The concept of a governing class is as old as political speculation. Like so much else, it is found in Plato and Aristotle, and in most of the classic works of political thinkers from their day to the present. In this paper, however, I am not concerned with a history and comparative treatment of the concept, but with the idea and fact of the governing class in Britain within the period when the democratic state was evolving from the aristocratic; that is, from the Second Reform Bill of 1867 to the present. Yet a brief initial comment on the general concept is essential, even at the risk of raising more questions than one can answer here.

Every state is a hierarchy of power and authority. A governing class consists of the individuals within the hierarchy who frame the agenda and plans for public action, make the final decisions about government, and hence about the people and interests affected by government. In the contemporary world of reality a sharp dividing line between governed and governors in this sense is seldom easy to draw. Yet there is a line. Democracy is not government by all the people, but by a few accountable for their decisions to the rest. The quality and modes of such accountability depend upon the laws and institutions of the state, especially upon the persons who actually make the laws, operate the institutions, and seek to render their actions acceptable to the majority of the electorate. Such a governing class, group, or élite, whatever term we apply, consists of those whose primary concern is with acquiring, sustaining, and exercising political authority. Their function in this matter is definite and clear, and in its performance they come to think in like ways about procedure, develop common skills appropriate to their purpose, and in miscellaneous efforts learn what is feasible and not feasible.

The population of the Eastern Townships of the province of Quebec has been growing steadily since this area was first settled in the early nineteenth century, but its composition has been gradually changing from English-speaking to French-speaking Canadians. This change has been due to urban and industrial forces which have both influenced the English Canadians to leave the Townships and the French Canadians to use the area as a new frontier for their surplus population. The impact of these forces affected the English, the first settlers, sooner than the French. As early as 1860, influences stemming from the cities gradually caused drastic changes in their way of life. These included a declining birth-rate, mechanization of farms, and ambitions for a higher and more sophisticated standard of living. Also, the agricultural products of the English Canadians entered the wider provincial and national markets before those of the French, another factor influential in changing their mode of life.

This earlier orientation of the English-speaking group to urban patterns has caused them to move slowly out of the Townships to the more urbanized parts of Canada. Census figures show that this movement has been going on since 1861. At the same time, French Canadians have been steadily moving in, so that now the 12 counties comprising the Eastern Townships are from 70 to 99 per cent French.

Australia emerged from the war with low costs, a high level of London funds, favourable terms of trade, and improved efficiency stimulated by the war effort. All these were substantial assets in the immediate post-war period but there were also certain handicaps, themselves also the product of the war. For one thing the economy was greatly under-capitalized. This was due in part to a low rate of capital formation in the years immediately preceding the war, and secondly to a deliberate policy developed during the war of concentrating entirely upon capital formation that would have a direct bearing on the war effort. Apart from a serious shortage of capital equipment in industry and defects in the transport system, there was a great lag in housing construction. In addition, certain specialized industries had been developed during the war, and it was doubtful whether these could be continued in the post-war circumstances. Then finally there was the heavy task of making a swift and smooth transition from a war economy to a peace economy.

Adaption of Canadian parliamentary processes to the conditions of the modern state must aim at two objectives not easily reconcilable and not easily pursued at one and the same time. First, it is vital that we enable the Government to govern. Governing now involves a large annual volume of new and amending legislation, the devising of complex taxation measures for raising some $4 billion a year from the reluctant taxpayer, and the appropriation of this vast sum to the various items of expenditure. A very large portion of the time of the House of Commons is therefore needed for Government business.

Second, it is equally vital to ensure effective responsibility of the Government to our elected representatives, to make it reasonably possible for the House of Commons to understand general Government policy as well as specific proposals for legislation, and to grasp the reasons why this policy and these measures are held to be necessary in the national interest. In addition, because the numerous policies being administered from day to day are more important than the new policies being proposed for adoption at any given time, it is necessary for the House to be able to learn enough about the actual running of the great business of the government of Canada to conduct an intelligent audit of the ramified activities of government. A large part of the time of the House is needed for these purposes.

