Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/535

Rh described political economy as a science which, assuming the facts of human nature and of the physical world, considers the laws of the production and distribution of wealth. But what are the facts of human nature which we may legitimately assume? At first sight we are inclined to take for granted that human nature is much the same all the world over. The late Professor Jevons gave clear expression to this view. "The laws of political economy," he says, "treat of the relations between human wants and the available material objects and human labor by which they may be satisfied. These laws are so simple in their foundation that they could apply, more or less completely, to all human beings of whom we have any knowledge." He adds: "I should not despair of tracing the action of the postulates of political economy among some of the more intelligent classes of animals." It has seemed as if in the march of progress modern industrial conditions must inevitably be introduced in backward countries, and that they would everywhere result in molding individual aims and character on the same lines. Each individual is to some extent affected by his environment; and it has been supposed that the keen competition and struggle for existence, which in one form or another dominates economic life in all parts of the globe, would make for the survival in all areas of men of the type with which we are familiar in business circles at home. In England there is on the whole a condition of free exchange, where each individual puts in his quota of service to the community and bargains for payment. His success in the management of land is rewarded by an increase of rent; his enterprise in investing his capital, by larger profits; his diligence and skill as a workman, by the wages he draws. The man who is self-disciplined enough to follow routine work habitually for the sake of reward, and whose ambitions lie in the direction of better paid and more responsible service, is the normal man of such a society. But it must be remembered that modern civilization is also producing another class; whatever the force of social environment may be, it does not, as a matter of fact, form each unit of the rising generation on the same type. There are men who do not fit readily into our modern system; they dislike the monotony and stationary life which steady industry imposes, though they may be able to work well and hard when the fit takes them. The tramp of the American continent is as much the product of existing industrial conditions as the ambitious leader of an organized body of skilled artisans. The 'ins and outs' of Great Britain have characteristics which may be described as nomadic. Economists recognize that the fluidity of labor is one of the assumptions that can be fairly made in regard to modern society.