SECTION E.— GEOGRAPHY. 



THE GEOGRAPHICAL STUDY OF 

 SOCIETY AND WORLD PROBLEMS 



ADDRESS BY 



PROF. H. J. FLEURE, D.Sc, 



PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 



I. Introduction. 



It has been assumed in many discussions that mass-production and com- 

 merce on a large scale represent a new mode of life, a form of society, that 

 is conquering the world and must disintegrate older modes of social life 

 and organisation. However true this is, there are limitations obvious now 

 that production far beyond immediate selling possibilities is causing so 

 much difficulty. It is truer to say that various types of society, the world 

 over, are trying to graft on to their ancient heritage this new scheme of 

 mass-production. In vastly increased numbers the peoples of the world, 

 some more, some less, touched by the idea of mass-production, are jostling 

 one another as never before, and various types of society have become, 

 willy nilly, standing dangers to others. 



Whether Adam Smith really willed it or not, his plea for specialisation 

 between individual and between parts of a nation became a plea for 

 specialisation of nations, and the laisser-fairt' doctrine which followed it 

 was an idea that all would be for the best if economic rivalry were un- 

 bridled, and the best were allowed to win freely. One might caricature 

 this, a little unfairly no doubt, by saying that unlimited commercial war- 

 fare was to be the way of progress, peace and plenty. A few thinkers were 

 not so sure of this ; Disraeli saw its dangers, and, on the other side of our 

 politics, Leonard Courtney, back in the seventies of last century, expressed 

 alarm at the growth of British industry and population, which he saw would 

 call up rivalries leading to war ; and at the end of such a war there would 

 be a breakdown of the network of credit and millions would be unem- 

 ployed. His foresight has been all too fully justified. It may have been 

 useful, up to a point, to think out the increase of production through 

 specialisation as Adam Smith does in his famous argument about pins, but 

 there was need for far more thought than seems to have been given to the 

 maintenance and development of social life in the various environments 

 nature provides and man adjusts. Study of that kind has lagged behind 

 for many reasons. There were those — and they had immense power in 

 the days when British industry was spreading — who, on religious grounds, 

 held that one had but to propagate the faith western Europe had assimi- 

 lated and all would be well ; for them there was one type of ideal society 



