THE WANING ROLE OF LAISSEZ FAIRE 



^ Bushrod W. Allin 



Professor Mason begins his paper with a discussion of the meaning of 

 conservation, and ends it with the conclusion "that there are special 

 conditions affecting the discovery, production, and consumption of 

 large groups of raw materials . . . that may or may not [underscoring 

 mine] produce 'failures of the price system' that justify public inter- 

 vention." He then says ". . . if the questions of 'failure' and 'justifica- 

 tion' are to be considered at all we inevitably move outside the realm 

 of pure economics and into that of political economy." 



But the title of his paper indicates that he is discussing problems in 

 political economy — not problems in pure economics. Actually, his 

 purpose seems to be only to highlight important areas of inquiry into 

 the political economy problems of natural resource use. And I think 

 he has done an excellent job of this. 



Economics, to him, appears to mean the "unfettered price system," 

 and political economy includes government intervention. Using this 



BUSHROD W. ALLIN is an agricultural economist, who has been 

 with the United States Department of Agriculture since 1921. In 1934-35 he 

 assisted in a nationwide study of population redistribution with the Wharton 

 School of Finance, University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the Amer- 

 ican Farm Economic Association and American Economic Association. He 

 is the co-author of Migration and Economic Opportunity, and the author of 

 many bulletins and articles in the Department of Agriculture and Land Grant 

 College publications. He was born in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, in 1899, and 

 received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1927. 



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