Recent publications of the Sage Foundation have sought to meet this need. They have emphasized publicity and public education particularly in matters of public health, child welfare, and the like. The Liberty Loan campaigns showed what could be done. These new volumes have analyzed, criticized and summarized the recent experience in this field of social publicity. They emphasize particularly the importance of following up campaigns after they have been started. They show how the newspapers, the schools, and local societies can be used for this purpose. In this way they are helping to solve the problem of leisure time in this very busy and very restless country. The most interesting and suggestive of these books is the little pamphlet entitled The Health Show Comes to Town in which Dr. W. W. Peters describes his health campaigns in China. In this description and the pictures which accompany it the awakening of China is fairly visualized. The feature of this campaign was the use of dramatic action, as well as mechanical and electrical devices, to illustrate his talks. These illustrated talks show better than anything mentioned in Mr. and Mrs. Routzahn's other books the possibilities of visual education and of the moving picture. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ROBERT E. PARK The Voice of the Negro, 1919. By ROBERT T. KERLIN. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1920. Pp. xii+188. $2.50. This is an exhibit in his own language of what the Negro in the United States is now thinking, and as such it deserves careful reading on the part of everybody who is interested in our greatest race problem. In the editor's words, it is a "compilation from the colored press of America for the four months immediately succeeding the Washington riot. Virtually the entire Afro-American press, consisting of two dailies, a dozen magazines, and nearly three hundred weeklies, has been drawn upon." The editor is professor of English in Virginia Military Institute. He has succeeded in being fairly representative in his selection of material and in his attempt to let the press speak for itself. Prominent among the topics touched upon are the Negro's reaction to the world-war, six recent riots, present-day Negro grievances, labor movements and bolshevism among colored workers, and general Negro progress. It is only natural if some Negro leaders have already welcomed the book as an attempt on the "white" side of the "line" to state their cause, and the reader may get the impression that Professor Kerlin is taking one side of the case only. One should notice, however, that the editorial comment is very restrained and limited to what is evidently required for an understanding of the evidence. The attitude is thoroughly honest throughout and places the responsibility for what is said squarely upon the Negro himself. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO FREDERICK G. DETWEILER History of the American Negro. By A. B. CALDWELL. Atlanta, Ga.: A. B. Caldwell Publishing Co., 1919. Pp. 757. $3.00. This is a book containing 276 biographies and autobiographies of men who were distinguished in their own communities, but the communities were small and undistinguished. Most of the names mentioned here are those of ministers. The biographies tell the stories of strange and pathetic struggles to get an education and win distinction in the small world in which they lived. Several of these people have vague traditions of their African ancestry. A unique and interesting book. ROBERT E. PARK UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Liberty and the News. By WALTER LIPPMANN. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920. Pp. 104. $1.00. It was, I think, Max Stirner, the most consequent of anarchists, who said that the last tyranny was "the tyranny of the idea." Mr. Walter Lippman has made the same discovery independently and has written a book about it. He says: "Just as the most poisonous form of disorder is the mob incited from high places, the most immoral act the immorality of a government, so the most destructive form of untruth is sophistry and propaganda by those whose profession it is to report the news." In other words, the last tyranny is the tyranny of the propagandists, the man who makes our ideas and so controls us. Of the power of the press much has already been said and written, but no criticism and appreciation of the modern newspaper more subtile and searching than that contained in this little volume has yet been published. The only other paper on this topic that compares with it is a chapter in Hadley's Under-currents in American Politics, "The Seat of Power Today." UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ROBERT E. PARK Classroom Organization and Control. By J. B. SEARS. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1918. Pp. xiii+300. $1.75. Professor Sears has invented a new title and arrangement for an old subject. Cubberley's Introduction says: ". . . . The volume is essentially a treatment of the old and ever-present problem of school management from the point of view of modern sociology, rather than from the psychological angle. . Readers of this Journal, however, will note the almost complete absence of everything they have seen under the name of sociology. Whatever of sociology there is seems to be drawn from books on education, or else is made by the author himself. He doubtless holds, in common with many other writers on education, that sociology, science of society though it purports to be, has nothing to contribute to the analysis of a social situation like a school. The fault-and a fault it must be lies farther back than any single author. The prevalent conceptions of education and sociology simply fail somewhere to make proper connections. May we assume by comparison that there was once a time when books on medicine, cookery, and soils made no use of chemistry, and also leave the reader to infer whether the defect was in the medicine, cookery, and agriculture, or in the chemistry? STATE NORMAL SCHOOL F. R. CLOW Education for Democracy. By HENRY F. COPE. