Some human problems are for the individual to solve, as, whether it is better to go to school or to go to work, to choose this occupation or that, to emigrate or to stay at home.  Other problems of wider bearing concern the whole family group; others, still wider, concern the local community, the state, or the nation.  In each of these there are more or less mingled economic, political and ethical aspects.  Economics in the broad sense includes the problems of individual economy, of domestic economy, of corporate economy, and of national economy.  In this volume, however, we are to approach the subject from the public point of view, to consider primarily the problems of “political economy,” considering the private, domestic, and corporate problems only insomuch as they are connected with those of the nation or of the community as a whole.  Our field comprises the problems of national wealth and of communal welfare.

What then are our politico-economic problems in America?  They are problems that are economic in nature because they concern the way that wealth shall be used and that citizens are enabled to make a living; but that are likewise political, because they can be solved only collectively by political action.

Sec. 2. #American economic problems in the past.# With the first settlements of colonists on this continent politico-economic problems appeared.  Take, for example, the land policy.  Each group of colonists and each proprietary landholder had to adopt some method of land tenure whether by free grant or by sale of separate holdings or by leasing to settlers.  In one way and another these questions were answered, but rapidly changing conditions soon forced upon men the reconsideration of the problem as the old solution ceased to be satisfactory.

In large part our political history is but the reflection of the economic motives and economic changes in the national life.  Thus the American Revolution arose out of resistance to England’s trade regulations, commercial restrictions, and attempted taxation of the colonies.  The War of 1812 was brought on by interference with American commerce on the high seas.  The Mexican War was the result of the colonization of Texan territory by American settlers and the desire of powerful interests to extend the area of land open to slavery.  The Civil War arose more immediately out of a difference of opinion as to the rights of states to be supreme in certain fields of legislation, but back of this political issue was the economic problem of slave labor.  Illustrations of this kind, which may be indefinitely multiplied, do not prove that the material, economic changes are the cause of all other changes, political, scientific, and ethical; for in many cases the economic changes themselves appear to be the results of changes of the other kinds.  There is a constant action and reaction between economic forces and other forces and interests in human society, and the needs of economic adjustment are constantly changing in nature.