Page:Forgotten Man and Other Essays.djvu/11

 PREFACE

ITH the present collection the publication of Sumner’s Essays comes to an end. The original project of publishers and editor contemplated but a single volume — "War and Other Essays" — and they accordingly equipped that volume with a bibliography which was as complete as they then could make it. But when, later on, other materials came to be known about, and especially after the discovery of a number of unpublished manuscripts, the encouraging reception accorded to the first venture led us to publish a second, and then a third collection: “Earth Hunger and Other Essays" and “The Challenge of Facts and Other Essays." It was during the preparation of the latter of these, now some five years ago, that the late Professor Callender deplored to the editor the omission of certain of Sumner’s essays in political economy — in particular those dealing with free trade and sound money. And the reviewers of preceding collections had reminded us, rightly enough, that there should be a fuller bibliography and also an index covering all the essays.

In this last volume we have striven to meet these several suggestions and criticisms. And it is now the purpose of the publishers to form of these singly issued volumes a set of four, numbered in the order of their issue. Since the series could not have been planned as such at the outset, this purpose is in the nature of an after-thought; and there is therefore no general organization or systematic