ALTERNATIVES SEEN AS BASIC ECONOMIC FACTS 195 
be possible to study human society in a scientific spirit and by 
scientific methods, and I had resolved to attempt to do at least 
that. My interest in economics was at first wholly practical. A 
trifling contribution that I made to newspaper discussion of the 
protective tariff happened to be read by David A. Wells who 
wrote me a kindly letter and sent me a generous gift of his 
publications. Professor Arthur Latham Perry also wrote to me 
and his text book was my first systematic reading in Political 
Economy. Subsequently, to qualify myself as best I could for 
editorial writing I read Francis A. Walker on The Wages Question 
and on Money, and Jevons on Money and the Mechanism of 
Exchange. After that I worked through Adam Smith, Ricardo, 
Cairnes, and Jevons. That was my mental preparation for the 
stimulation which I was destined to get from Clark. So almost 
I was persuaded to be an economist. I taught economies for six 
years at Bryn Mawr College, and at Barnard College three years 
more, after I had joined the Columbia Faculty. The man who 
more than any other was responsible for holding me to sociology 
was that prince of counsellors, the lamented Herbert B. Adams. 
But that is another story, which I must not linger over here. 
When I was compelled by the limitations of human energy to 
curtail my working day and to discontinue writing on economic 
topics, my scheme of theory was left at loose ends. All that I 
attempt now as my small contribution to this Festschrift is to 
show, with extreme brevity, that these threads weave together in 
a pattern. 
I conceive the pattern as emerging from certain alternatives of 
practical choice and behaviour by which man in his struggle for 
betterment is confronted; and the alternatives I see as basic 
economic facts, upon which economic theory must build. 
The first of these alternatives curtly stated is, Be helped or 
perish; or, yet more curtly put in the tart language of slang, “Be 
cared for or be done for.” 
From the standpoint of the classical economics this proposition 
is rank heresy. To the late William Graham Sumner, whose 
hard-headedness was almost genius, it was anathema. Man he 
admonished us, can have nothing to enjoy or to save one moment 
before he has earned it. But look at the most obvious facts. 
The chick can “scratch gravel” and begin to pick up digestible 
bits a few hours after breaking its shell. The human infant must