SECTION F : CARDIFF, 1920. 



ADDEESS 



TO THB 



SECTION OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS 



BY 



J. H. CLAPHAM, C.B.E., Litt.D., 



PRESIDENT OP THE SECTION. 



It is, I think, a President's first duty to record the losses which 

 oconomic science has sustained since the Association last met. A year 

 ago we had just lost, on the academic side. Archdeacon Cunningham, 

 and on the side of affairs. Sir Edward Holden. This year, happily, I 

 have no such losses to record in either field. But it is right to name 

 the death of a late enemy. Professor Gustav Cohn, of Gottingen, an 

 economist of the first rank, who had made a special study of English 

 affairs. I believe that no student of our railway history would fail to 

 place Cohn's 'Inquiries into English Eailway Policy,' published (in 

 German) so long ago as 1873, fii'st on the unfortunately very short list 

 of scientific works devoted to that side of liistoiy. Even when supple- 

 mented by an additional volume, issued ten years later, it covers only 

 what seems to-day the prehistoric period of our policy — befoi'e the 

 Act of 1888 and very long before our present uncertainties — but it is 

 not yet out of date. Cohn died full of years. He was nearly eighty. 

 I may mention, perhaps, with his name that of a much younger, and 

 possibly more brilhant, German economist, Mas Weber, of Munich, 

 who has died at the age of fifty-six. He once tried to explain, by a. 

 study of Puritan theology, the economic qualities of the Nonconformist 

 business man — -a very fascinating study. But his work as a whole has 

 not roused much interest in England. 



By an accident the three scholars whose names I have mentioned 

 were all best known, in England at any rate, as historians. And, with 

 your indulgence, I will do what I think has seldom been done from 

 this chair, in making my address largely historical. History has been 

 my main business in life; and it has occurred to me that some com- 

 parisons between the economic condition of Europe after the great 

 wars of a century ago and its condition to-day may not be without 

 interest. Historical situations are never reproduced, even approxi- 

 mately; but it is at least interesting to recall the post-war problems 

 which our grandfathers or great-grandfathers had to face, and how 

 they handled them ; to ask how far oiu- sufferings and anxieties have 

 had their parallels in the not remote past; and to note some danger 



