Report of the Proceedings of the Third International Congress for the Welfare and Protection of Children, Held in London, July, 1902. London: P. S. King & Son, 1902. 8vo., pp. xxvii+348. THE discussions of this congress fall under the general divisions: medical section, legislative section, educational and philanthropic section. Sir James Crichton-Browne gave an address on "Physical Efficiency in Children" which exposes the causes of physical degradation in defective income and unwholesome surroundings. J. F. J. Sykes presented the means of amelioration in a paper on hygiene and sanitation in the home and at school. Mr. Loch's chief conclusion in relation to the state and parental control is that guardianship should accompany maintenance, but that the rights of the child need protection by the agents of poor relief. The paper of Mr. Peacock on street trading of children has interest for American cities; for, while we have learned the evils of factory labor, the public has hardly begun to consider the physical and moral dangers of occupations which plunge children into hourly temptation. The whole volume deserves attention of economists because of the direct testimony of persons familiar with the present conditions of life for defective, neglected and delinquent children in Europe and America. C. R. H. The Empire of Business. By ANDREW CARNegie. New York: The Empire of Business is made up of independent articles on miscellaneous topics. There are seventeen of these papers, most of which have been previously published; the others are addresses before audiences of students, workingmen, or business-men. Mr. Carnegie counsels the young business-man to avoid liquor, speculation, and indorsement, and to do something to attract his employer's attention to his ability. While appreciating the value of technical education and wide reading, the author considers an early start in business a greater advantage than a college education. In the lecture on "Wealth and its Uses," he repeats his well-known belief in the enervating effect of hereditary wealth and in the disgracefulness of dying rich. When speaking to workingmen Mr. Carnegie emphasizes the interdependence and common interests of labor, business ability, and capital. Friction between industrial classes he attributes to ignorance: "Capital is ignorant of the necessities and the just dues of labor, and labor is ignorant of the necessities and dangers of capital." He advocates the payment of wages according to a sliding scale, in proportion to the net prices received for the product month by month; and he has introduced this plan in his own company. He also believes in the eight-hour day, but has found it impossible to maintain it against close competition; he therefore looks to legislation to bring it about by degrees. He believes in profit-sharing through taking able workmen into partnership; he has little faith in the ultimate success of corporations owned by idle capitalists and managed by mere salaried employees. In "The Bugaboo of Trusts" the author declares that the only persons who have reason to fear the trusts are "those foolish enough to enter into them." There can be no permanent extortion of profit beyond the average return from capital, nor any monopoly, either in transportation or manufacturing. In "The Manchester School and Today" Mr. Carnegie shows that the wide distribution of manufacturing industry among the nations has been due to causes which could not have been foreseen: coal, lime, and ironstone have been found where their existence was not suspected, and automatic machinery has done away with the necessity for trained mechanical skill. He is not in favor of protection beyond the point necessary to allow Americans to retain their own market in a fair contest with the foreigner. He would levy duties chiefly on the luxuries used by the rich, the consumption of which he believes would not be greatly affected by an increase of price; and he would leave the tariff unchanged, barring fiscal emergencies, except once in a decade, after the census. "The A B C of Money" is a defense of the gold standard, and incidentally a clear elementary exposition of the history and functions of money. The volume contains somewhat technical papers on iron and steel, on natural oil and gas wells, and on railroads, and a partly statistical comparison between British and American costs of living. MAX WEST. The Battle With the Slum. By JACOB A. RIIS. New York; The Macmillan Company, 1902. 8vo, pp. 465. THIS latest work of Mr. Riis supplements his How the Other Half Lives and A Ten Years' War," and completes the history of a struggle to improve conditions in the tenement-house districts of New York city. The book describes the work of the Tenement-House Commissions of 1894 and 1900, and the voluntary citizens' committee of 1898, which led up to the creation of the present Tenement-House Department; but it is far from being a statistical report. It is rather an intimately personal account of the awful conditions which prevailed in the tenement-house districts, with their population of over two millions, and of what has been done, and against what odds, to purge the city. Such triumphs as the razing of Mulberry Bend, the opening of various small parks and playgrounds, the model tenements, the Mills hotels, the vacation schools all these make a story not often exceeded in interest. The Battle With the Slum illustrates many important civic truths, not the least of which is that sometimes a made American may be worth a great many of the indigenous variety. The book is enlivened with anecdotes, and contains many telling reproductions from photographs. MARY MILLS WEST. Die vier Hauptrichtungen der socialen Bewegung. Kritisch und vergleichend dargestellt. By BENEDICT FRIEDLÄNDER. I. Theil: Marxismus und Anarchismus. Berlin S. Calvary & Co., 1901. 