<h2>CHAPTER 2</h2>
<h3>ECONOMIC MOTIVES</h3>
<h4>§ I. MATERIAL WANTS, THE PRIMARY ECONOMIC MOTIVES</h4>
<div class="sidenote">Feeling urges to economic actions</div>
<p>1. <i>A logical explanation of industry must begin with a discussion of
the nature of wants, for the purpose of industry is to gratify wants.</i>
An economic want may be defined as a feeling of incompleteness, because
of the lack of a part of the outer world or of some change in it. Often
the question asked when one first sees a moving trolley car or
automobile or bicycle is: What makes it go? The first question to ask in
the part of the study of economic society here undertaken is: What is
its motive force? Without an answer to that question one cannot hope to
understand the ceaseless and varied activities of men occupied in the
making of a living. The question merits long and careful study, but the
general answer is so simple that it seems almost self-evident: The
motive force in economics is found in the feelings of men. It is men's
desire to make use of men and things about them which calls forth all
the manifold phenomena studied in economics.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Animal species shaped by their environment</div>
<p>2. <i>Wants among animals depend on the environment; that is to say, the
utmost that creatures of a lower order than man can do is to take things
as they find them.</i> The imagination and intelligence of animals are not
developed enough to lead them to desire much beyond that which is
ordinarily to be obtained. And so the environment shapes and affects the
animal. The fish is fitted to live in the water and thrives there, and
we must believe, enjoys living there.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</SPAN></span> The horse and the cow like best
the food of the fields, and so each species of animal, in order to
survive in the severe struggle for existence, has been forced to fit
itself to the conditions in which it lives. After the animal has been
thus fitted, its desire is for those things normally to be found in its
surroundings. So different animals desire or want different things, but
always it is the environment that determines the want, and not the want
that determines the environment.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Simple wants of primitive men</div>
<p>3. <i>In simpler human societies, wants are mostly confined to physical
necessities; that is, in the earlier stages of society, man's wants are
very much like those of the animals.</i> Man bends his energies to securing
the things necessary to survival. He feels the pangs of hunger and he
strives to secure food. He feels the need of companionship, for it is
only through association and mutual help that men, so weak as compared
with many kinds of animals, are able to resist the enemies which beset
them. He needs clothing to protect him against the harsher climates of
the lands to which he moves. For the same purpose, to protect himself
against the cold and rain, he needs a shelter, a cave, a wigwam, or a
hut; for a house is but a larger dress.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Manifold wants in civilized society</div>
<p>4. <i>In human society, wants develop and transform the world.</i> In the
rudest societies of which there is any record, savages are found with
wants developed in a great number of directions beyond the wants of any
animals. Man is not a passive victim of circumstances; his wants are not
determined solely by his environment; his desires soar beyond the things
about him. As men become more the masters of circumstances, their
desires anticipate mere physical wants; they seek a more varied food of
finer flavor and more delicately prepared. Dress is not limited by
physical comfort, for one of the earliest of the esthetic wants to
develop is the love of personal ornament. The rude hut or communal lodge
to protect against rain and cold becomes a home. Out of the earlier rude
companionship develop the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</SPAN></span> noblest sentiments of friendship and family
life. Seeking to gratify the senses and the love of action, men develop
esthetic tastes, the love of the beautiful in sound, in form, in taste,
in color, in motion. And finally, as the imagination and intellect
develop, there grow up the various forms of intellectual pleasures—the
love of reading, of study, of travel, and of thought.</p>
<p>The various wants of man are sometimes classified as necessities,
comforts, and luxuries, but all economists take care to emphasize that
these terms have only relative meanings which, in the rapidly changing
conditions of modern life, are changing constantly. The comforts of one
generation, or of one country, become the necessities in another; and
luxuries becoming comforts, are looked upon finally as necessities. And
as the desires grow, they more and more alter the world. Man has changed
the face of the earth; he has affected its climate, its fertility, its
beauty, because, either for better or for worse, his desires have
impressed themselves upon the world about him.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Wants must precede wealth</div>
<p>5. <i>In human society the growth of wants is necessary to progress.</i> From
the earliest times teachers of morals have argued for simplicity of life
and against the development of refinements. We do not now raise the
moral question, but there is no doubt that the economic effect of
developing wants is in the main to impel to greater effort. They are the
mainspring of economic progress. In recent discussion of the control of
the tropics, the too great contentedness of tropical peoples has been
brought out prominently. Some one has said that if a colony of New
England school-teachers and Presbyterian deacons should settle in the
tropics, their descendants would, in a single generation, be wearing
breech-clouts and going to cock-fights on Sunday. Certain it is that the
