FOOTNOTES:
[179] Social Organization, p. 264.
[180] Professor J. R. Commons has made some interesting comments in a note ("Political Economy and Business Economy," Quar. Jour. Econ., Nov., 1907), as to the extent to which intangible objects have come to have economic value. The legal and psychical nature of such values is, of course, very manifest.
[181] Moral values, like economic values, in the sense in which I use the term here, are actual facts, and not mere ideals. A moral value is a value, to the extent that it is an effective power in motivation, to the extent that the social will backs it up, and punishes with its disapproval and with the subtle penalties which social disapproval involves, infractions of the moral standard in question. I am not here passing judgment on moral values themselves in the light of any ideal standard, but simply describing the manner in which moral values function.
[182] Intrinsically, there is no more reason why the economist should concern himself with measuring quantitatively the effect of tariff laws than with a similar treatment of other legal values. Tariffs do not affect industry any more intimately than hosts of other laws. The obvious reason why the economic laws of taxation have been worked out and the others ignored, in our economic analyses, is that the tax laws, being themselves expressed in money terms, are more easily handled by the economist.