The work is the result of an attempt to study the problems of administration from the point of view of the workers. To obtain this first-hand knowledge, the author donned overalls and worked as a laborer for a period of seven months. The greater part of the volume is composed of the record of the impressions of the author together with the observations of his fellow-workers in the numerous lines of work that he investigated. As a result of his investigation, the author concludes that there is more of likeness than of difference in the fundamental hopes, aims, and attitudes of the manual workers and the men holding administrative positions. The differences that exist rest upon the margin of assurance, opportunity, and living in general, allowed by the daily or weekly wage as compared with the monthly or weekly salary. The most important factor in the life of the wage-earner is the job. Without security in the job the worker cannot develop morale, interest in his work, and a free mind. One of the chief difficulties found was the inability of the workers to secure adequate satisfaction of his sense of individual worth in and through the job; "there is so wide-spread and so deep-set a conviction that for them there is no chance to break through on their industrial sector." Mr. Williams places most of the blame for the present intolerable conditions at the door of management. The aims, ideals, plans, and purposes of the owners and administrators are not applied by those directly responsible for the management and, therefore, are not known and appreciated by the workers. The remedy for the situation lies in precept rather than in exhortation, and responsibility for initiative rests upon the management. The sub-boss and the foreman hog too much of the satisfaction of knowing what is going on and why. Tiredness and temper are also permitted to play too large a rôle in the work of the foreman. Special attention is required to equip the foreman with an efficient technique of personel administration and a humane spirit. Such improvements as the eight-hour day, rest periods, labor-saving machinery, and the abolition of company police and detectives will help to make possible more satisfactory working conditions. Mr. Williams thinks it possible to make all jobs interesting and a vehicle of expression if pains be taken to let the worker understand and to a certain extent control what he is doing. He assumes that, if the workers were properly fed and cared for, and if work were made more interesting, there would be no labor problem. He does not deny that the workers are raising larger and more fundamental questions respecting the efficacy and justice of the present industrial and social system, but he assumes that these questions have no permanent basis if the workers' immediate conditions are improved. Without following Mr. Williams in all of his conclusions and impressions, one can, nevertheless, accord high praise to this study. It is written in a very clean, easy style, and the facts and conclusions are marshaled in such order that they must make a telling impression upon the careful reader. If it can only command a wide audience among those who need it most-the industrial managers-it may do much to impress them with the significance of the prevailing inefficiencies and injustices of the existing industrial system. STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA R. W. STONE The IW.W.: A Study of American Syndicalism. By PAUL FREDERICK BRISSENDEN. Columbia University Studies in Political Science. Vol. LXXXIII. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1919. Pp. 432. $4.00. We have, in this study, an exhaustive account of the historical evolution of the Industrial Workers of the World, and a detailed analysis of its structural and functional aspects. The first part of the study discusses the forerunners of the I.W.W. and shows how, in its origin, it was a combination of elements from these earlier institutions. The second part of the study reviews the attempted activities, propaganda, and struggles for existence. The third part discusses the forces tending toward disruption-the internal disruptive forces exerted by certain constituent and affiliated institutions, and the external forces exerted by trade-union and political institutions. Throughout the entire work there is evidence of the author's extensive personal investigation and original study. The study is replete with quotations from original documents, speeches, and personal interviews with members of the organization. The author takes pains to correct false impressions of the I.W.W. that have been created by overdrawn and misleading press statements. This book is the most accurate and comprehensive study of the I.W.W. that has appeared to date. Students desirous of formulating a correct estimate of this phase of revolutionary unionism should give this book careful consideration. STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA R. W. STONE Personnel Administration. By ORDWAY TEAD and HENRY C. METCALF. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1920. Pp. 538. $5.00. Students who have been awaiting a statement of the principles of personnel administration will find this book worthy of consideration. It is an attempt "to set forth the principles and the best prevailing practice in the field of the administration of human relations in industry." It is addressed to employers, personnel executives and employment managers, and to students of personnel administration. Personnel administration is defined as "the direction and co-ordination of the human relations of any organization with a view to getting the maximum necessary production with a minimum of effort and friction and with proper regard for the genuine well-being of the workers." The field of administrative activity covered includes personnel department, employment methods, health and safety, education, research (job analysis and job specification), rewards, administrative correlation, and joint relations. The authors have placed the primary emphasis upon the matters of organization and administration rather than upon the more specialized elements introduced by the technical psychologists. Whatever may