518 



SCIENCE, 



[Vol. VI., No. 149. 



intentions. The proof of the correctness of my 

 opinion cannot be given within the space which you 

 can allot to the discussion, since it involves a careful 

 comparison of Professor Newcomb's premises and 

 conclusions, of his declared intentions and his actual 

 success. The following sentences, taken somewhat 

 at random from the book, seem to me to prove the 

 general justness of my view. The italics are mine. 

 Page 543 (Summary of principles): "The motives 

 which animate men in the pursuit of wealth are in» 

 the highest degree beneficent, and have led to a 

 system which insures to every man fit to live the 

 maximum of enjoyment from his labor, if he will only 

 adapt himself to the system." Page 518 : " It is also 

 to be remembered that the existing system insures 

 the employment of every man in the way best suited 

 to his talents better than any other system possibly 

 can. This fact follows from almost the whole system 

 of political economy, so that it need not be further 

 dwelt upony Pages 517 and 518: "Thus, from an 

 idealistic point of view, nothing can be said against 

 the general equity of the existing system of free 

 competition.^'' Page 516: "It is a great mistake to 

 suppose that the enormous inequalities which we see 

 in wealth imply any thing wrong in the system which 

 permits them." Page 370: "We have already 

 shown that in the state of things which now exists in 

 this country it is scarcely piossible for any industrious 

 man to suffer for the necessaries of life." 



These quotations, it seems to me, present a fair 

 view of what should be regarded as the logical 

 outcome of the methods and principles of the book. 

 The author is not consistent in his reasoning, and this 

 leaves him abundant opportunity to quote passages 

 which are at entire variance with what I represented 

 as the result of his effort. It should also be said that 

 they are at entire variance with the conclusions 

 above quoted ; which latter are, in my opinion, more 

 in harmony with the general drift of the book than 

 the former. As one interested in the progress of 

 the science, I am glad to know that Professor 

 Newcomb recoils with such vigor from the logical 

 consequences of his theory, as we may hope that his 

 influence will at last be thrown in the direction of 

 sounder methods than those which he so vigorously 

 repudiates and so closely follows. 



In conclusion I should like to say that my objec- 

 tions are nearly all to the general methods and 

 tendencies of the book. I think, as I said in essence 

 in my review, that many of the minor discussions are 

 admirable and suggestive. E. J. James. 



Professor Newcomb may well repeat the ancient 

 prayer to be delivered from his friends, if Mr. 

 Franklin's letter fairly represents their best efforts. 

 With the single exception of what has been already 

 mentioned, the latter is exceedingly unhappy in his 

 strictures. 



To begin with his last point, he remarks that the 

 closing sentence of my review was " entirely and 

 absurdly gratuitous, as Professor Newcomb was 

 describing what governments do when they establish 

 an unlimited bimetallic system." Professor New- 

 comb's original sentence might possibly have been 

 excused on the ground of carelessness of statement ; 

 but if he should agree with Mr. Franklin, and still 

 desire to stand by it in its actual form, it would 

 simply be another instance of one of my chief objec- 

 tions to Professor Newcomb's general methods ; viz., 

 that he is dealing all the while with imaginary quan- 



tities. It is safe to say that neither Professor New- 

 comb nor Mr. Franklin can adduce a single historical 

 example where " governments, in establishing a 

 bimetallic system, assumed that the values of equal 

 weights of the two metals have a certain fixed ratio 

 to each other." They have sometimes assumed that 

 by establishing such a system they can do much- 

 toward creating such a fixed ratio, which is an en- 

 tirely different thing. The statement of Professor 

 Newcomb is doubly objectionable, — in the first place, 

 because it is not true ; and, in the second place, be- 

 cause it is the form usually adopted by one-sided 

 monometallists in describing the position of bimetal- 

 lists, so that they may forestall discussion by ascrib- 

 ing to their opponents such an absurd theory as to 

 make them appear a pack of drivelling idiots. I prefer 

 to think that Professor Newcomb does not desire to 

 bolster up his position by any such questionable de- 

 vices. 



Mr. Franklin asks how much of the influence of 

 recent German writers on economic science is trace- 

 able in Professor Sidg wick's book. The mere ques- 

 tion proves one or both of two things : 1°, that Mr. 

 Franklin is only superficially acquainted with Pro- 

 fessor Sidg wick's work ; or, 2°, that he knows 

 nothing of recent German writers on political 

 economy; or, 3°, both. The influence of German 

 thought is evident on nearly every page — certainly 

 in every chapter — of Professor Sidg wick's book. 

 Some of the chapters, indeed, — notably the one 

 on public finance and that on distributive justice, 

 — might almost be called abstracts of Wagner. 

 I did not say that Professor Newcomb knows 

 nothing of recent political economy, but simply 

 that his treatment of the subject shows no 

 traces of such knowledge. To give evidence of 

 such knowledge, it is not necessary, of course, to 

 quote from recent works. One might reveal the fact 

 in one's methods and conclusions that the gigantic 

 movements of the last generation had not swept by 

 without in some degree affecting the views of the 

 writer. A man who writes a work on physics need 

 not stop to trace out the authority for each state- 

 ment he makes in order to show that he is abreast 

 of the time. To do that would be as absurd in form 

 as it would be in reality, if he attempted to write 

 such a book without taking any notice of the work 

 done in that department within the last generation. 



Whether it be evidence of ignorance and incompe- 

 tence in any field to adhere to the system of a past 

 generation when another system, whatever may be 

 its merits or defects, has certainly displaced the old 

 one, may fairly enough be left to the sober sense of 

 men of science and to the practical answer of a moving 

 world. It seems pretty clear that Mr. Mill, to whose 

 methods and system Mr. Franklin implies that Pro- 

 fessor Newcomb adheres, would indignantly repudi- 

 ate any such views as those above quoted from Pro- 

 fessor Newcomb's book, since he regarded them as 

 already obsolete at the time when he wrote. 



I did not say, nor did I mean to imply, that Profes- 

 sor Newcomb had just begun to make excursions into 

 the economic field, but that these excursions had al- 

 ways been of a hasty and desultory character, since 

 the better part of his life and effort had been devoted 

 to something else; and, further, that the whole tenor 

 of his introduction was that we should now see an ex- 

 ample of the true scientific method, the failure to ap- 

 ply which, so far, was the real secret of the failure of 

 political economy. E. J. J. 



