An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker by Cornelia Stratton Parker
page 108 of 164 (65%)
page 108 of 164 (65%)
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mental tools, no norms applicable for entrance into the medley of human
motives called consumption. "For these many reasons economic thinking has been weak and futile in the problems of conservation, of haphazard invention, of unrestricted advertising, of anti-social production, of the inadequacy of income, of criminality. These are problems within the zone of the intimate life of the population. They are economic problems, and determine efficiencies within the whole economic life. The divorcing for inspection of the field of production from the rest of the machinery of civilization has brought into practice a false method, and the values arrived at have been unhappily half-truths. America to-day is a monument to the truth that growth in wealth becomes significant for national welfare only when it is joined with an efficient and social policy in its consumption. "Economics will only save itself through an alliance with the sciences of human behavior, psychology, and biology, and through a complete emancipation from 'prosperity mores.' . . . The sin of Economics has been the divorce of its work from reality, of announcing an analysis of human activity with the human element left out." One other point remained ever a sore spot with Carl, and that was the American university and its accomplishments. In going over his writings, I find scattered through the manuscripts explosions on the ways, means, and ends, of academic education in our United States. For instance,-- "Consider the paradox of the rigidity of the university student's scheme of study, and the vagaries and whims of the scholarly emotion. Contemplate the forcing of that most delicate of human attributes, |
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