Knowledge that Transforms

THE time is not very remote when the idea that the workingman could not only satisfy his immediate wants but make some provision for the future was scarcely entertained. At the present time it is not going too far to say that much of the best efforts now being put forth for the improvement of the welfare of the working classes has this object in view. The present century, and particularly its last half, has seen the creation and rapid development of provident institutions of all sorts. The movement for workingmen's insurance has swept over Europe, resulting in the enormous extension, either under the auspices of the state or through voluntary efforts of this form of provision for the future. Raiffeisen, Schulze-Delitzch, people's banks, co-operative credit, and kindred institutions, have been organized in great numbers throughout Europe. Savings banks, so organized as to appeal directly to the poorer classes, have progressed with remarkable rapidity. In this movement the state has felt compelled to play a part. In addition to assuming a more or less strict regulative control

In view of this attitude toward his subject, it is well to remember that his actual achievements were all in the field of practical economics, thus keeping that poise between logical reasoninig and concrete experience which was so marked in Adam Smith and Bagehot. But his mnind kept a firm and steady grasp upon the theoretical discussions, no matter how far they wandered into ethical or political complications. This quality appears at its best in "The Reaction in Political Economy," written as a declaration of the editor in the first numnber of the Quarterly Journal of Economics. By showing that the reaction was largely due to the stoppage of scientific inquiry by the failure to extend discussion to the fresh experience of recent tii-nes, he made it evident that the differences of opinion as to method were mainly differences in degree, and aided in bringing about in America the present freedom from dispute on this matter. Likewise, by pointing out that the most rigid Ricardian may reject or accept laissez faire, without doing violence to his standing as a member of the so-called old school, he explained that it had nothing to do with economic reasoning itself, that it concerned only the applications of such reasoning. His position, then, among modern economists was clearly that of a consistent, broad, philosophical student closely interested in practical problems; too learned to be an extremist; too exact to be visionary; too penetrating to be carried away by any passing fads. Possessing a frail body, a weak voice, an impersonal manner, and no great magnetism as a teacher, yet no one of Professor Dunbar's friends will ever forget his strong, refined face, his penetrating eye, his self-possession, his deliberation of perfectly-adjusted speech, his keenness, his flashes of humor, his knowledge of human nature, his practical common sense, and his political sagacity. His students everywhere throughout the land will unite in doing honor to his memory. J. LAURENCE LAUGHLIN.