Present interest in communication research in the social and physical sciences raises some interesting and difficult questions for the economic historian. Arthur Cole, who claims that he is merely trying to carry further the work of Harold Innis and others at Toronto, but who is surely the moving spirit in this session, has suggested that we might begin by pin-pointing a few leading questions for examination. Is this comparatively recent development to be regarded as merely a passing phase in the history of fashions in thought? Is the process of relating communication to economic change mainly a process of sophistication and is there anything to argue about in this relationship? Or, on the other hand, does it in fact amount to a major break-through in scientific and historical analysis, something comparable to the impact made on economics about a century ago by the Austrian School?

The present state of economic history in Canada contrastswith that of a quarter century ago. It could be written sharplyin the 1930's that the most distinctive work in Canadian economics was being done by economic historians concerned with the study of transportation and tariffs, trade associations and agricultural organizations, money and banking. There was at the same time a close approach to a generally accepted framework of analysis and interpretation and more than a suggestion of synthesis in Canadian historical writings. This pre-eminence of economic history and this unity of theme are now things of the past. As to the first, the rate of progress in economic analysis and statistics, in sociology and political theory, has brought with it both a change in status and the prospect of extensive revisions, factual and interpretative, of our views of the past. Similarly, a former unity of approach resting on the economics of staple production has lost ground before the complexities of modern industrial change. For the economic historian these changes promise much for present and future research even if, at the moment, they bring small comfort.

In this paper I shall limit myself to various comments on integration narrowly conceived, that is, within the discipline of economic history itself, and to a few historical cases used to illustrate the possibilities and limitations of comparative method as a means to this end. Comparative study, as Miss Thrupp has stressed, scarcely represents a new departure in economic thought. The novelty seems to be rather in the almost universal appeal it now has for those who would explore the mysteries of change. This interest appears to be a consequence of the impact of recent developments in backward-area studies and the closely related pursuit of a general theory of growth; these tend to focus attention on different kinds and rates of growth and comparison becomes inevitable. In turn, accumulations of knowledge about economic change in very different contexts lead to the need for some means of correlating diese, partly for aesthetic reasons but also because a synoptic view of the landscape of change has its very practical use. Unless the whole field can be surveyed from a single point of view, and by this I do not mean the same point of view, it is very difficult to know where the need for more intensive exploration is greatest.

Present-Day economic historians should be well qualified to talk about uncertainty. There was a happier time when the empirical and concrete study of individual situations was deemed sufficient, when mediodological problems of the long run were left for historians to raise and solve if they could and controversies centered on questions that they themselves formulated. Differences there were, but few irreconcilable differences; areas of the unknown were recognized but there appeared to be no gaps in knowledge that could not be bridged in the course of time. Now, for better or worse, this sheltered position has itself become a datum of history. The challenge of social scientists seeking chics to an understanding of die forces shaping secular change has become increasingly insistent and effective; the strenuous wooing of Clio by economic theorists, statisticians, and Parsonian sociologists can no longer be ignored. Assuming that retreat to the shelter of cloistered storytelling is out of the question, creative response on the part of historians to the uncertainties of their twentieth-century environment becomes a condition of leadership in historical inquiry, its lack a virtual guarantee of submergence.

Over the three decades of teaching and research allotted Harold Innis, no subject concerned him more than, the state of economics. He looked to economic history to enrich and broaden economic thought, and he sought to explain fashions in economics and to make economists intelligible to themselves. Although Veblen's influence left its mark on his work, Innis remained throughout a disciple of Adam Smith and no name appears more frequently in his observations on economics past and present. His plea was, as he put it, for “a general emphasis on a universal approach” and in his unfinished paper he writes, “The economic historian must test the tools of economic analysis by applying them to a broad canvas and by suggesting their possibilities and limitations when applied to other language or cultural groups.”

Apart from this search for perspective in economic thought there were other elements of continuity in Innis's thinking which give his life's work a coherence and a unity whether his interest centred on Canadian economic history or the duration powers of empires. It is scarcely necessary here to refer to his dislike of concentrations of power in any form or to his uncompromising belief in the free and creative powers of the individual, attitudes which stamp his research from beginning to untimely end. In his writings on economic history, technological change, free or controlled, links past and present. In his more specific references to economics, the pricing system provides the key to his reflections on the state of the subject. Early in his work there is present the same price-technology dichotomy that is to be found throughout Veblen's writings; later Innis sought to resolve this dichotomy in his studies of communication in which he saw technology and pricing as elements interacting with politics, law, and religion in a larger network of human relationships.

There is much talk in our time about freedom and economists have not been silent on the subject. It is apparent that in discussing the meaning and conditions of freedom they are moving beyond the limits of economics “proper” into the realm of political economy, which as O. H. Taylor has recently pointed out “… involves the latter [economic science] plus all other social or human sciences, plus philosophical, ethical and political reflection, plus thoughtful study of human history.” And since freedom involves value judgments, “ … is itself an ethical category …,” economics, in so far as economists concern themselves with freedom, cannot be regarded as a neutral science. There are deep waters here, deeper than many of freedom's advocates seem to realize. It is argued in this paper that while many economists writing about freedom will pay lip-service to the ideal of political economy as described by Professor Taylor, the strong tendency to remain economic scientists in thought and method is likely to produce in the end a flabbier economics and very little new light on freedom.

An approach very common in economic literature is to identify extremes of (i) freedom in thought and behaviour and (ii) authoritarian control, and then to suggest some happy middle way, preferably one which combines the “best” features of each. Freedom is identified with change, uncertainty and “progress” (these somehow identified with competition in free markets) and its absence with concentrations of power which threaten essential liberties. The problem appears to be that of reconciling liberty with stability, freedom of competition with an unseemly demand for security. To make the best of both worlds there must be some planning for stability, but not too much planning because it is so debilitating. Extremes must be avoided, some compromise sought; it is as simple as that.