energy and ambition of the temperate zone are hard to maintain in warmer
lands. The negro's content with hard conditions, so often counted as a
virtue, is one of the difficulties in the way of solving the race
problem in our<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</SPAN></span> South to-day. Booker T. Washington, and others who are
laboring for the elevation of the American negroes, would try first to
make them discontented with the one-room cabins, in which hundreds of
thousands of families live. If only the desire for a two- or three-room
cabin can be aroused, experience shows that family life and industrial
qualities may be improved in many other ways.</p>
<div class="sidenote">But impossible hopes lessen gratifications</div>
<p>Not only in America, but in most civilized lands to-day, is seen a rapid
growth of wants in the working-classes. The incomes and the standard of
living have become increasing, but not so fast as have the desires of
the working-classes. Regret has been expressed by some that the workers
of Europe are becoming "declassed." Increasing wages, it is said, bring
not welfare, but unhappiness, to the complaining masses. If discontent
with one's lot goes beyond a moderate degree, if it is more than the
desire to better one's lot by personal efforts, if it becomes an unhappy
longing for the impossible, then indeed it may be a misfortune. But a
moderate ambition to better one's condition is the "divine discontent"
absolutely indispensable if energy and enterprise are to be called into
being.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Wants grow refined as wealth advances</div>
<p>It is a suggestive fact that civilized man, equipped with all of the
inventions and the advantages of science, spends more hours of effort in
gaining a livelihood than does the savage with his almost unaided hands.
Activity is dependent not on bare physical necessity, but on developed
wants—in the economic sense of the term. Such social institutions as
property and inheritance owe their origin and their justification to
their average effect on the motives to activity. If society is to
develop, if progress is to continue, human wants—not of the grosser
sort, but ever more refined—must continue to emerge and urge men to
action.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</SPAN></span></p>
<h4>§ II. DESIRES FOR NON-MATERIAL ENDS, AS SECONDARY ECONOMIC MOTIVES</h4>
<div class="sidenote">The real man in economics</div>
<p>1. <i>The spiritual nature of man must not be ignored in economic
reasoning.</i> There has been much and just criticism of the earlier
writers and of their conclusions because so little account was taken by
them of any but the motive of self-interest in economic affairs.
Generally it was assumed that men knew their own interest, and sought in
a very unsympathetic way those things which would gratify their material
wants. Thus man in economic reasoning was made an abstraction, differing
from real men in his lack of manifold spiritual and social elements.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Desires for the non-material may become economic motives</div>
<p>2. <i>The main classes of non-material wants that are secondarily economic
are fear of temporal punishment; sentiments of moral and religious duty;
pride, honor, and fear of disgrace; and pleasure in work for itself, for
social approval, or for a social result.</i> The first is best illustrated
by slavery, where the slave is not impelled to seek wealth for his own
welfare, but is driven by punishment to perform the task. The object is
to create within the mind of the slave a motive that will take the place
of the ordinary economic motive. The feeling of religious or moral duty
leads men to act often in direct opposition to the usual economic
motive. The taboo is faithfully observed by the members of a savage
tribe who suffer as a result the severest hardships. A religious
injunction prevents the use of food that would save from starvation.
Pride, either of family or of calling; the soldier's honor leading him
to sacrifice not only his future but his life; the love of social
approval, holding men to the most disagreeable tasks—these illustrate
how strongly social sentiments oppose the narrower motive of immediate
self-interest as generally thought of. Pleasure in work for work's sake,
and pride in the result, may act as motives quite as strong in some
cases as desire for the product that can<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</SPAN></span> be used. And even where this
does not change the kind of work done, it comes in to influence the
interest and earnestness with which the work is performed.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Economists must overlook no influence on value</div>
<p>3. <i>Whatever motive in man's complex nature makes him desire things more
or less, becomes for the time, and in so far, an economic motive.</i> These
various social and spiritual motives sometimes work positively, in the
direction of magnifying man's desire for things; sometimes negatively,
to diminish it. If we are to understand economic action, we must take
men as they are. A religious motive that leads men to refrain from the
eating of meat or to eat fish in preference on certain days, is a fact
which the economist has but to accept, for it is sure to affect the
value of meat and fish at that place and time. Moral convictions,
whatever be their origin, whether due to the teaching of parents, to
unconscious influences, or to native temperament, may be quite as
effective as the pangs of hunger in determining what men desire.
Therefore, while these various motives are primarily social or moral or
religious, they may be said to be secondarily economic motives, and they
may become in certain cases the most important influences of which the
economist must take account.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</SPAN></span></p>
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