Elementary Social Science. By FRANK M. LEAVITT and EDITH BROWN. New York: Macmillan, 1917. Pp. vii+142.

The primary purpose of the book is to furnish instruction for "that large group of pupils who leave school and enter upon their occupations without completing a four-year high-school course." That is, the studies are to be made in the grades. Six chapters are devoted to matters primarily economic, four to problems commonly called "social," and one to a "few facts of political science." The subject-matter is interesting, the language simple.

The real question is whether the authors have selected matter both of vital public concern and within the purview of students in elementary schools. The reviewer answers "yes." The chapters on economics stress conditions of making a living, a matter that appeals easily and directly to the youth in the grades. The real human questions of economics are emphasized. The "social" matters considered are public education, promotion of public health, promotion of morality, each a theme vitally interesting and easily understood. The one chapter on "Political Science" treats functionally such subjects as constitutional rights, administration, taxation.

A scientist may quarrel with the apparently subordinate position of sociology and the separation of "social" from economic, but for the purposes of the book this matter is of no importance.

Of the following two sentences the first should be omitted for three reasons: (1) it seems cynical, (2) it is not true, (3) the needed statement is fully made in the second sentence. "It seems to be human nature for a man to get more than his share of good things if he can. History shows that there are almost always individuals in any community who will usurp the rights of others unless they are held back."

The reviewer believes in this book. It is another sign of the breakdown of the educational priesthood that would regard all social knowledge as occult and therefore not for the people. We predict a growing appreciation of the work and an increase in publications of this type.

STATE NORMAL SCHOOL
WAYNE, NEBRASKA

J. T. HOUSE

RECENT LITERATURE

NOTES AND ABSTRACTS

New Codes for Old.-When Mr. Wong finished his engineering works on the Yangtse River in China, he decided to build a city for the employees according to Western models. He found it necessary, however, to invite the leading men among the employees into his own modern home in order to arouse the interest among the employees to use the houses as they should be used. This indirect way of substituting the new codes for the old is the best method to use among the Asiatics. Mr. Hatano in Japan found a similar system successful in his silk filature. Modern industry is developing very rapidly in the East and the industrial revolution promises even worse conditions for the employees than was true in the Western world during the industrial revolution there. A modifying influence is the Christian religion and the Christian missionaries. They do not take an active part in social reform but the converts do. In India it is found that this indirect influence of Christianity is very powerful for reform. "There are no less than a dozen active agencies for social reform, which can be traced directly to the influence of the missionaries," though some of them are really anti-Christian. The Indian is a philosopher and adopts Christianity because its philosophy appeals to him; the Chinese because they believe they can better serve their country. The reform that will be under the greatest stress for the next twenty-five years is the relation of the sexes. Polygamy and prostitution are being attacked, and as girls, especially those educated in Western ways, are married they contract for the marriage only on the basis of monogamy. Tyler Dennet.-Journal of the American Asiatic Association, August, 1918. A. G.

The Fundamentals of a Socialized Educational Program.-In view of the fact that individuals, groups, and social forces are constantly becoming more interrelated, education should become more socialized to meet these changed conditions. The formation of adaptability, social-mindedness, and social intelligence is as fundamental as individualistic training. Educational aims should be formulated in harmony with social aims, educational principles stated in social terms, and educational practice should be permeated with the social spirit. The individual should be trained to helpful membership in the various groups necessary to social health and progress. This is not to be confused with industrial, vocational, or even practical education. It aims at cultural appreciation, social activity, and civic helpfulness. This would make necessary changes in administration, greater emphasis upon social studies, better adaptation of remaining studies to social life, more knowledge of current events, socialization of teaching methods, fostering of school spirit and student activities, mutual co-operation between educational and other institutions.-W. R. Smith, School and Society, July 13, 1918. E. G.

The Application of Organized Knowledge to National Welfare.-Especially in a time of crisis like the present, national welfare depends upon the greatest possible development and utilization of all its resources, particularly those of strength and skill. New experts should be constantly selected and trained. All the highest expert knowledge should be at the service of the nation for directing the best development, utilization, and conservation of all national resources, material, intellectual, manual, and financial. Organizations and individuals, as well as the nation as a whole, should have the help of systematic expert knowledge in bringing them up to their possibilities. A general and well-ordered application of the results of scientific research to the problems of the individual, the organization, the nation, and of the world would have incalculable effects. We are only beginning to apply organized knowledge in an organized way, but the desirability of increasingly doing this in the near future is urged.-P. G. Nutting, Science Monthly, May, 1918. E. G.

