Review of the Book:
A Preface to Economics
by Broadus Mitchell
Benjamin W. Burger
[Reprinted from
Land and Freedom, November-December 1936]
Broadus Mitchell has been long and favorably known to followers of
Henry George. In 1931 he wrote a sympathetic and interesting account
of the Great Leader in the Dictionary of American Biography
(Volume 7).
At the Convention of the Henry George Foundation held in Baltimore in
October, 1931, he created favorable comment by his discussion of "Henry
George, The Teacher of Political Economy" (LAND AND FREEDOM,
November- December, 1931, page 173).
In the same year, also, he was among the petitioners who warned
President Hoover of the serious consequences we might expect from the
Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act.
Last year Professor Mitchell did not hesitate to make a forlorn race
for governor of Maryland under the Socialist banner.
I mention these facts only to show that Professor Mitchell may fairly
be called liberal in the best sense of that term. Since 1927 he has
been Associate Professor of Political Economy at The Johns Hopkins
University, itself a liberal institution. He is conspicuous among the
half-dozen professors in our colleges and universities who have given
sympathetic ear to the Georgeian philosophy and approached it with an
open mind. He has sincerely sought to understand it and, as this
reviewer can testify, has presented it fairly to his students.
It is clear that he does not believe that the scholar may not take
sides. He has convictions on controversial questions of the day, and
admits them. As Heywood Broun has written, "Spirited writing only
comes out of commitments, enthusiasms, and even prejudices." To
make commitments, to take sides, distinguishes Professor Mitchell from
most teachers of economics. That he does not see eye to eye with us is
beside the point.
He hazards the opinion (page 56, of A Preface to Economics) "that
the cue to world developments of today and tomorrow is found in the
teaching of Marx."
In his Baltimore address, to which I have already referred, he
confessed that he was only "in imperfect sympathy" with us.
"Mine is a position, right or wrong, with which you
are familiar in others. Henry George, the man, the spirit, the
intellectual force, I honor as much as you can. The positive
proposal to recover economic rent for the community I accept as
joyfully as you do. But that this one social act, unaccompanied and
unfollowed by others, will set us economically free, I do not
believe.
We Socialists are anxious about many things."
His book A Preface to Economics, published four years ago, is
unique. I mean exactly that. I can recall no other work which covers
the subject as does this book.
"Let us sit down and examine this subject of economics,"
Professor Mitchell seems to say.
"It is the very stuff of life, juicy and inviting. I
have tried to keep it so, in spite of summary treatment. The manner
of the book is informal, is sometimes flippant, and oftener descends
to pretty poor 'wise-cracking'. Your indulgence is asked in the
effort, however misconceived, to prevent you from going to sleep."
(Foreword.)
In keeping with his views expressed at the Baltimore Conference
"That nothing so lights up dry economic analysis as
biographies of the persons who thought about the same things to good
purpose."
Professor Mitchell pauses at intervals, to sketch the lives of Adam
Smith, Karl Marx, Henry George, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, John
Stuart Mill, and many others.
Having mentioned some points of approval, I must now refer to others
of disagreement. I shall quote passages from this book and briefly
show how they deviate from sound economic philosophy, as we conceive
it. No one could write a work on political economy, 574 pages in
length, without challenging Georgeian philosophy. But then no
Georgeist could write a book of half that number of pages without
causing other Georgeists to rise in protest.
ONE. Concerning the social sciences, which include, of course,
political economy, Professor Mitchell writes:
"Here all is in state of flux. Nothing is certain
but change. No principle is immutable, eternal." (Page 3.).
We disagree. Political economy is a science, a science as exact as
astronomy, mathematics, or biology. Its laws are fixed and unyielding;
otherwise, it would not be a science. The basic law of economics, that
men always seek to satisfy their wants with the least possible
exertion, is but a re-statement of the law of physics that force
follows the line of least resistance. In science, nothing is in flux.
To say otherwise, would be a contradiction of terms.
True, until we discover scientific laws, everything seems to be in
flux. Gravitation was a fact long before Newton. Natural laws exist,
whether or not we discover them. The confusion inheres, not in laws,
but in man's gropings to find laws. He discovers some phenomena and
presumes to formulate principles. Later he discovers other phenomena
which make it necessary to modify his earlier "laws." Here
there is "confusion, uncertainty; everything seems to be in flux."
