FOREWORD

The present volume deals with various practical problems in economics, as a volume published a year earlier dealt with the broader economic principles of value and distribution.  To the student beginning economics and to the general reader the study of principles is likely to appear more difficult than does that of concrete questions.  In fact, the difficulty of the latter, tho less obvious, is equally great.  The study of principles makes demands upon thought that are open and unmistakable; its conclusions, drawn in the cold light of reason, are uncolored by feeling, and are acceptable of all men so long as the precise application that may justly be made of them is not foreseen.  But conclusions regarding practical questions of public policy, tho they may appear to be simple, usually are biased and complicated by assumptions, prejudices, selfish interests, and feelings, deep-rooted and often unsuspected.

No practical problem in the field of economics can be solved as if it were solely and purely an economic problem.  It is always in some measure also a political, moral, and social problem.  The task of the economist “as such” is the analysis of the economic valuation-aspects of these problems.  We may recall Francis A. Walker’s comparison of the economist’s task with that of the chemist, which task, in a certain case, was to analyze the contents of a vial of prussic acid, not to give advice as to the use to make of it.  Accordingly, in the following pages, the author has endeavored primarily to develop the economic aspects of each problem, and has repeatedly given warning when the discussion or the conclusions began to transcend strict economic limits.  In many questions feeling is nine-tenths of reason.  If the reader has different social sympathies he may prefer to draw different conclusions from the economic analysis.

The outlook and sympathies that are expressed or tacitly assumed throughout this work are not so much those personal to the author as they are those of our present day American democratic society, taken at about its center of gravity.  When the people generally feel differently as to the ends to be attained, a different public policy must be formulated, tho the economic analysis may not need to be changed.  Therefore, in some cases, the author has discussed merely the economic aspect, or has referred to the general principles treated in volume one, and has purposely refrained from expressing his personal judgment as to “the best” policy for the moment.

The present volume was planned some years ago as a revision of a part of the author’s earlier text, “The Principles of Economics” (1904).  The intervening years have, however, been so replete with notable economic and social legislation and have witnessed the growth of a wider public interest in so many economic subjects, that both in range and in treatment this work necessarily grew to be more than a revision.  Except in a few chapters, occasional sentences and paragraphs are all of the specific features of the older text that remain.  Suggestive of the rapid changes occurring in the economic field is the fact that a number of statements made in the manuscript a few months or a few weeks ago had to be amended in the proof sheets to accord with recent events.