HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY HENRY WOOD All Rights Reserved THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF NATURAL LAW ELECTROTYPING BY C. J. PETERS & SON PRESSWORK BY ROCKWELL & CHURCHILL PREFACE. THIS is no attempt to make people content with things as they are, but to turn the search for improvement in a promising direction. Unrest and agitation are vastly better than stagnation, but to bring the best results they must be wisely practical and in harmony with Law. The general purpose of this volume is the outlining of a political economy which is natural and practical, rather than artificial and theoretical. While independent of professional methods, it aims to be usefully suggestive to the popular mind. As a treatise, it is not scholastic, statistical, or historic, but rather an earnest search for inherent laws and principles. In 1887 the author issued a small book entitled "Natural Law in the Business World," which was well received and passed through several editions. The present volume is substantially a new work, although a portion of the original matter has been retained, somewhat changed in form. If it contains any larger measure of truth, the writer will congratulate himself upon any seeming inconsistency. The different factors of society need to be drawn together and not rent more widely apart. Negative condi tions exist; but they will not be improved by stimulating their realism, or by the assumption that they are inherent. Idealism is as wholesome in sociology as elsewhere. True sympathy for prevailing ills does not express itself in a morbid pessimism, but in pointing out the road to improvement and in inspiring hope and courage. Conventional political economy, as professionally formulated, lacks a practical element which renders it of little utility in actual experience. Not being fitted into the nature and constitution of man, it is largely a mass of fine-spun intellectual abstraction. If the absorption of ponderous tomes of scholastic political economy does not add to one's equipment for the practical business of life, it is not easy to discover its usefulness. The "cause of labor" has been injured by crowding under its banner many fallacies, and even more by the assumption that its interest is naturally antagonistic to that of other social elements. Society is a complex organism, or Greater Unit, and "when one member suffers, all suffer." The mischievous doctrine of a necessary diversity is largely responsible for prevailing frictions and antagonisms. The fault is not with the "social system," but with abuses which are the fruitage of moral delinquency in personal character. Labor and capital, when deeply defined, melt into each other. The "labor problem" will never be solved by mere sentimental and professional treatment. The laborer often suffers more from the mistaken action of his professed champions than from the natural ills of his condition, and this will continue so long as he is led into a moral and economic antagonism. A deep and diligent search for causes and remedies should take the place of a mere superficial rehearsal of woes. Not only the human constitution, but the world in general, would have to be made over before the chimerical plans of professional "labor reformers" could be made operative. Artifice can never be substituted for evolution and Natural Law. The writer will yield to no one in the intensity of his desire to promote, not only the public weal, but the interest of labor in its completeness. In whatever way superficial critics may construe detached statements of this book, the fact will remain that its deepest intent and animus is the true welfare of the workingman. The recognition of the universality of Law is the greatest achievement and inspiration of modern times, and it is no less regnant in social economics than in physical science. Circumstances and conditions change, but the orderly sequences of Natural Law continue uniform. All improvement must come through a better interpretation of and conformity to its immutable lines. |