The concept of a governing class is as old as political speculation. Like so much else, it is found in Plato and Aristotle, and in most of the classic works of political thinkers from their day to the present. In this paper, however, I am not concerned with a history and comparative treatment of the concept, but with the idea and fact of the governing class in Britain within the period when the democratic state was evolving from the aristocratic; that is, from the Second Reform Bill of 1867 to the present. Yet a brief initial comment on the general concept is essential, even at the risk of raising more questions than one can answer here.

Every state is a hierarchy of power and authority. A governing class consists of the individuals within the hierarchy who frame the agenda and plans for public action, make the final decisions about government, and hence about the people and interests affected by government. In the contemporary world of reality a sharp dividing line between governed and governors in this sense is seldom easy to draw. Yet there is a line. Democracy is not government by all the people, but by a few accountable for their decisions to the rest. The quality and modes of such accountability depend upon the laws and institutions of the state, especially upon the persons who actually make the laws, operate the institutions, and seek to render their actions acceptable to the majority of the electorate. Such a governing class, group, or élite, whatever term we apply, consists of those whose primary concern is with acquiring, sustaining, and exercising political authority. Their function in this matter is definite and clear, and in its performance they come to think in like ways about procedure, develop common skills appropriate to their purpose, and in miscellaneous efforts learn what is feasible and not feasible.

Australia emerged from the war with low costs, a high level of London funds, favourable terms of trade, and improved efficiency stimulated by the war effort. All these were substantial assets in the immediate post-war period but there were also certain handicaps, themselves also the product of the war. For one thing the economy was greatly under-capitalized. This was due in part to a low rate of capital formation in the years immediately preceding the war, and secondly to a deliberate policy developed during the war of concentrating entirely upon capital formation that would have a direct bearing on the war effort. Apart from a serious shortage of capital equipment in industry and defects in the transport system, there was a great lag in housing construction. In addition, certain specialized industries had been developed during the war, and it was doubtful whether these could be continued in the post-war circumstances. Then finally there was the heavy task of making a swift and smooth transition from a war economy to a peace economy.

The period from 1946 to date has been one of the great periods of Canadian development. There are only two earlier ones which are comparable. The first was the great expansion from just before the turn of the century to 1913 in which the Prairies were settled and developed. The second was the boom of 1925 to 1929 which, though short, was impressive while it lasted. It is true that, in addition to these two earlier periods of marked growth, the two world wars have provided strong impetus to industrialization but for obvious reasons they were not characterized by capital development.

During the eight years from 1946 to 1953 the population of Canada has been increasing at an average rate of 2¼ per cent per annum and new investment in fixed capital (not including maintenance and repairs) has been equivalent to more than 20 per cent of the gross national product. Recently, these rates of expansion have been higher, population increasing at over 2½ per cent per annum and capital investment representing over 23 per cent of the gross national product. These are high rates of growth by any standard of comparison. The investment programme of recent years has represented about the same proportion of the gross national product as did that of 1925–9, but the present expansion is more significant both because it has lasted a good deal longer and because it has been more broadly based. Even in the twenties it was still correct to think of the Canadian economy as dominated by wheat. Today, however, though wheat is still of great importance, other basic industries have developed strikingly, including pulp and paper, lumber, the traditional base metals, aluminum, the new metals, oil and iron. So far as population growth is concerned, the post-war increase has been more rapid than that of the twenties in part because we have not been losing nearly so heavily in emigration to the United States. From the middle of 1945 until the end of 1953 the natural increase in Canada's population has been about 2.1 million people and immigration has been about a million—a combined increase of 3.1 million. Over this same period, emigration has been around 500,000 and the net population gain has thus been 2.6 million, or over 20 per cent.

The machinery for providing medical services raises two kinds of problems for the sociologist. On the one hand these services involve various sorts of institutional structures, such as hospitals; these merit attention and analysis. On the other hand medical services involve a set of specialized occupations; these likewise merit study. These two classes of phenomena, that is, the social institution and the specialized occupation, represent two of the major subjects of present-day sociological investigation.