Recent Eugenic and Social Legislation in America.-The first Board of Eugenics, composed of certain officials from the State Board of Health, superintendents of the State Hospital, the State Institution for Feeble-Minded, and the State Penitentiary, has been established in the state of Oregon. Its chief function is to prevent the procreation of feeble-minded and insane, epileptics, habitual criminals, moral degenerates, and sexual perverts in institutions under charge of the Board members. The method used is some form of sterilization after a thorough physical and mental examination. Similar legislation exists in Indiana, California, Kansas, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and South Dakota. Many states require certificates showing exemption from venereal disease before marriage is permitted. Every state provides that subsequent marriage between parents of illegitimate children shall legitimate such children. North Dakota has a law that all children shall be deemed legitimate. Laws in grant of mothers' pension are in effect in many states. A recent law of Indiana for the prevention and control of tuberculosis is indicative of the preventive and curative measures being generally adopted to stop the progress of the disease. Physicians and chief officers of hospitals are required to report cases to the Board of Health within five days after the case comes to their knowledge. Premises must be disinfected and investigation made for preventing and restricting the disease and results published. In Washington divorce is granted where parties have become estranged and lived apart for eight years or more.-R. Newton Crane, The Eugenics Review, April, 1918. F. O. D.

The Bases of Social Co-operation.-The motives under which men co-operate are various and complicated. Men co-operate because of instinctive impulses, both selfregarding and other-regarding; men co-operate from habit; men co-operate because a leader interprets them to themselves and binds their separate purposes together; men co-operate rationally. The following co-operative enterprises show certain tendencies that, more fully developed, might make a positive contribution to democracy: (1) Steel trusts: (a) the wage-earners are moved largely by the impulse to feed and the impulse to grab, reinforced by the instinct to care for offspring; (b) those who get the profits are bound primarily by community of interest in this getting. A class springs up and meeting no resistance develops into custom. Here are only faint traces of motives that found a democracy. (2) City government: the chief motive here is the social impulse aided by social knowledge through means of communication and social authority in the use of the ballot. (3) Union labor movement: the primary motive was to get food. It is developing now into socially motived groups which promise to become great motives for the increase of democracy. (4) The modern missionary movement: here motives are mixed, partly impulsive, partly discriminative, but on the whole broadly humanitarian. In political international consciousness some growth toward an inclusive humanitarianism is evident, but here more light is needed as to the constructive social motives of men.-Geo. A. Coe, Religious Education, June, 1918. F. O. D.

The Higher Direction of Industry.-Three problems will confront England at the close of the war which can be met only by increased production of industry, viz., (1) national revenue, (2) the national debt, and (3) a rise in the standards of living. Increased production can be brought about only through a proper organization of trades. The Joint Standing Industrial Councils in all well-organized trades, already advised by the Whitley Committee, should become the instrument for the higher control of industry in the separate trades without, however, interfering with the liberty of the individual or of the special unions or associations which already exist. The fields open to these Joint Industrial Councils would be: (1) Reconstruction work after the war, which would include: (a) problems involved in the removal of war restrictions; (b) the rationing of raw materials, which must continue for a while after the war; (c) consideration of war pledges; (d) problems and plans of demobilization, studied within each industry; (e) the disposal of government stores of raw material; (f) apprenticeship for those who have left school or work to enter the war. (2) Work of a general and permanent nature in peace, which would include the organization of (a) a department of scientific industrial research; (b) trade statistics; (c) technical education; and (d) export trade. This problem cannot be undertaken without the co-operation of capital and labor. A proper organization of commerce would mean production sufficient for all.-Ernest J. P. Benn, Contemporary Review, June, 1918. F. O. D.

The New Place of Labor.-At Washington one finds the leaders of organized labor, called there not merely to advise but actively to administer; and the rank and file of workers have secured concessions in the principles and terms of labor adjustment for which they have struggled unsuccessfully for a decade. The Wilson administration has proved sympathetic with organized labor. The Adjustment Board is nominally determining shipyard labor standards. In reality it is profoundly influencing all labor standards on a nation-wide scale. The same might be said of the work of the Railroad Wage Commission and other agencies called into existence to solve the labor problem. The President's Mediation Commission has demonstrated a significant attitude toward labor, forwarding the eight-hour day and approving collective bargaining. The Commission left behind it in each of the districts which it investigated agencies for the joint control and determination of controverted issues. In Chicago it resulted in Judge Altschuler's far-reaching decision, awarding workers a basic eight-hour day, increasing wages, and the right to organize; and it has declared that minimum wages shall be based upon the actual cost of living. The Taft-Walsh Board in determining the national labor policy recommended to Congress-and the government accepted in their entirety-these same basic labor principles. These things point to a new day for labor in the reconstruction day just ahead. The InterAllied Labor Conference, in the statement of its war aims, insists that "Within each country the government must for some time to come maintain its control of the most indispensable commodities, in order to secure their appropriation . . . . to meet the most urgent needs of the whole community." The new place of labor seems to require the extension of representative government, not only into politics, but into industry.Ordway Tead, Atlantic Monthly, August, 1918. C. W. C.

Some Considerations Affecting the Replacement of Men by Women Workers.The war has enormously increased the number of women in industry in the United States as well as in European countries. While women have shown their ability to perform untried and difficult tasks, and have thus removed some of the prejudice against women's holding responsible positions, careful supervision is urgently needed or grave physical and moral injury to the women themselves, to the future generation, and to society as a whole may result. Such injury has been seen in several places abroad. Medical inspection, equal wages to insure a proper standard of living, and additional legislation against heavy lifting, long hours, night work, would do much to prevent such a disaster. Reasonable, wholesome, accessible lunchrooms, sanitary provisions, and free clinics for the early discovery and treatment of industrial diseases are some of the specific measures needed.-Josephine Goldmark, American Journal of Public Health, April, 1918. E. G.

