Stoddards establishes the author's critical acumen. His observations on history teaching can be followed with profit by every teaching sociologist. The Trend of History also seeks the essence of history and its practical availability to trace out the nature and origins of twentieth-century problems. Its author would agree with Professor Heitland that mere political history is insufficient, and that on the whole only recent history has practical meaning. Even with these restrictions he would reject it as an infallible vade mecum to the statesman. To the sociologist his chief appeal lies in his approach to history from the institutional and "organic," rather than the individual or national, standpoint, and in his theory of social fermentation through putrefaction of ideas and institutions. ARTHUR J. TODD CHICAGO Security against War. BY FRANCES KELLOR. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1924. 2 Vols. Pp. ix+851. $6.00. Scholars are not unaccustomed to recording negative results even after long and laborious researches; but seldom has it been the reviewer's fortune to work through such a mass as these nine hundred pages to so little purpose. With all the paraphernalia of research apparent and with every evidence of having had access to a wealth of materials, there runs throughout the fabric a suspicious thread of bias. Indeed the whole work sounds like a Lodge report to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. In the process, the poor old League of Nations is beaten black and blue; the Council machinery is declared unsound; the ambassadors, and not the League, the real power; the League, weak though autocratic, nothing but a glorified stretcher-bearer; no justice even when peaceable settlements are arrived at; the League Court unable to prevent wars; the fires of national egotism still leap high; small states have no rights; internationalism is weak in the face of Great Powers. The Saar Basin, Danzig, Albania, Fiume, and a score of other situations are analyzed in such a way as to belittle the League. It would seem that only on two points, the abhorrence of war and the substitution of law for force, are Europe and America in agreement. But in so far as methods are concerned, the author draws again the familiar picture of America contra mundum. America should not join the League, for that would be to entangle us in subversion of democracy. Instead, we must call a third Hague conference, codify international law, outlaw war according to the Levinson plan, and by all means scrap the League Council as a tribunal and replace it with the Hague Court. The mountain in labor finally brings forth a mouse! For these conclusions sound rather thin and naïve after such a ponderous array of research activities. More than that, they are belated and destructive and scarcely warrant the optimistic title, Security Against War. CHICAGO ARTHUR J. TODD Public Ownership. A Survey of Public Enterprises, Municipal, State, and Federal, in the United States and Elsewhere. By CARL D. THOMPSON, Secretary of the Public Ownership League of America. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1925. Pp. xviii+445. $3.00. Popular Ownership of Property: Its Newer Forms and Social Consequences. Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York, Vol. XI, No. 3, April, 1925. Edited by WILLIAM L. RANSOM AND PARKER THOMAS MOON. New York: The Academy of Political Science, Columbia University, 116th St. and Broadway. Pp. xix+198. Mr. Thompson's book is mainly composed of facts. It should be of constant use for reference by everyone who is helping to shape programs that involve choice between public and private ownership. The circumstance that the book is sanctioned by The Public Ownership League detracts nothing from its value. In any case, if action depended upon the experience cited it would be necessary to verify the evidence. The work is consistent with the opening paragraph of the Introduction: It is not the purpose of this volume to propound or to define any theory with reference to public ownership. The purpose is, rather, to present the facts with regard to the various phases of public ownership and enterprise. We are not concerned to argue for the public ownership of this or that public utility or against it. Our chief purpose here is to record the fact that this or that utility is publicly owned; and to give the results of such ownership so far as they can be learned. Under twenty subtitles the last chapter in the book deals with "Objections to Public Ownership." This discussion is not an exception to the rule that the book is an exhibit of facts. These objections are actual, and it is a service to both sides of the public ownership problem to schedule the reasons that have been urged against the device. The program of the Acedemy was based on recognition, or at least assumption that "a democratic trend in proprietorship" was in force, and it was a frank attempt "to conduct a scientific and searching National Conference as to the probable effects of what has been and is taking place." At three sessions twenty-five different participants discussed as many aspects of public ownership. Although the different contributions bristled with statements of fact, interpretation rather than addition to knowledge was the center of attention. In effect these two publications supplement each other. ALBION W. SMALL UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Elements of Modern Building and Loan Associations. By HORACE F. CLARK AND FRANK A. CHASE. