Just as eighteenth century politics and political theories were unable to keep pace with the economic and capitalistic aggressions of the nineteenth century, so also we find, if we look closely enough, that nineteenth century economics is inadequate to lead the world out of the catastrophic situation into which it has been thrown by the debacle of the World War.  Economists are coming to recognize that the purely economic interpretation of contemporary events is insufficient.  Too long, as one of them has stated, orthodox economists have overlooked the important fact that “human life is dynamic, that change, movement, evolution, are its basic characteristics; that self-expression, and therefore freedom of choice and movement, are prerequisites to a satisfying human state".(4)

Economists themselves are breaking with the old “dismal science” of the Manchester school, with its sterile study of “supply and demand,” of prices and exchange, of wealth and labor.  Like the Chicago Vice Commission, nineteenth-century economists (many of whom still survive into our own day) considered sex merely as something to be legislated out of existence.  They had the right idea that wealth consisted solely of material things used to promote the welfare of certain human beings.  Their idea of capital was somewhat confused.  They apparently decided that capital was merely that part of capital used to produce profit.  Prices, exchanges, commercial statistics, and financial operations comprised the subject matter of these older economists.  It would have been considered “unscientific” to take into account the human factors involved.  They might study the wear-and-tear and depreciation of machinery:  but the depreciation or destruction of the human race did not concern them.  Under “wealth” they never included the vast, wasted treasury of human life and human expression.

Economists to-day are awake to the imperative duty of dealing with the whole of human nature, with the relation of men, women, and children to their environment—­physical and psychic as well as social; of dealing with all those factors which contribute to human sustenance, happiness and welfare.  The economist, at length, investigates human motives.  Economics outgrows the outworn metaphysical preconceptions of nineteenth century theory.  To-day we witness the creation of a new “welfare” or social economics, based on a fuller and more complete knowledge of the human race, upon a recognition of sex as well as of hunger; in brief, of physiological instincts and psychological demands.  The newer economists are beginning to recognize that their science heretofore failed to take into account the most vital factors in modern industry—­it failed to foresee the inevitable consequences of compulsory motherhood; the catastrophic effects of child labor upon racial health; the overwhelming importance of national vitality and well-being; the international ramifications of the population problem; the relation of indiscriminate breeding to feeble-mindedness, and industrial inefficiency.  It speculated too little or not at all on human motives.  Human nature riots through the traditional economic structure, as Carlton Parker pointed out, with ridicule and destruction; the old-fashioned economist looked on helpless and aghast.