THE DECADENCE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.
IN an interesting, though badly reported, paper on " The Popular Attitude towards Economics," read before the British Association on Tuesday, Mr. into It. Phelps gave a very accurate diagnosis of the discredit nto which economists have fallen with the public at large. He pointed to the legislation of the middle of the century as evidence that at that time economics practically directed a great part of men's lives, whereas now they have scarcely influence nfluence at all. He distributed the blame of this a great part of men's lives, whereas now they have scarcely influence nfluence at all. He distributed the blame of this change between the economists and the public. People are lazy and impatient ; they will nob give to eeoromical questions the amount of steady thinking which they require. We confess that for once the public seem to have rather hard measure. So long as economics were a science with defined boundaries embracing a specific field of investigation, they had no difficulty in making good their claim to consideration. But when we read. Mr. Phelps's description of what economics have become, we should think but poorly of a public which paid them any particular attention. The economist " has deserted the a priori method with its certainties, limited indeed, but still certainties. He now endeavours to be comprehensive, and so becomes weak ; to allow for different motives, and so becomes indefinite and uncertain." The older econo- mists aimed at isolating their subject. One of the motives which govern human action is the desire for wealth, and they set themselves to consider by what steps a community, animated by this desire, would most certainly attain its end. Such an investigation as this was obviously incom- plete. The course of action to which it pointed was never realised except in theory. Men are never controlled—never, at least, except in those rare eases where avarice rises to insanity—by the simple desire for wealth. But subje, t to this reservation, it is useful and interesting to trace out the action of a motive which necessarily plays so large a part in the determination of human conduct. We are familiar with the same process in every other inquiry. When the physician describes the action of alcohol in the body, and gives us a picture of the physical degeneration which accompanies habitual drunkenness, we do not object that he has not allowed for the restraining influence of religion or family affection. When the engineer enumerates the parts of a locomotive, and shows how they all combine to take a train to its journey's end, we do not complain that he has left out of consideration the possibility of the train being wrecked by a gang of strikers. If doctors or engineers had stopped to take such matters as these into their calculations, medical and engineering science would have made but little progress. Each requires for the successful prosecution of its inquiries that it should exclude, for the special purpose it has in view, the obstacles to the free action of the motive it is examining. The consideration how that process is checked or furthered by the intervention of other motives, belongs to others. The principle of the division of labour is as applicable to the discovery of truth as to any other process.
In the economics of the moment, however, this principle is altogether disregarded. The best economist, in the estimation of the new school of teachers, is he who does most to enlarge the frontiers of the science. If a survival of the older school seeks to explain the phenomena of strikes by saying that their success or failure depends on the extent to which the margin of profit allows of reduc- tion, and on the ability of the men to hold out until this point is decided, he is at once reproached for making no allowance for human feelings, and asked if the contributions of thousands of sympathisers are to count for nothing. Undoubtedly they count for just so many hundreds or thousands of pounds as they bring in to the fund of the Union that happens to be on strike. But they are at best an intermittent element in the cal- culation. It is not every cause of quarrel that appeals to the imagination, or finds a public more disposed to sympa- thise with the strikers than to resent the inconvenience caused by the strike. Moreover, when allowance has been made for this source of revenue to the men, it remains nothing more than a source of revenue. It enables them to continue the strike until the determination of the em- ployers not to work for less than a certain minimum of profit has been ascertained beyond a possibility of doubt. No display of public sympathy will alter this determina- tion ; it will at most provide additional means of testing it. Let us suppose that two strikes are going on at the same moment, and that in each there is money enough to pay the nine strike-pay to the same number of men for the same length of time. What does it matter that in one case the whole of the money comes out of the reserve fund of the Union, while in the other case only half of it. comes from this source and the remainder from a public sub- scription ? In either case the money is there and is spent in maintaining the men on strike. In neither does it affect the attitude of the employers. If, indeed, public sympathy were always prompted by the reasoned conviction that the margin of profit will allow of the payment of higher wages, its manifestation would at least help us to pre- dict the result of a strike. But then we know but too well, that it is prompted by nothing of the kind. Money is given because the men are poor, because the strike-pay will keep them but will not keep their wives and children, because clever newspaper correspondents have painted harrowing pictures of their sufferings, because the em- ployers have been irritated by what the men have said, and have consequently shown no disposition to come to terms with them. Sympathy, which may come from one or all of these causes, is worthless from a scientific point of view. The economist is bound to treat it as though the money it contributes were provided from the Union chest, and simply indicated a larger accumulated fund. But in the present condition of the science, the economist is expected to treat this sympathy as a distinct and important contribution to the final result,—to talk as though, in part at least, strikes succeed or fail according as the opinion of the community, or of an active section of the community, is on the side of the employer or the employed. Or, to take another example, the older economists are constantly condemned for their supposed indifference to human happiness in their discussion of the land question, They approach it, it is said, with a single eye to the greater or less produce to be extracted from the soil. If more corn in proportion can be grown on one farm of five hundred acres than on ten farms of fifty acres, they regard the superiority of large farms to small ones as established. They make no account of the happy homes which would be created by small ownership, they refuse to look at anything except the relative sizes of the stacks pro- duced on the two systems. Yet how can the politician decide between them if he does not give its proper weight to the very element which is thus excluded ? Wealth is not a final object in itself ; it is only an object in so far as it ministers to the happiness of the com- munity. This is perfectly true, and perfectly irrele- vant. A new term has been slipped into the argument with the usual result of making the reasoning in- effectual. The happiness of the community is un- doubtedly the end which the politician ought to keep in view. But " politician " is not a synonym for " economist ; " rather, politics are the whole of which economics are a part. The results of economic science are one of the sources from which the politician draws his ultimate conclusions. Consequently, it is indispensable for him that these results should be presented with the least possible admixture of matter derived from other sources. He does not go to the economist for information as to what will most promote the happiness of the nation. He goes to him for information as to what will most promote the wealth of the nation. That, no doubt, is only one of the points which the politician will have to take into account in framing laws. But it is one point.
No matter how low a place we may assign to national wealth among the constituents of national happiness, it has its recognised position in the list. Naturally, there- fore, the politician wishes to be instructed about it. If he is contemplating legislation in the direction of small holdings, he will first inquire into the cost of such legislation. There must be a limit to the price paid for happiness in the case of nations as of individuals ; and in the case of small holdings this price, or a part of this price, may take the form of diminished production. The gain in happiness may be ample compensation for the loss thus incurred ; but this is a question for the politician, not for the economist. And when the politician comes to the economist for information as to the exact price he will have to pay, and instead of this gets nothing but general remarks on the blissful state of small proprietors or the wicked- ness of men who like to see themselves encompassed with submissive tenants instead of with independent yeomen, he goes away resolved not to trouble his infor mant with any similar questions in the future. He feels, in short, as Mr. Phelps so truly says, that in trying to be comprehensive, the economist has become weak, indefinite, and uncertain. He was once content to be useful in a sphere which was precisely ascertained ; he now soars beyond the narrow bounds of economic fact, and aspires to be a philosopher or a theologian. He is like a traffic manager who, on being asked by his directors what would be the lowest remunerative price for a workman's ticket, should give them nothing, by way of answer, save general remarks on the advantages of living in the suburbs, or the duty of public carriers to the toiling millions of our great cities. All that he says may be as true as gospel, but it is not the particular truth which traffic managers exist to furnish.
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