458 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



served for future study. Very full notes and drawings of the 

 animals in their living and normal condition were made. These 

 notes and drawings, together with the alcoholic specimens, are 

 stowed away awaiting further investigation, to be carried on 

 chiefly at the Johns Hopkins University. 



THE RELATION OF EVOLUTION TO POLITICAL 



ECONOMY. 



BY CHARLES S. ASHLEY. 



IF the reader will call to mind the great work of John Stuart 

 Mill, which still contains the best exposition extant of the 

 whole subject of political economy, he will remember that Mill 

 considers it by an analysis of production, distribution, and ex- 

 change, to which he adds a book on the influence of the progress 

 of society on production and distribution, and another on the 

 influence of government. 



The first three books are devoted, as Mill himself says, to an 

 examination of the " statics " of the subject. They are an analysis 

 of the phenomena mentioned as exhibited at a given time ; or, 

 more accurately speaking, Mill's work is really an analysis of the 

 manner in which products are distributed throughout society un- 

 der a single set of social conditions. 



To an evolutionist accustomed to seeing in industrial society 

 an organism which grows and changes like all others, Mill's 

 omissions, including those of his fourth book, are more striking 

 than his inclusions. There is, indeed, a bare mention of the fact 

 that the progress of society is accompanied by increased security 

 and co-operation. But the evolutionary conception that industrial 

 society, like all other organisms, begins with a simple germlike 

 state and by constant changes increases its structures and its 

 functions, nowhere occurs. Political economy is considered with- 

 out material reference to time or environment. And it is treated 

 as if industrial society were only to be considered with reference 

 to the way in which social sustenance, however obtained, is distrib- 

 uted along the social alimentary canal. Processes of production, 

 changes in methods caused by inventions, and changes of condi- 

 tions are ignored, and the formation of industrial organizations of 

 men engaged in common works, corresponding to organic struc- 

 tures, is passed by. Included in this is the all-important subject 

 of the division of labor, the examination of the conditions under 

 which it takes place, and the like. Strange as it may seem to one 

 who looks on industrial society from a standpoint of facts rather 

 than books, the functions performed by railroads, by banks, by 



