TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 819 
for careful and industrious investigation, and prominent among the subjects 
which await his trained observation are the condition of the people and the 
related subject of the consumption of wealth. ‘Training is, indeed, indispensable. 
Every social question has its purely economic elements for the skilled economist 
to unravel, and when this part of his task has been achieved, he is at an advantage 
in approaching the other parts of it, while his habit of mind helps him to know 
what to look out for and what to expect. 
It is a curious paradox that, busying ourselves as we do with the condition of 
the people, we are lamentably lacking in precision in our knowledge of the 
economic life and state of the British people in the present day. Political economy 
has, however, followed the lines of development of political power. At one time 
it was, as the Germans say, cameralistic—an affair of the council chamber, a 
question of the power and resources of the king. Taking a wider but still 
restricted view of society, it became capitalistic, identifying the economic interests 
of the community to a too great extent with those of the capitalist class. It has 
at length become frankly democratic, looking consciously and directly to the 
prosperity of the people at large. 
Thus, then, we have at once a more accurate theory, a livelier sense of caution 
as to its limitations in practice, and the widest possible field of study. So far as 
most of us are concerned, we might as well spend our time in verifying the ready 
reckoner as in tracing and retracing the lines of pure theory. These tools are 
made for use. Economic science is likely to make the most satisfactory progress 
if we watch the social forces that surround us, detecting the operation of economic 
law in all its manifestations, and in observing, co-ordinating, and recording the 
facts of economic life. It is not enough, to borrow the language of the biologist 
(part of which he himself borrowed from the old economists), to talk of the 
struggle for existence, the survival of the fittest, and of evolution. We want, 
above all, his spirit and his method—the careful, minute, systematic observation of 
life as affected by environment, heredity, and habit. Different problems are 
brought to the front by different circumstances and appeal to different minds; but 
at all times and to all economists the condition of the people is of chief interest, 
and the consumption of wealth is so closely connected with it that it might seem 
superfluous to plead for its study. Yet some such plea is necessary. The arts of 
production improve apace. The victories of science are rapidly utilised by manu- 
facturers anxious to make a fortune. Even here the descriptive study of the 
subject is hampered by the trade secrets involved in many processes, and by a 
feeling that production may safely be left to the unresting intelligence of captains 
of industry, so that the onlooker is chiefly concerned in this branch of the subject 
with solicitude for the health and safety of the workmen employed. The depart- 
ments of distribution and exchange appeal especially to the pride of intellect. The 
delicate theorems of value in all their branches—wages, rent, interest, profits, the 
problems of taxation, the alluring study of currency, the mechanism of banking 
and exchange—have attracted the greatest share of the economist’s attention. On 
the practical side of distribution the growth of trade unions, the spread of educa- 
tion, the improved standard of living, have increased the bargaining power of the 
working classes and combined with other causes to effect a gratifying improvement 
in the distribution of wealth, so that they receive a growing share of the growing 
national dividend. The practical and the speculative aspects alike of the con- 
sumption of wealth have received less consideration. Nobody sees his way to a 
fortune through the spread of more knowledge of domestic economy in workmen’s 
homes; and the scientific observer has curbed his curiosity before what might 
seem an inquisitorial investigation into the question, What becomes of wages? 
Economists long ago discovered the necessity of distinguishing between money 
wages and real wages. It is now necessary for us to distinguish between real 
wages and utilities—not to stop at the fact that so many shillings a week might 
procure such and such necessaries, comforts, or luxuries, but to ascertain how they 
are expended, From the first we can deduce what the economic condition of the 
_ people might be; from the second we shall know what it is. And when we know 
what it is we shall see more clearly what with more wisdom it might become. 
1899, 3G 