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1925. Pp. 496 and Appendix. $4.00. This fourth volume of the "Standard Course in Real Estate" is intended primarily as a textbook for persons engaged in the building and loan business, which the authors think of as being a specialized field requiring training different from that for banking, on the one hand, and real estate dealing, on the other. The types of building and loan associations, technical matters of the business, as appraisal of property, principles of finance involved, accounting, promotion of business, legal problems, the history of the movement, state and federal regulation, all are discussed. Comprehensive statistics have been put into tables and charts. Assuming that the technical material is of no great sociological interest in itself, there remain certain interesting facts brought out in the history and survey of the building and loan movement. One is surprised to learn that home ownership increased more rapidly than did tenancy from 1900 to 1920, even in the North, where cities have grown most rapidly. In the same period building and loan associations have had their greatest increase in number, membership, and assets. By inference from the facts presented, one learns that this one-time spontaneous movement with loose organization is becoming increasingly institutionalized and regulated; that the rigidity of organization and degree of regulation are greater in the West, where the movement is newer; that this co-operative movement has taken the stigma off the once hated mortgage; that associations succeed best when organized on a local community basis; that members are of certain economically and socially definable classes; and that the movement is developing a science and technique of its own. CHICAGO EVERETT C. HUGHES An Introduction to Statistical Methods: A Textbook for College Students, A Manual for Statisticians and Business Executives. By HORACE SECRIST. New York: The Macmillan Co., Revised Ed., 1925. Pp. xxxiii+584. $4.00. This book is a revised edition of an earlier attempt to give to college students and to those interested in statistical methods a complete but concise exposition of statistical theory and technique useful in the analysis of economic data. Unfortunately there is much more of technique than of theory. Those interested in better statistical analysis will accomplish their purpose much more quickly if they give more attention to teaching students to understand and appreciate the logic involved in statistical methods rather than to the methods whereby statistical computations are made. While a few sections show little change from the earlier edition, for the most part the book has been both revised and enlarged. The general organization, unfortunately, has been but slightly changed. It seems doubtful if the process of collecting data should be discussed at the first of the book. The theory of sampling seems much more important, though it has been almost wholly neglected. What the book lacks in originality is compensated for by including almost everything upon statistical methods. The brevity with which such chapters as those on diagrammatic and graphic presentation, correlation, and index numbers are presented, however, raises the question as to whether one can safely combine a textbook and a manual in one volume. The dogmatism necessary in a handbook is hardly to be condoned in a text for undergraduates who, generally speaking, are already far too uncritical. What the undergraduate needs is more theory and fewer rules, though the tendency in American colleges and universities is too often toward technique. In spite of its defects as a text, however, the new edition should prove a welcome handbook for those who already know something about statistical theory. CHICAGO ERNEST R. MOWRER Folk Songs of French Canada. Collected and edited by MARIUS BARBEAU and EDWARD SAPIR. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1925. Pp. 216. $4.00. The forty-odd folk songs contained in this volume are a selected group taken from a mass of French-Canadian folklore material collected for the Canadian National Museum. In general they are of very ancient origin, possibly going back to the jongleurs of medieval France. The songs, texts of which are in both French and English, with the melodies, are interesting both in themselves and as illustrating the perseverance with which a cultural heritage persists among an isolated people. MARGARET PARK REDFIELD BOULDER, COLORADO Fragments from My Diary. BY MAXIM GORKY. New York: Robert M. McBride & Co., 1924. Pp. 320. $3.00. The title of this book is misleading. It is composed of fragments, but not fragments of a diary. Doubtless the publishers thought a Gorky diary would meet a larger sale with American readers than if the label reminded one of plebeian Russian life. But it is the old Russia that is described, the Russia that Gorky loved so well and tried so hard to change-but withal the Russia that gave him his literary career. The author has invaded a very rich background of half a century and selected some fifty or more interesting but unrelated bits which he has thrown together with no special connection save the semblance of chronological order. With the exception of a few pages where he turns aside to talk about Tolstoy, Blok, and Tchekoff, the book is devoted to personality sketches of unique village types. One gets the feeling that this is a last hasty tribute to an order that Gorky feels is doomed to pass. Though he deals with reality Gorky is an artist; and here, as in other creations of his, he is ever on the alert to feed his artist's passion for flowing phrases and fancy adjectives. Notwithstanding the spots of high color the book is pleasant reading and a good piece of reporting. NELS ANDERSON Labor Economics. By SOLOMON BLUM. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1925. Pp. ix+579. $3.00. Professor Blum's central object of attention in his Labor Economics is the "labor movement," in the ordinary understanding of the term. |