editor believes quite firmly that the value of any course in economics is pretty much what the instructor makes it. He is the factor of vital importance. If the course is to be successful in aiding the student properly to begin the long-to-be-continued process of getting a fair conception of the economic world and of formulating an economic program, it must be the instructor's own course. He alone knows the factors involved in his own classroom problem. He must determine its content, fix its arrangement, and shape the tools which he uses to its peculiar need. Books, problems, and other pedagogical devices are at best but instruments. If a book of this kind has any advantage over a formal text, it is in the freedom which it allows to instructor and student, both in making the most of the recitation and in the ordering of the course. Wherever it is used, unity must come, not from the book itself, but from the teacher's own plan, and from his skilful use of the complementary tools he employs. The function of this volume is to give not leisure, but intellectual liberty.

2. Economic Problems as Aspects of Social Development

It is in the economic world of here and now that we are interested. Amid its complex of activities, institutions, conventions, ideals, standards, and modes of thought we order our lives. Its multifarious and baffling problems are our problems-ours to "muddle" or to "solve." How we handle them will determine quite largely what the economic world of tomorrow is to be like. For these problems are aspects of our industrial system; they are incidents in the development of our economic society. They emerge. or assume new forms, as the larger whole develops. With its onward sweep severally they pass into oblivion, lose themselves in new problems, assume unfamiliar forms, or otherwise manage to get "solved." They are not distinct things; they cannot be detached from the larger scheme of affairs to which they belong. They cannot be disposed of in isolation, as if the universe were one thing and each of them another. They are intimately associated with each other, with the economic system to which they belong, and with the larger world, which includes the legal, political, ethical, social, and all other aspects of life economic and non-economic. To understand them aright we must know something of this larger whole in its current manifestations.

In its rapid development our society is approaching the end of what, in no invidious sense, we may call the exploitative period. Our development in the nineteenth century was dominated by our stores

of natural wealth and by the use of an expanding and developing machine technique. The century witnessed the conquest of a continent, seemingly possessed of never-failing resources. The gifts of forest, waterfall, stream, soil and mine, by the magic touch of modern technique, were transformed into a golden stream of wealth. The expanding system absorbed larger and larger volumes of capital and increment after increment of alien labor. Its object and end was prosperity.

This process of getting rich absorbed quite largely our attention and our energy. Our thought was for virgin fields for machine. effort. Our impatience was at the slowness of our very rapid industrial development. Our powers of control, so far as they were consciously used, were aimed at speeding up. We made no inquisitive search into our legal arrangements, our fundamental -institutions, or our ethical standards. We did not perceive that development in one aspect of life leaves incompatibilities that need attention. It did not readily occur to us that improvement should occur elsewhere than in the technique of production, the growth of business organization, and the expansion of the pecuniary system. In short, we neither tried to discover, nor succeeded in discovering, society. We had problems, of course-many more than we had need for. But they were concerned with removing the barriers that opposed the establishment of a pecuniary system on a nationwide plan.

This neglect of the non-industrial side of life expressed itself most conspicuously in a formidable and overgrown individualism. Since we were growing wealthy, all was well. We rarely thought of attributing responsibility for what we did not like to society, institutions, conditions, or environment. Quite as rarely did we attribute prosperity to the abundance of our natural resources. We firmly believed that each individual "was master of his fate"; that "opportunity knocks once at every gate"; that "there is plenty of room at the top"; and that successful men are "self-made."

This habit of thought worked its way into the whole range of our institutions. A fundamental assumption of individualism was that all men were equal. A resulting principle of action was that the state should give "equal rights to all, and special privileges to none." Equality suggested the attainment of political wisdom by calculation. Accordingly the object of legislation was "the greatest good to the greatest number." Since each person possessed one, and only one, vote, it was evident that our government was a democracy. ethics our conduct was measured by individualistic standards. In education, by setting up the system of free electives, we made the

In

individual student the best judge of the training that was good for him. In economics our attention was given very largely to the market; the distribution of wealth and proposals of social reform were alike treated as if they were mere questions of value theory; and we elaborated and generally accepted the doctrine that one "gets what he produces." Even our religious systems were characterized by an intense and dogmatic individualism.

It was, perhaps, inevitable that we should not escape looking at things too narrowly. We manifested a contempt for philosophy and general theory. We encouraged specialization, but overlooked the broad and general training which should underlie it. We investigated particular subjects without knowing the general fields to which they belonged. We attempted to resolve phenomena into general schemes without understanding the laws which govern the phenomena. We formulated, analyzed, and attempted to solve our problems as if they were so many distinct entities. We saw the whole only as an aggregation of parts, and society only as a collection of individuals.

Closely associated was a notion of social change in mechanical terms. When we became impatient with this or that, we demanded an immediate remedy. We turned to the state as the obvious agent, one which we professed to distrust, and demanded legislation. If our attention was not distracted by some new "abuse," we usually turned out the party in power if immediate results were not forthcoming. Even our reformers usually gave us panaceas for all social ills, or demanded a reconstruction of the whole scheme of life.

