have shown a definite sense of the necessity of completing the operation of threshing and winnowing and thus ascertaining what was obtainable as a vital and final harvest, however meager.
Some of the more philosophic contributors to economic research, such as Adam Smith, Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill, have made invaluable contributions in the way of wider correlation; but to the engineer, with his trained predilection for unbroken logic, the earliest writer to make a strong appeal is probably Jean-Baptiste Say who, though he wrote over a century ago, is more consistent than many a modern writer. In the work of this man there is always the sense of a compact structure properly tied together. As a brief example, he avoids obvious confusion as to money by classing it, not as a unit of value, but as a commodity. This, under our present system, is logical even if not very satisfactory. It is easy to assert lightly, as some of his critics do, that Say is not original; but this after all is one of his credentials. There is more need of pruning in economics than there is of hybridization. Say cut back bravely till the trunk and branches were discernible.
In more recent times Professor Gide of the University of Paris has contributed work in which the vision breaks through and fluxes the detail of which he is master.
The evolution of Gide’s “Theory of Political Economy” is most enlightening. The first edition[1] showed an eagerness to work back toward fundamental factors, and though the later editions[2] are more orthodox, they are as comprehensive, as full of useful tools and as nicely arranged as a ship-carpenter’s chest. His “History of Economic Doctrines”[3] written in conjunction with Professor Charles Rist of the University of Montpelier, is a multiple screen through which all preceding economists have been sized and classified.
From the standpoint of the engineer, however, the most
- ↑ “Principles of Political Economy,” Charles Gide. 1st edition. Translated by E. P. Jacobsen. D. C. Heath & Co., Boston, 1892.
- ↑ “Political Economy,” Charles Gide. 3rd edition. Translated by E. P. Jacobsen. D. C. Heath & Co., Boston and New York, 1913.
- ↑ “A History of Economic Doctrines.” D. C. Heath & Co., Boston, 1915.