As our knowledge grows and we attain fuller understanding, we
gradually discover laws.
The law that men seek to satisfy their wants with the least possible
exertion, like the law of supply and demand, the law of rent, and the
other laws of political economy is as immutable and impersonal as the
law of gravitation. Given a certain set of conditions, the laws of
political economy will act and react on those conditions always and
ever in the same way. This is the test of law. The laws of political
economy meet this test, and, therefore, confirm its right to be
classed among the sciences.
In short, has not Professor Mitchell confused the uncertainty
preceding the discovery of the laws of political economy, with the
science itself?
Two. Professor Mitchell's division of political economy into four
heads production, consumption, exchange and distribution (page 6) is
without scientific basis. Political economy deals with the production
and distribution of wealth. Distribution and exchange are but parts of
production. The object of production is consumption. The method
whereby production is translated into consumption is exchange.
"Distribution is in fact a continuation of
production the latter part of the same process of which production
is the first part. For the desire which prompts to exertion in
production is the desire for satisfaction, and distribution is the
process by which what is brought into being by production is carried
to the point where it yields satisfaction to desire which point is
the end and aim of production." (The Science of Political
Economy, by Henry George page 426 et seq.)
Production and distribution are in fact not separate things, but two
mentally distinguishable parts of one thing the exertion of human
labor in the satisfaction of human desire. Though materially
distinguishable, they are as closely related as the two arms of the
siphon. And as it is the outflow of water at the longer end of the
siphon that is the cause of the inflow of water at the shorter end, so
it is that distribution is really the cause of production, not
production the cause of distribution. In the ordinary course, things
are not distributed because they have been produced, but are produced
in order that they may be distributed. Thus interference with the
distribution of wealth is interference with the production of wealth,
and shows its effect in lessened production." (The Science of
Political Economy, by Henry George page 438 et seq.)
THREE. Likewise we must take exception to Professor Mitchell's
statement (page 8) that there are four factors in production land,
labor, capital and enterprise.
"Enterprise was brought forward two generations ago
particularly by an American, Francis A. Walker, as a result of
economic progress and differentiation in this country. Enterprise is
the function which unites the other factors in production, it is the
catalytic agent which brings the others together and makes them
undergo a transformation. Earlier economists had confused enterprise
with capital or labor, generally with the former. But when American
industry and commerce developed on a grand scale, it was seen that
land, labor, and capital were all really passive, and that
production was in need of the services of an inventive, directing
intelligence. Nature offered resources, labor in masses was ready to
take orders, commercial banks and investment houses afforded
capital. Production required in addition the function of imagination
and experience to combine the factors of land, labor, and capital
wisely to give a desired result. (Page 10.)
"The reasons for including enterprise as a fourth factor in
production are not as strong as they were several decades ago. The
enterpriser is essentially a figure in individualistic, competitive
business. Whatever renders the outcome of business activity more
predictable, whatever concentrates economic control, reduces the
number of enterprisers and diminishes the importance of the
enterprising function. Business mergers, trade associations, the use
of economic statistics, government interference and regulation are
all tendencies in this direction.
Under the head of production we shall study the ways in which the
factors work together to make wealth. The principles controlling the
reward which each factor receives will be studied under the head of
distribution. Thus, as has been said, land receives rent, labor is
paid wages, capital demands interest, and enterprise leads to
profits." (Page 11.)
Professor Mitchell has injected into the divisions of wealth the
mechanism whereby one of those divisions operates. Strictly speaking
labor applied to land produces all wealth. Enterprise is only a higher
form of labor. A, on the farm, with brawn, grows potatoes. B, in the
city, with brain, plans their marketing. With- out A's labor (seeding,
hoeing, weeding and harvesting) we could have no potatoes. Likewise
without B's intelligence in arranging for their transportation,
packing, financing and distribution to the ultimate consumer, there
would be no potatoes so far as the consumer is concerned. Both farmer
and brain-worker are essential if the potatoes are to reach the
consumer for whom, primarily, they are intended.
I have quoted Professor Mitchell on enterprise in extenso because, it
seems to me, that this is the first fork in the road where he deviates
from sound principle.
FOUR. Like all Socialists, Professor Mitchell opposes "the
profit motive" and "production for profit." (Page 498.)
"The competitive system substituted the motive of
production for private profit for that of production for public use
or benefit." (Page 40.)
