University of Michigan - Michiganensian Yearbook (Ann Arbor, MI)

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among ' a people incompatible with a choice of monarchical forms. Democ- 1 racy is not merely a political form, but constitutes an element in the general life of the present age. On the Education of Statesmen appeared in the Princeton Review for January, 1884. In this article Professor Adams took the position that among a people that has adopted laissez jaire as the maxim of control in its public policy, a higher political education can hardly flourish, inas- much as among such a people all thought tends to effect a negation of activity. Professor Adams was of the opinion, however, that a change was taking place in this regard in the United States, and the past few years have seen a verification of his prophesy. The Forum of July, 1886, contained Shall ive Muzzle the Anarchists? in which he emphasizes once more a favorite idea, by arguing that danger comes not from too great freedom of speech, but from too little sense of personal responsibility. About this time the demand for a paper read before the Constitution Club of New York, lead to its expansion and pub- lication under the title the State in Relation to Industrial Action. This trea- tise begins with a consideration of laissez faire as a maxim of control, and states that, while much the doctrine contains seems true, the authority of the English Economy is shattered beyond recovery, its fundamental error being that it regards the state as a necessary evil. But the German political philosophy, he argues, is as erroneous in considering the state an organism complete within itself. The problem is to harmonize gov- ernmental activity and private enterprise, society being the entity about which all our reasoning should centre. The social harmony may be restored by extending the duties of the state, especially along two lines; by allowing it to determine the plane of competitive action, and by allow- ing it to realize for -society the benefits of monopoly. The choice, he says, lies between individualism and socialism, compromise being impos- sible. To the former of these Professor Adams is willing to adhere, believing that the solution of the problem lies in an extension of the old principle of personal responsibility, which must be accepted fearlessly and applied without reserve. Inasmuch as this idea of laying greater emphasis on the principle of personal responsibility is a favorite one of Professor Adams, it may not be out of place to define the meaning of responsibility as here used. It does not mean such responsibility as that of all of us before the law the responsibility of the public officer guilty of embezzlement, or of the student who rides his bicycle on the walks. It means something more

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Professor Adams ' first work received favorable attention. This was his doctor ' s thesis published under the influence of Wagner, in Tnbinger Zeitschrift fiir die gesarumte Staatswissenschaft, 1879, under title Zur Geschichte der Besteuerung in den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika in der Periode von 1789-1816. This thesis is familiar to American readers as Taxation in the United States, 1789-1816, published in Johns Hopkins University Studies, 1884. In this work Professor Adams gave evidence of the clearness of insight and power of analysis of which he was later to show himself so eminently possessor. These qualities are just as appar- ent in an article on Socialism which was published in the Penn Monthly for April of that year. This article shows true historical mindedness, and affords consolation neither for those who favor unconditional socialism, nor for those who just as unconditionally condemn it. The principle of free competition, he says, is the object at which socialism is aiming its blows, and while socialism is as a system untenable, it is right in claiming that the remedy must lie in a proper restraint on the opera- tion of the principle of free competition. Not an abolishment of free- dom, but freedom of the right sort, is the solution; liberty with respon- sibility. Among the most interesting expressions in this article, from our view of twenty years later, are those concerning the duty of Political Economy in America. He says, America must repudiate the centraliz- ing tendency of German Economy, because that tendency is opposed to the ideas upon which the government is founded; but, on the other hand, another century of unrestrained activity of private enterprise will itself contradict the theory of freedom, and destroy the government. From this dilemma must arise an American Political Economy an economy which is to be legal rather than industrial in its character. How inter- esting, in the light of the American Political Economy that has been since developed, in the light of Professor Adams place in it, and in the light of certain industrial phenomena, like trusts, which have appeared. In January, 1881, appeared in the New Englander, from his pen, an article on The Irish Land Question, and in November of the same year, one on Democracy, a consideration of that subject which affords some satisfac- tion as one turns from most of the books of this title that are flooding the market at present. Nowhere has the subject been more vitally touched than in these words: Democracy does not necessarily mean, as usually employed, a definite form of government. It is rather the expression of political individualism. Constitutional governments are not necessarily democratic; nor, on the other hand, are democratic ideas

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comprehensive, as the responsibility of the tax-payer for the use to which his money is put. It means responsiveness to, or vital interest in, every- thing ' with which we have relations. It is a responsibility that is self- executing and not dependent upon a penalty for its enforcement. The interest of every alumnus to his Alma Mater constitutes in this sense a responsibility for the welfare of the University. And Professor Adams does not insist that that form of ojective property has been discovered which can create a sense of this responsibility; but just as the astronomer can determine that there must be a star somewhere influencing the move- ments of known planets, so it is reasonable to assume that there is a form of property to be discovered which can create this responsibility, or responsiveness. Then the trust will not crush heartlessly the small employer, then the small employer will not bleed his workmen, and the workmen will not resort to destructive strikes to gain their rights, for each will have shares in this peculiar form of property that will make them inter-responsive and harmonious. As president of the American Economic Association, Professor Adams delivered an address before the session of December, 1898, which attracted universal attention. In Economics and Jurisprudence, the title under which the address was published in Economic Studies, he calls atten- tion to the confusion in economic theory and the discord in industrial life, and explains them as due to an inadequate expression by formal law of fundamental industrial rights; the conception of industrial rights having evolved from the individualistic stage, while the theories of jurisprudence are those of eighteenth century individualism. The point of view, he says, has been shifted from the individual to the whole; the social inter- est, the social impulse, the social aim, must be more clearly recognized by formal rules of conduct. Provided two things in particular rind this formal expression, Professor Adams is willing to trust the future to vol- untary individual association. The two things are rights and responsi- bility; rights that are fundamental, and a responsibility that works in the same manner to both parties to a contract. Too long has consideration been given to rights alone, the problem is one of rights and responsibility. This address as translated for Schmoller ' s Jahrbuc i fdr Gesetzgebung und Volkwirtschaft im Deutschen Reich for 1898, under the title Volkirirtxcliaft und Rechtsordnung. So far we have called attention only to Professor Adams ' mono- graphs and shorter articles, and not to all of these. His first work, we have seen, was one in Finance, a subject upon which he contributed dur-