Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Current Economic Affairs (1924).pdf/188



There are certain great laws of nature that are immutable and inevitable. Such are the law of gravitation, the law of the conservation of energy and the law of the indestructibility of matter. Science, having learned those laws, does not do aught but recognize them, for science is the interpretation of nature. These laws are the fundamentals of physics and chemistry. They are laws pertaining to energy and matter. There are also great natural laws relating directly to life and human affairs.

In economics there is the great natural law of supply and demand. A few years ago, amid the madness of the war, fools alleged that the law of supply and demand was an archaic thought, which should, could and would be dismissed. They might as well have chattered that the law of gravitation is a myth and that apples may be made to drop from a tree on a slant instead of perpendicularly; or that the law of the conservation of energy can be so annulled that an aeroplane may soar forever, refuting both this law and the law of gravitation.

In both economics and biology there is the great natural law of the survival of the fittest. In the production of goods competition is bound to bring into play the operation of this law and extinguish the unfit. So also in life itself. We may artificially delay the operation of this law and often with great advantage.