Marshall viewed education as an instrument capable of lifting up the poor and relocating them into the middle class. The direct benefits come from eliminating much of
that wasteful negligence which allows genius that happens to be born of lowly parentage to expend itself in lowly work
The indirect benefits of education came from character formation:
[Education] confers great indirect benefits even on the ordinary workman. It stimulates his mental activity, it fosters in him a habit of wise inquisitiveness: it makes him more intelligent, more ready, more trustworthy in his ordinary work; it raises the tone of his life in working hours and out of working hours; it is thus an important means toward the production of material wealth; at the same time that, regarded as an end in itself, it is inferior to none of those which the production of material wealth can be made to subserve.
Marshall’s primary solution to the problem of poverty is education, but he also exhorts individuals to behave responsibly, with thrift and self control.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Jul 21, 2014 @ 10:28:30
Marshall also wrote,
“Capital consists in a great part of knowledge and organization: and of this some part is private property and other part is not. Knowledge is our most powerful engine of production; it enables us to subdue Nature and force her to satisfy our wants. Organization aids knowledge; it has many forms, e.g. that of a single business, that of various businesses in the same trade, that of various trades relatively to one another, and that of the State providing security for all and help for many. The distinction between public and private property in knowledge and organization is of great and growing importance: in some respects of more importance than that between public and private property in material things; and partly for that reason it seems best sometimes to reckon Organization apart as a distinct agent of production.”
But he wasn’t the first to argue along these lines. Edwin Cannan noted 2 years before Marshall that,
“The first, and perhaps the most important, of the three causes which have led to the increase of the productiveness of industry is increase of knowledge. As regards this cause it is scarcely necessary to say anything. Everyone can see how enormously the productiveness of industry has been increased by the growth of men’s knowledge of mechanics, chemistry, electricity, and other departments of science. In consequence of the growth of knowledge a few men can now do not only what it used to require many men to do, but also what could not formerly have been done by any number of men in any length of time”
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Jul 21, 2014 @ 11:51:43
Thanks, Bob Eklund and Bob Tollison wrote a very good essay in the Journal of economic perspectives about how Alfred Marshall was not very good at crediting his predecessors.
Edwin Canning was very much underrated as a British economist and deserves more publicity
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Jul 21, 2014 @ 12:20:54
Cannan so does! There is a short (only 133 pages) biography of him “Edwin Cannan: Liberal Doyen” by Alan Ebenstein. But its the only one I know of.
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Jul 21, 2014 @ 15:58:47
see http://econjwatch.org/articles/the-practical-utility-of-economic-science for his presidential address published in 1902, He touches on international trade, housing, urban form, labor, distribution, justice, and national jealousy.
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