August 7, 1885. 



SCIENCE, 



113 



"Congress cannot regulate the value of money 

 until it can make a man give for a gold dollar 

 one grain of wheat more than supply and de- 

 mand force him to give, or yield a gold dollar 

 for one grain less than supply and demand will 

 give him for it. . . . It cannot regulate the 

 value of a coin, any more than it can regulate 

 a ph3'sical object to make it longer or shorter 

 than it is. ... To secure a concurrent cir- 

 culation, then, at a fixed ratio, it is necessary 

 to suppress the effects, which can only be done 

 by suppressing the forces ; so that a concurrent 

 circulation could never be realized until we 

 could extinguish economic forces b_y human 

 agency." Now, all this might be well enough 

 by wa}^ of reply to one who was ignorant of 

 the existence of ' economic forces ' and the 

 rest ; but of what avail is it as against a man 

 whose mind is troubled hy the fact that gov- 

 ernmental action is itself, in the matter of cur- 

 rency, one of the most constant and apparent^ 

 important of these ' economic forces ' ? In- 

 telligent doubters and honest opponents can be 

 but little influenced by the levelling of economic 

 anathemas at them : they can only be won 

 over b}' a fair statement of the strongest argu- 

 ments that can be urged on the other side, and 

 a refutation of them. 



Similar objections appl}^ with equal force to 

 Professor Sumner's treatment of the subject 

 of protection. It is of immense advantage to 

 correct thinking on the subject, that one should 

 see, first of all, clearly and unmistakably, that 

 a protective tariff is a tax on production ; that 

 its immediate effect is to diminish production, 

 to reduce the returns to labor and capital, to 

 lessen the rewards of human effort. The dem- 

 onstration of this important though simple truth 

 at once clears the air of the mists and vapors 

 with which it may have been filled by popular 

 ignorance and misconception. But when it is 

 urged by clear and candid thinkers that there 

 may be cases in which, even upon purely eco- 

 nomic grounds, it may be worth while to incur 

 this loss for the sake of a future gain made 

 possible by it, it is useless to dogmatically 

 shut off discussion by simply saying that pro- 

 tection is an economic loss, and nothing but 

 economic loss can come of it. There is not 

 the least disregard of the principles of political 

 economy in supposing that an industry which 

 it would not pay to introduce in a given coun- 

 try, without government protection, might be 

 a profitable and independent one after it was 

 introduced. Lack of knowledge, national hab- 

 its, the prestige of foreign manufacturers, — 

 such are some of the causes which may pre- 

 vent the rise in a given country of an industry 



for the pursuit of which its natural advantages 

 may be exceptionally great ; and it is simply 

 impossible to ' demonstrate ' that an indus- 

 try may not thus be established a centur\' 

 sooner than it would otherwise be, and which, 

 in all but its first j-ears, would be a source of 

 increased prosperity to all classes of the peo- 

 ple. There are a thousand valid objections to 

 protection even in this case, but it is not an 

 economic absurdit}^ To sa^^, as Professor 

 Sumner does, that "it is mathematicalh^ im- 

 possible that it [a protective tariff] should 

 ever issue in an independent and productive 

 industry," is to vastly diminish, in the mind 

 of an intelligent reader, the force of those con- 

 clusions whose truth has really been demon- 

 strated. 



Ungracious as it may seem, we have yet to 

 draw attention to a special feature in the style 

 and method of Professor Sumner's argument 

 which is calculated to intensif}^ the impres- 

 sion of dogmatism and reckless generaliza- 

 tion which economic writing of this character 

 so often produces. This is his constant em- 

 plo3^ment of language borrowed from mechanics 

 or physics, and especially his frequent ap- 

 peals to the principle of the conservation of 

 energy. Amateurs in natural science have 

 shown, in the last decade or two, a very great 

 fondness for this principle, and have delighted 

 in exhibiting the facility with which, by its aid, 

 they could solve the problem of the universe, 

 or any smaller problem which might happen to 

 engage their attention. But responsible writ- 

 ers on political economy — or, for that matter, 

 on any other subject — will do well to leave 

 the principle of the conservation of energ}' to 

 play its proper part in its proper field. Some 

 writers might be surprised to find how neces- 

 sary it is even in that field, to use it in the 

 exact sense in which it is understood b}' mathe- 

 matical ph^^sicists ; how little it enables one to 

 do eas3", offhand work, and accomplish the im- 

 mediate despatch of all scientific business. 

 One regrets to see even so much as the term 

 used in discussions that are outside the domain 

 of physics, for fear that the vagueness which 

 must necessarily there attach to the term may 

 affect the reasoning in which it appears ; this, 

 however, may in some sense be regarded as a 

 matter of taste. But to use the principle of 

 the conservation of energ}^ b}' waj^ of argument 

 in economic discussion is utterl}" unjustifiable ; 

 and when a writer says that " to suppose the 

 contrar}^ " of an economic proposition, "is to 

 deny the most obvious application of the con- 

 servation of energy to economic forces," he 

 can but make the judicious grieve. The acme. 