The labour problems of expansion and full employment are as intense and numerous as those of depression. Social and psychological problems arise from the twin processes of industrialization and urbanization. Large-scale immigration, and internal migration from rural to urban areas, bring complex problems of social disorganization and cultural conflict. Similar difficulties attend new industrial projects set up in hitherto untouched rural communities and in remote, unpopulated areas. Occupational maladjustments of various kinds are often characteristic of rapid industrial expansion. Labour shortages and bottlenecks develop side by side with pockets of unemployment. Labour-employer relationships become less personal, and internal communication more difficult, as enterprises expand in scale. Restlessness and dissatisfaction arise where workers find difficulty in adjusting to rapid technological change and unfamiliar environments. Employers complain about labour's irresponsibility and insubordination, high turnover and absenteeism, inefficiency and slowdowns.

Other problems are connected with the inflation that usually accompanies rapid economic expansion. Rising prices constantly threaten to outrun wages and salaries. Widening disparities of income among occupational groups generate dissatisfaction and unrest. Reports of high industrial profits, spectacular gains in the stock-market, and the conspicuous expenditures of the nouveaux riches, all provide very real (even if statistically inaccurate) symbols of unfairness in the distribution of income, and encourage labour to make what often seem exorbitant demands upon employers.

In the present stage of development of economic theory there is found even at the most elementary level a general theory for pure competition, for monopolistic competition, and for monopoly, but there is not to be found anywhere a general theory of oligopoly or circularity. Thus, there is a general theory for all branches of the modern classification of types of competition except one branch, namely, oligopoly. The explanation given for the absence is that a rival's possible reactions to price or output alterations by some particular firm are unlimited in number; there are indeed many oligopoly or circularity theories—a theory for each of many sets of specific assumptions.

It is not the purpose of this essay to set forth a general theory of oligopoly, but rather to move in the direction of a general classification of forms of competition. An attempt is made to retain one special characteristic of Professor Chamberlin's work viz., that of proceeding by degrees from one extreme to another, a characteristic Professor Chamberlin achieved with his “number of firms” and “degree of product differentiation.” At the same time it is attempted to break up oligopoly situations; thus, for example, “leadership oligopoly” is as distinct from “collusive oligopoly” as it is from pure competition, or as monopolistic competition is from pure competition.

The striking feature of labour relations in France is the wide scope of governmental regulation and influence. Employers and unions rarely succeed in solving their labour problems by joint action, and the strikes of August, 1953, attest to the discontent of a large portion of the French labour force.

Until the First World War, relations between labour and management were on an individual, rather than a collective, basis. Employers and workers had organized for collective action, but, except in the printing and coal mining industries, relations between the trade unions, strongly influenced by syndicalism, and the defensive associations of employers were chiefly violent in nature. Both unions and employers opposed government intervention in the labour market, and the government respected this sentiment.

During the war it became necessary for the government to bring employers and unions together on arbitration committees and in less formal discussions in order to encourage uninterrupted production through the peaceful settlement of industrial disputes. Thus the first widespread contact between employers and unions took place under the auspices of the government. The syndicalist philosophy of the French trade unions was abandoned, partly as a result of this demonstration of the importance of governmental support, and partly as a result of the political success of the Communists in Russia.

An architect, viewing for the first time the structure of the Canadian economy, would be impressed at the outset by its flying buttresses, that is, its external connections and supports, which appear to bulk about a quarter as large as the main edifice. On closer examination he might remark on the apparent strength of the main structure in its own right and begin to question the function and need of the flying buttresses.

Should he chance to meet another visitor, especially one who had made the pilgrimage from the south, he would probably be treated to a glowing eulogy on its details and be told that it is the soundest such structure in the world. Indeed, the intimate knowledge and unqualified approbation of another comparative stranger, who claimed to be paying his first visit, and a short one at that, might surprise this architect.

Moreover, if he ventured inside he would immediately be struck by the great activity going on and the sense of unconcern exhibited by the inhabitants. Were he to fall into conversation with one of the many incumbents entrusted with the governance and administration of the building, he would hear the same note of confidence sounded in the security of the structure. He would likely be told that the diligent labour in progress was contributing to a steady enlargement and strengthening of the building and that this work had a momentum of its own. The flying buttresses would be pointed to with pride and their need freely admitted and even emphasized. But his attention would also be drawn to an ingenious collection of internal scaffolding, movable supports, counterweights, and other contrivances designed to protect the edifice as far as possible against adverse trade winds and against inflationary fires that might creep in by way of the buttresses. Some of these devices, it would be pointed out, are actively but not too obviously in use; others have been successfully employed in the past; all are ready for instant and judicious use in case of need.