8vo, pp. xx+220. DR. FRIEDLÄNDER, although by profession an investigator in biological and related scientific fields, is not a homo novus in the province of economic criticism. In 1902 he published a booklet bearing the title: Der freiheitliche Sozialismus im Gegensatz zum Staatsknechttum der Marxisten; mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Werke und Schicksale Eugen Dührings. Now, following, as it were, the advice "nonumque prematur in annum," the author purposes to give us, in his new book, a carefully revised, enlarged, and modified study of the social problem and its theories. For the sake of clearness and expediency he has reduced the multitude of social-reform theories to four principal types, i. e., Marxism, as represented, e. g., by the German Social Democrats, anarchism, Eugen Dühring's societarian system, and Henry George's neophysiocratic single-tax theory. These four types, no doubt, represent the most important forms of social-reform theories of our time. Nor do we believe that interest in the able critical summaries of the author can be wanting after the tremendous growth, in the recent state elections, of the socialist vote and influence. In Mas sachusetts alone the socialists increased their vote from about ten thousand in 1901 to thirty-three thousand in 1902. While the increase in other states is not as great as this, yet it is in evidence everywhere and likely to set people to thinking. There is no dearth of critical. books on socialism and anarchism, yet we do not hesitate to count this book among the best of its kind. Following, as he states in the preface, the excellent criticism Eugen Dühring has given on Marxism, Dr. Friedländer shows how untenable, scholastic, and sometimes trivial are some of the theoretical foundations of "scientific" socialism, such as Verelendungstheorie (which by this time even the orthodox Marxist admits to be contrary to fact), and the materialistic conception of history. And as to its promise of freedom and happiness, so alluring to the toiling masses, the author's criticism sounds like an extended paraphrase of Goethe's words: Wie man denn niemals mehr von Freiheit reden hört, als wenn eine Partei die andere unterjochen will und es auf weiter nichts abgesehen ist, als dass Gewalt, Einfluss und Vermögen aus einer Hand in die andere gehen sollen. Freiheit ist die leise Parole heimlich Verschworener, das laute Feldgeschrei der öffentlich Umwälzenden, ja das Losungswort der Despotie selbst, wenn sie ihre unterjochte Masse gegen den Feind anführt und ihr von auswärtigem Druck Erlösung auf alle Zeiten verspricht. The laissez-aller doctrine of the materialistic conception of history is truly branded as fatalistic, unfruitful, and, on that account, as dangerous and pernicious. The inability for positive and constructive social work exhibited by the Marxists is correctly explained as the direct result of their crude and mechanical way of judging and accounting for the forces at work in human history. But by no means is the author willing to admit the great service Marx has rendered, especially to German socialists, in politically organizing the workingmen into such a magnificent body and leading them to what the socialists call classconsciousness. Neither is he blind to the fact that theoretical anarchism has well deserved of society by severely criticising the specific shortcomings of paternalistic socialists. Yet its fundamental contentions, based on an extremely optimistic view of human nature, are cleverly subjected to irony as against a good deal of sarcasm directed toward the Marxists. The anarchist's horror of authority in any form, of the state, and of most forms of social organization is leading to more utopian views and dogmas in regard to social problems than the socialism of Marx. Dr. Friedländer points to the indisputable fact that any decent, intelligent society, especially such a complex one as ours, must necessa rily admit the authority of experts, not the least in the affairs of government. This necessity, however much we may regret it, is nevertheless absolute, although totally ignored by the so-called communistic anarchists, like Bakunin, Krapotkin, Tolstoi, Most. The individualistic forms of anarchistic theory, if the term "theory" be not a misapplication, the teaching of Max Stirner, John Henry Mackay, et al., are, quite naturally, treated less in extenso. Perhaps it would have been appropriate to make some mention at least of the American Benjamin Tucker, whose doctrines are based on Prudhon's. But Dr. Friedländer does not aim to be critical only; he professes to be constructive in his review of Eugen Dühring's and Henry George's social theories, in both of which he discovers valuable corner stones for the structure of a future society juster and freer than the one we live in. With great interest we look forward to the appearance of the second part. The statement, on p. 149, that the weekly Freiheit edited by Johann Most was discontinued in 1893 is to be revised. It was being published years after that, and is, I believe, still appearing in New York. KARL DETLEV Jessen. Droit et coutumes des populations rurales de la France en matière successorale. By Alexandre de BRANDT. Translated from the German by EUGÈNE RÉGNIER, with a preface by GEORGES BLONDEL. Paris L. Larose, 1901. 8vo, pp. xvi+371. ALEXANDER VON BRANDT, a student of August Meitzen, describes in this book the hereditary laws and customs of the rural population of France. Before the French Revolution, the farms, according to the laws and customs existing in the various parts of the country, were either equally divided among all the heirs or at least all male heirs, or left to one heir alone (pp. 6, 18-68). The civil code introduced by Napoleon established for the whole country the principle of the equal division of the farms among all the heirs. The economic motive for that innovation was the expectation of an ensuing rapid growth of the number of small proprietors and at the same time an increase of the population. Nowadays many scholars, from Le Play to Bertillon, Parliament, the press, etc., make this same law responsible for the small increase of the French population. The farmers are said to have |