In taking for this paper the title “Sociology, History, and the Problem of Social Change,” I am made highly conscious of the fact that, although today I go by the title of sociologist, it was as a student of history twenty-nine years ago that I graduated from this University. It would be scarcely fair to my old history teachers of Saskatchewan to suggest that this evening my past has risen to haunt me. But certainly I learnt too much from George Simpson, Hilda Neatby, and the late Arthur S. Morton for it not to influence what I have to say this evening. Indeed, it was a simple saying of Professor Morton's, made here to apply to sociology, which perhaps best expresses the theme of this paper. The eyes of history, it was his saying, are geography and chronology. Tonight I want to argue that geography and chronology are the eyes of sociology as well as of history and that only by the use of both these eyes can an adequate theory of social change be developed. If, in the course of arguing this, I am led to the conclusion that there cannot continue to exist the kind of distinction now made between history and sociology, I feel confident that my old history teachers of the University of Saskatchewan will not consider that I have been an unfaithful pupil.

The first day of January, 1959, saw the opening moves in the formation of the European Economic Community, the most spectacular experiment in regional economic integration to occur in recent history. If no hitches occur, within fifteen years West Germany, France, Italy, and the Benelux countries will have formed something between a customs union arid a full economic union, with internal free trade, a common external tariff, partial freedom of internal factor movement, partial co-ordination of economic and social policies, and a common framework of agricultural protection and control. There is a small and wildly fluctuating probability that this “common market” will become embedded in a larger European free trade area organized by Great Britain and including Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, and possibly other small European nations.

On June 1, 1959, Canada's Department of External Affairs may look back upon a history of half a century's duration. Even so it is not the oldest foreign ministry in the overseas Commonwealth. That distinction belongs to the Australian Department of External Affairs, which became one of the original departments of the new federation created in 1901. The Canberra innovation seems not to have excited the slightest interest in Canada, despite the appearance during the same year of a book by a Canadian author containing what is probably the earliest written advocacy of separate foreign ministries for the self-governing colonies or dominions. In The Canadian Contingents and Canadian Imperialism, W. Sanford Evans developed at considerable length the case for “the creation in Canada, and in each of the other self-governing Colonies, of a Ministry of Imperial and Foreign Affairs.” It was, however, far from his intention to provide machinery for conducting a foreign policy distinct from and perhaps in defiance of that of the mother country. Evans was a staunch supporter of imperial federation, who looked on his project as a means of strengthening the imperial connection by adding to the power and influence of the centre.

When Carl A. Dawson, a Canadian of American sociological training, went to McGill University in 1922, he went as a pioneer. He succeeded to the directorship of a school of social work, but the sociological point of view he brought was novel in Canada. Robert M. Maclver had taught at Toronto in the twenties. After he left to continue his work with great distinction in the Graduate Faculty of Political Science at Columbia University, the late Professor E. J. Urwick carried on in somewhat the same mood. It was the mood of the British scholarly liberals in which interest in welfare politics joined with social philosophy. Courses called sociology had certainly been offered in other Canadian universities, usually as a sort of sideline.

I do not believe that there had been any formal courses in sociology in the French universities of Canada, but Léon Gérin, Edouard Montpetit, and other French-Canadian scholars had long since studied, and in some measure emulated, the work of Frédéric LePlay, that same LePlay whose name lived on more among British sociologists than among those of his own France. I have no doubt Montpetit was familiar with Durkheim, whose work had so great an influence first on American sociologists and, later, on British and American social anthropologists. One should add that during all of this time Marius Barbeau, an anthropologist of British training, was rummaging around for evidence of the nearly lost arts of early French Canada. He had no fixed place in a university. Edward Sapir, also an anthropologist and one who had a great influence on American sociologists and social psychologists, had spent some time in Canada under the same auspices as other Canadian ethnologists–the Bureau of Mines. The sociological mood was not completely wanting in Canada, but sociologists were, to put it mildly, not a group with strong vested interests. In fact, the students of that time were inclined to complain that sociologists assigned them far too many books and articles concerning the States. Professor Dawson warned me, when I joined him in 1927, that my predecessor, also an American, had been given quite a runaround on this point. When it came up in one of my classes, I countered by assigning large doses from English social and housing surveys. When the students complained of that, too, I suggested that we might all get together and create our own research on Canada.

