POLITICAL ECONOMY. 723 



the equipment of an economist of the first rank. On the one hand, he 

 must have the power of close, sustained, and logical reasoning ; on 

 the other, he must have a most thoroughly practical spirit, without 

 vagaries and nonsense. The former he gains chiefly by his academic 

 training ; the latter, by general maturity and an intuitive or practical 

 knowledo'e of the world of business. In short, he must be at once a 

 (so-called) "doctrinaire " and a "practical man." To be without one 

 set of these faculties is to seriously and fatally prevent any great use- 

 fulness. A purely " practical man," without the logical training, can 

 no more achieve economic success than a railway -locomotive, no mat- 

 ter how great its steam-power, can continue to run and reach its 

 destination without rails. And yet, a bookish and literary economist, 

 without the practical intuitions, can accomplish nothing more than a 

 finely finished and most perfect engine in the hands of an ignoramus 

 who does not know how to get up steam. We here find the explana- 

 tion of a very common belief among the wide ranks of the busy and 

 successful men of affairs in the United States— a class who have gen- 

 erally had little academic training — that economists are mere " doc- 

 trinaires," whose assumptions are all a priori, all in the air, and 

 above the level of every-day work ; who had better make a fortune in 

 pig-iron, or fancy dress-goods, before they set up to instruct the com- 

 munity. Merely making money, however, does not at the same time 

 make one logical. It is as if we should demand that every scientific 

 physicist or chemist should have first put his knowledge into practice 

 by inventing some application of electricity, or a patent-medicine, be- 

 fore he is competent to impart the principles of his science to others. 

 The contempt of the practical world for (so-called) " doctrinaires " is 

 as great a mistake as for the speculative writers to set themselves 

 above the men of affairs. As in most things, the correct position lies 

 somewhere between. If an economist is an abstract thinker, and 

 nothing else — unable to verify his deductions — then he justly merits 

 contempt ; but in that case he is not a properly equipped man, as we 

 have described him above. On the other hand, it is common to see 

 merchants or manufacturers showing great energy in studying and 

 writing upon economic subjects, who, so long as they confine them- 

 selves to the range of facts within the limits of their own horizon, 

 make most valuable and effective contributions to the verification of 

 principles ; but, when, without accuracy, logical power, or a grasp upon 

 governing principles, they begin to generalize upon their limited data, 

 they are very apt to be less effective and useful than they are dog- 

 matic. He only is truly an economist who, eagerly studious of facts, 

 not in one occupation or place only, but in as many as possible, ap- 

 plies scientific processes to his investigation, and produces that which 

 becomes the world's truth, the property of men of all times — not the 

 petty sum of thought which has grasped only a small fraction of the 

 facts. In other words, when a wide-awake man goes to books, he 



