A BUGBEAR OF ECONOMICS 595 



made in the method of cultivation or exploitation." Carver in his " Dis- 

 tribution of Wealth " goes more into detail and proves the law with 

 mathematical exactness. In fact, he is so clear that he seems to be 

 proving the obvious. However, he offers as an excuse that such proof 

 would not be needed " had not certain writers seen fit to deny it because 

 it did not harmonize with their views of economics, and certain would-be 

 reformers to ignore it because its recognition would interfere with the 

 acceptance of their reforms." 



Such a reformer, I suppose, he would call Wm. H. Allen, of New 

 York, who said in a recent article in the Annals of The American Aca- 

 demy that " When John D. Eockefeller said to the world, ' There will 

 never be enough money to do the world's uplift work/ he started in 

 motion forces and doubts and compromises that will do vastly more 

 harm to the south than the hookworm." The reason Mr. Eockefeller 

 made such a statement was that he was biased by the law of dimin- 

 ishing returns which closes the door of hope, because, as Patten indi- 

 cates, hopelessness is inherent in a world of diminishing returns. Many 

 who argue for the truth of this law quote not only men of success like 

 Mr. Eockefeller, but any business man or farmer who finds himself 

 face to face with the law. The difficulty in both cases is that the indi- 

 vidual is looking at production from his personal point of view, and not 

 from the point of view of production as a whole. The economists, how- 

 ever, ought to see principles in the large. 



Scientific laws are much like creeds. Some one has an insight which 

 he formulates, and for him and some of his successors the formulation 

 seems to satisfy the conditions and the needs. So an economic law is 

 the classification of a group of facts as some one's insight sees them; 

 but as with the creed, men may make the fatal mistake of thinking it 

 an eternal truth. There was a time when belief in hell fire was an in- 

 centive to morality, but now many of us succeed in getting a degree of 

 morality when in the state of mind of the small son of a famous mod- 

 ern philosopher who asked his mother what hell was. She described it 

 to him and at the close added, " But there are some who do not believe 

 this." The boy replied, " Mamma, I am one of those." There was a 

 time when the law under discussion had a vital meaning to the race, 

 but I am one of those who think that a new formulation is in place, 

 that here is a case where orthodoxy does not mean clear thinking. 



The fallacy common to Seligman, Seager, Carver and the others is 

 that of emphasizing archaic conditions. Seligman, for example, was 

 talking about equal " additional doses " of capital and labor ; and Seager 

 at the close of his definition said, " it being understood, of course, that 

 no important change is made in the method of cultivation or exploita- 

 tion." Now of what earthly good is a law for such conditions? If 



