The Principles of Economics, with Applications to Practical Problems. Frank A. Fetter
because of the lack of a part of the outer world or of some change in it. Often the question asked when one first sees a moving trolley car or automobile or bicycle is: What makes it go? The first question to ask in the part of the study of economic society here undertaken is: What is its motive force? Without an answer to that question one cannot hope to understand the ceaseless and varied activities of men occupied in the making of a living. The question merits long and careful study, but the general answer is so simple that it seems almost self-evident: The motive force in economics is found in the feelings of men. It is men's desire to make use of men and things about them which calls forth all the manifold phenomena studied in economics.
Animal species shaped by their environment
2. Wants among animals depend on the environment; that is to say, the utmost that creatures of a lower order than man can do is to take things as they find them. The imagination and intelligence of animals are not developed enough to lead them to desire much beyond that which is ordinarily to be obtained. And so the environment shapes and affects the animal. The fish is fitted to live in the water and thrives there, and we must believe, enjoys living there. The horse and the cow like best the food of the fields, and so each species of animal, in order to survive in the severe struggle for existence, has been forced to fit itself to the conditions in which it lives. After the animal has been thus fitted, its desire is for those things normally to be found in its surroundings. So different animals desire or want different things, but always it is the environment that determines the want, and not the want that determines the environment.
Simple wants of primitive men
3. In simpler human societies, wants are mostly confined to physical necessities; that is, in the earlier stages of society, man's wants are very much like those of the animals. Man bends his energies to securing the things necessary to survival. He feels the pangs of hunger and he strives to secure food. He feels the need of companionship, for it is only through association and mutual help that men, so weak as compared with many kinds of animals, are able to resist the enemies which beset them. He needs clothing to protect him against the harsher climates of the lands to which he moves. For the same purpose, to protect himself against the cold and rain, he needs a shelter, a cave, a wigwam, or a hut; for a house is but a larger dress.
Manifold wants in civilized society
4. In human society, wants develop and transform the world. In the rudest societies of which there is any record, savages are found with wants developed in a great number of directions beyond the wants of any animals. Man is not a passive victim of circumstances; his wants are not determined solely by his environment; his desires soar beyond the things about him. As men become more the masters of circumstances, their desires anticipate mere physical wants; they seek a more varied food of finer flavor and more delicately prepared. Dress is not limited by physical comfort, for one of the earliest of the esthetic wants to develop is the love of personal ornament. The rude hut or communal lodge to protect against rain and cold becomes a home. Out of the earlier rude companionship develop the noblest sentiments of friendship and family life. Seeking to gratify the senses and the love of action, men develop esthetic tastes, the love of the beautiful in sound, in form, in taste, in color, in motion. And finally, as the imagination and intellect develop, there grow up the various forms of intellectual pleasures—the love of reading, of study, of travel, and of thought.
The various wants of man are sometimes classified as necessities, comforts, and luxuries, but all economists take care to emphasize that these terms have only relative meanings which, in the rapidly changing conditions of modern life, are changing constantly. The comforts of one generation, or of one country, become the necessities in another; and luxuries becoming comforts, are looked upon finally as necessities. And as the desires grow, they more and more alter the world. Man has changed the face of the earth; he has affected its climate, its fertility, its beauty, because, either for better or for worse, his desires have impressed themselves upon the world about him.
Wants must precede wealth
5. In human society the growth of wants is necessary to progress. From the earliest times teachers of morals have argued for simplicity of life and against the development of refinements. We do not now raise the moral question, but there is no doubt that the economic effect of developing wants is in the main to impel to greater effort. They are the mainspring of economic progress. In recent discussion of the control of the tropics, the too great contentedness of tropical peoples has been brought out prominently. Some one has said that if a colony of New England school-teachers and Presbyterian deacons should settle in the tropics, their descendants would, in a single generation, be wearing breech-clouts and going to cock-fights on Sunday. Certain it is that the energy and ambition of the temperate zone are hard to maintain in warmer lands. The negro's content with hard conditions, so often counted as a virtue, is one of the difficulties in the way of solving the race problem in our South to-day. Booker T. Washington, and others who are laboring for the elevation of the American negroes, would try first to make them discontented with the one-room cabins, in which hundreds of thousands of families live. If only the desire for a two- or three-room cabin can be aroused, experience shows that family life and industrial qualities may be improved in many other ways.
But impossible hopes lessen gratifications
Not only in America, but in most civilized lands to-day, is seen a rapid growth of wants in the working-classes. The incomes and the standard of living have become increasing, but not so fast as have the desires of the working-classes. Regret has been expressed by some that the workers of Europe are becoming "declassed." Increasing wages, it is said, bring not welfare, but unhappiness, to the complaining masses. If discontent with one's lot goes beyond a moderate degree, if it is more than the desire to better one's lot by personal efforts, if it becomes an unhappy longing for the impossible, then indeed it may be a misfortune. But a moderate ambition to better one's condition is the "divine discontent" absolutely indispensable if energy and enterprise are to be called into being.
Wants grow refined as wealth advances
It is a suggestive fact that civilized man, equipped with all of the inventions and the advantages of science, spends more hours of effort in gaining a livelihood than does the savage with his almost unaided hands. Activity is dependent not on bare physical necessity, but on developed wants—in the economic sense of the term. Such social institutions as property and inheritance owe their origin and their justification to their average effect on the motives to activity. If society is to develop, if progress is to continue, human wants—not of the grosser sort, but ever more refined—must continue to emerge and urge men to action.
§ II. DESIRES FOR NON-MATERIAL ENDS, AS SECONDARY ECONOMIC MOTIVES
The real man in economics
1. The spiritual nature of man must not be ignored in economic reasoning. There has been much and just criticism of the earlier writers and of their conclusions because so little account was taken by them of any but the motive of self-interest in economic affairs. Generally it was assumed that men knew their own interest, and sought in a very unsympathetic way those things which would gratify their material wants. Thus man in economic reasoning was made an abstraction, differing from real men in his lack of manifold spiritual and social elements.
Desires for the non-material may become economic motives
2. The main classes of non-material wants that are secondarily economic are fear of temporal punishment; sentiments of moral and religious duty; pride, honor, and fear of disgrace; and pleasure in work for itself, for social approval, or for a social result. The first is best illustrated by slavery, where the slave is not impelled to seek wealth for his own welfare, but is driven by punishment to perform the task. The object is to create within the mind of the slave a motive that will take the place of the ordinary economic motive. The feeling of religious or moral duty leads men to act often in direct opposition to the usual economic motive. The taboo is faithfully observed by the members of a savage tribe who suffer as a result the severest hardships. A religious injunction prevents the use of food that would save from starvation. Pride, either of family or of calling; the soldier's honor leading him to sacrifice not only his future but his