THUNDERING LEGION. The name given to a body of Christian troops under Marcus Aurelius. from the tradition that a thunderstorm, sent in response to their prayers, caused great destruction in the opposing army.
THitNEN, tu'nen, JOHANN HEINRICH VON (1783-1850). A celebrated German economist, born in Oldenburg. After receiving a thorough education in the theory and practice of agricul ture and passing two semesters at Gottingen, he bought in 1810 an estate called Tellow. in Mecklenburg-Schwerin, which under his skillful management became famous as a model farm. His fame rests on his work Der isolirte Stoat in. Beziehung auf Landwirtschaft Inul National Cikonomic. the first volume of which appeared in 1826, the second in 1850 and 1863, and the third in 1S63. In this work Thiinen simplified the com plex conditions of economic life by imagining an isolated State. circular in form, with land of equal fertility, laborers of equal productivity, and with the sole city and market at the centre. Hav ing so simplified his premises, he proceeded to in vestigate, principally, the effect of distance from the market upon the agricultural economy of the several zones of the territory surrounding the market. In the second volume Thiinen struck
a new note in the political economy of his time by protesting against the common treatment of wages as the price of an inanimate commodity. and insisting upon the introduction of ethical factors. His treatment here, as generally, was highly abstract, and with the aid of the differen tial calculus he arrived at the conclusion that natural wages = where a is the amount required to support the laborer and his family and p is the product of the labor of one man, this product being defined as that part of the gross product remaining after deduction of profits, insurance, and cost of management, This law of wages expresses in a highly interesting way the modern theory that wages vary as the productivity of the laborer. At Thiinen's request it was engraved on his tombstone. Consult: Schumacher, J. H. von Tlr.iincn, ein Forschcrleben (Rostock, 1883) ; Moore in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. xiv., pp. 291, 388. See POLITI CAL ECONOMY.