Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/192



This is a scientific—not a politico-economic—illustration. All that it is necessary to point out is that the raft is our one dimension dollar—our drifting storm-tossed datum—always gone when we organize a party of reformers to go to the rescue of our economic man. While the Bureau of Economic Research estimates that between 1909 and 1914 the raft drifted into smoother waters to the extent of $35.00 per capita in terms of national income, the man busy walking across the raft in the same period got just where he did in Trautwine’s example—that is, nowhere, since, in terms of purchasing power, his effective income was just what it was when he started, five years earlier, namely $333 “1913” dollars.

Trautwine the elder in 1872, so regardless of the ritualists of his day that he probably was not conscious that he might be hurting their feelings, wrote in his preface: “Nearly all the scientific principles which constitute the foundation of civil engineering are susceptible of complete and satisfactory explanation to any person who really possesses only so much elementary knowledge of arithmetic and natural philosophy as is supposed to be taught to boys of twelve or fourteen in our public schools.” His comment is too apropos to be left at this point, without recommending the reader to the enjoyment of Trautwine’s footnote, which might be referring to the uninterested victims of the economic ritualists, when it concludes: “They turn up their noses at science, not dreaming that the word means simply knowing why. And it must be confessed that they are not altogether without reason; for the savants appear to prepare their books with the express object of preventing purchasers (they have but few readers) from knowing why.”