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1920. Pp. 275. $1.50. This little book is a thoughtful analysis of the relations between democracy and our religious and moral life. It shows clearly the close relationship of democracy and Christianity. Moral education is found to be the key to the success of democracy, and this education is outlined for the home, the school, and the church. The book abounds not only in ethical idealism, but in sociological insight. Perhaps the spirit of the book cannot be better indicated than by the following quotation: Legislation, social regulation, and regimentation promise to do by compulsion that which education, working through the will of all, can affect only in a much longer period of time. But whenever we take advantage of these short-cuts, every time we place our reliance on external compulsions, we defeat the ends and short-circuit the processes of democracy. And this perhaps suffices to indicate the sociological merit of the book. The conclusion of the author is that our only hope for a better world, one in which men live together prosperously, happily, and harmoniously, lies in developing a common good will, in training the young to the democratic life of co-operation and helpful fellowship. CHARLES A. ELLWOOD UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI The School and the Modern Church. By HENRY FREDERICK COPE. New York: G. H. Doran & Co., 1919. Pp. x+290. $1.50. This is a splendid guide on practical methods and plans for making the necessary readjustment in purpose, program, and method of the church and church school. The author holds that it is inevitable that the church take a larger function in the stimulating and organization of the experiences of actual life-relations, such as in the family, school, industry, political, etc., to the end of developing a spiritual control in human society. He not only insists that the church should do this but develops the practical machinery for doing it. He further sets forth the need and plan of a church committee of religious education, the task of the religious-education director, the type of teachers needed and how to get and train them, the kind of building and equipment essential, the importance of religious day-school work and how to promote it, the significance of play and how to develop it as a portion of religious education, the value of good books and how to develop a working library, how to make the family central in religious-education work and how to manage the Sunday school. All interested in the new social import of the church should read this book. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO The Malden Survey. By WALTER S. ATHEARN. J. M. ARTMAN A report on the church plants of a typical city, showing the use of the Interchurch World Movement Score Card and standards for rating city church plants. New York: Interchurch World Movement of North America. Pp. 213. $2.50. The Malden Survey is a practical treatise on church construction and management. The church is regarded as an organization for religious education and community service and the church building is the "plant" necessary to carry on this work. The survey consisted in the application to seventeen Protestant churches of Malden of a very carefully worked-out series of standards covering (1) site, (2) building placement and construction, (3) service system, (4) church rooms, (5) religious school rooms, (6) communityservice rooms. On the basis of these specifications a score card was constructed, which permitted a comparison of the different church plants in numerical terms. Among the specifications of the standards used are the following: The site should be large enough to provide in front for ample lawns and shrubbery for outdoor fêtes, pageants and other festivals. A plot of from 3 to 10 acres, depending upon the size of the community to be served, is necessary for these activities. Where city congestion is such as to prevent acquisition of standard site, roof garden should be planned for festivals, song services, play and other outdoor activities. Where playground and athletic field are separated from the church site they should not be so distant that the school and gymnasium equipment cannot be used. The most striking thing about the survey is the conception, implicit in the whole study, that the church must now be regarded, to a much greater extent than hitherto, as an institution like the public library or the Young Men's Christian Association, in which any member of the community, either directly or indirectly, has an interest, and, correspondingly, the church itself must be regarded as responsible to the community to the extent that it seeks to become a community institution. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ROBERT E. PARK Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Work, at the FortySeventh Annual Session, held in New Orleans, April 14-21, 1920. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Pp. 524. $3.50. This annual report contains one hundred and twenty-one brief papers read at the annual meeting of the National Conference on Social Work. These papers are divided into the following sections: children; delinquents and correction; health; public agencies and institutions; the family; industrial and economic problems; the local community; mental hygiene; organization of social forces; and the uniting of native and foreign-born in America. Some of these articles are of course dull, others of only local or historical interest; still others deal only with questions of method or technique. But most of them are interesting and a few splendid. Among the last might be mentioned: |