who prefer popularity to thoroughness and thought, and by the cheap economics of old-fashioned every-day economists, who are not able to perceive that, since the time of their youth, there has been any change or progress in practical life as well as in the scientific interpretation of it. But whosoever tries to understand the times, at once perceives the different character of modern problems and the necessity of new standards of judgment."
Our limitations permit, finally, brief reference to the conclusions proposed as a result of these parallel applications of an economic method. The title of Dyer's final chapter—"Industrial Integration"—may be understood as his term for what actually is in progress, in which he sees certain amelioration of industrial conditions, and in the conscious guidance of which he predicts the largest practical social gains. (Vide pp. 255 sq., esp. pp. 294 sq.)
Hobson takes an equally optimistic view of social possibilities, but pins his faith to somewhat different factors. Thus (pp. 352 sq.) "The complete breakdown of all barriers which impede the free flow of commerce and the migration of capital and labor, the fullest and widest dissemination of industrial information, are necessary to the attainment of the individualistic ideal of free trade. Perfect transparency of industrial operations, perfect fluidity of labor and of wealth, would effect incalculably great economies in the production of commercial wealth."
But, continues Mr. Hobson, "We shall secure such progress as shall abate the evils of our present condition, and secure for humanity the uses of machinery only by gains in two directions: (1) an adequate social control over machinery, (2) an education in the arts of consumption such as may assign proper limits to the sphere of machine production" (p. 355.). Mr. Hobson's development of the latter proposition is very much in the spirit of Ruskin; thus the author of Unto This Last might have written the paragraphs upon the themes: "It is to improved quality and character of consumption that we can alone look for a guarantee of social progress" (p. 368); and "It is hardly too much to say that the whole of social progress depends upon the substitution of qualitative for quantitative methods of consumption" (p. 373 sq.)
Von Halle is less explicit, except when he concludes that "the repeal of the present anti-trust legislation seems desirable" (p. 147.). He is apparently quite as confident however, that we are surely