Canada's federation is distinct from the other two major federations in the English-speaking world in resting upon an alliance of two peoples and two cultures. Other differences exist, but this is fundamental. Since 1867 the dualism of culture has been slowly woven into the political fabric of the nation, although outside Quebec its implications are still not always appreciated or wholly accepted. With the appearance in 1956 of the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Constitutional Problems, English-speaking Canadians have little excuse for misunderstanding the position of their French-speaking compatriots. The Commission was appointed by provincial statute in January, 1953, under the chairmanship of Judge Thomas Tremblay. Its bulky report is never likely to be widely read. It is prolix and sometimes repetitious to the point of tedium; its analysis would have been more telling had it been tidier and more compressed. Yet, despite such flaws, it is a landmark in the literature of federalism: it describes and explains more fully than any other public document the position and anxieties of Quebec in the federal state, and defends the concept of a strict federalism as the essential basis for the success of Canada's national experiment. For the Tremblay Commissioners the issue of Quebec in the federation and the issue of the French in the nation are one and the same. In harmony with their theme they submit numerous recommendations. We cannot, however, assess these or do justice to their premises, without first reviewing briefly the historical position of Quebec in Canadian federalism.

The historian of the future, in attempting to interpret developments in the middle years of the twentieth century, may well be appalled by the mass of documentary evidence that confronts him. Particularly is this likely to be the case if he is foolhardy enough to explore the decisions of governmental regulatory agencies and the processes by which such organizations undertook to define the public interest. These public bureaucracies, exposed to strong political pressures and staffed largely by lawyers, characteristically accumulate very large masses of testimony, oral and written, in the course of their hearings. Partly for reasons of expense, this testimony is seldom published, and the lay inquirer, if he delves into the morass, is more than likely to find himself confused rather than enlightened by the unfamiliar phraseology and by the sheer bulk of the record.

Nevertheless, such agencies have come to play a very significant role in determining the rate and direction of economic development in the United States and Canada, and it is important that we should understand the kind of reasoning that underlies their decisions. The present inquiry stemmed initially from an interest in the Canadian natural gas industry, and from curiosity about the impediments that seemed to be delaying the export of Canadian gas to the United States.

The words “collective bargaining” are gaining wide currency in the context of civil service staff relations in Canada. The term, however, seems to mean different things to different men, and is sometimes used to confound the real issues. Thus, if one wishes to resist any basic adjustments in existing procedures for staff representation the words may be given their strictest construction. This suggests collective bargaining as it is practised in private labour relations. It implies a process involving the certification of associations, the signing of periodic written agreements, the institution of conciliation boards and, in the last resort, strike action. On the other hand, if one recognizes the shortcomings in present experience, collective bargaining may imply nothing more than some adjustment of the machinery of staff relations in response to growing pressures for more meaningful negotiations. The point to be stressed is that constitutional democratic government cannot afford to be forced into rigid positions, hog-tied by precise definition and institutional inertia. It must seek accommodation with, and among, the many interests that exert their pressures within a given community and it must do so in a way that is consistent with the general climate of opinion and expectation.

This paper is limited to a narrow portion of the field of economic growth. Its purpose is to discover how growth in the labour force, capital accumulation, and technological change have affected the movements of factor prices (particularly the return to capital) in a private enterprise economy. The question of what may happen to the return on capital, and indeed to all factor prices, is an old one. There is now material to provide some evidence of what has happened.

The first part of the paper deals briefly with the theory of the matter and provides a rough model. The second part explores the dimensions which quantitative data for the United States for a period of 100 years put on the variables and parameters of the model. Finally there are some comments related to the possible bearing of the results on future changes in the economic variables dealt with. The analysis is entirely for the long period.

