GENERAL PRINCIPLES 3 



upon one's power to destroy, to injure, or to deceive. War, 

 plunder, robbery, and fraud of all kinds are included in this 

 class. These methods are called "uneconomic," because when 

 one individual secures something by any of these methods no 

 one else is benefited and some one is sure to be injured. Other 

 methods are not positively destructive, but are nevertheless un- 

 productive in the sense of returning to society no real advantage 

 for the living received. Getting rich by marrying or inheriting 

 \\ealth, or through a rise in land values, would come in this 

 class. The economic or productive methods of getting a living 

 are those in which one's success depends upon one's power to 

 produce or to serve. All productive industries and all useful 

 trades and professions belong in this class. They are called 

 economic because, when one individual gets something by any 

 of these methods, no one else is injured and some one is 

 always certain to be benefited. People who make their living 

 by these methods do not impoverish other people, but tend to 

 enrich them. The richer a man gets by any of the productive 

 methods the richer he makes the rest of the' world, and in pro- 

 portion as the whole community or the whole world adopts 

 these methods, in that proportion will the whole community or 

 the whole world prosper, whereas the opposite is true of the 

 uneconomic methods. 



Purpose of law and government. With the progress of civili- 

 zation, with the growth of a sense of justice and a perception of 

 what is good and what is bad for a people, with the development 

 of systems of law and governmental control, there is a tendency 

 more and more to prohibit the uneconomic methods and to leave 

 only the economic methods open to individuals. A government 

 may be said to be just and efficient in proportion as it distin- 

 guishes sharply between these methods and as it succeeds in 

 suppressing all uneconomic methods. No government has yet 

 attained perfection in either of these particulars, but some are 



