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An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker by Cornelia Stratton Parker
page 108 of 164 (65%)
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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