POLITICAL ECONOMY. 



221 



general subject, although the great monetary discus- 

 sions raised by our fiscal policy during the war had al- 

 ready begun. In 1S64 Prof. Bowel) published Political 

 Economy Applied to tin < 'ondftion* and Institution* of 

 the American People, in which hard money and mod- 

 erate advocacy of Protection are leading features. Prof. 

 A. L. Perry published in I860 his Elements of Political 

 Economy, following Carey and Bastiat in his conception 

 ul value, but advocating ihelaissfzfaire theory without 

 reservation. In 1869 Horace Greeley, the veteran editor, 

 collected into a book his Essays to Elucidate the Science 

 of Political Economy, chiefly occupied with the tariff 

 and cooperation. Mr. Andrew W. Young in 1866 pub- 

 lished under the title National Economy an historical 

 aceountof the great debates on the tariff question in this 

 country. In 1870 Dr. William Elder gave the public 

 a popular exposition of Mr. Carey's leading doctrines 

 in Questions of the Day. 



The next decade (1871-80) witnesses the division of 

 the economists who look to Europe for light and lead- 

 ing into two schools. The new Historical School 

 founded by Roscher in Germany began to find disci- 

 ples in America. Prof. Francis Walker, a son of 

 Amasa Walker, published The Wages Question (1876), 

 Money (1S7S). Money, Trade and Industry (1879), in 

 which the new views of labor and the functions of 

 government are presented, and bimetallism is de- 

 fended. Since that time the new school has grown 

 rapidly, and now much more than outnumbers its 

 orthodox rival in the leading universities of the coun- 

 try. On the other side Prof. William G. Suinner, 

 of Yale, represents the old method and the old doc- 

 trines of English Political Economy with an energy 

 peculiar to himself, in his History of American ( ',//- 

 rency (1874), his Lectures on the History of Protection 

 in liic I'nltid States (1*77), and other works. On the 

 protectionist side are Prof. R. E. Thompson, who in 

 liis Social Science and National Economy (1875), re- 

 vised under the title Element* of Political Economy 

 ( 1 ss-jj. M'eks to combine the views of List with those of 

 Carey : Prof. Bowen's American Political Economy 

 (1*77); Orin Skinner's Issues of American Politics 

 (1873) ; Prof. Albert S. Bolles's Chapters in Political 

 Economy (1874) and his Financial History of the 

 United States (3 vols., 1879-83), besides pamphlets by 

 John L. Hayes, George Basil Dixwell, Cyrus Elder, 

 and David H. Mason 



The resumption of specie payments in 1879 may l>e 

 said to have dis|>osed of that controversy, only to leave 

 the country leisure for a prolonged discussion fir>t of 

 the Silver question, and then of the question of Free 

 Trade vs. Protection. In the former controversy the 

 case for reraonetization has been ably maintained by 

 Mr S. Dana Morton in The Silver Pound (1887) and 

 other works, by Mr. Balche as an American inter- 

 preter of the ideas of Cernuschi, by Prof. Francis A. 

 Walker, Hon. Wm. D. Kelley, and many others ; and 

 the Report of the Congressional Commission on the 

 question is of permanent value. On the other side 

 were Prof. Sumner, Prof. J. L. Laughlin, of Harvard. 

 in his History of Bimetallism in the United States 

 t I vsi>). and the orthodox economists generally. In 

 that on Protection Prof. Sumner has been the fore- 

 most champion of Free Trade, as is shown in his 

 Economic Problems (1884), and Protectionism (1885). 

 Next to him comes Mr. Henry George, whose rwj 

 readable Protection ami r'ree Trade is marred by readi- 

 ness to catch at any loose statement made by an op- 

 ponent, anil by extremism. It advocates the entire 

 abolition of custom-houses and the substitution of a 

 single tax on land for all others. Mr. David A. AY ells, 

 Mr. J.S. Schoenhof, Prof. F. W.Tanssip in his History 

 of the Tariff (\***). and others have been earnest fight- 

 ers on that line, and Prof R. T. Ely has advocated Free 

 Trade in his /',-.,/,/<<> ,,/' To-day (1888) from thr 

 standpoint of the new school whicli rejects the laissc-. 

 faire premise of that policy. On the other side are M r. 

 UQai B. Hawley's Capital and fbpulatioH (iss-j) : Mr. 



Ellis D. lloberts's Giti-ernmcnt Iterrnne (I8S4) : Pro I'. 

