray.