y of
distribution in objective factors,--partly in the chemical qualities
of the soil, partly in labor, partly in the costs (or outlays) of the
employing class. The psychological factor in value had been almost
eliminated from this older treatment of value and price, or at best
was imperfectly recognized under the name of "utility." The newer
school made the psychological element primary in the positive
treatment of economic principles, and launched a negative criticism
against the older terms and ideas that effectively exposed their
unsoundness considered separately and their inconsistency as a system
of economic thought. Both the negative criticisms and the proposed
amendments taken one by one gained wide acceptance among economists.
But when it came to embodying them in a general theory of economics,
many economists have balked.[33] Most of the American texts in
economics and much of our teaching show disastrous effects of this
confusion and irresolution. The newer concepts, guardedly admitted to
have some validity, appear again and again in the troubled discussions
of recent textbook writers, which usually end with a rejection, "on
the whole," of the logical implications of these newer concepts. Many
teachers thus have lost their grip on any coordinating theory of
distribution. They no longer have any general economic philosophy. The
old Ricardian cock-sureness had its pedagogic merits. Without faith,
teaching perishes. The complaints of growing difficulty in the
teaching of the introductory course seem to have come particularly
from teachers that are in this unhappy state of mind. They declare
that it is impossible longer to interest students successfully in a
general theoretical course, and they are experimenting with all kinds
of substitutes--de-nicotinized tobacco and Kaffee Hag--from which
poisonous theory has been extracted. At the same time, economics "with
a punch in it," economics "with a back bone," is being taught by
strong young teachers of the new faith more successfully, perhaps,
than economics has ever been taught in the past. This greater question
of the teacher's conception of economics dominates all the minor
questions of method. Economics cannot be taught as an integrated
course in principles by teachers without theoretical training and
conceptions; in such hands its treatment is best limited to the
descriptive phases of concrete special problems,--valuable, indeed, as
a background and basis, but