 Robert Ellis Thompson's Harvard Lectnn,< mi Free 

 Trade and Protection (!S8.">) ; Mr. Hubert P. Porter's 

 Kreadielnners Alu-oail ( Iss5) ; Hon. Henry M. Hoyt's 

 Protii-tioii n ivitii r'ree Trade (188i>) : Mr. Giles B. Steb- 

 bins's Protectionist'* Manual (1883); Mr. Richard W. 

 Thomp.-on's History of Protective Tariff I^aws (1888) ; 

 Mr. Henry V. Poor's Tn-rntu-ttco Years of Protection 

 ( KsM ; and .Mr. David 11. Mason's Short Tariff His- 

 tory of tlie United States, Part I. (1884), besides 

 pamphlets by John Welsh, Joseph Wharton, Horace 

 Castle. John F. Scanlon, Henry Hall, Thomas H. 

 Dudley, and many others. Arguments from both sides 

 will be found in Mr. H. W. Furber's Protection and 

 If,-.,' Trade, Both Sides (1888) and in Dr. Albert 

 Shaw's The National Revenues: a Collection of 

 Papers by American Economists (1888). 



Parallel with these two controversies, and at times 

 running into the second, has been the discussion of the 

 relations of rich and poor, wage-earners and wage- 

 payers, which has come to be recognized as an econo- 

 mic problem since the discredit of the wage-fund 

 theory by Thornton and Mill. In America the con- 

 dition of labor has been a matter of public concern 

 ever since the rise of the factory system and the con- 

 sequent formation of a class who live by wages out- 

 side of personal relations to their employers of any 

 intimate sort. Mr. George's theories of land national- 

 ization and the single tax, set forth in his Progress and- 

 Poverty (1879) and Social Problems (1884), have given 

 a notable impulse to the discussion. Mr. Wm. G. 

 Moody in Land and Labor in the United States con- 

 tends that machinery has made the reduction of the 

 hours of labor to six imperative, if we are to find work 

 for our people. Mr. George Gunton in Wealth and 

 Pronres* (1887) maintains that the rate of wages is 

 fixed by the standard of living, that this can be raised 

 only by increasing the social opportunities of the 

 laboring classes, and that the readiest means to this is 

 a reduction of the daily hours of labor. Mr. Laur. 

 Gronlund in The Cooperative Commonwealth (1884) 

 contends for the entire overthrow of the competitive 

 system and the absorption of all productive energies 

 by the state. These are specimens of the teachings 

 which are stirring the laboring population of all 

 Christendom like a ferment. The only notable attempt 

 to assert the old economic indifference to them is in 

 Prof. Sumner's What Social Classes Oicc to Each other. 

 (1883). Genuinely radical is the demonstration offered 

 I iy Mr. Edward Atkinson of the truth of the law of 

 equalizing distribution first formulated by H. C. Carey, 

 which lie presents in '/'/,< Distribution of Prixlm-lx 

 (1 885) and Tin Man/In of Profits (1KK7). Mr. Win. 

 B. \\ eeden in The Social Law of Labor brings tin- 

 light of general sociological development to bear on the 

 problem. It is taken up in the light of Christian princi- 

 ple in Rev. Washington Gladden's Working People and 

 their Employers (1885); in Dr. T. Edwin Brown's 

 Studies in Socudism (1886) ; and in Prof. Richard T. 

 Ely's admirable book, The Labor Movement in America 

 (1886). 



Of systematic treatises in this period there are Simon 

 Newcomb's Political Economy (1887) and Prof. J. L. 

 JAiughlin's The Elements of Political Economy (1887), 

 whieh belong to the orthodox school, as does the latter s 

 abridgment of Mill (1884) with valuable additions; 

 also translations of Roscher and Laveleye and Prof. F. 

 A. Walker's Political Economy (] 8X3), which represent 

 the new Historical School ; as does Dr. Simon N. Pat- 

 : ten's Premises of Political Economy (1884). On the 

 Protectionist side, to which Dr. Patten also belongs, 

 there are Dr. Steele's Lessons in Political Economy 

 j prepared for the ChaafMqua students, and Dr. Van 

 Buren Denslow's Principles of Economic Philosophy 

 of Society, Government and Industry (1888). 



A marked feature of the decade lias been the en- 

 largement of the facilities for economic study in the 

 leading universities of the country Harvard, Yale, 



