properly belonging to each means of transport; the charting of a safe course between competitive and monopolistic extremes— must rest finally with the general public, and be accomplished through the bestowal of patronage and the exercise of legal authority. In a situation like the present one, which change has rendered somewhat chaotic, a tendency exists to strive for order and system above all else; to determine where each element belongs and put it there.18 An orderly, well-organized transport system is, indeed, an ideal to which we should suitably defer in formulating policies. But it would be short-sighted not to recognize that any significant development must involve some measure of disturbance that time alone can cure. Transportation is basic and its methods must go forward. An adjustment of agencies truly harmonious from a standpoint embracing future, as well as present, will not impose too rigid a regulative harness, nor intrust too unreservedly the nurture of new facilities to those who fear them. So, at least, it appears to the present writer. But this is a private view which may be disputed. Beyond debate is the desirability, in achieving suitable relations between carriers, old and new, of apprehending the precise nature of the problems which exist and the character and consistency of the remedies proposed, instead of permitting these things to be scrambled indiscriminately together.

18

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

G. SHOREY PETERSON

As manifest, for example, in the lengths to which some of the states have gone in their motor-carrier laws, and in the interpretation of convenience and necessity.

ence that the new-fangled diminishing utility and maximum satisfaction doctrines were leading economists to socialism and away from the rock-ribbed individualism of the classical economics.38 The utility theory is a mode of analysis, not a set of conclusions, and what conclusions will be reached by it will depend on the character and the fullness of the data to which it is applied and the skill and honesty with which it is used.39 It would be trite, were it not for the extent to which the principle Maledicti sunt qui ante nos nostra dixerunt seems to pervade certain phases of recent American economic theorizing, to suggest the possibility that some, at least, of the older utility theorists applied the analysis honestly, and that intellectual curiosity occasionally got the best of social bias with the others.

PRACTICABILITY OF A SUBJECTIVE CALCULUS

The advocate of a subjective calculus of welfare encounters the objection that it is not possible to measure subjective quantities, whether they be desires, satisfactions, pleasures, or pains, except through their objective manifestations in price offers or other types of behavior. I believe the answer lies in the fact that we all do repeatedly measure desires and satisfactions as such, our own and those of other persons, and that much of our family relations, our contacts with our friends and neighbors, and the relations of government with its citizens are actually guided, whether well or ill, by such calculations. Such calculations of subjective quantities may never be exact, and may often be grossly inaccurate, but they can, and often must, be made in the absence of means to more precise measurement. Moreover, no one asks that economics abandon the pecuniary calculus and substitute therefor a purely subjective one. For many purposes the pecuniary calculus serves all needs. In any case, it is an institutional fact, an important force in human behavior and in

38

Report of Sixty-third Meeting (London, 1894), pp. 843 ff.

So Cf. W. C. Mitchell "Wieser's Theory of Social Economics," Political Science Quarterly (March, 1917), p. 111: "[The utility theory] has been ... adopted as a substitute for Marxism by one set of socialists and decried as a covert defense of the established order by another set."

the guidance of economic activity, and must be fully reckoned with by the economist. But for many purposes the pecuniary calculus is a grossly imperfect instrument whose results require modification by calculations of subjective quantities before they can serve as an acceptable guide to action or to understanding.

The subjective type of measurement cannot, at least not as yet, yield absolute quantities as its product. The most it can attain is the discovery of more-and-less relationships, and even that with a very small degree of reliability. But there is a wide range of human activity in which only imperfect instruments are available with which to guide conduct toward perfection. Those who insist that welfare economics confine itself to measurement in terms of prices, because prices are data for statistical investigation, whereas the subjective conditions reflected by prices are not, have succumbed to an all-too-prevalent methodological fanatacism which prefers the accurate but superficial to the approximate but fundamental, and which makes adaptability to its special technique of investigation, rather than importance, the standard for the selection of problems and the delimitation of the scope of inquiry. Statistics is a tool, not an end. The imperfect measurement of variations in welfare may serve as a better guide to action than the perfect measurement of something which has something to do with welfare.

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

JACOB VINER

TYPOTHETAE AND THE EIGHT-HOUR DAY

The eight-hour day was the goal set for American trade unions by the American Federation of Labor in its very inception and persistently maintained as an objective for the several national organizations. The International Typographical Union decided that it would make its campaign for nine hours in 1887 as having a better chance of success. It renewed its shorterhour activities in 1890 on the same basis, and finally signed the Syracuse agreement for nine hours in 1898; but it was very generally known that the union looked upon this reduction in hours merely as a step toward the ultimate aim, the eight-hour day. The Inland Printer urged that the concession of the Syracuse agreement be made the basis for securing an agreement from the unions that they would abide by the nine-hour day for a definite period of time. No such clause was secured, although there is some evidence that there was an understanding on the part of Typographical Union officials that they would take no further action for a period of five years.1

This understanding did not preclude discussion of the subject, and at the union convention in 1901 a resolution was presented intending "to establish the universal eight-hour work day." The committee reported this resolution back to the convention without recommendation, stating that the time was inopportune for it, and it was laid on the table. Again in 1902 several resolutions were brought into the convention on the subject. This time a substitute resolution was adopted to the effect that the executive council should act as a committee, first for making plans looking toward the establishment of the eighthour day, and second, for bringing the matter "before the National Typothetae, to the end that the eight-hour day be put

1Inland Printer, XXII (October, 1898), 55. Statement of Vice-President John W. Hays, Minneapolis Journal, November 11, 1905.

ferent condition from that of the states of Northern, Central, and Western Europe, so that their demographic future may be contemplated with assurance, or do they find themselves only in a preceding stage of the same demographic evolution, wherein the germs of decadence are not yet manifest?

Multifarious indications induce eminent men of science to think that human populations, like individual organisms, in their evolution, follow a cycle. Whoever admits such a theory finds, in demographical statistics and in the social manifestations of the white populations of the present, not a few symptoms of a more or less advanced senility. And other persons, who do not bind their forecasts to the conception of biological cycles, hold that, for sundry causes, the white populations are doomed to a more or less rapid decline, if not altogether to extinction. Still others, instead, hold that the present trend leads to a stationary level which is destined to become the normal condition of civilized populations; and, finally, others are confident that the amount of a population may in future be rationally regulated by means of a control of births, so as to be kept in that condition which corresponds to an "optimum" from a qualitative and quantitative point of view.'

II. THE EFFICACY OF THE GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF POPULATION

Under such conditions three questions may be raised: (1) Is a demographic policy on the part of the state justified? (2) Can one foresee that such a policy would be effective? (3) In what direction should such a policy be carried out? A negative answer to the first question signifies that the state has properly no concern about the increase or decrease of its population. Such a view is hardly defensible. The second question arises for all * Cf. C. Gini, "The Cyclical Rise and Fall of Population," loc. cit. 'Cf. C. Gini, L'optimum quantitativo della popolazione," in Nascita, evoluzione e morte delle nazioni, "Libreria del Littorio," (Roma, 1930). This report and the following discussion may be found also in the mimeographed proceedings of the round-table conferences held by the Norman Wait Harris Foundation (University of Chicago) in June, 1929. Cf. Population and Migration, III, pp. 793– 856. On the same subject, cf. an earlier article "Considerazioni su l'optimum didensità della popolazione," Economia, July, 1927.