March 24, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



441 



Alvord, of the U. S. Department of Agri- 

 culture. 



The record of attendance of speakers on 

 the published program was one of the best 

 in the history of the section. Out of the 

 twenty-three papers twenty were read in 

 pereon by the authors. The attendance on 

 the part of the public varied from thirty- 

 five at the first session to seventy-five at the 

 last session. Five different sessions were 

 held, including one afternoon session de- 

 voted to the address of the retiring vice- 

 president, Professor Simeon E. Baldwin, 

 New Haven, Conn., on 'The Modern Droit 

 DAubaine,' treating of the recent multi- 

 plication of succession tax laws, and their 

 application to non-residents, resulting in 

 double taxation. 



The following officers were elected : 



Vice-President and Chairman. — Professor Ir- 

 ving Fisher, Yale Universitj-. 



Council — ^Marcus Benjamin. 



Sectional Committee — E. L. Corthell. 



General Committee — Henry Farquhar. 



The papers presented included the fol- 

 lowing as reported in abstract: 



SESSION ON ECONOMIC QUESTIONS. 



The Basis of Economics as an Exact 

 Science. Professor Simon Newcomb, 

 Washington, D. C. 



One of the first things to strike us in the 

 effort to apply scientific methods to eco- 

 nomics is the absence of nomenclature. We 

 notice, in the first place, that there is no 

 name for the organized system of economic 

 phenomena. Herbert Spencer has used the 

 ter;n 'social organism,' but the objection to 

 that is that it includes more than is neces- 

 sary. It embraces all phenomena which 

 are social, but there are social phenomena 

 which do not strictly belong to the economic 

 order or which relate so indirectly to it as 

 to be negligible factors in the consideration 

 of economic questions. 



Another phase of defective definition 



may be mentioned. I refer to the fact that 

 there is no name for that portion of wealth 

 which is not capital. Marshall makes use 

 of the inconvenient term of 'wealth of the 

 first order.' 



Referring to the economic order as a 

 whole, we notice, to begin with, that it is a 

 unified system, in which the parts are re- 

 lated as means and ends. In economics 

 these terms, means and ends, take the place 

 of the correlated terms cause and effect in 

 the physical order. That is, the relation 

 of means and ends in economics corresponds 

 to the relation of cause and effect in phys- 

 ics. In the economic order capital is 

 means. The problem, then, is to find the 

 relation of capital means to economic ends. 

 We must study from ends to means and 

 from means to ends according as the one 

 or the other inquiry may be necessary to 

 establish the causal relation which is the 

 business of science to ascertain. 



Now, as to the method of inquiry. In 

 this procedure we have to distinguish be- 

 tween machinery which is necessary for 

 production and auxiliary means to an end. 

 The machinery necessary for production is, 

 of course, capital in its essential character. 

 The auxiliary means to ends which capital 

 serves to reach is money. But money, im- 

 portant as it is in its auxiliary function, 

 adds nothing to the power of the machine. 



Knowledge or direction is needed as an- 

 other auxiliary in the organization of the 

 means to ends of production. 



Socialism overlooks the necessity for the 

 means of production, and seems to be based 

 on the omission of this mediating factor 

 between man's wants and his ends. The 

 socialist is like the man who walks to the 

 edge of a precipice and proposes to proceed 

 even at the risk of losing his life rather 

 than to build a bridge to pass from one 

 precipice to another. 



How far can economics be made an ex- 