The machinery for providing medical services raises comparable problems for other branches of science. The biological and psychological sciences find many of their theoretical problems dictated by the practices current in the medical field. The financing of such services raises problems for the economist, and the control and distribution of such services are matters of concern for the political scientist. This paper can, therefore, at best deal only with one facet of a large field of inquiry.

In sociology in recent years a considerable body of literature has developed around the problem areas indicated above. Various parts of the work world have been explored in order to gain a better knowledge of work institutions, more specifically to understand them as going concerns. Concurrently many specialized occupations have been subjected to study, with the purpose of discovering the common characteristics of this feature of our society.

The general idea of my title was hatched some years ago for an after-dinner speech at the annual meeting of the Midwest Economic Association. It proved to have been hatched from a double-yoked egg. In the first place some of the younger members, nurtured in the New Deal and the labour developments of the late thirties, said there was a printer's error on the programme. My title should be, not CLIO, but CIO. In the second place, the toastmaster primed himself for introducing me by looking Clio up in the Encyclopædia. He was baffled to learn that it is “a shell-less pelagic mollusc in the class Pteropod. A small spindle-shanked animal with six tentacles on its head. It forms the principal part of the food of some species of whales.” Being brought up on short-run phenomena, he read no further. Had he persisted he would, of course, have discovered that another Clio was one of the nine Greek muses; that she got her Ph.D. for a thesis on epic verse, then settled down to that other branch of poetic licence, history; and that she was thus an eternally young lady who never forgot a date.

From the evidence of sculpture and pottery it seems clear that Clio, unlike Venus, always wore clothes, choosing her apparel to fit the story she was writing. When dealing with military history she dressed like an Amazon, spear and shield and all; for political and constitutional history she had a whole clothes-closet—a crown and a purple coronation robe, a black gown which made her look like Portia, a knee-length coat copied later by southern senators, also miscellaneous wigs, cloaks, and daggers; the history of art and literature called for a corduroy tunic and flat-heeled buskins; for religious history she was garbed like a priestess; and when psychiatry was invented she experimented at length to see what went best with a couch. When, having passed through the drum and trumpet stage of history writing, she got round to economic history, she donned overalls: blue jeans, with copper rivets, pockets everywhere, white stitching, and union-made label. The get-up did not look divine, or even muse-like, especially from the back. But for the job in hand it has proved functionally well suited, and Clio at work has chalked up a creditable record of achievement during three quarters of a century's full employment of all her resources. It is about that record that I want to talk this afternoon.

I have interpreted the rather facetious title given me by the programme committee as permission to speak rather light-heartedly, even irresponsibly, about a few of the changes in the formal methods of analysis in the field of economic theory; to speak of fashions in tools, fashions in gadgets, fashions, if you will forgive me, in models.

In the 1920's Professor J. M. Clark supported the thesis that economic theory has developed by replacing worn and outgrown half-truths by new half-truths, that correspond more closely with increased knowledge, changing points of view, and different circumstances. Sir Dennis Robertson reviewed the first volume of the Survey of Contemporary Economics, called his review “A Revolutionist's Handbook,” and enumerated seven revolutions; but his phrasing is ironical. In his posthumous work on the History of Economic Analysis Professor Schumpeter has contended, with some success I think, that advances in economic analysis have been more consistent and less fluctuating than changes in the field of economic doctrine, economic systems, or economic thought. Fashions change, then, even in the methods of economic theory, but there is a good deal of continuity too. Many of the most widely useful tools of economic theory have changed very little in the last generation, or even in the last century; some have been in use for many centuries. Nevertheless, there have been many important changes too. Periodically, as attention comes to be focussed on a particular sort of problem, old tools are repaired, polished up, and put in the shop window; or new ones are invented.

Nowadays we are often and quite rightly reminded of the price of liberty. But eternal vigilance is the price paid for maintaining liberty, not the cost of production. To build up and establish a tradition of political freedom demands more heroic qualities: inner conviction, selfless devotion, and a willingness to risk everything for the worth and dignity of the individual. The histories of Switzerland, Holland, Britain, and the United States record the cost of our inherited privileges.

