Prof. Newcomb on Economics at 8

Tonight, at 8 o'clock in the Lecture Room of the Fogg Art Museum Professor Simon Newcomb '58, LL.D., of Washington, will deliver a public lecture on "The Diffusion of Economics knowledge." He will consider the benefits that would follow from a better understanding and appreciation of economic principles by the general public.

Last night Professor Newcomb spoke informally before the Seminary of Economics on "The Development of Economics as a Branch of Exact Science."

Professor Newcomb emphasized the great need for fixed principles in the science of economics, to which one may appeal for support in economic theories just as one appeals to the facts and formulas of physics in arguing its theorems. In the broadest sense economics is a system through which the want of the people are satisfied. Its operation is not governed by blind force, as some people suppose, but by individual with at every stage. Its purpose is the production and distribution of wealth--the transformation of one form of wealth into another until an object is finally produced for the consumer's use.

Another end to which the science of economics has yet to be applied is the establishment of laws to govern the amount of the wage that any individual can command in return for his services. It is true that in a large proportion to his qualifications, but at the same time there is much unjustified inequality in salary. A dynamical principle can be developed, in the lecturer's belief, that will govern this most interesting and vital social problem, and form a nucleus for a new science.