It is evident from the discussion that I assume that factor prices are determined by the factors' marginal productivities.

In what follows I take much that is commonly accepted for granted and use many obiter dicta, some of which are justified in footnotes.

This paper is an attempt to give the interested economist who is not an econometrician a general picture of some of the developments in the specialized field of econometrics. It is hoped thereby to enable him to see how this field is related to the general science of economics, and how he may be able to make use in his own work of the results obtained in econometrics. The implications of the current rapid innovations in the field of electronic computers are stressed, since these may soon help to produce an ever increasing flow of econometric results.

In an address given in 1897, Alfred Marshall suggested that economics should develop not only as a quantitative science in many of its aspects, but also as a numerical science. Professor Schumpeter, in appraising Marshall's advice, observes that it follows the line of development begun by Sir William Petty in his Political Arithmetick of 1672. Schumpeter came down firmly on the side of this prescription himself. He too emphasized the importance of economics' being able to “figure out results.” Professor Pigou also reveals how Marshall, well aware as he was that much in economics cannot be described by numbers, hoped to see the areas that could be so described brought to the same stage as physics, where the amount of an effect produced by a cause can be estimated by numerical methods, using statistical data.

No conscience molten into gold,

Nor forged accusers bought and sold,

No cause deferred, nor vain spent journey,

For there Christ is the King's Attorney. …

—Sir Walter Raleigh,

A Passionate Man's Pilgrimage

In English history the seventeenth century is the locus classicus of the struggle between the prerogatives of the king and the rights of Parliament. And the student, looking beyond James II and Charles I, tends to see the Revolution of 1688 and the Civil War of the 1640's latent in the first two decades of the century. Indeed, the struggle between James I and Parliament in these years has more than once been stated in moral terms: the supporters of prerogative were wrong, Parliament and the common law were right. More than one student has regarded the seventeenth century as Tanner did: a drama, the prologue of which is the reign of James I, and the final act the Revolution of 1688. The suggestiveness of this analogy obscures the real nature of the struggle; one looks for events on the stage and neglects the world outside it.

The general election of 1911 was one of the most significant in Canadian history. Not only did it bring crushing defeat to the long-triumphant forces of Laurier Liberalism but it was also a decisive expression of Canadian sentiment on the subject of commercial relations with the United States. Success in this, his third electoral contest, saved Robert Borden from political oblivion and opened for him new vistas of opportunity and new avenues of achievement. The true measure of his ability as a party chieftain was revealed in the great struggle over reciprocity which shook the usually apathetic Canadian electorate during the summer of 1911. It is one of the ironies of history that the issue which brought down the Liberals in this election was one of their own choosing. The Conservatives who had at first feared the reciprocity issue eventually found it to contain potent emotional ingredients making for their own triumph. In his handling of reciprocity, the one decisive issue, Borden showed a masterly finesse which had not been apparent in his earlier attempts to win the support of his fellow Canadians.

Under what conditions can depreciation of the currency be relied on to correct a passive balance of payments? The question has interested theorists at least since Bickerdike's pioneering article of 1920 and in the post-war years has been the subject of an intensive and.long-drawn-out polemic. There is now on file a formula for each of umpteen different situations and one might feel tolerantly towards anyone who cried “Enough.” Yet, as I hope to show, important work remains to be done.

Almost without exception, existing solutions to the exchange stability problem have been derived by analysis of the “comparative equilibria” variety. It is assumed that, before and after depreciation, all commodity markets, international as well as purely domestic, are in equilibrium, in the sense that ex ante demand is equal to ex ante supply at the going price. Analysis of the problem consists in the location and, with an eye on the balance of payments, the comparison of the two equilibria.