be their merits, the psychological contributions are only a detail in the general problem of personnel administration, and they can be fully utilized only in connection with a properly conceived plan of general administration. It is the particular merit of this book that it does present the fundamental principles involved in the basic problem of organizing personnel work. This is without doubt the best general book that has appeared in the field. Instructors interested in outlining courses in personnel administration should give this volume careful consideration. STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA R. W. STONE RECENT LITERATURE NOTES AND ABSTRACTS [With this issue of the Journal is inaugurated a change in the manner of presenting abstracts. The classification given below, while the outgrowth of direct contact with the concrete materials, should be regarded as wholly temporary and subject to revision as issues change and attention shifts. The printing of abstracts at the head of the articles in the Journal is also begun with this issue, a practise rapidly being adopted in technical journals, with obvious advantages. It is planned that in future abstracts shall be prepared by the authors, but in the present issue they were written by the editors. The pressure of time made this procedure necessary. The reader should make due allowance and the authors will, we trust, forgive our presumption.] A TENTATIVE SCHEME FOR THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE LITERATURE OF SOCIOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES I. PERSONALITY: THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE PERSON 1. Biography 2. Eugenics and the Study of Original Nature 3. Child Study 4. Social Psychology and the Genesis of the Person II. THE FAMILY 1. The Natural History and the Psychology of Sex 2. The Historical Family and Family as an Institution 3. The Modern Family and Its Problems III. PEOPLES AND CULTURAL GROUPS 1. Theology and Folklore 2. Histories of Cultural Groups (Kulturgeschichte) 3. Immigrants and Immigration 4. Colonial Problems and Missions 5. Comparative Studies of Cultural Traits; Religion, Mores, Customs, and Traditions IV. CONFLICT AND ACCOMMODATION GROUPS 1. Classes and the Class Struggle; Labor and Capital 2. Nationalities and Races 3. Political Parties and Political Doctrines 4. Religious Denominations and Sects V. COMMUNITIES AND TERRITORIAL GROUPS VI. SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 1. Home and Housing 2. The Church and the Local Community 3. The School and the Social Center 4. Play, the Playhouse, and Playgrounds 6. Other Institutions VII. SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL PROCESS 1. The Cultural Process: Education and Religion 2. The Political Process: Politics and the Formation of Public Opinion 4. Personal and Social Disorganization: Social Pathology, i.e., Family 5. Collective Behavior: Social Change and Social Progress; Fashion, VIII. METHODS OF INVESTIGATION 1. Statistics, Graphic Representation 2. Mental and Social Measurements 3. Social Surveys: Community Organization, Community Education, Health, Government, Mental Hygiene, etc. 4. Case Studies and Social Diagnosis 5. Life-Histories and Psychoanalysis IX. HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 1. Social Ethics and Social Philosophy I. PERSONALITY: THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE PERSON The Sublimation of Non-sexual Instincts.-The author proposes to apply the single Freudian notion of sublimation to still other instincts that are nearly or quite as fundamental as sex, and to show the extent to which moral education involves the sublimation of these instincts. Education consists primarily in a redirection of primitive instincts into socially acceptable channels. If the natural outlet of an instinct is closed, a new and possibly higher form of expression may be produced. Anger may be sublimated into rivalry in the classroom, on athletic field, in business, etc. Selfassertion may be sublimated into joy of unselfish service in the community. Curiosity, which sometimes leads to bad results, may be turned to intellectual curiosity, which leads to achievement in science and religion. The food instinct may be sublimated into a "hunger and thirst after righteousness," or after wisdom. Man cannot live in modern society without the primitive instincts being sublimated.-Wesley H. Wells, Pedagogical Seminary, March, 1921. K. E. B. The Appeal to Reason.-The commanding problem of the day is the problem of human nature and the control of human action. Within this lies the problem of the relation between the intellectual part of man and his impelling interests. In the field of practical arts as well as in our standards of criticism the appeal is to human nature. The belief that there is a deeper and more auspicious reality than physical nature now rests mainly upon the irreducible human prerogatives. Nature is material, mechanical, blind, and determined; man is conscious, purposive, rational, and free. The proper evidence in this case is such evidence as can be obtained regarding the higher processes of the mental life. If psychology has neglected these matters through preferring what can be more readily translated into the terms of existing physics or physiology, then psychology must rise to its larger opportunities or forfeit its exclusive title to the field. If psychology is to serve, it must in some sense again become the science of the soul or of the personality. The accumulations of observations of sensory discrimination, reflexes, habit-formation, and reaction-time must be regarded as preliminary to the understanding of reason and will, or as affording data from which to formulate a comprehensive hypothesis that shall define the essential man. The ancient problem must be examined in the light of new facts. The essential problem has been obscured and its solution greatly retarded by the habit of regarding reason as a prerogative leading a purely "logical life of its own." Human conduct is therefore said to be governed, not by reason, but by feeling or emotion, or imitation or complexes. We are, in effect, told that the intellectual faculties of |