The Forgotten Man, and Other EssaysSumner, William Graham
Science
The Forgotten Man, and Other Essays
Sumner, William Graham
Economics; Social sciences
the suppressed condition is: “if they insist on staying and seeking
support where they are and in pursuits to which they are accustomed.”
The hardships of change are not for one moment to be denied, but
nothing is gained by sitting down to whine about them. The sentimental
reasons for clinging to one’s birthplace may be allowed full weight,
but they cannot be allowed to counterbalance important advantages. I do
not see that any but land owners are interested to hold population in
certain places, unless possibly we add governing classes and those who
want military power. When I read declamations about nationality and the
importance of national divisions to political economy (observe that I
do not say to political science), I never can find any sense in them,
and I am very sure that the writers never put any sense into them.
We may now return to consider the remedies proposed for hard times. We
shall see that although they are quack remedies, and although they set
at defiance all the economic doctrines which have been so laboriously
established during the last century, they are fitted to meet the
difficulty as it presents itself to land owners, governments, military
powers, socialists, and sentimentalists. The tendency is towards an
industrial system controlled by a natural coöperation far grander than
anybody has ever planned, towards a community of interest and welfare
far more beneficent than any universal republic or fraternity of labor
which the Internationalists hope for, and towards a free and peaceful
rivalry amongst nations in the arts of civilization. It is necessary to
stop this tendency. What are the means proposed?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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