Social Problems of Today. By GROVE S. Dow, Head of the Department of Sociology, University of Denver, in collaboration with EDGAR B. WESLEY, Head of the Social Science Department, University City (Mo.) High School. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1925. Pp. xvi+337. Illustrated. $2.00. How the World Grows Smaller. "The Community-Life History Series," Book I. BY DANIEL J. BEEBY, Principal of the Oglesby Public School, Chicago, and DOROTHEA BEEBY. New York: Charles E. Merrill Co., 1924. Pp. vi+293. Illustrated. $0.96.

Community Life Today and in Colonial Times. "The CommunityLife History Series," Book II. BY DANIEL J. BEEBY, Principal of the Oglesby Public School, Chicago, and DOROTHEA BEEBY. New York: Charles E. Merrill Co., 1925. Pp. iv+ 369. Illustrated. $0.96.

Textbooks in social science for the senior year of the high school may be divided into two main groups. The first group follows tradition in that it presents economics, sociology, and political science as separate courses. Each course of this type maintains the boundary lines defined by university research and technique. It bears quite distinctly the earmarks of its descent from the higher to the lower institutions of learning. The second group of texts treats life as a unity, paying little heed to the defined limits of traditional courses of study in the university, and crossing at will the boundary lines of all the social sciences. Authors of this group of texts contend that an intelligent person in a life-situation seeks the solution of a problem not by restricting his researches or thinking to a specialized field, but by exploring all fields which give promise of suggestions for the solution of his problems. A textbook in this group should therefore contain materials selected and presented in a manner conducive to the development of an understanding of the basic social relationships. Further, it should contain suggestions for projects which will assist the student to acquire some skill in the technique of problem solving, together with an active and personal interest in social adjustment and maladjustment.

Social Problems of Today clearly belongs to the first group, for at basis the book is college sociology simplified and clarified for use by high-school students. In his preface Professor Dow states that he aims

to present (1) materials on the structure and nature of society, (2) some understanding of social institutions, and (3) some knowledge of social defects. The organization of the book is much what we expect to find. The first three chapters are devoted to a traditional and academic discussion of the nature of sociology, of the influence of geographic environment, and of heredity. Then follow seven chapters on conditions which arise in the evolution of society, such as population, immigration, urban migration, race problems, the family, and industry. The next four chapters deal with typical maladjustments: women and children in industry, poverty, crime, and defectives. The last chapter is on progress. Practically all the references are to college texts and treatises. There are no annotations as to chapters of special interest, as to the ease or difficulty of the book, or as to its distinctive merits. This lack of modern teaching materials is the book's greatest defect.

Social Life and Institutions, by Professor Hart, is a superior example of the second group. It raises questions for discussion and then it produces a mass of evidence drawn from sociology, economics, political science, history, and biology. The first half of the book deals with the organization and development of society. Here we find discussions on individual differences, on group controls, on the sources of our social problems, etc. The second part of the book is from the general standpoint of the problems, tasks, and promises of society. Here Professor Hart has chapters on stability and change, on religion and the church, on the meeting of races, on perversions of the social instinct, on the democratic movement, etc. At the end of each chapter are problems for study. Their main aims are to enlarge the pupil's range of observation and to stimulate analysis of the institutions and customs of his own community. Under each problem for study are grouped reference readings with pages and chapters. For the most part the references are to other texts and treatises. There are very few references to biography, travel, fiction, or essay, whereas many could have been used to great advantage. In his problems for study Professor Hart uses very little of the social survey technique, a tool which would have increased their usefulness greatly. However, he does smooth the road to the goal toward which he strives, namely, that at the end of the course the student "will find himself interested in some fundamental social task or problem, ready to join hands with some congenial group in an effort to help guide society to intelligent and socially justifiable objectives" (p. 4).

How the World Grows Smaller and Community Life Today and in

Colonial Times represent a new venture in the field of history and civics. They aim to give pupils in the elementary grades an opportunity to study history as a branch of social science rather than as a collection of facts about people and institutions in remote times and places. How the World Grows Smaller, which is intended for the fourth grade, begins the work of building an understanding of group life. It has two main divisions: Part I, "Travel," and Part II, "Communication." Under "Travel" we find such topics as city streets, country roads, automobiles, steamships, railroads, etc. The topics under "Communication" include the telephone, telegraph, mail, and newspapers. Using these familiar evidences of modern community life as starting-points, the authors then proceed to the historical origins of the various conveniences of travel and communication. From this treatment the pupil comes to see the present as an outgrowth of the past, and in an elementary way sees dynamic forces at work.

