Science in Public Affairs 



be credited to the same account. Here is the 

 gravest practical issue of modern industrial de- 

 velopment, the evident failure of the growth of 

 consumption throughout the industrial world to 

 keep pace with the possible growth of production, 

 with the result that the most scientifically equipped 

 businesses cannot exert continuously their full pro- 

 ductive powers, that many scientific improvements 

 cannot be adopted without long delay, and that 

 large quantities of capital and labour remain un- 

 employed or under-employed during a considerable 

 portion of their productive life. 



Put briefly, the problem is this : Why is it so 

 much more difficult to sell than to buy, that pro- 

 ducers for sale are continually obliged to check 

 the producing power which they command ? The 

 solution of this problem belongs to economic 

 science, and it is the backward development of 

 that science and its sociological congeners that 

 blocks the march of progress in the technical arts 

 of industry. 



While certain special departments of economic 

 science, in particular certain periods of economic 

 history and problems of finance, have made not- 

 able advance during recent years, we seem further 

 removed from the possession of a unified body of 

 economic doctrine, capable of explaining such 

 economic waste and disorder as we have just 

 described, than we were when J. S. Mill published 

 his " Principles of Political Economy" in 1848. 

 The truth is that further progress in objective 

 economics was impossible until some definite 



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