Knowledge that Transforms

The problem of securing an adequate supply of pure milk for cities has for a long time been the subject of serious consideration. This commodity is such an essential food in the dietary of every household, and at the same time is so highly perishable, so easily contaminated, and so dangerous as a medium for carrying disease that the duty to safeguard its purity and wholesomeness has been recognized in most large centers. It is true that the problem has most generally been viewed from the standpoint of sociology. The economic phases of the problem have until recently remained in the background. So long as there remained large sections of the producing field unexploited, and so long as the distributive organization was on a competitive price basis, the economic problems of milk production and distribution never were acute. Evidences of the impending struggle appeared in the conditions in Boston and New York, where investigations were deemed necessary to break the growing monopolistic power of the milk dealers. It may now be seen that these were only preliminary to the crisis that occurred during the summer and autumn of I9I7. This crisis developed in various large cities from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and led to many investigations.

I had formerly some claim to be called an economist, having taken a Doctor's degree in that subject in x894. Having since that time devoted myself to sociology it is only recently that I have endeavored to recover my economic foothold by reading those current books that seem to have most acceptance. The following paper is in the way of general comment on this reading. The science and philosophy of the present day strives to see everything as part of a process, as growing out of the past under the operation of ascertainable laws, and giving rise, in a similar way, to the future. What should this mean as applied to economics ? What should we expect of a doctrine of economic process? Such a doctrine should, of course, embrace something corresponding to the theory of production, exchange, valuation, competition, and the like which we now study in the textbooks; but it should do much more than this: it should show these immediate processes as consistent and intelligible parts of economic process at large; it should enable us to understand their human significance and to act wisely with reference to them. Practical guidance is what we have a right to ask of every social science, and that we may have this, special phenomena must be seen in the light of their larger relations. An adequate doctrine must, then, take account in the largest possible way of the economic movement with a view to rational social action for economic welfare. Where economics falls short of this it fails of its essential function; and if it does fall short, if the function cannot be fulfilled immediately, it should not for a moment be abandoned as an idea; we should keep it in view and be content with no substitute.