of our progress. Thus it is customary to say that
Adam Smith dates the change from the old mer-
cantilist economy to the capitalistic economics of
the nineteenth century. But that is a manner of
speech. The old mercantilist policy was giving
way to early industrialism: a thousand unconscious
economic and social forces were compelling the
change. Adam Smith expressed the process,
named it, idealized it and made it self-conscious.
Then because men were clearer about what they
were doing, they could in a measure direct their
destiny.

That is but another way of saying that great
revolutionary changes do not spring full-armed
from anybody's brow. A genius usually becomes
the luminous center of a nation's crisis, -- men see
better by the light of him. His bias deflects their
actions. Unquestionably the doctrine-driven men
who made the economics of the last century had
much to do with the halo which encircled the
smutted head of industrialism. They put the
stamp of their genius on certain inhuman prac-
tices, and of course it has been the part of the
academic mind to imitate them ever since. The
orthodox economists are in the unenviable posi-
tion of having taken their morals from the ex-
ploiter and of having translated them into the

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