to the facts of life, and modified or abandoned if it will not bear examination, unless we are convinced on genuine evidence that it may for a time be employed as a useful approximation, without prejudice to the later stages of the investigation we are conducting. An illustration of economic method. We shall best illustrate the character and method of economic reasoning by examples, and for that purpose let us take first of all a purely historical problem, namely, the effect on the wage-earners of the wages clauses of the Statute of Apprenticeship (1563). It is at once obvious that we are dealing not with an abstract scheme of regulation in a hypothetical world, but with an act of parliament nominally in force for two hundred and fifty years, and applicable to a great variety of trades whose organization and history can be ascertained. The conclusions we reach may or may not modify any opinions we have formed as to the manner in which wages are determined under modern conditions. For the time being such opinions are irrelevant to the question we are investigating, and the less they are in our minds the better. There is no reason why we should apply to this particular act a different method of inquiry from that we should apply to any other of the numerous acts, of more or less economic importance, passed in the same session of parliament. The first step is to see whether there is a _prima facie_ case for inquiry, for many acts of parliament have been passed which have never come into operation at all, or have been administered only for a short time on too limited a scale to have important or lasting results. The justices were authorized to fix wages at the Easter quarter sessions. Did they exercise their powers? To answer this question we must collect the wages assessments sanctioned by the magistrates. This is a perfectly simple and straightforward operation, involving nothing more than familiarity with records and industry in going through them. Without having recourse to any elaborate process of economic reasoning, by confining our attention to one simple question, namely, what happened, we can establish conclusions of the greatest interest to economic historians and, further, define the problem we have to investigate. We can show, for example: (1) that the Statute of Apprenticeship did not stand alone; it was one of a long series of similar measures, beginning more than two centuries before, which in their turn join on to the municipal and gild regulations of the middle ages; one of an important group of statutes, more or less closely interwoven throughout their history, administered by local authorities whose functions had grown largely in connexion with this legislation and the gradual differentiation of the trades and callings to which it related. (2) That wages were regulated with much greater frequency during the reigns of Elizabeth, James I. and Charles I. than at any later period. (3) That they were regulated in some