in the solution of the
economic and social problems of the present day. The last fifty years
have witnessed a reaction against the scientific abstractions of the
classical economists, and modern thinkers are growing more and more
dissatisfied with an economic science which leaves ethics out of
account.[1] Professor Sidgwick, in his _Principles_ _of Political
Economy_, published in 1883, devotes a separate section to 'The Art
of Political Economy,' in which he remarks that 'The principles of
Political Economy are still most commonly understood even in England,
and in spite of many protests to the contrary, to be practical
principles--rules of conduct, public or private.'[2] The many
indications in recent literature and practice that the regulation of
prices should be controlled by principles of 'fairness' would take too
long to recite. It is sufficient to refer to the conclusion of Devas
on this point: 'The notion of just price, worked out in detail by the
theologians, and in later days rejected as absurd by the classical
economists, has been rightly revived by modern economists.'[3] Not
alone in the sphere of price, but in that of every other department
of economics, the impossibility of treating the subject as an abstract
science without regard to ethics is being rapidly abandoned. 'The best
usage of the present time,' according to the _Catholic Encyclopaedia_,
'is to make political economy an ethical science--that is, to make it
include a discussion of what ought to be in the economic world as well
as what is.'[4] We read in the 1917 edition of Palgrave's _Dictionary
of Political Economy_, that 'The growing importance of distribution as
a practical problem has led to an increasing mutual interpenetration
of economic and ethical ideas, which in the development of economic
doctrine during the last century and a half has taken various forms.'
[5] The need for some principle by which just distribution can be
attained has been rendered pressing by the terrible effects of a
period of unrestricted competition. 'It has been widely maintained
that a strictly competitive exchange does not tend to be really
fair--some say cannot be really fair--when one of the parties is
under pressure of urgent need; and further, that the inequality of
opportunity which private property involves cannot be fully justified
on the principle of maintaining equal freedom, and leads, in fact, to
grave social injustice.'[5] In other words, the present