ABSTRACT
After much travail and many false beginnings the social sciences have in effect learned this lesson. In this respect they have passed through two stages. At first they were so engrossed in moral or religious considerations that they concerned themselves lightly with the social reality. So slowly did the social sciences re-emerge that at the beginning of the nineteenth century the Professor of Political Economy at Columbia University could characteristically say that what religion revealed to be right political economy proved to be expedient. The social sciences have on the whole passed beyond these two stages and in consequence they have acquired a richness of interest and a potentiality of advance they never possessed before. Many studies have been made of them, such as the cooperative researches undertaken under the auspices of committees appointed by ex-President Hoover and published with the titles of Recent Economic Changes and Recent Social Trends.