"There have been, of course, many criticisms of the
competitive, profit-making system which relies upon chance, sows to
the wind and hopes against hope that we shall not reap the
hurricane." (Page 486.)
"We do not make and distribute and exchange things because
they are useful, but because we hope these activities will be
profitable in the money sense." (Page 503.)
"We need to produce in agreement with a rational scheme,
making things directly for use and not for profit." (Page 516.)
Political Economy recognizes no such terms as "profits" and
"production for profit." They have no scientific basis and
are meaningless to one accustomed to precision in speech.
When wealth is produced it must be distributed through three
channels, and only three channels. As labor, in primitive society
produced all wealth, labor alone was entitled thereto. This was its
natural wage.
Since capital (stored-up labor) in modern society, helps labor to
produce more wealth than labor otherwise could produce, capital,
obviously, is entitled to share with labor in the increased production
resulting from its use. This share we call interest. Socialists
loosely refer to it as profit, but, as already stated, political
economy designates it as interest and only interest.
(Not infrequently the use of capital is attended with risk; as where
there is uncertainty that the borrower will return the capital as and
when agreed. In that event, the lender exacts a premium for the risk
he is taking. This additional charge, clearly, is insurance, not
interest.)
Interest is the price paid for the use of capital. It is as much
justified as the wages paid to labor. When labor shall work without
wages, capital will work without interest.
Professor Mitchell and Socialists to the contrary, notwithstanding,
production for profit is not incompatible with the public interest.
(Page 484.) Competition among capitalists for users of capital (supply
and demand) prevents capital from receiving too great a return for its
use. If, during extraordinary times capital should receive, for even a
little while, a return out of keeping with the return of capital
generally, other capitalists enter the field and interest quickly
drops, for the law of supply and demand works twenty-four hours a day,
365)4 days a year.
Witness the condition of capital during the great depression.
Commercial loans have been almost at a standstill. Prime commercial
paper has commanded a rate scarcely more than 2 per cent. A short
twelve months ago banks were lending money on call at the record low
rate of one-quarter of one per cent.
Were lenders willingly making such loans, or had they been forced so
to do by vast accumulations of capital desperately seeking employment?
Just as labor has suffered unemployment, so has capital been in the
doldrums. This disproves the Socialist's contention that capital
thrives at the expense of labor. It is in harmony with the Georgeian
position that capital and labor are not antagonistic to each other but
that landlordism is the enemy of both.
Land monopoly, however, closely entwines itself around capital. This
is not only unnecessary but injurious to the effective functioning of
capital. If capitalism is to preserve itself from Communism and
Fascism it must promptly and completely disentangle itself from
monopoly. The issue is clear, Georgeism or state slavery.
In criticism of the profit system Professor Mitchell cites the case
of
"A merchant (who) ordered a stock of canned goods
which he was prepared to retail at 10 cents a can. He had hardly got
them arranged on his shelves when he found that he could get 12 or
15 cents each. These were the halcyon days for trade." (Page
475.)
Would not the converse also happen? Would not merchants offer other
products at 10 cents with no customers; so that they would be
compelled finally to offer them for 2 cents or 3 cents? These abnormal
situations have a way of averaging up. If bricklayers during the World
War find themselves receiving $20.00 daily they also find themselves
at the end of a war with no jobs whatsoever.
These abnormal situations are not inherent in the capitalist system
but arise out of extraordinary, unforseen circumstances, and are just
as likely to be disadvantageous as advantageous. Over a period of
years they iron themselves out.
FIVE. "But when all is said and done, the principle
which Malthus announced (that population if unchecked in some way
will outgrow the means of subsistence) has always been and always
will be sound. It represents a fact with which all human contrivance
must reckon." (Pages 18-19.)
Does Professor Mitchell really subscribe to the Malthusian doctrine?
Can he point to a single spot on this earth with its 2,000,000,000
inhabitants where people are starving because of the niggardliness of
nature? To be sure, there are places which seem inordinately crowded,
but that is quite a different thing from saying that the earth cannot
support them. Is not the problem one of distribution of wealth, and
only to a limited degree, better distribution of population?
The Island of Java, for example (probably the most .densely populated
spot on the earth), contains 816 people to the square mile or a total
population of 41,700,000.
This in an area no larger than the state of Alabama which has a
population of less than 3,000,000. All around Java are islands
comparatively unpopulated. Nearby Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes and New
Guinea, with a combined area ten times as large as Java, have a
population density of less than 28 people to the square mile.
