medieval industry, and he is so carried away by his advocacy of this thesis that he fails to warn us of the inevitable limitations and lacunæ in our knowledge of so noteworthy a phenomenon. We hear much vague talk, where definite information would be in place, of a "tremendous accumulation of capital" (p. 400), of a "full-grown, brutal capitalism," mastering with an "unrestrained class egoism" the "proletariat masses" (p. 481 et passim). He accepts uncritically the unreliable figures given by Villani for the population (including the mortality in the Black Death) and for the cloth production of Florence, together with those of the Florentine cloth export through Venice attributed to the doge Mocenigo, while he dismisses rather too airily a rare statistical statement based on the tax-list of the clothiers.1 Doren makes some score of references to the contents of his next instalment of the Studien, promising among other things certain tax-list statistics. It is to be hoped that the forthcoming volume will carry less sail in the way of rhetoric and be better ballasted with facts and figures. But in thus pleading for a better documented and more sober treatment of the subject no disparagement is intended of the abiding elements of value in Doren's work. Doren, to be sure, is not the first to discover the early existence of a capitalistic industry, nor indeed does he claim to be. Attention has recently been called to somewhat similar phenomena in Flanders by Pirenne, in Germany by Schmoller, Gothein and others, in the silk industry of Genoa by Sieveking and in that of Venice by Broglio d'Ajano; but no one has pursued this particular problem so closely on so favorable a field as has Doren. We had become accustomed in economic history to push back the beginnings of the modern period and to find here, as in the history of literature and art, earlier manifestations of modern individualism than are consonant with current notions regarding the middle ages. But Doren urges, as indeed Schmoller suggested long before him, that we must differentiate between an initial rise of capitalism in the town economy of the mediæval period, ultimately breaking down partly by reason of the limitations of that economy and of its concomitant labor organization, and a modern capitalism more happily or at any rate more securely adjusted in the wider national economy. How valid this suggestive generalization may be, how far its perspective may lead, cannot, however, be discussed within the limits of a book review. HARVARD UNIVERSITY. EDWIN F. GAY. 1 Cf. appendix vii, a, and p. 343; the output for the year 1381-82 stated at 19,474 pieces of cloth from 279 makers as contrasted with Villani's estimate of 70,000 to 80,000 pieces from 300 makers in 1338. L'Utilité sociale de la propriété individuelle. By ADOLPHE LANDRY. Paris, Société nouvelle de libraire et d'édition, 1901. 511 pp. xii, This book is intended as an argument for socialism. It does not, however, pretend to completeness, but is concerned primarily with an analysis of the conflicts between private and public interests, which the author conceives to be inherent in the very nature of individual property. No attempt is made to present a like analysis of the difficulties inherent in socialism, or to strike a balance between the relative merits of socialism and of individual property as working systems. The book is divided into two parts, one dealing with production and the other with distribution. In the first part are discussed the curtailment of production with a view to securing larger money returns through increased prices; the conflict between gross and net product; the tendency to overproduction, or rather the uneconomical distribution of the factors of production among different industries; waste; and the tendency to sacrifice the future to the present. This part of the book concludes with a discussion of the problem of maximum productivity. The second part is divided into two sections, one treating of inequality of incomes in relation to general well-being; the other, of the best system of wealth distribution. The chief value of the work lies in the detail, sometimes, it must be confessed, wearisome and far-fetched, with which the character and extent of the various forms of conflict between public and private interests are analyzed. Nowhere else, in the knowledge of the reviewer, will an equally detailed and systematic discussion be found. It must be said, however, that, except in the first division of the first part, devoted to the curtailment of production in the interest of higher prices and constituting the most valuable portion of the book, there is a crudeness in the conception of the facts of economic life, and a tendency to the exaggeration of partial truths, which go far to impair the value of the work. These faults can be traced in part at least to an evident lack of economic training, shown most clearly in the failure to understand so familiar a principle as Ricardo's theory of international trade (pp. 416, 417). Thus, in the section devoted to the consideration of gross and net product, the author seems to hold that the value of land and capital is determined by their productivity; hence, if it is necessary on account of the high value of these factors to economize their use in a certain industry, that fact itself is proof that their value in some other industry is greater than in the industry in question; and the economy is bene ficial from the point of view of the public. The wage of the laborer, on the other hand, is determined, not by his productivity, but by his needs. If he cannot be profitably employed in a certain industry, the probable reason is, in a well-developed country at least, not that he has a higher value in some other industry, but simply that he cannot produce the equivalent of his wage. Not to employ a laborer who cannot produce his wage is, however, an injury to the community, which loses whatever productive power the laborer may possess. Approaching the same question from another standpoint, it is argued that instruments of production, other than labor, involve cost. If their cost exceeds their product, their use is evidently injurious to the community. Laborers, however, have no cost, and whatever they produce is clear gain. Economy in labor, therefore, which involves a diminution in the number of laborers, results in loss to the community. It can be readily understood how from such premises, more appropriate to a work on the administration of charity than to a work on economics, it is possible to reach, for example, the conclusion that England would be more populous