64 ECONOMIC THEORY 



twenty years almost exclusively historical or institutional on the 

 one hand, and local or intensive on the other. Of extensive eco- 

 nomic investigation, economic description in the proper sense of the 

 term, little has been attempted and less achieved. The historical 

 evolution of economic institutions as revealed in more or less access- 

 ible records, the functional activity of economic organizations as 

 displayed in limited areas - - these have defined the scientific activity 

 of the ordinary economist. Of the comprehensive study of the 

 history, structure, and functions of any actual part of the economic 

 organism, we have had infrequent examples. 



In the field of local finance, for example, we have had, on the one 

 hand, faithful historical studies of the finances of particular states 

 and cities and of particular fiscal institutions, and, on the other hand, 

 we have been given intelligent analyses of the present financial 

 status of specific localities. But the investigator has probably not 

 yet attempted understand, I do not say completed an exhaustive 

 study of local finance in the United States, in the spirit in which we 

 may conceive the chemist or the physicist approaching a kindred 

 problem. Similarly, the institutional history of the Negro in certain 

 states has been traced and his present status in certain limited 

 localities has been described. But the larger subject, the Negro in 

 the United States, taken in its scientific entirety, is still untouched. 



Turn where we will, a similar condition prevails. Railroad trans- 

 portation, trade-unionism, taxation, industrial combinations, tariffs, 

 as fields of investigation, have been approached only fragment- 

 arily, historically, or locally. Brought face to face with exten- 

 sive subject-matter, economists have shown the white feather and 

 solaced their souls in the thought that comprehensive study of any 

 important economic institution might properly be postponed until 

 such number of detailed monographs, dealing with specific aspects 

 of the subject, have been completed as will permit full exposition 

 and safe generalization. 



Monographs have multiplied; doctoral dissertations have accu- 

 mulated, and the progress of economic science, as judged by results, 

 has been inadequate. The experience of twenty years seems to 

 suggest that the prime usefulness of intensive economic studies is 

 educational and local, and that variety of approach, distinctness of 

 treatment, and change of environment are grave qualifications, under 

 existing conditions, of the value, and certainly of the economy, of 

 large reliance upon this monographic method of economic investi- 

 gation. 



The proposition which I venture to submit is that the time has 

 now arrived when, without any necessary cessation of historical and 

 local studies, the economic investigator, and in particular the 

 economic investigator in the United States, if he is to attain his 



