Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 95 of the revised (1964) edition of T.S. Ashton’s 1948 book, The Industrial Revolution: 1760-1830:

If it cannot be held that the period of the industrial revolution was one of individualism – at least in the narrow sense of the term – it may with some justice be maintained that it was an age of laisser-faire . This unhappy phrase has been used as a missile in so many political controversies that it now appears battered and shabby. But there was a time when it was employed, not as an epithet of abuse, but as an inscription on the banners of progress.

DBx: The escape, starting about 250 years ago, from humanity’s never-before-escaped widespread material deprivation owed almost nothing to government planners. The escape occurred because bourgeois values became more widely accepted and practiced – a development that was key in turning the ages-old trickle of innovation into a Niagara.