Essentials of Economic Theory Part 26

The organization of labor, its motives, its measures, and its tendencies,--including a tendency toward monopoly,--we have examined.

Through all the wastes and disturbances which the struggle over wages occasions we have discovered a certain action of natural economic law, and have seen what type of measures, on the part of the state, will remove impediments in the way of that law and enable it to act in greater perfection.

Connected with the dynamic movement on which the future of society depends are the policies of the government in connection with currency and with protective duties. Here, less action, rather than more, is demanded on the part of the state. While no renewal of a _laissez-faire_ policy is possible, a reduction of the duties which now play into the hands of monopoly is distinctly called for. In connection with currency a greater trust in nature and a smaller reliance on governments will give the best results.

Our studies have included, not the activities of the whole world, but those of that central part of it which is highly sensitive to economic influences. The whole producing mechanism here responds comparatively quickly to any force which makes for change. This society _par excellence_ is extending its boundaries and annexing successive belts of outlying territory; and as this shall go on, it must bring the world as a whole more and more nearly into the shape of a single economic organism. The relations of the central society to the unannexed zones are attaining transcendent importance, and a fuller treatment of Economic Dynamics than is possible within the limits of the present work would give much s.p.a.ce to such subjects as the transformation of Asia and the resulting changes in the economic life of Europe and America. Here again the conscious action of the people determines the economic outcome. In the main we can still leave the natural forces of industry to work automatically; but we have pa.s.sed the point where we can safely leave to self-regulation the charges of the common carrier, the conduct of monopolistic corporations, or certain parts of the policy of organized labor.

Foreign relations are, of course, a subject for public control, and they are coming to affect in a most intimate way our own economic life. Everywhere our future is put into our own hands and will develop the better the more we know of economic laws and the more energy we show in applying them. The surrendering of industries generally to the state may be avoided, and the essential features of the system of business which evolution has created may be preserved; but to keep this system free from unendurable evils will require, on the part of the people, a rare combination of intelligence and determination. It will require a public policy that shall neither be hampered by prejudice nor incited by ebullitions of popular feeling, but shall be guided through a course of difficult action by a knowledge of economic law.