Some human problems are for the individual to solve, as, whether it is better to go to school or to go to work, to choose this occupation or that, to emigrate or to stay at home. Other problems of wider bearing concern the whole family group; others, still wider, concern the local community, the state, or the nation. In each of these there are more or less mingled economic, political and ethical aspects. Economics in the broad sense includes the problems of individual economy, of domestic economy, of corporate economy, and of national economy. In this volume, however, we are to approach the subject from the public point of view, to consider primarily the problems of "political economy," considering the private, domestic, and corporate problems only insomuch as they are connected with those of the nation or of the community as a whole. Our field comprises the problems of national wealth and of communal welfare. What then are our politico-economic problems in America? They are problems that are economic in nature because they concern the way that wealth shall be used and that citizens are enabled to make a living; but that are likewise political, because they can be solved only collectively by political action. § 2. #American economic problems in the past.# With the first settlements of colonists on this continent politico-economic problems appeared. Take, for example, the land policy. Each group of colonists and each proprietary landholder had to adopt some method of land tenure whether by free grant or by sale of separate holdings or by leasing to settlers. In one way and another these questions were answered, but rapidly changing conditions soon forced upon men the reconsideration of the problem as the old solution ceased to be satisfactory.