Regarding the present visible disintegration of the family, and the closely related "woman question," Professor Schmoller's observations are of much the same texture. He notes the growing disinclination to the old-fashioned family life on the part of the working population, and shows that there are certain economic causes for this growth or deterioration of sentiment. What he has to offer is made up of the commonplaces of latter-day social-economic discussion, and is charged with a strong undertone of deprecation. What the trend of the causes at work to alter or fortify this body of sentiment may be, counts for very little in what he says on the present movement or on the immediate future of the institution. The best he has to offer on the "woman question" is an off-hand reference of the ground of sentiment on which it rests to a recrudescence of the eighteenth century spirit of égalité. This notion of the equality of the sexes he refutes in graceful and affecting terms, and he pleads for the unbroken preservation of woman's sphere and man's primacy; as if the matter of superiority or inferiority between the sexes could conceivably be anything more than a conventional outcome of the habits of life imposed upon the community by the circumstances under which they live. How it has come to pass that under the economic exigencies of the past the physical and temperamental diversity between the sexes has been conventionally construed into a superiority of the man and an inferiority of the woman,—on this head he has no more to say or to suggest than on the correlate question of why this conventional interpretation of the facts has latterly not been holding its ancient ground. The discussion of the family and of the relation of the sexes, in modern culture, is marked throughout by unwillingness or inability to penetrate behind the barrier of conventional finality.
The discussion of the family just cited occupies the opening chapter of Book II. For a further instance of Professor Schmoller's handling of a modern economic problem, reference may be had to the closing chapter of Book I., on the "Development of Technological Expedients and its Economic Significance," but more particularly the sections (84-86) on the modern machine industry (pp. 211-228). In this discussion, also, the point of interest is the attention given to the latter-day phenomena of machine industry, and the author's method and animus in dealing with them. There is (pp. 211-218) a condensed and competent presentation of the main characteristics of the modern "machine age," followed (pp. 218-228) by a critical discussion of its cultural value. The customary eulogy, but with more than the customary discrimination, is given to the advantages of the régime of the machine in point of economy, creature comforts, and intellectual sweep; and it is pointed out how the régime of the machine has brought about a redistribution of wealth and of population and a reorganisation and redistribution of social and economic structures and functions. It is pointed out (p. 223) that the gravest social effect of the machine industry has been the creation of a large class of wage laborers. The material circumstances into which this class has been thrown, particularly in point of physical comfort, are dealt with in a sober and discriminating way; and it is shown (p. 224) that in the days of its fuller development the machine's régime has evolved a class of trained laborers who not only live in comfort, but are sound and strong in mind and body. But with the citation of these facts the pursuit of the chain of cause and effect in this modern machine situation comes to an end. The remainder of the space given to the subject is occupied with extremely sane and well-advised criticism, moral and æsthetic, and indications of what the proper ideals and ends of endeavor should be.
Professor Schmoller misses the opportunity he here has of dealing with this material in a scientific spirit and with some valuable results for economic theory. He could, it is not too bold to assume, have sketched for us an effective method and line of research to be pursued, for instance, in following up the scientific question of what may be the cultural, spiritual effects of the machine's régime upon this large body of trained workmen, and what this body of trained workmen in its turn counts for as a factor in shaping the institutional growth of the present and the economic and cultural situation of to-morrow. Work of this kind, there is reason to believe, Professor Schmoller could have done with better effect than any of his colleagues in the science; for he is, as already noticed above, possessed of the necessary qualifications in the way of psychological training, broad knowledge of the play of cause and effect in cultural growth, and an ability to take a scientific point of view. Instead of this he harks back again to the dreary homiletical waste of the traditional Historismus. It seems as if a topic which he deals with as an objective matter so long as it lies outside the sphere of every-day humanitarian and social solicitude, becomes a matter to be passed upon by conventional standards of taste, dignity, morality, and the like, so soon as it comes within the sweep of latter-day German sentiment.
