• DEPARTMENT REPORTS. 71 



has had its present teaching at this college two great economic move- 

 ments have powerfully affected its pedagogical presentation. The two 

 referred to are the money question and that of trusts and monopolies. 

 The custom followed for years by President Hadley in teaching 

 economics at Yale was to take the uppermost economic questions of the 

 day as the means of entrance into the subject. This was easily realized 

 by co-ordinating and grouping economic phenomena around this initial 

 question. This method has many merits, and any method of study 

 adopted for a living subject like our ever-changeable industrial and 

 commercial life must assimilate itself to that life. 



Nothing lends itself more properly, it seems to me, to the lecture 

 system of instruction than a subject like this whose materials are 

 changing from year to year. In spite of the vogue text-books have 

 acquired among us, I incline to the view that no method of teaching 

 will be ultimately satisfactory which is not some form of the lecture 

 system — either the giving of notes, or oral discussions. It is best for 

 the teacher because it enables him to keep in the front with his subject; 

 it is best for the student because he is enabled to get the best from the 

 teacher. 



The bond of harmony in all the subjects of this department is the 

 development in the student of "social consciousness." "The complete 

 man," says Taine, "is the man in society and one who develops himself 

 therein; the superior race is that which is disposed to social intercourse 

 and to progress." "Man isolated from society," says Cooley, "is un- 

 thinkable." Surely no one may doubt that the inter-dependence of man 

 upon man increases day by day. 



The ties that bind society together are, perhaps, more concretely ex- 

 hibited in civics than in either history or economics, though here again 

 "history is past politics." A boy's earliest conception of society is 

 that a mass of individuals — a human forest. The other conception 

 — and this is the one that law-makers and statesmen act upon — defines 

 society as something like an organism, within which man or woman has 

 some function. Beyond dispute, this second view-point must be ac- 

 quired by the good citizen. No true explanation of suffrage, of taxa- 

 tion, of legal penalties, of military service, or of compulsory education, 

 is possible without the organic conception of society. The sense of 

 relationship among those who form this organism is "social conscious- 

 ness." 



No other subject than political economy furnishes more material of 

 a usable sort to bring out these relationships. The inter-dependency 

 of man upon man for sustenance, under the regime of competition now 

 prevailing, is put forth here. An inter-dependency whose absence 

 would be suffering or death, comes out. For example, the numbers 

 whose efforts contribute to the feeding and clothing of any one of us 

 for one day is not inconsiderable. So, too, the wide-reaching conse- 

 quences of such an event as the coal strike or the failure of a large 

 bank are illustrative of the materials with which economics abounds 

 for teaching the lessons of our dependence one upon another. 



A further study, suggested by the series of disciplines described as 

 naturally sequential both from the subjects and aims of this depart- 

 ment and from the utilitarian character of this college, is the study of 



