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insisted, concerns itself with the creation of wealth irrespective of who shall receive this wealth, though this is properly assumed to be those who create it. It narrows down there- fore to the question of earnings and profits. It deals with wages, salaries, dividends, receipts and expenditures as related to each other, and marginal values. The class considered is the earner in the widest sense of the term. It is the makers, those who increase the value, and the sellers or disposers of goods, with whom economics has to do. The primary question in each case is: Is the business a success? If it is not it must go down. The buyer, the user, the enjoyer, the consumer, is left out of the account. " Political economy .... has nothing to do with the consumption of wealth, further than as the con- sideration of it is inseparable from that of production, or from that of distribution." 1 In sharp contrast to this, sociology is exclusively concerned with the destination of wealth, in so far as it deals with wealth. It is no more interested in the benefit that the producer receives than in that which it confers on any other class. If a business, no matter how "successful," is injurious, it is a failure from the standpoint of sociology. And in broader national affairs it is not a question whether a policy is or is not a source of revenue to the state, but whether it is a benefit to the public. Thus in the question of taxation, of whatever kind, soci- ology is not concerned with its " fiscal " effects, but with its " social " effects. A tariff, if defended, is so not because it proves a successful and easy way to raise revenue, but because it diversifies and elevates population. 3
It is true that certain modern economists have insisted more or less that consumption should be regarded as a legitimate sub- ject of economic study. I gave a brief history of this movement in economic thought in a former paper,* treating it as an advance
- JOHN STUART MILL, Essay* tm Some I'usettled Questions of Political Economy,
London, 1844, p. 132, footnote.
I once made a studv estion which appeared under the title: "The
Sociological Position c Trade," American Anthropologist, Wash-
ington. V..I. II, No. 4, October 1889, pp. 280-299.
3 Political Science Quarter r 1895, pp. 215-217.
