It is, indeed, a common contention in scholastic Economic circles that the science of Economics is not governed by natural law as the physical sciences are. The answer would seem to be conclusive, in so far as that contention is true, that Economics cannot be a science at all. Nor are some of the Economics of modern universities strictly scientific. They disclose a tendency to confuse business customs with Economic science as if they were identical. This characteristic of those “business colleges” of a previous generation seems to have charmed the “scientific” Economists of some of our universities. But Economic science and business customs or arts are not identical. Business arts and customs which conflict with natural Economic law are as certain to culminate in disaster as is the life of a man who, approaching a wide and deep chasm, attempts to walk across it without a bridge. Such a bridge cannot be created, it must be produced in accordance with natural physical law. The same is true of Economic processes. As physical science cannot create, but can only discover and apply natural physical laws, neither can Economics create, but must be content to discover and apply natural Economic laws. The contention that Economics is not subject to natural law may be fairly regarded as a lineal descendant of the social doctrine that there are no natural rights in human relationships, but that human rights are only conventional. This is the lawless and vicious doctrine upon which slavery and every other form of social larceny have rested, from that form which held the Forty Thieves together, to that modern policy of “get what you can and keep what you get.” Economists who can offer any other effective process for satisfying Economic desires than by the production of Artificial Objects from and upon Natural Resources and in accordance with natural laws, Economic as well as physical, would thereby kill every inference that may be correctly drawn from any contention in these pages. But until that miracle has been performed it behooves all advanced students of Economics to think, and to think clearly, without active prejudice or indolent confusion, upon the natural phenomena of the Economic realm. Give to those phenomena whatever name you please--my name for them is “natural law”--the fact nevertheless remains, a Basic Fact in Economics, that no Man nor any number of Men can produce Artificial Objects to or from any stage of the productive process except from and upon Natural Resources. Natural law in Economics is not comparable with “common law” in the sense of a coordination and sanctioning of social customs. Nor is it “business law” in the sense of a clutter of commercial customs. And of course it is not “statutory law” in the sense of commands from political authorities to obedient citizens. In Economic science, as in every other science or art worthy the name, natural law uniformly and inexorably governs the relationship of cause and effect.