"Java is like an overcrowded ship surrounded by
empty boats." (Fortune Magazine, December, 1934. (Page 79.)
Six. Professor Mitchell apparently believes that machinery causes
unemployment. He writes: (page 222)
"Machinery . . . has gone further, and reduced the
demand for workers generally."
And at page 294:
"America is right now (1932) suffering conspicuously
from 'technological unemployment', or the supplanting of human labor
by mechanical devices."
Most economists today are agreed that in the long run, machinery docs
not displace labor but increases the demand for labor. The very object
of machinery is to make production more efficient; to produce more
wealth at less cost per unit. If it failed to do this, it simply would
not justify its existence. If I recall correctly, a would-be patentee
is required to show in what respects his invention is superior to
machines already in use.
When wealth is produced more efficiently, which is the same as to say
when it has become cheaper, it comes into wider use. The sale of
cotton, for example, when it cost more than $1.00 a pound, as it used
to, was greatly restricted. The introduction of the cotton gin
increased its use ten thousand-fold. The introduction of the
automobile, while it has decreased the demand for horses, certainly
has created millions of new jobs for automobile mechanics, dealers in
gasoline, and the like, and has brought into existence tens of
thousands of road-houses and miles of greatly widened highways.
If Professor Mitchell were correct, how does he explain the increase
in factory workers from 41,000 per million in 1849 to 76,000 per
million in 1929, and their increase in wages from an average of
$237.00 annually in 1849 to $1314.00 in 1929? (See letter of Gus W.
Dyer, Professor of Economics, Vanderbilt University, to President
Roosevelt, dated July 13, 1936.) During this period of eighty years
thousands of inventions displaced labor, yet factory workers increased
over 50 per cent and their wages increased 500 per cent.
SEVEN. Professor Mitchell writes (page 488):
"The advertiser under a profit-making system does
not care, on the whole, whether his product is good, or good for
you, so long as he can make you want it enough to buy it."
This comment would be more in keeping with the facts had Professor
Mitchell qualified it by showing that true capitalism, like
Christianity, never really has been tried. A moment's thought shows
that in a normal capitalistic state the interest of the buyer and the
seller are not in conflict ; on the contrary, they are in harmony. A
buyer will purchase only what he needs; a seller will offer only what
is beneficial to the buyer. The seller will receive wages (erroneously
called "profits") for the services or commodities delivered
to the buyer; the latter will be benefited by their acquisition.
Should the seller attempt to overreach himself, the buyer will cease
to patronize him, and seek elsewhere in the competitive market to
satisfy his needs. Each party to the transaction must benefit;
otherwise he will not participate. An exchange of services like an
exchange of goods, must be mutually advantageous, otherwise it will
not be repeated.
Today, both buyer and seller, hard pressed by monopoly, find the
struggle to live exhausting. They are forced to resort to shady
practices. Our criminal records, bankruptcies, strikes, lockouts, and
wars, reveal only too painfully that something is wrong with our
economic system. No system can function properly if its workings are
constantly interfered with by extraneous forces. Competition, which is
the essence of capitalism, is weighted with monopoly, and can no more
manifest its virtues than a marathon runner dragging 50 pounds of iron
around his legs can show his true speed.
EIGHT. Professor Mitchell poses four interesting problems in rent.
(Page 285.)
The first reads:
"Off the coast of the 'Eastern Shore' of Virginia,
in the Atlantic Ocean, is an island called Chincoteague. It is said
that wages on the island are much higher than on the mainland. Can
you assign a cause connected with rent?"
Professor Mitchell answers as follows:
"The waters surrounding the island contain a lot of
fish. Since these waters are public property, nothing need be paid
for the privilege of fishing in them; that is, any man with rowboat
and line may pull up hard- heads, trout, and rock and no owner of
the fishing grounds meets him at the wharf to exact from him part of
his catch. So no man with any inclination for fishing will work for
less on the island than he can make on the water; in fishing he pays
no rent, and his earnings at that occupation are relatively high."
Professor Mitchell fails to state how the land constistituting the
island is held. He does not state whether "owners" claim to
own the island or whether the Georgian philosophy is in force. In the
former case, we submit that if the landlords be too lazy to meet the
fishermen at the wharf to seize their fish, in exchange for rent
receipts, they nevertheless will require the fishermen to hand over
their fish (or their money equivalent) on the first day of the
following month as rent for the privilege of living on what they call
"their" (landlord's) island.