and enjoy a larger revenue if it produced its own food supply (pp. 109, 127). While the securing of the maximum production is the great economic problem, the failure to solve which condemns, in our author's view, the existing system, the present economic organization is open to criticism also on the ground that, since wealth is unevenly distributed, the productive power actually employed is not so distributed as to yield the maximum amount of satisfaction of which it is capable. In his brief treatment of socialism as a constructive system, M. Landry accepts the principle of equal distribution of wealth, subject to such slight modifications as may be necessary to secure efficiency in production. He recognizes that demand and supply, and not the principle of labor cost, must control prices, and that it may be necessary for the state to regulate the growth of population, which he thinks can be easily done by making the family responsible for the care of children when it is desired to discourage the growth of population, and by placing the responsibility on the state when it is desired to encourage it. It would simply be a question of choosing the number that, all things considered, might seem desirable (p. 128). While the book has a real value, and is often suggestive even when it is not convincing, it is far from being an adequate discussion of the subject which it treats. BROWN UNIVERSITY. HENRY B. GARDNER. Pure Sociology. A Treatise on the Origin and Spontaneous Development of Society. By LESTER F. WARD. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1903. viii, 607 pp. Except perhaps to readers already familiar with the author's previous works, it would be impossible to convey in a few paragraphs even an approximate idea of the contents of this volume. We might compare it to an algebraic formula of two complex terms. These are "genesis" and "telesis." The argument is an analysis of these two terms into their principal components. This, however, would be Greek to one who had not read the book. Another way of suggesting its contents would be to say that the principal words of the alternative title may be rearranged so as to stand for the subject-matter and the chief points of view from which the subject-matter is considered: “society," "origin," "development," "spontaneous." The phenomena of society in general present the problems. Among them, problems of the origins of society are primary; the idea and the fact of a progressive unfolding are next in order; and that portion of the process which the author proposes to treat in this book is the spontaneous phase. Those human actions in which men say to themselves, "Go to now, we will modify society," are reserved for a future volume. Attention is directed in this book to those social developments that take place while men's thoughts are not fixed upon society as such at all, but while they are obeying impulses that are relatively individual. The inquiry might be paraphrased in the question: "What are the lines and the laws of convergence through which acts not so intended by the actors produce or modify social combinations ?" Since space does not permit a résumé of the contents of the book, it is best worth while to indicate its importance. The author recurs now and then to a familiar phenomenon which he expresses as “the illusion of the near." The attitude of the majority of Professor Ward's contemporaries toward his book has furnished a clear instance of that vagary. The book before us confirms an opinion which has been growing upon the present reviewer since the Dynamic Sociology appeared twenty years ago. "The illusion of the near" chiefly accounts for any failure by his contemporaries to recognize Professor Ward as entitled to rank with the world's first-rate philosophers. Indeed, the query may be raised whether he is not to be classed as a philosopher rather than as a sociologist, for, although he is by general consent the Nestor of American sociologists, he appears in Pure Sociology as an explorer in positive philosophy, with society as his base. But his interest as here revealed is in a range of generalization that correlates all the phenomena and problems of biology, psychology and sociology. The work therefore is comparable not with Spencer's Principles of Sociology; it is rather in the same genus with that writer's First Principles. Considering the mass of knowledge and the complexity of relationships with which Professor Ward is familiar at first hand, in contrast with the nearly empty formal categories which are the stock in trade of most philosophers, and considering the scope of his thought with reference to this material, the Pure Sociology strengthens the conviction that when he is far enough away for the "illusion of the near" to vanish, he will come into focus in the history of thought as a not less conspicuous figure than Comte, and not at all hidden by the shadow of Spencer. The essential interest of the sociologists is in getting as many social categories as possible, and as soon as possible, in shape for use in criticising our own passing phase of the social process. In the book before us this interest appears to be incidental rather than central in the author's thinking. This, however, is immaterial. So too is the question whether this volume speaks a final word upon any of the philosophical problems with which it deals. Some of the most useful thinkers have opened more questions than they have closed. Whether or not the mental type that tries to think things through is approaching extinction, the Pure Sociology reveals Professor Ward as a stalwart survivor of the species, and no one that wants to get an all-round look at things from the social point of view can afford to neglect this his latest book. ALBION W. SMALL. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. Les Finances de la Russie au XIXe Siècle. By JEAN DE BLOCH. Paris, Guillaumin, 1899. 2 vols., 265, 267 pp. Russlands Finanzpolitik und die Aufgaben der Zukunft. By K. GOLOVIN, from the Russian of KOLOSSOVSKI. Leipzig, Otto Wigand, 1900. 233 pp. A history of Russian finance requires frank and independent treatment, for the official reports and statements tell only a part of the story. A borrower naturally wishes to give the best possible aspect of his resources and prospects, for on them his credit depends. Russia has long been borrowing in foreign markets, and the budget statements have more than once dwelt upon the possible revenues and the plans of retrenchment, rather than on the actual condition of treasury and people. It is the foreign purchaser of Russian stock who is addressed, rather |