SCOPE AND METHOD OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 61 



in default of a more exact phrase, might be termed the " pace " of 

 economic science. Political economy has for a hundred years or 

 more been " a going concern " the subject of sustained and deliber- 

 ate study. It seems high time to pause and inquire as to the 

 relative efficiency of its devotees. In what relation does the achieve- 

 ment of the economist stand to that of his fellow scientists? Accord- 

 ing as he has forged ahead or fallen behind, the economist must teach 

 to or he must learn from those who are speeding to the same goal, 

 although by other courses. 



If recourse be had to the readiest empirical measure public 

 estimate we are left in no manner of doubt that the progress of 

 political economy, as tested by the practicability of its application, 

 has been incomparably slower in degree and less in result than that of 

 coordinate sciences. For example, at the present moment there are 

 three great economic problems disturbing the consciousness of the 

 American people: Trusts, Tariffs, and Trade-unions. It should be 

 as natural and proper for the public mind to turn to the scientific 

 economist for specific and definite guidance with regard thereto as 

 for the farmers of the arid regions to harken to the physicist as to the 

 efficacy of concussion as a means of rain-making, or for a municipal 

 administration to turn to a pathologist for counsel as to the best 

 method of dealing with epidemic smallpox. Each of the three eco- 

 nomic problems can be simplified, if not solved, by the determination 

 of an underlying principle. The public will know how to deal with 

 industrial combinations when an answer has been given to the 

 query: " Is there an assignable limit to the size of the modern indus- 

 trial unit, and if so, what determines it?" The tariff question will 

 speedily enter upon a new era if clear light be thrown upon the precise 

 relation of labor-cost and industrial efficiency. The crux of trade- 

 unionism is the determination of a natural law of wages and, no 

 less important, a practicable method of ascertaining it. In each of 

 these directions the economist might properly be expected to meet, 

 indeed to anticipate, the public appeal for counsel; and in each of 

 these directions the economist, within the ken of the ordinary man 

 of affairs, has been mute. 



Unless, therefore, the economist is to acquiesce with a resigned 

 fatalism in a condition of affairs, of which my illustrations are, I 

 believe, fairly typical, it is imperative that there be profounder 

 searching of heart and more accurate scrutiny of fact for explana- 

 tion of the loss of popular respect for economic study, and for the 

 decline, at best partially arrested in our own day, of the economist's 

 influence in public affairs. 



A generation ago, Arnold Toynbee asserted that " the wage- 

 fund theory was the great cause of the unpopularity of political 

 economy among working-men." More recently, President Hadley, 