The period from 1946 to date has been one of the great periods of Canadian development. There are only two earlier ones which are comparable. The first was the great expansion from just before the turn of the century to 1913 in which the Prairies were settled and developed. The second was the boom of 1925 to 1929 which, though short, was impressive while it lasted. It is true that, in addition to these two earlier periods of marked growth, the two world wars have provided strong impetus to industrialization but for obvious reasons they were not characterized by capital development.

During the eight years from 1946 to 1953 the population of Canada has been increasing at an average rate of 2¼ per cent per annum and new investment in fixed capital (not including maintenance and repairs) has been equivalent to more than 20 per cent of the gross national product. Recently, these rates of expansion have been higher, population increasing at over 2½ per cent per annum and capital investment representing over 23 per cent of the gross national product. These are high rates of growth by any standard of comparison. The investment programme of recent years has represented about the same proportion of the gross national product as did that of 1925–9, but the present expansion is more significant both because it has lasted a good deal longer and because it has been more broadly based. Even in the twenties it was still correct to think of the Canadian economy as dominated by wheat. Today, however, though wheat is still of great importance, other basic industries have developed strikingly, including pulp and paper, lumber, the traditional base metals, aluminum, the new metals, oil and iron. So far as population growth is concerned, the post-war increase has been more rapid than that of the twenties in part because we have not been losing nearly so heavily in emigration to the United States. From the middle of 1945 until the end of 1953 the natural increase in Canada's population has been about 2.1 million people and immigration has been about a million—a combined increase of 3.1 million. Over this same period, emigration has been around 500,000 and the net population gain has thus been 2.6 million, or over 20 per cent.

The interval in the history of the Canadian balance of payments to be dealt with in this paper is a short one. Even so, it is well to emphasize at the outset that limitations of time, the unusual complexities of the period, and the fact that it is still too recent to be viewed in its true perspective, make it impossible to do much more than a reconnaissance survey, in the hope that this will enable one at least to trace and identify the principal factors involved if not to appraise them finally.

Time limitations notwithstanding, since this is the only session devoted to the balance of payments, it is appropriate to recall that Canada has recently passed the half-century milestone in balance of payments statistics. Undoubtedly this is a record for an unbroken series of balance of payments estimates. It is of course quite true that this is not a uniform series; there are three distinct sets of estimates which are neither identical in quality nor in aim. Nevertheless they are sufficiently complete and conformable to give us a fairly uninterrupted view of the main developments in the balance of payments. The gradual evolution of the estimates from a purely private effort undertaken to test theoretical assumptions down to an accepted instrument of official policy is a story in which Canadians can justly take some pride.

The study of politics in the United States today is something in size, content, and method unique in Western intellectual history. As Professor Pendleton Herring has recently said: “Political science as a subject of systematic enquiry started with Aristotle but as a profession it has won its greatest recognition in the United States and within our generation. One fact is clear: no other country in the world has so large, so well trained, so competent a profession dedicated to the teaching and analysis of government… . This profession … is now part of our national strength.” Not merely has the size of “the profession” grown so much since Aristotle's day, but the method has also markedly changed. American methods have consciously aspired to the modern concepts of natural science. There has been an advocacy of an integrated science of society, resting especially on concepts drawn from modem physics, biology, and psychology, and on a marked displacement of speculative philosophy and historical study. There now follow, from a sceptical foreigner, some reflections on the claims of Professor Herring. It is surely important for friends and neighbours to make some judgment on how a political science profession can become a “partof … national strength” and how relevant these new methods can be to the peculiar historical experience of the United States.

The machinery for providing medical services raises two kinds of problems for the sociologist. On the one hand these services involve various sorts of institutional structures, such as hospitals; these merit attention and analysis. On the other hand medical services involve a set of specialized occupations; these likewise merit study. These two classes of phenomena, that is, the social institution and the specialized occupation, represent two of the major subjects of present-day sociological investigation.

