Tugwell

ECONOMICS By REXFORD GUY TUGWELL
Quoted from the book: Roads To Knowledge, edited by William Allan Neilson, President of Smith College. Chapter by Rexford Guy Tugwell: ECONOMICS. (Page 93.) IT would be interesting to ask a dozen people who lived in different places, had different occupations, unequal incomes, and contrasting upbringings, what “economics” is. A dreadful fear assails me, though, whenever I contemplate doing it. Suppose they hadn’t heard the word! It is very likely. I have often been embarrassed in meeting strangers who, on inquiring my occupation and hearing the answer, “economist,” have allowed a slightly dazed expression to cross their faces while they murmured some polite rejoinder. I find it more politic, under these circumstances, simply to say that I am a teacher and to avoid specification. Perhaps, however, the layman’s vague frustration at hearing the word economics has been relieved by the events of recent years. This change, if change it is, has doubtless been caused by the pressing nature of the crises in economic life of the years since the war. The war was an experience of the massing of effort in common enterprise— though the enterprise was a destructive one— which threw a flood of new light on potentialities we had not hitherto suspected. And we have had the experience since the war of tensions so heightened as to be unique; of great prosperity and of vast disaster. There were other contributing circumstances. If we think of those war years as a crisis, the crisis was not a simple one of military effort. There was waiting for the call a century or more of slowly preparing industrial technique which had never before been given a real chance. The various natural sciences hidden away in the laboratories of universities and government departments had awaited their application to the productive arts until Taylor and his successors should show the way to their use in the system of “scientific management.” (Page 94.) The system of laissez faire in industry had survived into a period when it had so outworn its usefulness that the first breath of crisis blew away its defenses and new systems of rational control— of an improvised sort and consequently imperfect— had to be substituted for it. The enthusiasm with which we then embraced the romance of that reality, and our genuine successes in handling vast economic affairs in a controlled way ought to have taught us something. True, we sank into a vast inertia of “normalcy” when the romance faded out. But we ought not to be confused because those least able to understand what had taken place were in control of the war settlements and have remained our responsible statesmen since. The genuine and unforced culmination of those forces which the war brought to premature birth will occur in its own time. And at that time there must be a new kind of trust in economics and economists— not those economists who live among dogmas as dead as the Ptolemaic astronomy, and not those who, like the quacks they are, rush in to predict the turns of our majestic gambling device, Wall Street— but those who, like Randolph Bourne’s educated person, have sought to promote “interest and skill in work and an acquaintance with the contemporary world;” and have sought it faithfully in the manner of science, with a passion for its dissemination among their students, and a sense of responsibility for public policy. (Page 95.) In time, I should say— perhaps it is almost true now— there will be no more vagueness in lay faces at the mention of economics than there is at a similar mention of mathematics or of chemistry. And yet, though I have no doubt of its importance or its growth, I am still hesitant to say, in casual company, that I am an economist lest some one, more than usually malicious, ask me what that is. For it is difficult to define. . . Here it seems pertinent to observe that economics is having an evolution toward matter-of-factness and away from abstruseness. This partly because facts, with our new measuring devices, become plainer; and partly because of distrust in the generalizations of the economists of an earlier day, who either proceeded from facts not now to be observed, or were guided by too grim a determination to defend existing institutions and privileges. . . When we come to consider the characteristic content of contemporary economics this ought to become clearer. Isonomia.US LandGrab.US Eminent Domain - Condemnation: reduces Private Property to a priviledge, and creates Nomads.

ECONOMICS
By REXFORD GUY TUGWELL

Quoted from the book: Roads To Knowledge, edited by William Allan Neilson, President of Smith College.
Chapter by Rexford Guy Tugwell: ECONOMICS.

(Page 93.) IT would be interesting to ask a dozen people who lived in different places, had different occupations, unequal incomes, and contrasting upbringings, what “economics” is. A dreadful fear assails me, though, whenever I contemplate doing it. Suppose they hadn’t heard the word! It is very likely. I have often been embarrassed in meeting strangers who, on inquiring my occupation and hearing the answer, “economist,” have allowed a slightly dazed expression to cross their faces while they murmured some polite rejoinder. I find it more politic, under these circumstances, simply to say that I am a teacher and to avoid specification. Perhaps, however, the layman’s vague frustration at hearing the word economics has been relieved by the events of recent years. This change, if change it is, has doubtless been caused by the pressing nature of the crises in economic life of the years since the war. The war was an experience of the massing of effort in common enterprise— though the enterprise was a destructive one— which threw a flood of new light on potentialities we had not hitherto suspected. And we have had the experience since the war of tensions so heightened as to be unique; of great prosperity and of vast disaster.
There were other contributing circumstances. If we think of those war years as a crisis, the crisis was not a simple one of military effort. There was waiting for the call a century or more of slowly preparing industrial technique which had never before been given a real chance. The various natural sciences hidden away in the laboratories of universities and government departments had awaited their application to the productive arts until Taylor and his successors should show the way to their use in the system of “scientific management.”

(Page 94.) The system of laissez faire in industry had survived into a period when it had so outworn its usefulness that the first breath of crisis blew away its defenses and new systems of rational control— of an improvised sort and consequently imperfect— had to be substituted for it.
The enthusiasm with which we then embraced the romance of that reality, and our genuine successes in handling vast economic affairs in a controlled way ought to have taught us something. True, we sank into a vast inertia of “normalcy” when the romance faded out. But we ought not to be confused because those least able to understand what had taken place were in control of the war settlements and have remained our responsible statesmen since.
The genuine and unforced culmination of those forces which the war brought to premature birth will occur in its own time. And at that time there must be a new kind of trust in economics and economists— not those economists who live among dogmas as dead as the Ptolemaic astronomy, and not those who, like the quacks they are, rush in to predict the turns of our majestic gambling device, Wall Street— but those who, like Randolph Bourne’s educated person, have sought to promote “interest and skill in work and an acquaintance with the contemporary world;” and have sought it faithfully in the manner of science, with a passion for its dissemination among their students, and a sense of responsibility for public policy.

(Page 95.) In time, I should say— perhaps it is almost true now— there will be no more vagueness in lay faces at the mention of economics than there is at a similar mention of mathematics or of chemistry.
And yet, though I have no doubt of its importance or its growth, I am still hesitant to say, in casual company, that I am an economist lest some one, more than usually malicious, ask me what that is. For it is difficult to define. . .
Here it seems pertinent to observe that economics is having an evolution toward matter-of-factness and away from abstruseness. This partly because facts, with our new measuring devices, become plainer; and partly because of distrust in the generalizations of the economists of an earlier day, who either proceeded from facts not now to be observed, or were guided by too grim a determination to defend existing institutions and privileges. . .
When we come to consider the characteristic content of contemporary economics this ought to become clearer.

Isonomia.US

LandGrab.US
Eminent Domain - Condemnation:
reduces Private Property to a priviledge,
and creates Nomads.