Physical Welfare of Employed Children. The number of child workers is being rapidly increased by the war, due to scarcity of labor, high wages, and increased cost of living. This demands protective measures. The federal report shows that boys between sixteen and nineteen who make up one-sixth of all the male workers in the cotton mills have a death rate nearly twice as high as the non-operative population of the same age. Approximately one in every two deaths of operatives between fifteen and fortyfour is due to tuberculosis. A recent study in Massachusetts by the United States Public Health Service shows that the average fourteen-year-old mill boy was decidedly below standard in height and weight. The sixteen-year-old boys did not show a normal gain over the fifteen-year-old boys in height and decreased 2 pounds in average weight. The printing trade leads to illness through exposure to lead dust and fumes, yet many states do not have even fourteen years as a limit for this industry, and very few class it dangerous for sixteen and eighteen years. Out of about fifteen hundred factory children over fourteen years of age examined in Baltimore nearly one hundred diseases and defects due to occupation were isolated. The only existing legislation is that in New York which requires only that "all children between fourteen and sixteen years of age employed in factories shall submit to a physical examination whenever required by a medical inspector of the state department of labor." Most states require a medical permit at the time the children go to work but no supervision after. The great need is for follow-up work by a force of medical inspectors attached to the labor department working under the supervision of the state board of health.— Florence I. Taylor, Child Labor Bulletin, February, 1918. F. O. D.

The Child and the Cinema.-The Cinema Commission's report has called attention to the pernicious effect of the cinema on the morals of young people. However, "quite apart from the question of incitement to crime, and to more or less serious misconduct as a result of seeing the pictures, the subject of the psychological effect on the child's mind is of importance in itself, and not as seen in conduct easily and logically traced to the films." For good or for evil the cinema is helping to form the minds of practically all the children. This formation is in reference to the tastes and manners, as well as the morals, of the children. School and home training are affected by the fact that parents and teachers give their approval to attendance upon pictures where the children "are tickled with the smartness of vulgar slang. Not words only-they are bad enough, illiterate, coarse, and ugly-but deeds, tricks, attitudes, frequently degrading, and the more dangerous when amusing. The outlook of life, so material, so amusing and smart, so destructive of domestic virtues, the non-British methods of police and court proceedings, the underworld rowdyism and worse, and all the possible situations depicted in some of the most beautifully produced films," would all pass a state censor. Yet we ought to look after the mental and moral health of the children as well as the physical. The cinema offers an opportunity to give good material for development, but it is not probable that this will be done until the presentation of the cinema is given for proper recreational and educational purposes instead of for economic gain. Mary Horne, The Child, July, 1918. A. G.

Essentials of Case Treatment with Delinquent Children.-The freedom from rules of the chancery court makes that court a good one for the treatment of juvenile delinquents. While the Roman law, the penal code of France, and the English common law arranged for a variation of the punishment of juvenile offenders, graded somewhat according to age, yet the underlying conception of criminal law, that the state must vindicate by punishing, has handicapped the courts "where public opinion toward juvenile delinquents has not yet become formulated in chancery law and in judicial practice for children's courts." It is also necessary that "public opinion, formulated in law and judicial procedure," should make "it possible that adults who are responsible for the neglect and delinquency of children can be reached either directly by the juvenile court, or by another court on the initiative of the juvenile court." When a complaint is made, an order for a hearing should be issued to all concerned. Pending that hearing, a probation officer should investigate thoroughly all the facts and present them to the judge, who at the trial should vary the treatment to meet all the conditions of the case, though that may mean that several offenders tried for the same offense may receive different treatment. The enforcement of the decision should be left to the probation officer, who should supervise both the probationer and the adults upon whom he is dependent. The chief end of the treatment should be to keep the child occupied happily in work and play. The probation officer should be a voice in his community urging the removal "of causes and conditions which make for delinquency and also urging with still greater earnestness the provision of adequate facilities and agencies that make for wholesome juvenile life and education."-Henry W. Thurston, American Academy of Political and Social Science, May, 1918. A. G.

The Value of Mental, Physical, and Social Studies of Delinquent Women.-A study of eight cases of delinquent women shows certain definite psychological and social needs. Of these cases two were cases of mental disease; the third, one of mental defect; the fourth, one of psychoneurosis; the fifth, a pathological liar, was a neuropath; the sixth, a maniac-depressive temperament, showed much immaturity; the seventh, a colored girl with much emotional instability, and in whom racial primitiveness was a dominant characteristic; the eighth demonstrated environmental influence in the case of a woman with no abnormal mental characteristics. The greatest needs as shown by these cases are: (1) clearing houses, or laboratories in courts and penal institutions where psychologists, sociologists, psychiatrists, and other specialists may make complete studies of all cases; (2) institutions for feeble-minded, or suitable colonies in every state; (3) psychopathic hospitals in all large cities; (4) increased facilities for supervision on probation so that institutions may be the last resort; (5) increased facilities for supervision on parole so that the individual coming from an institution will not be plunged into an unprotected environment; (6) increased