mortgage or trust deed may be foreclosed and that upon default in any interest or principal the holders of the certificates may declare the whole amount due and payable.

The law also provides for a reissue of certificates to take up previously issued and matured certificates.

The principle involved is not entirely new in Wisconsin legislation. Chapter 348, laws of 1899, amended by chapter 143, laws of 1901, contains similar provision but was applicable to only certain classes of cities. The supreme court has never passed upon the constitutionality of any of these laws.

It is to be noted that the law makes no provision that the purchaser at a foreclosure sale upon the plant may continue to operate it either under franchise or otherwise. The query presents itself whether the physical property constituting the plant without the right to continue operation of the plant will appeal to investors as good security for the large loans that will be necessary. It is to be remembered in this connection however that the granting of franchises has been placed by recent legislation in the hands of the State railroad commission and investors will have less fear than formerly of an arbitrary refusal to grant a franchise.

MATTHEW S. DUDGEON.

Railroad Taxation. The legislature of Maine of the current year has followed the example set by New Jersey in 1906, by adopting a graduated railroad tax. This tax is a specific State tax. It is based on the gross mileage receipts, and is to apply on a graduated scale increasing. as the gross income per mile increases. When such receipts do not exceed $1500 the tax is to equal one-half per cent of the gross transportation receipts; when over $1500 and under $2000, three-fourths 'per cent, and so on increasing the rate one-fourth per cent for each additional $500 of gross receipts per mile, providing that in no case is the rate to exceed 4 per cent.

New Jersey and Maine furnish the only precedents thus far for this method of railroad taxation. During the regular sessions of 1907, no less than nine State legislatures discussed a change in their present method of taxing railroads. However Maine was the only State to take advanced ground in the matter.

Legislatures are at great variance as to what is the best method of taxing railroads in order to promote that equality and justice which the constitution guarantees. The majority of States, however, maintain

the integrity of basing their tax on the unit system of valuation, which the inter-state commerce commission, in its report of 1901, recommended as the best method in practice at that time. The courts are generally in accord, in saying that every railroad system is a unit, absolutely indivisible, for the purpose of determining the value of the parts, and that the aggregate of such values makes the value of the whole. berlain v. Walter, 1894, 60 Fed. 788.)

(Cham

ARTHUR H. ROBERTSON.

Stock Watering. An act aimed at stock watering was passed at the last session of the Iowa legislature.

Corporations for pecuniary profit, except building and loan associations are forbidden (1907, c. 71) to issue any capital stock until the par value thereof has been received. If it is proposed to receive pay for stock in property or in any other thing than money, the corporation proposing such issue must apply to the State executive council for leave to do so. The application must state the amount of capital stock proposed to be thus issued, and must set forth specifically the property or other thing to be received in payment. The executive council is thereupon required to make investigation and to fix the value at which the corporation may receive the property or other thing in payment for capital stock. The corporation is also required to file a sworn certificate with the secretary of state within ten days after the issuance of any capital stock, stating the date of issue, the amount issued, the sum received therefor, if payment be made in money, or the property or thing taken, if such be the method of payment. Capital stock issued in violation of these provisions is void, and any money or thing of value received therefor is to remain the property of the corporation for the benefit of the remaining stockholders. Further penalties imposed for violation include dissolution of the offending corporation, and both fine and imprisonment for any offending officer, agent, or representative. FRANK MCDERMOTT.

Trade Unions and Trade Disputes. The socialists introduced into the last Wisconsin legislature a bill (S2A) copied after the British trade disputes act enacted by parliament in December, 1906.

The bill is almost an exact copy of the British law. It authorizes peaceful picketing by declaring that any person or number of persons may peacefully patrol the premises under strike (1) for the purpose of peacefully obtaining or communicating information, (2) for the pur

pose of peacefully persuading any person to work or to abstain from working. Theoretically the laborer is already in possession of this right, but certain judicial constructions of such words as intimidation, coercion, and force have so frequently deprived workmen of rights freely exercised by others that they desire a clear expression of the law on this point. The bill also calls for the repeal of the law of conspiracy. The conspiracy clause is similar to the statute of Maryland and of other States on this subject. It provides that an act done in the performance of an agreement or combination by two or more persons shall, if done in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute, not be actionable unless the act if done without any such agreement or combination would be actionable. Before the committee on manufactures and labor to which the bill was referred, the Wisconsin trade unionists argued that they should have the right to do in concert that which they are permitted to do as individuals. The bill further seeks to place trade unions upon the same footing as other associations in regard to civil as well as criminal liability by providing that while trade unions may be held responsible in contract they may not be sued in tort for acts done in furtherance of a trade dispute.