Unless the fishermen lived on that island, or some nearby island,
they could not reach the fishing grounds. The very fact that the
island is close to fishing grounds reflects itself in the increased
value of the island. In other words, the "owners" of the
island charge as rent for nearness to opportunity to earn a
livelihood, "all the traffic will bear."
Professor Mitchell is in error, then, in implying that the fishermen
are relieved from the payment of rent because they go elsewhere to
earn their livelihood. He fails to perceive the universality of rent;
that even if one occupied only land and refrained from working it, one
must, nevertheless, pay a landlord, as rent, all one possesses except
only a bare subsistence. The alternative is to get off the earth.
NINE. "The apparent prosperity came to an end in the panic of
1819, which struck both Europe and America. This was the collapse
which regularly, sooner or later, follows war." (Page 240.)
Really, how can war, which means the destruction of wealth, lead to
economic collapse which means failure to produce wealth? Assuming that
in a natural economic order we had war (a most violent assumption)
would it not be followed by great activity (prosperity) to make up the
losses occasioned by war?
TEN. "Between the capitalist who furnished the means of working
and the laborers who fed the raw material to the machines, there was a
great gulf fixed. Machinery (the emblem of the capitalist) had
deprived the workers of their old independence and assigned them to
grinding taskwork, while their masters seemingly drew an income simply
by virtue of ownership." (Pages 411-412.)
Is not Professor Mitchell unfortunate in writing that the capitalist
furnished the means of working? Is he not thinking of natural
resources?
Also, how long has machinery "deprived the workers of their old
independence?" Can workers who depend on landlords for a place to
work, as Henry J. Foley has so aptly expressed it, ever enjoy
independence?
In a word, are not the faults which Professor Mitchell ascribes to
the capitalist system really due to land monopoly? Karl Marx, whom
Professor Mitchell admires, seemed to think so.
In "Das Kapital," quite innocently, he admitted that labor
could not be exploited until it had first been dispossessed from the
land.
ELEVEN. In a beautiful metaphor, worthy of a poet, Professor Mitchell
indicates the role that price plays in political economy.
"Our economic system may be compared to the span of
a steel bridge, where every part hangs upon every other part,
receiving thrusts and imparting thrusts. And the joints and rivets
and couplings, which expand and contract, hold fast or give way, are
forged of the delicate metal which we call price." (Page 504.)
This sound statement is vitiated elsewhere, as, for example, at page
336 where Professor Mitchell writes:
"Wages of women are lower than those of men mainly
because their choice of occupations is limited, and because they are
weaker bargainers than men." And at page 118:
"In actual economic life, prices are increasingly
con- trolled. The chief control of price is by monopoly."
Will Professor Mitchell refer us to a single commodity or service
which is monopolized? Even public utilities (which possess the
characteristics of a limited monopoly) find that customers will not
avail themselves of the service if their rates are too high. Price in
the last analysis is determined by the relation of supply to demand.
"The end is easily foretold,
When every blessed thing you hold
Is made of silver, or of gold,
You long for simple pewter.
When you have nothing else to wear
But cloth of gold and satins rare,
For cloth of gold you cease to care
Up goes the price of shoddy."
(Act II "The Gondoliers" by Gilbert and Sullivan.)
True, supply has attempted, and still attempts to fix price, but it
must always fail because it does not reckon with the second factor in
the equation, namely, demand. Even the price of a public service as
Professor Mitchell himself shows (page 120), is influenced by demand.
The United States Post Office Department is as near a monopoly as can
be conceived since it is a criminal offense offer to carry mail for
private profit. When, a few years ago, it attempted to raise postage
rates from two to three cents it quickly experienced lessened demand
for its services. Public utilities, for example, found it cheaper to
deliver bills by messenger; patrons generally began to economize. In
the case of mail-order houses, for example, the increase of 1 cent a
letter meant a tremendous increase in postage.
Every attempt to fix price from the time of the Egyptians down to the
Roosevelt Administration; every scheme to "regulate" or "stabilize"
prices of bread and coffee, to fix "minimum" wages; to
establish "just" prices for wheat and pigs and cotton by
destroying so-called "surpluses" has ended in dismal
failure. Men have yet to learn the hard lesson that they cannot
successfully interfere with natural law.
