In consequence, economic investigation in the United States, although pursued with unexampled activity, has been almost exclusively historical or institutional, on the one hand, and local or intensive, on the other. Of extensive economic investigation, economic induction in the proper sense of the term, little has been attempted and less achieved. The historical evolution of economic institutions as revealed in more or less accessible records, the functional activity of economic organizations as displayed in limited areas these have defined the scientific activity of the ordinary economist. Of the comprehensive study of the history, structure and functions of any actual part of the economic organism, we have had infrequent example.

In the field of local finance, for example, we have had, on the one hand, faithful historical studies of the finances of particular States and cities and of particular fiscal institutions, and, on the other hand, we have been given intelligent analyses of the present financial status of specific localities. But the investigator has probably not yet attempted-understand, I do not say completedan exhaustive study of local finance in the United States, in the spirit in which we may conceive the chemist or the physicist approaching a corresponding problem. Similarly, the institutional history of the negro in certain States has been traced, and his present status in certain limited localities has been described. But the larger subject, the negro in the United States, taken in its scientific entirety, is still untouched.

Turn where we will, a similar condition prevails. Railroad transportation, trade-unionism, taxation, industrial combinations, tariffs as fields of investigation-have been approached only fragmentarily, historically or locally. Brought face to face with extensive subject-matter, economists have shown the white feather, and solaced their souls in the thought that comprehensive study of any important economic institution might properly be postponed until such number of detailed monographs, dealing with specific aspects of the subject, have been completed as will permit full exposition and safe generalization.

Monographs have multiplied; doctoral dissertations have accumulated, and the progress of economic science, as judged by results, has been imperceptible. The experience of twenty years seems to suggest that the prime usefulness of intensive economic studies is educational and local, and that variety of approach, disVOL. OLXXX.-NO. 579. 17

tinctness of treatment, change of environment are grave qualifications under existing conditions, of the value, and certainly of the economy, of large reliance upon this monographic method of economic investigation.

The proposition which I venture to submit is that the time has now arrived when, without any necessary cessation of historical and local studies, the economic investigator-and, in particular, the economic investigator in the United States,-if he is to attain his highest scientific possibility, must adopt a larger mode of inquiry, a mode analogous to that employed by the physical scientist, and described as extensive or experimental rather than intensive or institutional. He must derive his subject-matter not from past history alone, nor from the present experience of restricted localities; but he must observe and collate the phenomena under consideration from an area practically co-extensive with their manifestation; he must interpret each group of facts in the light of the conditions prevailing in that particular place; and he must test the uniformities revealed by reference, as tentative hypotheses, to conditions in still other localities.

If he is attempting safe and useful generalizations, he must consider, for example, the taxation of corporations not by one State, but by every State. He must study the structure and functions of trades-unions, not with respect to a handful of labor organizations and a few convenient cities, but in the light of the policy and practice, declared and actual, of every important national labor-union, as displayed in many representative localities. In a word, the basis of economic induction must henceforth be, to a much greater degree than heretofore, qualitative data, amassed as deliberately and laboriously as chemical or physical data are collected by the natural scientist in his laboratory, and approximating in comprehensiveness the quantitative material the public statistician makes available with increasing efficiency.

The successful conduct of economic investigation along the extensive or experimental course thus outlined involves the use of a group of workers, instead of the individual student, as the unit of research. Until such time as the number of independent investigators will have greatly multiplied, the well-equipped department of Political Economy in the University will, naturally, be the prime agent of scientific activity. Such an economic laboratory or seminary will include not only a directing and teaching staff

and a body of students actually in residence, but affiliated workers in the field and associated beneficiaries of subventions desirous of operating from an academic base. A particular body of contemporary economic phenomena will be selected for collective, rather than cooperative, investigation; and specific aspects thereof will be assigned to individual workers for research in accordance with an organic plan. A student showing special interest in or capacity for investigation along lines other than that selected for collective effort, will be encouraged to follow his particular bent; otherwise, his energies will be directed, by deliberate assignment, to the seminary topic. Class instruction and the use of bibliographical and documentary materials will serve as the preparation for systematic laboratory and field work.

