Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/756

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740 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

rather than in terms of obsolete conventionality. The industrial world of the living Rothschilds and Morgans and Carnegies and Van - derbilts, the world of railroad systems and clearing houses and legis- lative lobbies and trusts and trade unions is a world in which Adam Smith would not readily find himself. Professor Hadley has not attempted to fit descriptions of ancient combinations to present con- ditions, he has tried to explain the relations of modern industrial factors to each other. He has done his work splendidly. He is clear, precise, and thorough. Mastery of this account of modern industries would transform some of our prominent social rhapsodists into philosophers with at least this potentiality of science perception of some things as they are, in the world where their alchemy hopes to find a vocation. No one is justified in accepting, still less in cre- ating a theory or programme of social change until he understands the things which this book explains. No other book has given an equally compact and intelligible interpretation.

Nevertheless, Professor Hadley has made one serious mistake. His alternative title is an entire misnomer. It is not in harmony with the first sentence of his preface, "This book is an attempt to apply the methods of modern science to the problems of modern business." The author succeeds in this attempt, but in so doing he entirely neglects "the relations between private property and public welfare," except as the industrial system is a factor of public welfare. The relations chiefly expounded are those between private wealth and pub- lic or general wealth ; or perhaps rather between private wealth and the effective operation of the present industrial system. A thinker so modern in spirit as Professor Hadley need not be told that while private wealth or public wealth is a condition of welfare, neither is the synonym of welfare. The perception is in the thought of the author (e. g., 26), but it is not sufficiently in the book to justify the descrip- tion on the title page. Confusion of wealth and welfare is a mistake only slightly less anachronistic than the notion that money alone is wealth. No single discrimination so distinctly marks the difference between the economic and the sociological view point. Since eco- nomics deals primarily with wealth, and sociology aims primarily to learn the conditions of welfare, failure to distinguish the concepts obstructs and confuses both, and retards adjustment of thought between economists and sociologists.

ALBION W. SMALL.