6o4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the working classes in the name of political economy, just as the 

 " cursed-be-Ham " clergymen used to preach the divine sanction of 

 slavery in the name of Christianity. In so far as the real turning 

 questions of the day are concerned, political economy seems to be con- 

 sidered by most of its professors as a scientific justification of all that 

 is, and by the convenient formula of supply and demand they seem to 

 mean some method which Providence has of fixing the rate of wages 

 so that it can never by any action of the employed be increased. Nor 

 is it merely ignorant pretenders who thus degrade the name and terms 

 of political economy. This character has been so firmly stamped upon 

 the science itself as currently held and taught that not even men like 

 John Stuart Mill have been able to emancipate themselves. Even the 

 intellectually courageous have shrunk from laying stress upon princi- 

 ples which might threaten great vested interests ; while others, less 

 scrupulous, have exercised their ingenuity in eliminating from the sci- 

 ence everything which could offend those interests. Take the best 

 and most extensively circulated text-books. While they insist upon 

 freedom for capital, while they justify on the ground of utility the 

 selfish greed that seeks to pile fortune on fortune, and the niggard 

 spirit that steels the heart to the wail of distress, what sign of sub- 

 stantial promise do they hold out to the workingman save that he 

 should refrain from rearing children ? 



What can we expect when hands that should offer bread thus hold 

 out a stone ? Is it in human nature that the masses of men, vaguely 

 but keenly conscious of the injustice of existing social conditions, feel- 

 ing that they are somehow cramped and hurt, without knowing what 

 cramps and hurts them, should welcome truth in this partial form ; 

 that they should take to a science which, as it is presented to them, 

 seems but to justify injustice, to canonize selfishness by throwing 

 around it the halo of utility, and to present Herod rather than Vincent 

 de Paul as the typical benefactor of humanity ? Is it to be wondered 

 at that they should turn in their ignorance to the absurdities of pro- 

 tection and the crazy theories generally designated by the name of 

 socialism ? 



I have lingered to inquire why political economy has in popular 

 apprehension acquired the character of indefiniteness, abstruseness, and 

 selfishness, merely that I may be the better able to convince you that 

 none of these qualities properly belong to it. I want to draw you to 

 its study by showing you how clear and simple and beneficent a science 

 it is, or rather should be. 



Although political economy deals with various and complicated 

 phenomena, yet they are phenomena which may be resolved into sim- 

 ple elements, and which are but the manifestations of familiar princi- 

 ples. The premises from which it makes its deductions are truths of 

 which we are all conscious and upon which in every-day life we con- 

 stantly base our reasoning and our actions. Its processes, which consist 