The bill was drawn after the British model and had it been introduced by any other than the socialist party it might not have met with defeat in the Wisconsin legislature. Taken separately most of the provisions of the bill are already in force in different States in this country.

GERHARD A. GESELL.

BOOK REVIEWS

The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle. By E. BARKER, M.A., late Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. (London: Methuen and Company; New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1906. Pp. xxii, 559.)

This work, as the preface tells us, is not confined in its scope to a mere exposition of the political thought of Plato and Aristotle as it may be deduced from their writings. Beginning, as Mr. Barker says of the work, some seven years ago as an introduction to Aristotle's Politics, it soon became evident that the Politics was not to be comprehended without a knowledge of Plato, and so an introduction to an introduction became necessary.

In dealing in turn with Plato, the same necessity confronted the author, so that to quote his words "the result was inevitable, that I should, as Aristotle himself would say, 'begin from the beginning,' and in defiance of Horace, commence my tale gemino ab ovo" (p. v). Accordingly, after an introductory chapter dealing with some general considerations regarding the origin of political thought in Greece, the Greek idea of the State, the relation of politics and ethics in the Greek mind, and the position of Athens and Sparta as opposing types, we find a chapter dealing with the Pre-Socratics, Socrates and the Minor Socratics. Then follow three chapters on Plato, in the first of which we are given a sketch of his life and his method, and a discussion of the earlier dialogues; in the second, a treatment of the republic or concerning justice; and in the third, Plato's view of monarchy and of the mixed State.

The remaining chapters, seven in number, are devoted to Aristotle and bear the following titles: Aristotle His Life and Times; the Place of the Politics in his System; the Teleological View of the State; the State as a Compound; Aristotle's Conception of Law and Justice; Aristotle's Principles of Economics; the Ideal State and its Scheme. of Education; Actual States and the Lines of their Reform.

The book closes with an epilogue; The Later History of the Politics, for, says Mr. Barker, "Finally, reflecting on the later history of Aristotle, maestro di color che sanno, and on his influence during the

Middle Ages, I could not refrain myself from touching upon Aquinas and Marsilio or from treating of the times of contempt of Aristotle" (p. v-vi).

Two appendices have been added, the first touching upon a newspaper, entitled Observations on the Politics, which appeared under the Commonwealth; the second giving briefly the later history of the republic.

The author not only has set for himself the very difficult task of an exposition of the political thought of Plato and Aristotle, with its relations both to its predecessors and to its successors, but also, to quote again his own words, has "attempted to discuss the value of those conceptions today, and the extent to which they can be applied to modern politics" (p. vi).

The form in which the book is written, namely, a succession of chapters, each containing an analysis of an appropriate part of some one of the political writings of the authors under consideration, tends to give a mechanical impression, which palls upon the reader before the end is reached; yet it is perhaps as complete and thorough an analysis of the political writings of Plato and Aristotle as we have. No history of political theories can compare to it in elaborateness of treatment; and by reason of the introduction and the epilogue it might almost be called a history of Greek political theories and their influence.

The epilogue is far from being the least interesting portion of the book, for in it we have sketched, all too briefly it is true, yet with considerable acumen, the course this Greek political thought took; first in the hands of the Greek, then of the Roman stoics, the ideas of the world empire and the world church and the complete change in the conception of the nature of the State brought about by the doctrine of the church fathers, which saw in the State only the evil result of the fall of man; the influence exerted by Aristotle upon Thomas Aquinas, Hooker, Locke and Rousseau, resulting in "a theory of original contract, utterly different from itself and bitterly hostile to its own teaching" (p. 509).

Turning from Aquinas to Dante, we find an equally strong influence but very different in character. Beginning as Ghibelline in Dante, in Marsilio of Padua it advocates the complete subordination of the spiritual to the temporal power and in Machiavelli, results in that separation of ethics and politics, which may be regarded as the starting point of modern political science.