Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/501

 American Historical Association 49 1 course of industrial evolution, so complex are the phenomena, would require not one but a series of formulae. The world-encompassing transportation agencies have made the thread of sequence difficult to follow. Beyond a mere verbal analogy to the processes of bio- logical growth economic evolution is not organic ; sequence of forms is not inevitable. Yet human society is being progressively indus- trialized, and industrial progress is determined by the survival of the most efficient. Environment exercises always an important influence on the course of economics, and in our country the deter- mining conditions have been free land and the absence of legislative restraint. The transitions have been remarkably rapid. Notwith- standing these disturbing forces — cheap and rapid transportation, world-commerce, and rapid transitions — the course of economic evolution in this country may be quite clearly traced. Professor Bogart of Princeton University disagreed with what he thought to be Professor Gay's view that correct historical generalizations of historical development are impossible. Existing schemes of economic stages might be incorrect, but all such schemes he thought of value for certain purposes. He thought it possible to find some broader generalizations which should be both correct and useful. Professor Richard T. Ely of the University of Wisconsin thought man's power over nature the true principle for the tracing of economic development. A classification so based is not absolute, but is helpful and convenient. Professor Gay closed the discussion. He thought that to posit economic stages was useful, but feared that hard and fast stages and classifications might dominate too much. In the next forenoon two conferences were simultaneously held. The one, intended to serve the interests of college teachers, had as its topic " The Sequence of College Courses in History " ; the other was a conference on the special problems of state and local his- torical societies. The former was presided over by Professor ]lax Farrand of Leland Stanford University, who described the order of courses provided in that institution. It begins with a series of introductory courses covering all the chief fields of general history, which must be taken in the first or second year of college. There is also what is called a library course, likewise to be taken in one or the other of these years, which is intended to give the student some preliminary knowledge of the means by which more elaborate studies should be conducted. After these courses the student must take one advanced course in history, to be pursued in detail, with- out taking which he cannot be graduated in history. Professor George B. Adams of Yale University discussed frankly