The machinery for providing medical services raises comparable problems for other branches of science. The biological and psychological sciences find many of their theoretical problems dictated by the practices current in the medical field. The financing of such services raises problems for the economist, and the control and distribution of such services are matters of concern for the political scientist. This paper can, therefore, at best deal only with one facet of a large field of inquiry.

In sociology in recent years a considerable body of literature has developed around the problem areas indicated above. Various parts of the work world have been explored in order to gain a better knowledge of work institutions, more specifically to understand them as going concerns. Concurrently many specialized occupations have been subjected to study, with the purpose of discovering the common characteristics of this feature of our society.

The role of such left-wing Liberals as Frederic Harrison, Professor E. S. Beesly, A. J. Mundella, Vernon Harcourt, and Tom Hughes in bringing the English working classes into politics on the side of the Liberals in the late 1860's and early 1870's has long been appreciated. What has not, perhaps, been sufficiently realized is the quandary in which these middle-class radicals found themselves when the general election of 1874 approached. The years following the Hornby v. Close case and the appointment of the great royal commission on trade unions in 1867 had seen a rapid development in the political consciousness of the workmen—especially of the unionists—which was, from the point of view of the radicals, all to the good; but they had also seen the politically conscious among the working classes turning bitterly against the Liberals. The milestones in the latter of these two important political trends were the Liberals' Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1871, the Gas Stokers' and Chipping Norton cases and the persistent refusal of the Gladstone Government to respond to the demands of the unions' lobby for the reform of the labour laws of the country. Labour feeling with regard to the Liberal party was reflected, for example, in the discussions of the Labour Representation League in 1871. A meeting of September 2 voiced strong disapproval of the Government's treatment of the working-class legislative demands and of its general attitude of hostility. The meeting decided to initiate discussions on the advisability of forming a third party. There was also a great deal of criticism of the Liberals at the Trades Union Congress of 1872 and, in the following year, the Parliamentary Committee of the Congress minced no words in discussing the matter in its report on the year's work. After reciting the fruitless efforts of the labour lobby during the 1872 session, the report concluded with the remark that a Liberal government under which such a legal situation could be consolidated was a mockery. And in two bye-elections in August, 1873, at Dundee and Greenwich, the workmen supported independent candidates in opposition to the official Liberals. Gladstone's cabinet shuffle of that same month probably did little to improve relations. Robert Lowe, who took the Home Office, was considered an enemy of the working classes and John Bright was well known as an opponent of unions and of all state action in industrial affairs.

The general idea of my title was hatched some years ago for an after-dinner speech at the annual meeting of the Midwest Economic Association. It proved to have been hatched from a double-yoked egg. In the first place some of the younger members, nurtured in the New Deal and the labour developments of the late thirties, said there was a printer's error on the programme. My title should be, not CLIO, but CIO. In the second place, the toastmaster primed himself for introducing me by looking Clio up in the Encyclopædia. He was baffled to learn that it is “a shell-less pelagic mollusc in the class Pteropod. A small spindle-shanked animal with six tentacles on its head. It forms the principal part of the food of some species of whales.” Being brought up on short-run phenomena, he read no further. Had he persisted he would, of course, have discovered that another Clio was one of the nine Greek muses; that she got her Ph.D. for a thesis on epic verse, then settled down to that other branch of poetic licence, history; and that she was thus an eternally young lady who never forgot a date.

From the evidence of sculpture and pottery it seems clear that Clio, unlike Venus, always wore clothes, choosing her apparel to fit the story she was writing. When dealing with military history she dressed like an Amazon, spear and shield and all; for political and constitutional history she had a whole clothes-closet—a crown and a purple coronation robe, a black gown which made her look like Portia, a knee-length coat copied later by southern senators, also miscellaneous wigs, cloaks, and daggers; the history of art and literature called for a corduroy tunic and flat-heeled buskins; for religious history she was garbed like a priestess; and when psychiatry was invented she experimented at length to see what went best with a couch. When, having passed through the drum and trumpet stage of history writing, she got round to economic history, she donned overalls: blue jeans, with copper rivets, pockets everywhere, white stitching, and union-made label. The get-up did not look divine, or even muse-like, especially from the back. But for the job in hand it has proved functionally well suited, and Clio at work has chalked up a creditable record of achievement during three quarters of a century's full employment of all her resources. It is about that record that I want to talk this afternoon.