This habit of treating a given problem from these various and shifting points of view at times gives a kaleidoscopic effect that is not without interest. So in the matter of the technically trained working population in the machine industry, to which reference has already been made, something of an odd confusion appears when expressions taken from diverse phases of the discussion are brought side by side. He speaks of this class at one point (p. 224) as "sound, strong, spiritually and morally advancing," superior in all these virtues to the working classes of other times and places. At another point (pp. 250-253) he speaks of the same popular element, under the designation of "socialists," as perverse, degenerate, and reactionary. This latter characterisation may be substantially correct, but it proceeds on grounds of taste and predilection, not on grounds of scientifically determinable cause and effect. And the two characterisations apply to the same elements of population; for the substantial core and tone-giving factor of the radical socialistic element in the German community is, notoriously, just this technically trained population of the industrial towns where the discipline of the machine industry has been at work with least mitigation. The only other fairly isolable element of a radical socialistic complexion is found among the students of modern science. Now, further, in his speculations on the relation of technological knowledge to the advance of culture, Professor Schmoller points out (e.g., p. 226) that a high degree of culture connotes, on the whole, a high degree of technological efficiency, and conversely. In this connection he makes use of the terms Halbkulturvölker and Ganskulturvölker to designate different degrees of cultural maturity. It is curious to reflect, in the light of what he has to say on these several heads, that if the socialistically affected, technically trained population of the industrial towns, together with the radical-socialistic men of science, were abstracted from the German population, leaving substantially the peasantry, the slums, and the aristocracy great and small, the resulting German community would unquestionably have to be classed as a Halbkulturvölk in Professor Schmoller's scheme. Whereas the elements abstracted, if taken by themselves, would as unquestionably be classed among the Ganskulturvölker.
In conclusion, one may turn to the concluding chapter (Book II., Chapter vii.) of the present volume for a final illustration of Professor Schmoller's method and animus in handling a modern economic problem. All the more so as this chapter on business enterprise better sustains that scientific attitude which the introductory outline leads the reader to look for throughout. It shows how modern business enterprise is in the main an outgrowth of commercial activity, as also that it has retained the commercial spirit down to the present. The motive force of business enterprise is the self-seeking quest of dividends; but Professor Schmoller shows, with more dispassionate insight than many economists, that this self-seeking motive is hemmed in and guided at all points in the course of its development by considerations and conventions that are not of a primarily self-seeking kind. He is not content to point to the beneficent working of a harmony of interests, but sketches the play of forces whereby a self-seeking business traffic has come to serve the interests of the community. Business enterprise has gradually emerged and come into its present central and dominant position in the community's industry as a concomitant of the growth of individual ownership and pecuniary discretion in modern life. It is therefore a phase of the modern cultural situation; and its survival and the direction of its further growth are therefore conditioned by the exigencies of the modern cultural situation. What this modern cultural situation is and what are the forces, essentially psychological, which shape the further growth of the situation, no one is better fitted to discuss than Professor Schmoller; and he has also given valuable indications (pp. 428-457) of what these factors are and how the inquiry into their working must be conducted. But even here, where a dispassionate tracing-out of the sequence of cause and effect should be easier to undertake, because less readily blurred with sentiment, than in the case, e.g., of the family, the work of tracing the developmental sequence tapers off into advice and admonition proceeding on the assumption that the stage now reached is, or at least should be, final. The attention in the later pages diverges from the process of growth and its conditioning circumstances, to the desirability of maintaining the good results attained and to the ways and means of holding fast that which is good in the outcome already achieved. The question to which an answer is sought in discussing the present phase of the development is not a question as to what is taking place as respects the institution of business enterprise, but rather a question as to what form should be given to an optimistic policy of fostering business enterprise and turning it to account for the common good. At this point, as elsewhere, though perhaps in a less degree than elsewhere, the existing form of the institution is accepted as a finality. All this is disappointing in view of the fact that at no other point do modern economic institutions bear less of an air of finality than in the forms and conventions of business organisations and relations. As Professor Schmoller remarks (p. 455), the scope and character of business undertakings necessarily conform to the circumstances of the time, not to any logical scheme of development from small to great or from simple to complex. So also, one might be tempted to say, the expediency and the chance of ultimate survival of business enterprise is itself an open question, to be answered by a scrutiny of the forces that make for its survival or alteration, not by advice as to the best method of sustaining and controlling it.
What has here been said in criticism of Professor Schmoller's work, particularly as regards his departure from the path of scientific research in dealing with present-day phenomena, may, of course, have to be qualified, if not entirely set aside, when his work is completed with the promised genetic survey of modern institutions to be set forth in the concluding fourth book. Perhaps it may even be said that there is fair hope, on general grounds, of such a consummation; but the present volume does not afford ground for a confident expectation of this kind. It is perhaps needless, perhaps gratuitous, to add that the strictures offered indicate, after all, but relatively slight shortcomings in a work of the first magnitude.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Reprinted by permission from The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. XVI, Nov., 1901.
[2] Grundriss der allgemeinen Volkswirtschaftslehre. Erster Teil. Leipzig, 1900.
[3] E.g., K. Bücher's Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft, and Arbeit und Rythmus; R. Hildebrand's Recht und Sitte; Knapp's Grundherrschaft und Rittergut; Ehrenberg's Zeitalter der Fugger; R. Mucke's various works.