Easy Economics

THE PROMISES MEN LIVE BY--Harry Scherman--Random House ($3).

The U. S. has produced spectacular feats of economic practice. But it has not, except for the Single Tax ideas of Henry George, produced any original economic theory. The Promises Men Live By, a 492-page volume addressed to laymen, is offered as "a new approach." Its author, shrewd, 51-year-old Harry Scherman, is president and owner of the Book-of-the-Month Club, onetime successful adman and originator of the Little Leather Library, which in two years (1923-25) sold 40,000,000 copies through such outlets as Woolworth's and the Whitman Candy Co.

Author Scherman sets out with an admirable purpose: to make economics readable, and to show up Carlyle, who labeled economics "the dismal science." Scherman's economic theory is as simple as his conclusions are fantastic. He defines economics as a promise economy depending for its smooth running on mutual honesty. His startling discovery is that the scheme does work, that men are honest. Thus the employer keeps his promise, within a "thousandth of a per cent" to pay his employes. Employers, manufacturers, retailers, tenants, banks, even "soulless" corporations and installment buyers--all these, says Author Scherman, pay their financial promises within one and one-half per cent of perfect.

The one exception in this ring-around-a-rosy is Government. At this point Author Scherman, who says you must keep your shirt on if you want to understand economics, throws his hat on the ground and stamps on it. Government, says he, welshes on all its promises. It steals property through taxes, steals money through devaluation of the currency (which he compares to the "coldblooded cheating of little children"), milks the banks, shows an unbroken record of "fraud" for 3,000 years. Finally, says Author Scherman, the combination of all these Governmental dishonesties is the main cause of depressions.

What to do about this deplorable contrast between private and Governmental honesty Author Scherman makes less clear. The essential thing, he suggests, having summed up a laissez-faire program that looks suspiciously like Adam Smith in modern dress, is to "raise the standards of economic literacy among men."

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