A significant aspect of anarchism, which brings it close to Russian nihilism and in the minds of some people is responsible for the erroneous identification of the two, is individual terrorism. Individual acts of violence, known especially in the last century as “propaganda by deed,” have been regarded by some anarchists as part and parcel of the over-all revolutionary activity which is to culminate in the overthrow of the existing social system by acts of mass violence. There were and are anarchists of different schools opposed to violence as a means towards the establishment of an anarchist society, and they include not only religious anarchists like Leo Tolstoy and individualists like Benjamin Tucker, but also many of those who at one time or another could be classed as anarchist communists, for instance, Francisco Ferrer, Louisa S. Bevington, and Gustav Landauer. The so-called philosophical anarchists are also opposed to violence, if by them are meant people who believe in the possibility or at least the desirability of realizing the ideals of anarchism but do not accept the usual anarchist analysis of the existing system or the methods generally advocated by anarchist groups for the achievement of anarchism. Thus Godwin, Tolstoy, and Tucker, could be included in this group, and among our contemporaries Bertrand Russell.

In the present century anarchists have almost ceased in theory and practice to view individual terrorism as important. Violent acts have been usually perpetrated by people who had practically no significance as thinkers and writers. Alexander Berkman is probably the only notable exception here, while men like Kropotkin, fortunately for anarchism, propagated anarchist ideas by the written and spoken word rather than by “deed.”

The purpose of this paper is twofold. Primarily it is an attempt to isolate some of the structural parameters governing New Zealand's balance of trade during the inter-war period. A secondary end, a by-product of the first, is to throw some light on the controversy between “elasticity pessimists” and “elasticity optimists.” Born out of very real problems concerning monetary policy on the international level, and carried on by some of the most acute and productive minds among economists, this controversy has, I believe, been in general a good and highly fruitful one. If any criticism is to be made, it must be methodological, and concern itself with the statistical procedures used by one side, and the tendency of the other side toward a priori refutation instead of empirical investigation. I also believe that, while the statistical data are highly imperfect, the best possible use has not been made of what data exist, and that at this stage only more, and more carefully weighted, evidence can help us on. The present investigation offers only a little of the great amount of such evidence which is needed.

Following a few theoretical remarks, three commodities—butter, lamb, and cheese—will be studied, in order to increase our information about New Zealand's trade balance. Only their behaviour in the United Kingdom market is analysed. This procedure immediately raises the question: how important are these goods as part of New Zealand's exports and how important is the United Kingdom market? The answer is that up to 1929 the sale of these three products in the United Kingdom made up about one-half of New Zealand's export receipts. Had wool been included, this proportion would have risen to about 70 per cent. After 1929 it declined somewhat, but never fell below 40 per cent. From this it seems to follow that whatever determines the demand in the United Kingdom for these three products affects significantly but not overwhelmingly New Zealand's balance of trade on the export side.

It is the purpose of this paper to consider some of the problems which have confronted the inhabitants of Tasmania and the Canadian Maritime Provinces in fitting themselves, individually and corporately, into the Australian and Canadian federations.

If the move to federate be regarded as a leap in the dark, then the majority of the Tasmanians of the late 1890's would have to confess that they jumped, while their Maritime counterparts of the 1860's could claim, with some justice, that they were pushed. In the referenda held on the proposed federal constitution prior to the establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia, Tasmania shared with Victoria the honour of being the colony recording the highest percentage of affirmative votes. No such popular endorsement was sought for the terms of union embodied in the British North America Act. Tilley's defeat in the 1865 New Brunswick election, which was fought on the issue of federation, and the success of the “Repeal” advocates in the 1867 federal and provincial general elections in Nova Scotia, were indicative of the popular disapproval with which the proposals for federation were regarded in these two provinces which became charter members of the Dominion; while the special circumstances surrounding the belated entry of Prince Edward Island into Confederation were indicative of the attitude of the Islanders to the movement. The cause of federation in the Maritimes, unlike that in Tasmania, required tangible external “encouragement”–from the Colonial Office and from Canada–to assure its success.