The astute reader even of detective stories makes a practice of looking at the end of the book because the ending reveals the basic values of the book more quickly than any other single part of the whole. An audience is at a disadvantage unless the speaker furnishes some preliminary sketch of the problems to be explored and some brief answers to the questions to be examined. It is therefore appropriate to state the purpose of the paper in a few words. It is proposed to show that his torical analysis affords no support for the uncritical faith in progress that characterized most of the nineteenth century. The development of the power economy has not brought the abundance for all nor the general recognition of the advantages of world-wide freedom of trade that was confidently anticipated by idealists like Cobden.