Note 173 — Chapter XIII

The danger of the abstract individualistic study, from the entrepreneur's viewpoint—a useful enough method within limits—is well illustrated by Professor Davenport's contention that "men as employees are passive facts, mere agents under the direction of managing producers, and are therefore only potentially directing forces. The problem of production and of marginalship is, accordingly, an entrepreneur problem." (Op. cit., p. 279, n.) This is set forth as a limitation on the doctrine, stated in the paragraph which precedes it, that "man is to be conceived as the subject and centre of economic science, etc." Surely Professor Davenport's contention is an impossible abstraction from the rich facts of social control. The managing entrepreneur knows better, when he deals with union rules and walking delegates. And the economist, tracing the subtler forces that underlie values, and so motivate the direction of industry, should know more, rather than less, than the entrepreneur.