Many of our highest social values are associated with individualism. Its note must be retained to keep the system from being resolved into an orderly, mechanical, prosaic, and dull scheme of things. Without it, it is hard to see how society can most fully utilize its capacity for development. In the America of the nineteenth century it helped to solve the problems of a young society as perhaps nothing else could have done. The individual pluck, energy, and initiative which it called forth were just the qualities necessary to the gigantic and crude stage of development through which the country was passing. It remains in the present, however, in a very dominant form, thoroughly ingrained in our institutions and in the social philosophy of classes which occupy quite important positions in society.

But for some time we have been conscious that we are approaching the end of this exploitative period. We have by no means reached the end of our resources; but we have come to see that they are no longer boundless. It is evident that there is real danger of wasting

our patrimony. Opportunities for sudden wealth are no longer plentiful. We have awakened to the necessity of economy, of giving long and careful thought to our social arrangements. We are beginning to find out, too, that our prosperity has entailed its costs. We gave conscious thought to securing a well-developed machinesystem, a large population, and a large measure of individual liberty, believing that these would bless us with wealth. We succeeded in securing these things. But we neglected to take thought for the cultural incidence of the industrial system. As a result we have acquired a number of things for which we did not ask, that may well be considered the costs of our material progress. Our urban life has its full complement of slums, overcrowding, vice and poverty. There is clearly evident a tendency toward a stratification of society on a pecuniary basis, with a funded-income class at the top and a proletariat of alien blood at the bottom. There is growing a spirit of protest based upon a philosophy quite foreign to that which underlies our cherished institutions. Our vast pecuniary system is making the lot of labor, and capital, too, for that matter, extremely insecure. Moreover, we are beginning to see that our prosperity is imposing its costs upon the next generation, in conditions and institutions which we did not will, in problems which we helped to raise but cannot solve, and in depleted resources with which to work out its social salvation.

As we realize these things, there grows up among us a reaction against the extreme individualism of the nineteenth century. We are imposing limitations upon what we conceive individual initiative and energy to be capable of accomplishing; we doubt if the ladder which leads to the top has its full number of rungs; all successful men are no longer "self-made." We occasionally even make excuses for the man who fails. We have discovered "environment," and speak quite frequently of "exceptional opportunities," "social conditions," and the "favor of fortune." We are beginning to associate those things which we do not like with an "overdeveloped individualism," and to see "grave dangers" in unrestricted liberty.

This change is manifesting itself in a changed attitude toward our institutions. Quite frequently we use the word "privilege" in connection with the activities of government. Seemingly forgetful of our former boasts, we are today demanding reforms which will make our government "democratic." We are not distrustful of the fundamental soundness of our legal institutions, such as property, contract, equality before the law, etc., but we are beginning to sus pect that they bear too many signs of having been forged to meet

the needs of frontier and craft societies; that they are more consonant with the plow and the spinning-wheel than with the powerloom and the locomotive. We are qualifying ethical standards which we regard as valid with the adjective social. In education the elective system is giving way to a flexible curriculum adapted to the newer society. A spirit of group and class welfare is expressing itself in such voluntary associations as the trade and craft unions, and is beginning to permeate legislation. We are beginning to trust the state, and are no longer affrighted by the cry of paternalism. In economics we use the term "social value"; we have begun to insist that economic theory is not confined to value theory; and we are more clearly recognizing that distribution of wealth and projects of social reform are concerned with institutional arrangements. Our religious systems are more and more emphasizing the note of "social service."

With the reaction from individualism has come a protest against our habit of considering the particular apart from the general. We are beginning to learn that things in general matter; and that the reality of our problems lies in their connection with social life ip its varied and multifarious aspects. We are realizing that specialization, to be anything more than clerical, must have a broad basis. We are coming to see that the whole is something quite different from the sum of its parts; that society is not a mere aggregation of individuals.

Quite naturally enough the impatience that comes from the newer view of things has enough of the older thought in it to place great reliance in mechanics. It wants results and wants them now. Instinctively it turns to the state and demands legislation. But, in spite of that, we are surely, if slowly, learning that there are decided limitations upon what can be accomplished by tinkering. We know that laws must be passed, and that there are many things which immediately they can be made to do. But we are beginning to understand that in many cases they produce their results, not from their direct enforcement, but from a series of reactions which they start, and these results can only gradually appear. We are learning, too, that there are other and more delicate instruments of control, such as the educational system, codes of professional ethics, occupational associations, and even conventions and traditions, that we may use in the furtherance of our schemes, and that these delicate instruments will reach many things too subtle and too minute to be touched by the bolder and cruder machinery of the state.

In view of this it is not surprising that we are at last learning that we do not have to be forever in a hurry. We must pay for what we get. Perfect societies are not El Dorados or Klondikes to