1893 - State Library Information Center

64 STATISTICS OF LABOR AND INDUSTKIKS.increasing industrial progress so far surpass all previous periodsin the world's history as to allow of no possible comparison withthe past.The terms Capital, Rent, Division of Labor, Hanks, Balanceof Trade, Commercial Treaties, Association, Cooperation, &c,in reality have no significance if they do not tend toward the increaseof knowledge and happiness of the individual, whichalone can secure to the state prosperity and peace. Tho insufficiencyof the generally accepted theories of societury organization,and the need of more accurate knowledge concerning thenatural laws that underlie our social arrangement, is quite apparentto all who give the matter any attention. Lot anywho care to try the experiment, ask the first ten or fifty menthey meet, irrespective of conditions in life, and note the aimwersto queries concerning any one of the dominant questions of theday—money, tariff, cause of hard times, want of employment,&c,—and they will be astonished to find how few there are whoeven claim to have made any study of causes at all. Tho con.fusion of ideas is even greater among the so-called educatedclasses than anywhere else. The fact is that we find men inpublic life who have been taught in the same school, graduate*from the same colleges, and studied tho same books, acting indirect opposition to each other in all matters of public policy,and each justifying his actions by what is called Bound principlesof political economy. About the only matter of agreementseems to be that it is the right of each individual to adopt whatever,in his own judgment, may seem to contribute tuoHt to hinown interests, without any responsibility for its effect upon thecollective well-being, which is theoretical anarchy, pure uiuisimple. And as a result we see practices justified publicly that,as individuals, the great body of society condemns.This, we believe, would be remedied if the study of oconomioscience were confined to ascertained facts, instead of mero opinionsof the writers upon the subject. To illustrate : Why shouldstatesmen differ about the effects of a tariff? If it promotes theinterests of the greatest number, it ought to be demonstrable bysome principle of political science. This controversy ha« beengoing on since the beginning of the government, and while thebasis of conflicting opinions remains substantially the same, ap-