the conditions may be similar, with some confidence in their utility, because with some knowledge of all their practical effects. One nation can profit cheaply by the experiments of others.

The pending propositions for the formation of an American Society of Comparative Legislation or of Political Science, emanating from a conference of publicists and scholars held at Washington during the last convocation week; the strength already attained by the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the good work which it has done in giving Americans prompt information of innovations in foreign laws; the "Legislation Bulletins" of the New York State Library, which have now been regularly issued since 1890, and its "Reviews of Legislation," begun in 1902; all attest the new interest of our people in a subject to which they find themselves, since the Spanish war, standing in a new relation. It is now for the government to see to it that they have better means of information from official

sources.

SIMEON E. BALDWIN.

Yale University.

ECONOMIC INVESTIGATION IN THE UNITED

TH

STATES.

HE active pursuit of economic investigation in the United States can hardly be said to extend back further than a period of twenty years. From the foundation of the republic, indeed, no important phase of our economic development has failed to receive some descriptive treatment or even critical study at the hands of contemporary observers. Any comprehensive survey of American economic writing would thus give proper appreciation to the state papers of Hamilton, Gallatin and Wolcott, to the pamphlets and debates of Webster, Clay and Calhoun, to the concrete studies of Gouge, Tanner and Colwell. The ante-bellum controversies on currency, tariff and slaverypolemic and ephemeral in the main-contain certain positive and enduring elements, just as the writings of Raymond, Rae, the Careys, Amasa Walker, and later, of Henry George and Francis A. Walker, reveal in greater or less degree intimacy with economic environment. Finally, the economic problems of the Civil War and Reconstruction, first in their practical significance and later in their theoretical import, aroused attention and invited study. But in the decade beginning in 1880 this spasmodic interest in particular aspects of American economic life was replaced by something akin to sustained scientific inquiry. The occasion was the coincidence, roughly speaking, of economic investigators and economic issues. A remarkable group of young American scholars then returned to this country with the substantial equipment of German university training, and tingling with the possibilities of the historical method in economic science, and found academic opportunities awaiting them, at the very time, probably in consequence of the fact, that the new prominence of economic issues in the United States was directing popular attention towards the importance of systematic economic inquiry.

The natural result of this unusual combination was speedily evident. In many fields of economic activity-finance, transportation, the tariff, labor organizations, immigration, coöperation,

communism-scientific inquiries were instituted and promising paths were blazed. The stream of economic student travel was diverted from German universities to those institutions in the United States where then, for the first time, advanced instruction in economic science was afforded. In September, 1885, the American Economic Association was formally organized with "the encouragement of economic research" and "the publication of economic monographs" as its primary objects. The Political Science Quarterly was founded early in 1886, in October of the same year appeared the first issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and the Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, established in 1883, thenceforth gave increasing place to economic monographs.

A survey of the score of years since elapsed reveals a progressive development of the forces thus set in motion. Every important university of the country has found it necessary to provide more or less abundant opportunities for economic instruction, and yet the demand for well-qualified teachers of political economy largely exceeds the supply. Increasing numbers of capable students have gathered for training in economic investigation, new channels of economic publication have been provided and economic science has come to be studied with a vigor and an enthusiasm unequalled in any European country and unsurpassed in the case of any of the philosophical sciences in this.

Explanation of this intense interest is probably to be found in the peculiar scientific attractiveness and the high practical importance of economic study in the United States. It is generally admitted that the handicap upon the social, as contrasted with the physical sciences, is the impossibility of deliberate experiment, and that the nearest approximation thereto with respect to modern problems is the comparative study of economic institutions and environments. Accordingly, students of economic science have not been slow to recognize that the United States, with its fifty states and territories, widely various in natural resources and deliberate institutions, each seeking to solve its peculiar economic problems by bold, independent legislation, presents to the scientific economist perhaps the most efficient substitute for a great economic laboratory that the world has ever known. Nor is the

opportunity less attractive in its practical than in its scientific aspects. It is almost a commonplace to assert that the United States is still in a condition of economic immaturity and that, despite its marvelous material development, the resources of the country have been little more than touched. A limitless vista of increasing wealth, social betterment, civic improvement and political development stretches ahead, and in the results of economic study seem to lie here, as perhaps nowhere else in the world, the possibilities of sure and quick approach.

But the very wealth and variety of economic material in the United States, while the prime stimulus to economic study, has up to the present time imposed its essential limitation. So vast is the area, so extensive the activities, so scattered the data subject to economic inquiry, that the ordinary investigator is precluded both on the score of requisite resources and opportunities from attempting any comprehensive induction.

A single illustration will make this clear. A relatively limited, but vitally important economic problem for investigation and solution in the United States is, to what extent and in what manner shall the state influence the conditions under which children and young persons may be employed, i. e., the proper degree and character of child-labor legislation. On the one hand, laissez faire threatens exploitation and race degeneration; on the other, unnecessary interference means social loss and industrial disturbance. The economist believes that the subject demands careful study and scientific investigation, not only as a contribution to knowledge, but as a precedent to wise action.

An essential part of such an investigation must be, of course, detailed study of actual experience in the United States. But here the investigator finds that almost every state and territory in the Union has dealt or is dealing with the problem in one way or another. If his generalization is to be sound, he must study the legislation of each political body in its historical development and in its present phase. He must analyze the interpretation and application of such statutes by a corresponding number of State judiciaries; and most important of all, he must acquaint himself by local observation and inquiry with the actual results of this legislation and adjudication. For such a procedure, entailing

time, travel and expenditure, the ordinary economic investigator, as he has existed and as he now exists in the United States, has neither opportunity nor resources.

In consequence, economic investigation in the United States, although pursued with unexampled activity, has been almost exclusively historical or institutional on the one hand, and local or intensive on the other. Of extensive economic investigation, economic induction in the proper sense of the term, little has been attempted and less achieved. The historical evolution of economic institutions as revealed in more or less accessible records, the functional activity of economic organizations as displayed in limited areas these are inquiries involving field-work or travel expenditure within the resources of the ordinary academic investigator. But from the comprehensive study of the history, structure and functions of any part of the economic organism, the economic scientist has been precluded.

In the field of local finance, for example, we have had, on the one hand, faithful historical studies of the finances of particular states and cities and of particular fiscal institutions, and on the other hand, we have been given intelligent analyses of the present financial status of specific localities. But the investigator has not yet presented, probably has not yet dared to attempt, an exhaustive study of local finance in the United States. Similarly, the institutional history of the negro in certain States has been traced and his present status in certain limited localities has been described. But the larger subject, the negro in the United States-taken in its scientific entirety, is still untouched.

Although in the largest sense, it has been objective environment, rather than any principle of methodology, which has determined the quality of economic inquiry in the United States, yet it is undoubtedly true that the natural trend towards intensive studies has been aided to some extent by extraneous forces. The Comptian criticisms of the classical political economy, both in their original form and as restated by English disciples, have afforded a certain justification for economic microscopics. Similarly, the influence of the German historical school, and notably the "extreme Historismus" of Professor Schmoller, has vindicated "a period of empirical, statistical, and historical inquiry" as a preliminary to a new body of economic theory.