Germany has no tradition of political freedom. It is not that Germans have lacked heroism. They have played a great part in the struggle for religious liberty. They have been only too willing to die for their country's greatness. But the facts of geography and the course steered by their leading statesmen have diverted their attention from the advantages of political liberty.

German liberals missed their last great chance as far back as 1848. The most remarkable and sinister of all Bismarck's feats was the way in which, by sheer force of achievement, he won over many of the leading German intellects to unrestrained nationalism. Readers of Treitschke's Deutsche Geschichte often find it difficult to believe that the historian was ever an ardent liberal. After the foundation of the German Empire of 1871, as Dr. Adenauer put it recently, “a nationalism founded upon might gradually replaced the ethical idea of national freedom.” The Imperial Constitution provided for a bicameral parliament and introduced manhood suffrage. But the Chancellor was nominated by the Emperor and was not responsible to parliament. Furthermore the Constitution was so devised that no laws could in practice be passed without the Chancellor's approval. In the words of Liebknecht, the German Socialist, the Reichstag turned out to be little more than a “fig-leaf’ to cover the nakedness of autocracy.

Conservation is a word which occurs more and more frequently in politics. The “conservation of natural resources” appears both in the government accounts and in election speeches as a phrase which covers public spending on forests, waters, minerals, and fisheries, regardless of the ultimate purpose of that expenditure. Payments to American farmers, which enable them to achieve higher output and receive larger incomes, are blithely described as “conservation” without reference to whether or not the transaction has increased the nation's stock of natural resources.

Conservation is a field of study for many of the sciences. Originally, I think I may say, the child of the forestry profession (indeed in the United States the profession of forestry might almost be described as the child of the conservation movement), it has received increasing attention from many other fields. In the 1920's, conservation of oil resources became the slogan of the petroleum companies, swamped by new discoveries. They lost interest when demand increased relative to the newly controlled supply. In the 1930's, low demand for farm output, grave drought conditions, and allegedly increasing soil erosion made “conservation” a good cry for those who would give aid to agriculture. During the last war, farm specialists pushing soil conservation continued to hold the stage, but since then the public has heard increasingly from scientists and business men connected with fisheries, petroleum, water power, forestry, and even minerals. The current approach is to discuss the interrelation of the use of all the natural resources and to stress the necessity of conserving such resources simultaneously.

The Nova Scotian party system was both a product of the struggle for responsible government and a major instrument in determining its outcome. While issues of some magnitude occasionally agitated the House of Assembly prior to 1835, none possessed such a character as to permit a clear-cut and continuing division of its members. In fact, whether the differences of those days were between Loyalist and pre-Loyalist, or between country and town, they usually sprang from no more than the struggle for personal advantage, and great public questions were lost sight of or did not arise. Up to the end of the Napoleonic wars Halifax had lived largely off the expenditures made by the British government. Hence before this flow of easy money dried up there was in Nova Scotia poor ground for the growth of a party in opposition to the oligarchy in which ecclesiastical, commercial, and political power was concentrated. Even when the first attacks upon this clique commenced in the 1820's, they were led for the most part by men of Tory sympathies who, while they felt free to make an occasional display of independence on specific constitutional issues, never carried it to the point where they might be labelled as confirmed critics of government.

Varied programmes of research are now commonplace in, or in connection with, the military establishments of most of the larger countries of the world. In the United States, and to some extent in Canada, this is true also of the social sciences. The institutional setting of research is of peculiar interest to sociologists, particularly since rapid and extensive changes have recently been characteristic of military organizations. The main concern of this paper is, therefore, to describe and interpret some of the processes of change observed in the course of the work of the Defence Scientific Service with the Canadian Army during the past five years. A brief introduction notes the recent growth of the Army, the involvement in military affairs of large numbers of scientists, including some social scientists, and suggests the importance of the military as an area for the sociological study of work.