"Most Prized Book In My Library"

By: R. C. Hoiles

The above is the heading of an article by John W. Scoville, economist for the Chrysler Corporation, printed in "The Detroiter," the weekly publication of the Detroit Board of Commerce.

The following is what Mr. Scoville said about this book which The Register Publishing Co., Santa Ana, Calif., had printed:

Several years ago I stumbled on to a used copy of "Economic Sophisms" in a bookstore on 42nd Street, New York. That book is the most prized book in my library. After reading it, I was filled with awe and admiration. I had been sitting at the feet of a master.

The book was written in 1845 by the French Economist, Frederic Bastiat. In it he attacks the interference of the French government with foreign trade. With inexorable logic expressed in language as clear and transparent as cold water flowing from a mountain spring, he demolished the Protective System and left it, not broken, but pulverized into rubble and dust.

He begins Chapter I like this: "Which is best for man and for society, abundance or scarcity? What, you exclaim, can that be a question? Has anyone ever asserted, or is it possible to maintain that scarcity is at the foundation of human wellbeing?"

"Yes, this has been asserted, and is maintained every day; and I hesitate not to affirm that the theory of scarcity is much the most popular. It is the life of conversation, of the newspapers, of books and of political oratory; and strange as it may seem, it is certain that Political Economy will have fulfilled its practical mission when it has established beyond question, and widely disseminated, this very simple proposition: 'The wealth of men consists in the abundance of commodities.'"

Bastiat's book will never grow old; it is the bible of all who believe in human liberty. His arguments against the intervention of government in foreign trade are equally cogent against the intervention of government in domestic trade.

For the past decade, our government has adopted the theory of scarcity as a national policy. We have killed pigs, plowed under cotton, shortened work week; In short, done what we could to make commodities scarce and dear.

If "Economic Sophisms" could be read by millions of Americans, it would help destroy the current delusion, that government should promote scarcity rather than abundance. I hope that hundreds of Detroiters will read this masterpiece. It has been made available now through patriotic efforts of R. C. Hoiles, who has reprinted it under title, "Social Fallacies." The book is easy to read and very entertaining. Cobden said it is as "Amusing as a novel."

In her foreword to the book, Rose Wilder Lane said, "Bastiat was also the first to see clearly that the enemy of freedom was socialism. In America, the intellectuals were blindly adopting socialism from Europe. Bastiat lived in Europe, where the enemy still seemed to be the Kings; he wrote twenty years before Marx, but he saw in Fourier the seed of the reaction that has grown from Fourier and Hegal, through Marx, to Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler. He saw the 'common good' fallacy, and pointed it out in Cobden, Bright and Adam Smith."

We quote from the publisher's statement: "The reason for republishing Bastiat's 'Economic Sophisms' (which we have called 'Social Fallacies') is that we believe Bastiat shows the fallacy of government planning better than any other writer of any period."

As Bastiat said, in his "Harmonies of Political Economy," the companion work to his Sophisms --

"There is a leading idea which runs through the whole of this work, which prevades and animates every page and every line of it; and that idea is embodied in.

If the reader wants to own this book, which Mr. Scoville says "is the bible of all who believe in human liberty," it can be bought, while the edition lasts from this newspaper.