reason to believe that, however great the general gain of society through increased production, there have been multitudes of individual workmen whose share in this gain has not been sufficient to compensate them during their lives for the injuries personally sustained by them. Doubtless the general good is the controlling consideration, but the incidental evils demand recognition, and the more society at large is benefited by machinery, the greater is its obligation to ward off, as far as may be possible, the injuries inflicted on special classes of workmen by changes in the methods of production. This obligation is all the stronger from the fact that the rapid progress of invention is not a purely spontaneous phenomenon, but is largely the result of patent laws expressly designed to secure it. Since governments thus interfere in the matter, they ought, if possible, to deal with the problem as a whole, and, while promoting the increase of machinery with a view to the extension of its benefits, to consider also how the attendant evils may be averted.

Of these evils that which is most serious and general is the divorce which machinery is bringing about between labor and capital. So far has this already gone that people have come to think of the two as things naturally distinct from each other, and to regard it as a normal state of affairs that the persons who perform the manual toil of a country shall be absolutely dependent for employment on a comparatively small class known specifically as capitalists, in whose hands are concentrated the implements with which alone modern industry can be successfully carried on. That such dependence is unfavorable to the highest type of manhood will hardly be questioned; and the enormous extent to which machinery has increased and is still increasing the percentage of persons subject to such dependence is surely a most serious matter. The manhood of a nation is its most precious possession, for the loss or deterioration of which no increase of material wealth can adequately compensate.

It goes without saying that the remedy does not lie in the direction of a return to the old slow methods of production. But if the workman may not again aspire to a separate business carried on with his own capital in his own little shop, he may reasonably aim at something which would constitute its economic equivalent, namely, the ownership of a proportional share of stock in some larger establishment.

The success attained in Philadelphia and elsewhere by the

coöperative loan associations, popularly known as building societies, shows that, under favorable conditions and suitable laws, cooperation may attain a large development, and gives some reason to hope that by proper effort its sphere may be extended until capital and labor shall, to a great extent, be again united in the same hands. The enactment of laws to render the combination of small capitals in industrial enterprise as easy, secure and convenient as possible would be a useful exercise of legislative power and one to which the extremest adherent of the laissez faire doctrine could take no exception.

This, however, is only a part of the question which machinery has pushed into the foreground. In so vastly augmenting the produce of industry, it has given a corresponding importance and urgency to the problem of its equitable distribution. Nor should we fail to note what it is doing in the direction of giving the political control of this problem to the wage-earning classes. By widening the chasm between labor and capital to a seemingly impassable breadth, it has given to workingmen the feelings of a permanent class bound to seek their separate interests as such; by concentrating them in large bodies in manufacturing cities and towns it has facilitated combination among them, increased their means of acquiring knowledge, and, in many ways, contributed to cement them together in one mass animated by the common purpose of securing for themselves a more liberal share in the advantages of civilization; it is still further promoting their union even where it seems most to injure them; for, by disintegrating the skilled trades, it is breaking down the partitions which selfishness had erected between different classes of laborers; and, finally, by reducing multitudes of independent tradesmen into their ranks, it has created among them a robust and combative element, such as would hardly have been found in a working class trained to patient endurance by generations of servitude, while by the same process it is also augmenting their numbers, so that it has made or is making them a majority in countries where majorities rule.

Under such circumstances it seems more than likely that what they resolve upon is destined to become the law of the land in the leading nations of the world. By one means or another they will seek a remedy for the ills which they believe that they unnecessarily endure and which many eminent thinkers - such men, for

example, as the late John Stuart Mill-have believed to be largely removable by means within the reach of social science. If the proper remedy were offered, it might commend itself to their reason and be accepted, thus averting the social disasters which must follow an erroneous method of treatment; but they will put no faith in any physician who shall tell them that the social body is in normal health, unless he can make good his statement by overwhelming demonstration. Whether disease exists, and, if so, what is its character and how should it be dealt with? are questions which demand the most unprejudiced and searching inquiry. Especially do they claim the attention of economic students, whose obligations to society in this connection are proportional to the facilities they possess for arriving at sound conclusions.

ON THE APPLICATION OF THE

IN ECONOMIC SCIENCE.

Toronto, Ontario.

HISTORICAL METHOD TO QUESTIONS By T. B. BROWNING, M. A., East

[ABSTRACT.]

THE paper raises the question, What is the historical method, and what application is it capable of in economic problems? e. g., (1) as to land legislation and holding; (2) as to competition and combination; (3) the law of the market, or bargain and sale, or caveat emptor; (4) laissez faire.

ON THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECTION OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS AT THE MONTREAL MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. BY CHARLES W. SMILEY, Washington, D. C.

[ABSTRACT.]

THIS paper consisted of an account of the papers read, and of the discussions thereupon.

ON THE CREDIT OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.

By E. B.

ELLIOTT, Government Actuary, Washington, D. C.

[ABSTRACT.]

TABLE

Showing the average prices (flat and net) of, and rates of interest realized to investors in the United States four per cent securities of 1907, and, in the four and a half securities of 1891, respectively, for each of the first eight months (January to August inclusive) of the calendar year 1884.

The disturbance of values about the middle of May was due to a financial panic which then occurred.

IRREGULARITY IN RAILROAD BUILDING, A CHIEF CAUSE OF RECENT BUSINESS DEPRESSIONS. BY WILLIAM KENT, New York, N. Y.

[ABSTRACT.1]

THE author presents a table of statistics for each year from 1860 to 1883 inclusive, of miles of railroad built in the United States, of production of pig iron, iron rails, steel rails, and of rolled iron other than rails, of rail importations, of prices of pig iron and of iron and steel rails, and of immigration; also a plotted diagram made from the figures, which shows how the fluctuations in railroad building, in production, importation and prices, and in immigration coincide with each other.

He divides the twenty-four years, from 1860 to 1883 inclusive, into four periods: First. The period of moderate development, 1860-68, in which railroads built, pig iron and rails produced, and number of immigrants, all increased at an even rate. Second. The first period of violent development, 1869-73, inclusive, in which railroad building, pig iron and rail production, importation and prices, and immigration, all enormously increased. Third. The period of depression, 1874-78, characterized by diminished rate of railroad building, diminished production and greatly diminished prices of pig iron and rails, almost absolute cessation 1This paper is printed in full in the Iron Age, Sept., 1884.