I suspect, however, that depreciation often is mooted in a context of widespread disequilibrium in commodity markets. For, granted only that at some previous point in time the balance of payments was in equilibrium, present difficulties must be the aftermath of a “disturbance,” and it is difficult to conceive of a disturbance which impinges on the market for foreign exchange but not on the markets for individual commodities. In a context of market disequilibrium, then, what are the minimal conditions of exchange stability?

This year farmers in western Canada planted about 23 million acres to spring wheat. It was mainly Triticum vulgare (common bread wheat) with a small acreage of Triticum durum (macaroni wheat), but within each of these species any one of five or six varieties might have been used depending on location. Wheat is grown throughout the entire length and breadth of the crop land of western Canada, on soils of widely different types and under a considerable range of weather conditions. During the growing season and at harvest time, the wheat is subjected to numerous hazards, but eventually some 300 to 550 million bushels are harvested. In addition, there will be a carryover from the last crop or two representing wheat grown under other seasonal conditions. This large quantity of wheat will be far from uniform; it will vary in appearance from near perfect to mere chicken feed, in weight per bushel from 45 to 70 pounds, in protein content from 9 to 18 per cent, and in many other physical and chemical characteristics.

This wheat must be classified into grades of dependable and uniform quality, for Canada exports wheat to countries all over the world; and when a food product moves in bulk, in large volume, over great distances, a major factor in maintaining stable markets is the buyer's confidence in what he will receive from the seller. This is especially true when the sales are made on the basis of “certificate final.” In effect, the certificate issued by the Board of Grain Commissioners for Canada when a boat is loaded guarantees that the parcel represents the specified weight, that it is of the specified grade, and that it is equal to the current Standard Export Sample of that grade. Should the buyer be dissatisfied he has no legal recourse, though he may, of course, refer the matter back to the Board. Obviously, under such a system of marketing, the seller must establish a world-wide reputation for unimpeachable integrity and an almost infallible expertness and efficiency, both to attract new customers and to retain old ones.

On April 25, 1950, when convening the House of Commons Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts, Mr. L. Philippe Picard, M.P., remarked: “This committee, so far as I understand, has sat only about six times in the last twenty years, and it has been traditional that the committee would sit upon a request by any member to the elected chairman. There is no fixed date, no definite time at which we should sit. I wish to inform the committee that I have received a letter from the member for Winnipeg, Mr. Stewart, asking for the committee to be assembled.” The haphazard approach then taken by the committee towards its work, despite the importance of parliamentary control of public expenditure, was actually rather worse than its chairman's observations suggested: the committee had not in reality met in six of the previous twenty years for the consideration of public accounts, but on occasion had taken up quite other matters, as in its romp through the Bren Gun Contract in 1939. It is true that during those years other committees of the House of Commons studied various aspects of public finance, and that modern governmental procedures of accounting and auditing have made almost redundant the additional examination of some parts of the public accounts by legislative members.

The word “moral” gets a social scientist into trouble. A few years ago a colleague of mine strongly advised against my using it in the title of a monograph. On the face of it the term seems to some people unscientific; moreover, it is ambiguous. One has to explain tediously what one means by it. These would seem to be good reasons for avoiding its use altogether. They would be, except that no other word describes what I want to discuss.

It is true of course that the term moral has to do with values. But it has reference to an aspect of human life, and one that can be studied objectively. Religious phenomena have not been thought unworthy of research just because there are strong value elements in them.

Any planned growth is embedded in a set of institutions and attitudes which come from the past; in Asia a rich past obtrudes into the present in every aspect of life. One can see the layers of history lying one on the other in both material and mental life, in every field from archaeology to arithmetic, from ethics to economics. There is no hope of doing justice to this past in any summary that can be included here, but it may be useful to frame remarks about the future in terms of a simplified account of the three Asias which this century inherits.

The three Asias of the past. The periods of Asian history are most easily described in agricultural terms: Stone Age shifting cultivation; advanced irrigated rice culture which had spread to most of the more heavily settled portions of the continent hundreds of years ago; plantations established under imperial rule. In recent years all of these forms of agriculture and associated industry have merged into nation-states created since the Second World War.