66 ECONOMIC THEORY 



to command, in addition to ordinary library apparatus, all primary 

 documentary material relevant to his inquiry, whether it be as 

 ephemeral as municipal reports and trade-union journals, or as 

 unobtainable by formal request as trade agreements and corporation 

 record. Similarly, he must be able to publish the results of his 

 investigations in the precise form which scientific fidelity or prac- 

 tical usefulness demands, without regard to their commercial 

 attractiveness or to the limited resources of existing scientific agen- 

 cies. A more liberal policy of library administration and a more 

 intelligent appreciation of the proper relation of publication to 

 investigation in the social sciences, have notably improved condi- 

 tions in the past few years with respect to these two requisites. 



It is with respect to field and experimental work that the occa- 

 sion for largest change exists. Descriptive investigation, as dis- 

 tinct from historical study and local inquiry, must bear the same 

 relation to political economy that field work does to geology and 

 the clinic does to medicine. The immediate environment should 

 first be utilized as an economic laboratory for the development of 

 scientific spirit in economic study and sound method in economic 

 research, and as the field from which bases of working hypotheses 

 may be derived.' Thereafter the investigator must extend the 

 range of his inquiry by visits to and even residence in representative 

 localities, with a view to collecting wider and more varied data 

 and to testing tentative conclusions. 



Such a procedure involves two essentials, - - leisure and resources. 

 The investigator's time and energy, if not entirely available for 

 scientific inquiry, must certainly not be unduly absorbed by the 

 routine engagements of the student or the teacher. To the extent 

 that he is still a student or instructor in academic attendance, 

 opportunity for extensive inquiry must come with greater promi- 

 nence of field-work and laboratory exercise in economic instruction. 

 Economic teaching can properly harken to the message of the physi- 

 cal sciences, that the ideal of student training is less the accumulation 

 of detail than the development of a mode of thought. An asso- 

 ciation of courses, a reduction of lecture attendance, a unification 

 of seminaries, and, most important of all, the utilization of the 

 long summer recess for field-work, will ordinarily effect an economy 

 of time, making possible that amount of experimental inquiry 

 demanded both by student development and scientific progress. 



With respect to resources, the investigator must be in command 

 of funds sufficient to enable him to visit, and upon certain occasions 

 temporarily to reside in representative localities, for the purpose of 

 gathering additional evidence and of testing and verifying tentative 

 conclusions. To some extent, such funds can be made available 

 by a modification of the fellowship system, the original purpose of 



