F.—ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS 95 
of self-sufficiency in the continent of North America. The precise 
relation between monetary troubles and the movement towards economic 
self-sufficiency—which is cause and which is effect, whether both are due 
to a third group of fundamental causes, will appear later ; but there is no 
doubt that monetary management of any kind for any purpose calls for 
increasing control over the course of international trade and that the task 
of management is easier the more nearly the economic system involved 
happens to be self-contained. 
The movement towards economic self-sufficiency, therefore, has its 
roots deep in the past. Jn the political sphere in the nineteenth century 
nationalism sought for unity and fought oppression to win self-determina- 
tion. Then, at the beginning of that century and during the latter part 
of the eighteenth century, economic organisation was simple. Machinery 
was relatively unimportant and production was on a small scale. By this 
time, also, economic activity had become increasingly free. The fetters 
forged by the mediaeval guilds and mercantilism had been cast aside. 
Markets were unrestricted and mobility unimpeded. A domestic 
capitalist system had been evolved and with it had come political freedom 
and political democracy. This general scheme of organisation lasted until 
well on towards the middle of the century without radical change; and 
contemporary economic theory regarded it as its problem to explain the 
economic processes of a society dominated by small competing units 
entirely free from political interference. In the ideal world of these 
theorists Free Trade was a necessary condition for territorial division 
of labour. Free movement of capital and unimpeded mobility of popula- 
tion were equally important in their view; and anything which offered 
obstacles to the attainment of the ideal of a single price in a single market 
co-extensive with the world was, on that account, condemned. But 
towards the end of the nineteenth century large aggregates of capital came 
to dominate the field. It was not that the earlier small competing units 
of the classical economists had become less numerous but rather that they 
had become less significant. As industrialisation proceeded the growing 
scarcity of economic opportunity favoured, even demanded, the consolida- 
tion and the integration of trade and industry. As the size of units 
increased economic opportunity became still more circumscribed and 
competition grew still more relentless. Under these circumstances 
legislation and public opinion were powerless to prevent the trend towards 
monopoly ; and the cartel movement spread, at first within national 
boundaries, and, later, it was extended to the international sphere. 
Meantime, nationalism, which originally had merely political aims, 
changed its character and became, fundamentally, an economic movement. 
This was due, in some part, to the attainment of most of its former ambi- 
tions, but mainly, to the causes just described and to the continuous 
expansion of economic activity which now absorbs by far the greater part 
of the energy of the whole of society. Thus, the world of the first quarter 
of the twentieth century provided an environment exceptionally favourable 
to the growth of a very militant movement for economic self-sufficiency. 
This long-term influence has been reinforced, temporarily, by the con- 
‘ditions attendant on the great depression. New areas of production have 
