I i8 



NATURE 



[September 26, 1912 





N'P'A' is less ihan NPA. The amount grown would 

 decrease from OM to OM'. The proceeds of the tax 

 would be OM' times five shillings, and the consumers' 

 surplus of enjoyment would have considerably 

 diminished. This is all obvious enough if you look at 

 the curves. But I want to ask whether, without a 

 curve, you could have got all that so quickly by 

 logical cogitation ? I agree it could have been done 

 by hard thought, but what a help the diagram has 

 been in thinking it out. It is like drawing a genea- 

 logical tree when you are thinking out some complex 

 problems of family relationship. A simple inspection 

 of the figure also shows that an ad valorem tax on 

 rent would not increase price or diminish production. 

 Again, what is a monopoly? A monopoly is simply 



a power of stopping production at a point short of 

 that which it would reach under conditions of free 

 production, sale, and distribution. You can stop pro- 

 duction by means of statutes regulating quantities 

 produced, or by combinations to limit production, or 

 to limit the supply of labour produced, or by statutes 

 regulating the employment of capital, or by statutes 

 fix'ing minima of wages, or in various other ways. 

 If vou exercise the power, then the state of things 

 shown in Fig. 8 comes into play. The quanTity pro- 

 duced is reduced to OM'. The price rises from PM 

 to P'M', the surplus producers' profit (including rent) 

 rises from ANP to AQP'N'. So that profits, interest, 

 and wages increase, but the consumers' surplus enjoy- 

 ment goes down from NPB to N'P'B. The limitation 

 of output plays a far larger part in the regu- 



lation of prices than is commonly supposed. Those 

 who are engaged in the manipulation of the meat 

 trade, and the bread trade, and the petroleum indus- 

 try, the supply of machinery or other articles, do not 

 usually advertise the means they have taken to limit 

 supply, nor do trade imions publicly descant upon the 

 means they adopt to limit the labour of adults or 

 apprentices. It is no part of our business here to 

 discuss the necessity or the legitimate limits of such 

 limitations. AH that I am here to do is to show how 

 useful diagrams are in explaining their effects. 



The monopoly controller seeks, of course, to make 



the area AQP'N' a maximum, arranging his price 



just in the way a milliner would do who had to cut 



the biggest square she could out of a remnant of 



NO. 2239, VOL. 90] 



material. How much reduction of output and increase 

 of price will the market bear? is the question that 

 all monopolists present to themselves. 



I could go on with these curves through a great 

 variety of questions. They become especially interest- 

 ing where applied to show the effects of tariffs upon 

 export and import trade, but I must forbear. 



My principal object has not been to introduce to the 

 notice of the audience a subject already known to 

 many of them, but rather to use it as an illustration 

 of the truth that national economics is subject to laws 

 - — laws which, though complicated, are as exact and 

 unfailing as the laws of physics, chemistry, or 

 engineering, and which, if neglected by political 

 engineers, will as certainly bring the State to ruin as 

 the miscalculation of a mechanical engineer in design- 

 ing a boiler, or of a civil engineer in designing a 

 bridge. Whence, then, instead of consigning 

 economics to Saturn, let us study it, not in a meta- 

 physical or Aristotelian manner, using question- 

 begging epithets, or, on the other hand, in the manner 

 of some moderns, as, for example, Ruskin, by re- 

 placing reason by sentiment ; but let us approach it 

 in the spirit of positive science. 



SECTION H. 



ANTHROPOLOGY. 



Opening Address by Prof. G. Elliot Smith, M.A., 

 M.D., Ch.M., F.R.S., President of the Section.' 



The Evolution of Man. 



At the outset it is fitting that I should express our 

 sense of the loss this section has sustained in the 

 death of Mr. Andrew Lang. Meeting as we do so 

 near to his home at St. Andrews, it was hoped at 

 one time that his versatile scholarship and literary 

 skill would have been available to add lustre to our 

 deliberations. But early last winter we learned with 

 deep regret that the state of his health would not 

 permit him to accept the presidency of the section. In 

 associating ourselves with those who are deploring 

 the loss literature and history have sustained, we 

 realise that our science also is the poorer to-day 

 through the death of one of its most brilliant ex- 

 positors. 



The Scope of Evolution. 



In a recent address Lord Morley referred to "evolu- 

 tion " as " the most overworked word in all the 

 language of the day " ; nevertheless, he was con- 

 strained to admit that, even when discussing such a 

 theme as history and modern politics, " we cannot do 

 without it." But to us in this section, concerned as 

 we are with the problems of man's nature and the 

 gradual emergence of human structure, customs, and 

 institutions, the facts of evolution form the very fabric 

 the threads of which we are endeavouring to dis- 

 entangle; and in such studies ideas of evolution find 

 more obvious expression than most of us can detect 

 in modern politics. In such circumstances we are 

 peculiarly liable to the risk of " overworking " not 

 only the word evolution, but also the application of 

 the idea of evolution to the material of our investi- 

 gations. 



My predecessor in the office of president of this 

 section last year uttered a protest against the tendency, 

 to which British anthropologists of the present genera- 

 tion seem to be peculiarly prone, to read evolutionary 

 ideas into many events in man's history and the spread 

 of his knowledge and culture in which careful in- 



1 This report represents the add; 

 a somewhat condensed : 

 Association's Reports. 



s it was delivered at the meeting : 

 iged form of that appearing in t 



