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