Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/743

Rh the equipment of an economist of the first rank. On the one hand, he must have the power of close, sustained, and logical reasoning; on the other, he must have a most thoroughly practical spirit, without vagaries and nonsense. The former he gains chieily by his academic training; the latter, by general maturity and an intuitive or practical knowledge of the world of business. In short, he must be at once a (so-called) "doctrinaire" and a "practical man." To be without one set of these faculties is to seriously and fatally prevent any great usefulness. A purely "practical man," without the logical training, can no more achieve economic success than a railway-locomotive, no matter how great its steam-power, can continue to run and reach its destination without rails. And yet, a bookish and literary economist, without the practical intuitions, can accomplish nothing more than a finely finished and most perfect engine in the hands of an ignoramus who does not know how to get up steam. We here find the explanation of a very common belief among the wide ranks of the busy and successful men of affairs in the United States—a class who have generally had little academic training—that economists are mere "doctrinaires," whose assumptions are all a priori, all in the air, and above the level of every-day work; who had better make a fortune in pig-iron, or fancy dress-goods, before they set up to instruct the community. Merely making money, however, does not at the same time make one logical. It is as if we should demand that every scientific physicist or chemist should have first put his knowledge into practice by inventing some application of electricity, or a patent-medicine, before he is competent to impart the principles of his science to others. The contempt of the practical world for (so-called) "doctrinaires" is as great a mistake as for the speculative writers to set themselves above the men of affairs. As in most things, the correct position lies somewhere between. If an economist is an abstract thinker, and nothing else—unable to verify his deductions—then he justly merits contempt; but in that case he is not a properly equipped man, as we have described him above. On the other hand, it is common to see merchants or manufacturers showing great energy in studying and writing upon economic subjects, who, so long as they confine themselves to the range of facts within the limits of their own horizon, make most valuable and effective contributions to the verification of principles; but, when, without accuracy, logical power, or a grasp upon governing principles, they begin to generalize upon their limited data, they are very apt to be less effective and useful than they are dogmatic. He only is truly an economist who, eagerly studious of facts, not in one occupation or place only, but in as many as possible, applies scientific processes to his investigation, and produces that which becomes the world's truth, the property of men of all times—not the petty sum of thought which has grasped only a small fraction of the facts. In other words, when a wide-awake man goes to books, he