TWELVE. Professor Mitchell ranges himself alongside those who believe
in planning.
"A planned economy, forecasting demand and supply
with far greater accuracy than is possible in a scheme which makes
profit the criterion of production, would be able to make steadily
for stock, keep the requisite number of men and machines employed,
and feed them to consumption as goods were needed. (Page 490.)
We have individual greediness which knows no known cautionary
restraint. There is no forethought. Instead we suffer the penalties of
industrial collapse. There is no plan. All is left to chance, which
results as often unluckily as luckily. (Page 516.)
Concert of action according to deliberate plan must be substituted
for the present anarchy in production. . . . Remedies are doubtless
helpful, . . . but they do not touch the cause, which lies in the fact
of competition under acquisitive sanctions." (Page 517.)
Planned economy is incompatible with democracy, inevitably demands
increased power to make and influence its plans. It was no accident
that Congress delegated to President Roosevelt its functions; that was
necessary under the system he sponsored. Planning implies that one man
or a set of men in Washington are better qualified to direct the
production of wealth than millions of adult Americans scattered over
48 states.
What special qualifications for producing goods and services do
politicians and office-holders possess? It has been well said that
nature endowed no man, or group of men, with sufficient wisdom to
manage the economy of a large nation as well as it can be managed by
the individuals themselves. Assuming, however, that she did endow
Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin, with omniscience, what assurance is
there that she would breed equally wise successors?
State capitalism can never match private capitalism because of the
inefficiency inherent in the centralization of power and decision.
State capitalism smothers individualism, without which there can be no
spiritual and little cultural progress. A free people need no
government planning. They plan for themselves; they are better
qualified to determine what services need to be performed and what
wants need to be supplied.
The supreme intelligence already has "planned" for us. All
we need do, is to discover the natural laws governing the production
and distribution of wealth and make our laws conform thereto. The
natural law of distribution is that the producer shall be paid all
that he produces; man-made law violates this by permitting a
non-producer (land owner) to absorb a portion of wealth which the land
"owner" has had no part in producing. This is the basic
injustice which we must correct.
THIRTEEN. "The socialist wants, in the end, the
maxi- mum of individual development and the freest individual
expression. But he feels that this is to be attained only through a
preliminary sinking of the individual in the collectivist
undertaking." (Page 558.)
The socialist's claim that he believes in freedom is specious, so
long as he advocates state ownership and control of the means of
production and distribution. Such a programme implies a wider, and
constantly wider, extension of governmental interference in the
production of wealth. It is inevitable that where the State constantly
seeks to extend its power over more and more of the area which the
world has come to recognize as private business (the production and
distribution of wealth), it must do so at the expense of those now
engaged in the same field. This explains such cases of tyranny as N.
R. A., under which a Jersey City tailor was sentenced to thirty days'
imprisonment and fined $100.00 for offering to press a suit of clothes
for 35 cents instead of 40 cents; such examples of legislation as the
law which forbids competition with the Post Office Department and the
law which forbids officials of airplane companies dealing with the
government receiving greater salaries annually than $17,500,
regardless of their services.
The fundamental instinct of humanity is individual freedom. We are
individuals of infinite varieties, personalities, capabilities,
inclinations and needs. Each of us possesses the itch for personal
self-realization and self- dominion. This itch to weave our own
patterns in life and to be entities, not cogs, gives rise to the
competitive spirit which Socialism, Communism, and Fascism denounce
but which, under natural law, is essential to the maintenance of
social harmony.
Autocracies have generally tried to thwart individualism and the
competitive spirit and prevent it from functioning freely and
naturally. They point to the mess we are in as confirmation of their
belief that the competitive system has failed. In truth, of course, it
has never fairly been tried.
Our instinct to carve our own destinies according to our own patterns
is deep-seated. There is no substitute for our desire to work out our
own salvation. Expression is life; repression, death. Expression
attained through mastery is the prime essential of life. It can never
be attained by Socialistic, Communistic, or Fascist methods. Freedom
for all can flower only in the garden of equality of opportunity
wherein we distinguish between public and private property and respect
the sanctity of each, a distinction which no country in the world has
yet recognized. We regret that Professor Mitchell has not made more
clear these fundamental distinctions. We trust he will, in a future
book, take note of them. Then will he be acclaimed the author of a
truly great work on the "Queen of the Sciences."
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