Asiatics, Europeans, Africans, Americans, Australians—all people who follow the movement of events realize that the crisis confronting the capitalist world is a serious one. Informed men like J.M. Keynes and Frank Vanderlip believe that the situation is perilous. While many persons see that something is wrong, and while some see what is wrong, there is a great diversity of opinion as to the remedies that should be adopted. What most of the writers fail to see, or at least to realize, is that economic organization is the basis—the only possible basis—for the reconstruction of the world.
The time has passed when political readjustments will meet the world situation. The events accompanying the industrial revolution have hammered the world into a closely knit economic whole, and until this fact is understood, and made the basis of world thought and world building, there can be no permanent solution of the world's problems.
The present chaos in world relations cannot be met and settled by war, legislation, diplomacy or any similar means. All of the steps in these fields imply some adjustment of political relationships, and it is the economic institutions rather than the political institutions of the world that are in need of constructive effort.
If a town is suffering from a break in the water-main, there are two things that may be done! The old pipe may be patched or a new pipe may be put in its place. It is sometimes possible for the engineers to patch the old main temporarily, while they are getting in a new one. The same situation confronts the people of the world. Their economic life is disorganized and chaotic. Shall it be reorganized along old lines, slightly modified in the light of experience, or shall it be built on fundamentally different lines?
[3] "Engineering is the science of controlling the forces and of utilizing the materials of nature for the benefit of man, and the art of organizing and directing human activities in connection therewith." (Resolution of the Engineering and Allied Technical Societies in creating the Federated American Engineering Societies. "Waste in Industry" 1921, p. IV).
III. ECONOMIC FOUNDATIONS
When a town or a city decides to repair a water system or to replace an old system by a new one, the plans are made and the work is carried on in accordance with the soundest principles known to the engineering profession. There are communities which neglect their water systems, and which suffer accordingly. But for the most part, the water supply is looked upon as so vital a factor in the common life that no pains are spared to have it reflect the last word in sanitation and efficiency.
The same reasoning must apply to the economic machinery upon which a community depends for the supply of its necessaries and comforts. Economic life touches every home. No human being who eats food, wears clothes, lives in a house, rides on street cars or reads papers and books can escape its all pervasive influence. Therefore when changes are made in an established system of economic life, or when a new economic system is substituted for an old one, it behooves the people concerned to see that the work of reorganization is done in accordance with the soundest known principles of social science.