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Some Classical Economists, Laissez Faire, and the Factory Acts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Lloyd R. Sorenson
Lloyd R. Sorenson
Affiliation:
University of Oregon
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Extract

Until very recently scholars have been able to solve certain problems of historical interpretation to their own and presumably to their reader's satisfaction by merely uttering the magic words, “laissez faire.” Thus, much of what was done and most of what was not done, some of what was good and practically all of what was evil in nineteenth-century England and America have been accounted for by a facile reference to laissez faire. During the past few years, however, several studies have cast much doubt on the validity of this catchall interpretation. Laissez faire, it seems now, is a principle more easily imposed upon nineteenth-century data than found there; and in successive investigations supposed instances of this principle have dropped away one by one.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , Summer 1952 , pp. 247 - 262
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1952

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References

1 Brebner, J. Bartlet lists several such studies undertaken at the suggestion of the Committee on Research in Economic History.— “Laissez Faire and State Intervention in Nineteenth-Century Britain,” The Tasks of Economic History (Supplemental issue of The Journal of Economic History), VIII (1948), 59CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Several of these studies have now been expanded into books.

2 Unfortunately Walker's, K. O. study of this hardly went beyond 1833; consequently most of the pertinent data is still unrevealed.—“The Classical Economists and the Factory Acts,” The Journal of Economic History, I (November 1941), 168–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The study of Linnenberg, C. C. Jr., is traditional and inconclusive in its treatment of the economists' attitude toward the factory acts.—“The Laissez-Faire State in Relation to the National Economy,” The Southwestern Social Science Quarterly, XXIV (December 1943), 235–36.Google Scholar

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11 Writing in 1821 Torrens expressed the opinion that devotion to economics as science and to the scientific method in economics would resolve all outstanding differences among economists within twenty years.—An Essay on the Production of Wealth (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1821), Preface, p. xiiiGoogle Scholar.

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22 Ibid., p. 79. Torrens thought that the corn laws offset the advantage of superior efficiency and urged their repeal.

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