ortation agencies. Sec. 11. Raw
materials for clothing, shelter, machinery, etc.

Sec. 1. #Politico-economic problems.# The word "problem" is often on our
tongues. Life itself is and always has been a problem. In every time
and place in the world there have been questions of industrial
policy that challenged men for an answer, and new and puzzling social
problems that called for a solution. And yet, when institutions,
beliefs, and industrial processes were changing slowly from one
generation to another and men's lives were ruled by tradition,
authority, and custom, few problems of social organization forced
themselves upon attention, and the immediate struggle for existence
absorbed the energies and the interests of men. But our time of rapid
change seems to be peculiarly the age of problems. The movement of
the world has been more rapid in the last century than ever before--in
population, in natural science, in invention, in the changes of
political and economic institutions; in intellectual, religious,
moral, and social opinions and beliefs.

Some human problems are for the individual to solve, as, whether it is
better to go to school or to go to work, to choose this occupation or
that, to emigrate or to stay at home. Other problems of wider bearing
concern the whole family group; others, still wider, concern the local
community, the state, or the nation. In each of these there are more
or less mingled economic, political and ethical aspects. Economics
in the broad sense includes the problems of individual economy, of
domestic economy, of corporate economy, and of national economy. In
this volume, however, we are to approach the subject from the public
point of view, to consider primarily the problems of "political
economy," considering the private, domestic, and corporate problems
only insomuch as they are connected with those of the nation or of
the community as a whole. Our field comprises the problems of national
wealth and of communal welfare.

What then are our politico-economic problems in America? They are
problems that are economic in nature because they concern the way that
wealth shall be used and that citizens are enabled to make a living;
but that are likewise political, because they can be solved only
collectively by political action.

Sec. 2. #American economic problems in the past.# With the first
settlements of colonists on this continent politico-economic problems
appeared. Take, for example