56 W. G. Langworthy Taylor 



progress can only be tested by its contributions to a higher, more 

 psychic living. This higher standard may at some times call for 

 a greater population or wealth, and sometimes for a smaller. It 

 may sometimes define goods as having a greater and sometimes 

 as having a less material mass or consistency. Economists find 

 matter for controversy on the point whether the strains of a violin 

 are physical and hence items of wealth. 



As for changes in the rate of progress, deviations in its path, 

 temporary pauses or retrogressions, changes in its phenomenal 

 constitution, — these were matters entirely beyond economic 

 science or any science of social polity. Unconsciously, perhaps, 

 the crisis was acknowledged to be that very manifestation that 

 embodied all of these intractable phenomena — and therefore it 

 was ignored ! Even the unconscious race-philosophy of lan- 

 guage employs in this connection a word, "crisis," that indicates 

 a turning point, a parting of the ways calling for decisive action, 

 a culmination of a series of movements of utmost importance to 

 the industrial world (K/divw). And yet the static philosophy of 

 industry says little or nothing on the subject which is really the 

 dominating one, but which it chooses to ignore or is unable to 

 see. The result of this attitude is that the crisis is looked upon 

 as something abnormal, as an unaccountable obsession of the 

 industrial world by malign, unexplainable influences which it is 

 hoped will run away and not come back again to bother the 

 weary brains of men who are trying to account for the happen- 

 ing of industrial events. 



The criticism to be passed on static economists' theories of 

 crises is therefore that of deficiency rather than that of incor- 

 rectness. Mill seized one of the most salient crisis phenomena 

 when he said that crises were caused by an overfilling of the 

 field of investment, whence resulted a fall of profits, causing 

 speculation and an inordinate rise of prices, succeeded by a cor- 

 responding depression of the same. While all this is true, little 

 is said as to the socio-industrial utility of the process, except to 

 insist that it tends to raise profits 1 again. There is here a slight 

 hint of a large process of alternately filling and emptying a 

 reservoir of investment. 



*/(&., bk. V, ch. Ill, sec. 4. 



56 



