Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T22:59:51.895Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Balance Sheet of Economic Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Abbott Payson Usher
Affiliation:
Harvard University

Extract

The astute reader even of detective stories makes a practice of looking at the end of the book because the ending reveals the basic values of the book more quickly than any other single part of the whole. An audience is at a disadvantage unless the speaker furnishes some preliminary sketch of the problems to be explored and some brief answers to the questions to be examined. It is therefore appropriate to state the purpose of the paper in a few words. It is proposed to show that his torical analysis affords no support for the uncritical faith in progress that characterized most of the nineteenth century. The development of the power economy has not brought the abundance for all nor the general recognition of the advantages of world-wide freedom of trade that was confidently anticipated by idealists like Cobden.

Type
Analysis and Evaluation
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1951

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Dublin, Louis I., Lotka, Alfred J., and Spiegelman, Mortimer, The Length of Life (rev. ed.; New York: Ronald Press, 1949), pp. 3239.Google Scholar

2 Pribram, Carl, Conflicting Patterns of Thought (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1949)Google Scholar. Lewis, Clarence Irving, An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (La Salle, Illinois: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1946).Google Scholar