25 AUGUST 1923, Page 21

ECONOMICS.

Economic Problems of Democracy. By Professor A. T.

Hadley. (Cambridge : at the University Press. 6s. net.) Under this comprehensive title Professor Hadley, President Emeritus of Yale, delivered here last year the first full course of lectures under the " Watson Chair" foundation. Demo- cracy grew in England with slow and sure growth. In the United States it had before it the lessons of the British past and every condition favourable to rapid growth. Has it reached in both lands a zenith from which there will be a decline of liberty ? Professor Hadley fears this danger unless true education at least keeps pace with the advance of the voters' power. He has a wise and healthy admiration for individualism, free exchange and competition. While he admits that their immense and invaluable development reveals a need for some practical control, he warns us of the wrong lines that restriction may take when equality or demo- cracy supplants liberty as the goal sought. When politics and economics become entangled the legislator often ceases to regard the welfare of the whole community. Collective bargaining in politics becomes controlled by collective bargain- ing in industry. Handworkers and capitalists alike need education in their duties to society. Nations, too, need it, as Professor Hadley shows in a wise chapter on "National Animosity."