The purpose of Community Life Today and in Colonial Times is to extend and deepen the children's insight into methods of community cooperation. In Part I there are chapters on public education, community health, fire and police protection, and parks and playgrounds. All these topics are treated in such a way that they form an introduction to the study of the past, which comprises Part II of the book. Here we find the story of the Pilgrims and of the other early colonists and explorers in North America. Since life in these early settlements was reduced to its simplest elements, it is easy for children to see how the people co-operated, first for their daily necessities of food, clothing, and shelter, and later to satisfy their desires on higher levels.

On the whole, these two volumes are a valuable contribution to the teaching of social science in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. Their chief weakness lies in the assignment of space. For example, in How the World Grows Smaller about sixty-five pages are devoted to the telephone and telegraph, while radio is barely mentioned. Also, there are thirty pages on the mail; but the airplane mail is given only two lines. The chief strength of the two books is their equipment of modern teaching devices coupled with their interesting and comprehensible viewpoint. From them pupils will gain a kind of interest in American life and institutions not attainable from the older and more formal texts.

WALTER R. HEPNER

FRESNO, CALIFORNIA

FRANCES K. HEPNER

Mellows: A Chronicle of Unknown Singers. By R. EMMET KENNEDY. Decorations by SIMMONS PERSONS. New York: Albert and Charles Boni. Pp. 186. $5.00.

On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs. By DOROTHY SCARBOROUGH. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925. Pp. 289. $3.50. The Negro and His Songs. A Study of Typical Negro Songs in the South. By HOWARD W. ODUM, PH.D., and GUY B. JOHNSON, A.M. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 1925. Pp. ix+306. $3.00.

The Book of American Negro Spirituals. Sixty-one songs. Edited with an introduction by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON. Musical arrangements by J. ROSAMOND JOHNSON; additional numbers by LAWRENCE BROWN. New York: The Viking Press, 1925. Pp. 187. $3.50.

Negro Poets and Their Poems. By Robert KERLIN. Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, Inc., 1925. Pp. xii+285. $1.50. The New Negro: An Interpretation. Edited by ALAIN LOCKE. Book decoration and portraits by WINOLD REISS. New York: Albert & Charles Boni, 1925. Pp. xv+446. $5.00.

It is an interesting fact that among all the varied racial groups composing America's cosmopolitan population, only two, the Negroes, and the Jews of Eastern Europe, have produced in the United States an independent literature.

What makes this racial literature interesting, what makes, finally, any literature significant outside the group for which it is primarily written, is the degree to which it gives access to, and knowledge of, lives other than our own, lives that in this case are strangely alien to us, considering their proximity to our own.

The Negro has always produced poetry of some sort. It has not always been good poetry, but it has always been a faithful reflection of his inner life. The several volumes in which this poetry has recently been collected traverse the whole range of the Negro's racial experience in America. Here are reflected the Negro slave's ecstatic vision of "bright mansions above," visions in which he sought compensation for a real existence in which so many of his wishes are unfulfilled. Here also are recorded, with equal candor, the elementary passions of his secular life and the hopes and dreams of a dawning racial consciousness. In this lit

erature, including the spirituals, the folk-songs, and the more formal and ambitious poetry of the present day, all the tragedy and the pathos of his racial history, as well as the quaint humor of his naturally sunny temperament, are recorded with astonishing veracity, simplicity, and naïveté. No other people, in the United States at least, have compressed into a career so brief so many transfigurations of their racial life and so much that has human interest; and no other racial group can count among its living members representatives of so many grades of culture, ranging from the primitive peasant of southern plantations to the sophisticated singers of the Harlem cabarets and the radical poetry of the so-called "Negro Renaissance."

It is because these Negro songs and Negro poetry touch life so intimately and at so many points that they are interesting not only to the student of literature but to the student of human nature and social life.

The collectors of Negro folk-songs have approached them with very different interests and have discussed them from widely different points of view. "Mellows" is the word which Negroes in Louisiana apply to what are elsewhere known as spirituals. The collection which Mr. Kennedy has brought together under that title includes not devotional songs merely, but interesting examples of the Negro's secular folk-songs, even some of the quaint street cries of old New Orleans. He has accompanied the songs themselves with an account of the circumstances under which they were secured and of the singers from whose lips the words and music were taken down. Since the songs themselves have something of the character and interest of a human document, this commentary contributes something necessary to the appreciation of the songs themselves. They are reproduced, for the most part, with a transcript of the melody and the accompaniment, of which the author says: "I have tried to follow, as closely as I know how, the intuitive harmonies and the instinctive rhythmic peculiarities of the music of these people, and have tried to suggest in the accompaniment the primitive, rudimental element so marked in all their reproductions." This volume is written for "those who love these songs, for the songs' sake."

Somewhat the same interest has inspired the author of the volume On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs, which is probably altogether the most varied and interesting collection of Negro secular songs that has yet been printed. As its title suggests, this volume is the story of an adventure in which the author has not merely set down the songs which she discovered, but has recorded also, in an intimate and chatty way, her observations of Negro life, of which these songs are the unsophisticated expression.