In regard to books and documents, the investigator must be able to command, in addition to ordinary library apparatus, all primary documentary material relevant to his inquiry, whether it be as ephemeral as municipal reports and trade-union journals, or as unobtainable by formal request as trade agreements and corporation records. Similarly, he must be able to publish the results of his investigations in the precise form which scientific fidelity or practical usefulness demands, without regard to their commercial attractiveness or to the limited resources of existing scientific agencies. A more liberal policy of library administration and a more intelligent appreciation of the proper relation of publication to investigation in the social sciences, have improved conditions in the past few years, as to these two requisites.

It is with respect to field and experimental work that the occasion for largest change exists. Extensive investigation, as distinct from historical study and local inquiry, must bear the same relation to Political Economy that field-work does to Geology and the clinic does to Medicine. The immediate environment will first be utilized as an economic laboratory for the development of scientific spirit in economic study and sound method in economic research, and as the field from which bases of working hypotheses may be derived. Thereafter, the investigator will extend the range of his inquiry by visits to, and even residence in, representative localities, with a view to collecting wider and more varied data and to testing tentative conclusions.

Such a procedure involves two essentials: leisure and resources. The investigator's time and energy, if not entirely available for

scientific inquiry, must certainly not be unduly absorbed by the routine engagements of the student or the teacher. To the extent that he is still a student or instructor in academic attendance, opportunity for extensive inquiry must come with greater prominence of field-work and laboratory exercise in economic instruction. Economic teaching can properly harken to the message of the physical sciences, that the ideal of student training is less the accumulation of detail than the development of a mode of thought. An association, of course; a reduction of lecture attendance; a unification of seminaries; and, most important of all, the utilization of the long summer recess for field-work-will ordinarily effect an economy of time which will make possible that amount of experimental inquiry demanded both by student development and scientific progress.

With respect to resources, the investigator must be in command of funds sufficient to enable him to visit and, upon certain occasions, temporarily to reside in representative localities for the purpose of gathering additional evidence and of testing and verifying tentative conclusions. To some extent, such funds can be made available by a modification of the fellowship system, the original purpose of which, the attraction of students to postgraduate study, has ceased to be necessary, and the further extension of which along existing lines threatens serious evils. Beyond this, aid may be anticipated from cooperation with governmental agencies and with endowed institutions of research. But, most of all, university authorities must recognize that "investigation funds" are as essential to scientific activity in Political Economy as laboratory apparatus is to Chemistry and clinical provision to Medicine. It seems reasonably safe to venture the opinion that less and less will lack of material resources operate as a handicap, and that, as long as the method be sound and truth light the way, economic investigation will probably receive as generous an equipment as the economic investigator desires.

In short, I urge a closer parallelism in method of investigation between Political Economy and Physical Science. Comparative study can fairly well replace deliberate experiment. Beyond this, we need but a larger equipment and a common spirit. Heretofore, the economist has adapted his method to his resources. Let him now demand resources, made necessary by this method. JACOB H. HOLLANDER.

BIOGRAPHY.

BY WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER.

BIOGRAPHY is that branch of history which has been cultivated least successfully. The annals of civilization cover twenty-five centuries, but how few are the first-rate biographies! Is this because Biography is the final product of History, as Portraiture is of Painting?

Plutarch, the supreme ancient biographer, flourished at the close of Rome's imperial expansion, long after the golden age of Greece had become only a memory. He drew the portraits of the most conspicuous public men of seven centuries, with an art so excellent that he can still teach us much. He opens to our view not only the individual careers which made and unmade empires, but also the familiar concerns of classical antiquity, the life of the household and shop and market, the anecdotes, the superstitions, the customs and rites. Had Plutarch's books been lost, we should have lost more of the human than Thucydides, Livy and Tacitus could ever supply.

So, too, the Old Testament has gained its immense hold over later peoples, not merely because it contains the religion of the Jews, but because it abounds in biography. Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Saul, David, Joshua, and how many more, are drawn with such unsurpassed fidelity that a child recognizes the lifelikeness and a philosopher wonders at the perfection with which they typify phases of universal human nature. Can we suppose that, if the tale of our modern biographies were closed, we should hand down to readers two thousand years hence such treasures as we find in the Old Testament and in Plutarch?

And yet individuality never took more varied shapes, it was never more interesting, than in the nineteenth century, which produced specimens of almost every type known to earlier ages,