vance a consistent scheme of social philosophy. Like most gospels of social emancipation, it has its denunciatory and its triumphant tone. There is something eminently clear in the brutal frankness with which it breaks with the old world of conventional and accepted ideas. Instead of the doctrine of the beneficence of competitive freedom, we have the dogma of the total depravity of complete competitive freedom; instead of liberty of individual contract, the new compulsory freedom of collective contract. There is no sophistical attempt to reconcile trade union ideals of a common rule and collective bargaining with absence of coercion and liberty of choice of non-unionists. Such industrial non-conformity is only tolerated as an illogical result of weak organization. Realization of the trade minimum and the national minimum involves the deliberate abandonment of illusory ideals of liberty: otherwise Collectivism would have little interest in such realization. "Freedom," unregulated competition, is the worst possible state: hence any method of regulation, however imperfect and antiquated, is better than none. To efficient enforcement of the common rule ever thing else must bow. The friendly benefits of Trade Unionism are, therefore, not amenable to the actuarial tests of scientific insurance. Insurance funds are only adventitious accompaniments of collective bargaining; and the workman's claim upon them for sickness, accident, and old age, is always qualified by the proviso,if there is anything left. For this reason Trade Unionism seeks to maintain the legal anomaly which now protects its funds against the prosecution both of employers and disaffected members. The militant ideal of collective bargaining also calls for jealous hostility to all insidious attempts to blur the lines between capital and labor, whether in the name of philanthropy or of individual improvement. Hence in this trade union decalogue we find the prohibition of all participation in schemes for

profit-sharing, and for mutual insurance and friendly co-operation by employer and employee; in all such devices as "self-governing" workshops; in all liberal schemes for creating conservatism and content by making workmen owners of house or land. All these things tie the workman's hands, diminish his bargaining efficiency, and make for conservatism in the hour of contemplated strike. If the trade unions shall be true to this revelation of their nature and mission, the "vision" of the future is indeed stimulating and triumphant. The institution which the wise and learned and powerful have despised, rejected, and persecuted, shall prove to be the typical exemplar of the democratic spirit, the permanent embodiment of industrial ideals, the conscious realization of instinctive human nature, the corner-stone of the social and industrial edifice.

It is obviously a good propagandist move to try to show that large fraction of the population known as the working classes what they have been, are, and by right ought to be. Nothing succeeds like the conviction that the new reform is only an application of an old principle. Nothing predisposes the "unconscious" philosopher to live up to his newly revealed creed like reading a rational demonstration of a coherent and far-sighted policy into his groping, incoherent past. Once reform is found to be an application of long-recognized principles, half the battle is won, and instinctive conservatism becomes an ally of innovation. It is, therefore, an event in the history of any movement when it finds a competent historian. It is a still more significant phase of any movement when it finds, not only a sympathetic chronicler of its past, but a propagandist expounder of its unconscious philosophy, a formulator of its "inarticulate" principles and aspirations, a codifier of its past and prophet of its future. The political radicalism which styles itself Collectivism has clearly adopted trade unionism as the typical workingmen's organization, with

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largest political possibilities before it. It remains to be seen whether the workingmen's organizations will adopt Collectivism, whether trade unionism will fall in love with its own portrait, drawn by a masterful hand, and endeavor to live up to its prophetic reputation.

He

Doubtless the absolutely impartial historian and investigator is an ideal desideratum, but it is part of the avowed psychological creed of this treatise that such an ideal attitude is humanly impossible. The inquirer is shrewdly warned that it "must never be forgotten that every man is biassed by his creed and his self-interest, his class, or his views of what is socially expedient. If the investigator fails to detect this bias, it may be assumed that it coincides with his own." In accordance with this didactic confession it is pertinent to ask, What is the dominating bias of these investigations? Certainly not the bias of the so-called orthodox, or classic, economist. comes in for his full share of contempt. Not the bias of that obsolete abstraction known as the individualist. He is treated as the economic scapegoat of civilization. Not the old-fashioned bias "which inspired the proposals of Lassalle, and most of the inferences drawn from Karl Marx's Theory of Value, whilst it still lingers in the declarations of German Socialism and its derivatives." It is the bias of that new and true collectivist socialism of the "unearned increment, arising from the progress of invention and organization of population and capital in dense masses, upon which the modern English socialist bases his demand for collective ownership of the means of production, and the subordination of the producer to the citizen, and the individual to the community."

HARVARD UNIVERSITY.

EDWARD CUMMINGS.

NATURAL DIVISIONS IN ECONOMIC THEORY.

IN a recent article in this Journal I called attention to the impossibility of dividing political economy into four distinct parts, by following the traditional plan of division. Production, distribution, and exchange are not distinct operations. I suggested a division of the science based on sociological evolution. According to this plan the first division contains universal principles, which hold true whether society is organized or not. It defines wealth and describes the varieties of it. It describes also the agents of production, and tells how they severally work in creating wealth, and under what conditions they work well. It contains, in short, the treatment of labor, of capital, and of the manner in which they combine to make the earth fruitful. It tells of the various kinds of utility that these agents are employed to create, such as elementary utility, form utility, place utility. It presents a law of variation in the productive powers of these agents, whereby, if one of them becomes comparatively abundant, then a single unit of it produces comparatively little, while, if one of them becomes scarce, a single unit of it produces a great deal.

This part of the science has nothing to say about hired labor or loaned capital; for these things depend on social organization, and the distinctive fact about this part of the science is that it contains no facts or principles that depend on social organization. It contains only a statement of what takes place wherever man subdues the earth, and makes it useful. It can have nothing to say about wages and interest as ordinarily understood; yet it presents a law by which wages and interest are determined,— a law, namely, of final productivity of labor and of capital. In like manner this division of the science has nothing

to say about market value, since that also is a social phenomenon, and not a universal one. Nevertheless, it presents the principle according to which values are determined; for it is a universal fact that final utilities are small when commodities are abundant, and that they are large when such things are scarce. A sailor stranded on a rock, and with a single sea biscuit in his possession, is in a position to appreciate the high final utility of bread. If fish are abundant, he can also estimate the low final utility of fish. He has no chance to make exchanges, but the law according to which exchanges are made operates in his case with a full measure of force.

The second division treats of Catallactics. It adds to the universal phenomena whatever results from exchanges. It is a science of organized economy, and puts before the mind a picture of society as a single organization, working in its entirety to produce wealth, and apportioning it among its members.

The socialization of economic life arranges producers in groups and subgroups. What we here term a group produces one complete article, and sells it. High organization, however, prevents any one body of persons from producing an article in its entirety; for no one set of men gets out of the earth, as it were, the rawest materials that enter into the article and fashions it to completion. The general groups are divided into subgroups.

Let A represent a raw material taken from the earth, and let A' represent that material carried by one stage towards completion. A" will represent it near to completion, and A"" will represent it as quite ready for the

consumer.