WELFARE AND THE NEW ECONOMICS 5° 7 



lived under a barter economy, we should work out its laws. We broke 

 away from the domestic system of industry when inventors made pos- 

 sible the factory system. The economic world is still in the making. 

 Men are doing the work. 



So long as men regard the laws of political economy as immutable, 

 so long will they be in the grip of the powers which these laws express. 

 It is in vain that Karl Marx argues regarding economic determinism; 

 it is futile for Henry George to " seek the law which associates poverty 

 with progress " ; the future is hopeless so long as men believe that 

 political economy is " as exact a science as geometry." Under the 

 domination of economic law, the exploiter will continue to exploit, and 

 the exploited to suffer. Not until men realize that they are the creators 

 and arbiters of economic laws will economic laws subserve human 

 welfare. The dawning lies beyond the fetish of economic determinism ; 

 the hope for the future rests upon man's ability to make of political 

 economy an eclectic philosophy. 



The economists in the past have asked " What ? " and " Why ? " of 

 economic phenomena. The time has now come when they must face 

 the third question and discover how economics may be made to serve 

 mankind. Progress in other sciences has led plain men to question the 

 validity of the fatalistic philosophy of Eicardo ; the gloomy forebodings 

 of Malthus; and the necessity for poverty, overwork, untimely death 

 and the devastations wrought by the brutal hand of cut-throat competi- 

 tion. The discovery that opportunity largely shapes the life of the 

 average man, determining whether he shall be happy or miserable, has 

 led to an insistence that the economists part company with the ominous 

 pictures of an overpopulated, starving world, prostrate before the throne 

 of " competition," " psychic value," " individual initiative," " private 

 property," or some other pseudo god, and tell men in simple, straight- 

 forward language how they may combine, reshape or overcome the laws 

 and utilize them as a blessing instead of enduring them as a burden 

 and a curse. The day has dawned when economists must explain that 

 welfare must be put before wealth ; that the iron law of wages may be 

 shattered by a minimum-wage law; that universal overpopulation is 

 being prevented by a universal restriction in the birth rate; that over- 

 work, untimely death and a host of other economic maladjustments will 

 disappear before an educated, legislating public opinion ; and that com- 

 bination and cooperation may be employed to silence forever the savage 

 demands of unrestricted competition. In short, the economists, if they 

 are to justify their existence, must provide a theory which will enable 

 the average man, by cooperating with his fellows, to bear more easily 

 the burden and heat of the day. 



How shall this be? What relief may economics — "the dismal sci- 

 ence" — afford? Perhaps the matter can best be stated in an analogy 



