and, with some exceptions, contain little serious scientific work. They may be grouped into three divisions. In the first will fall the two papers on the spread of democracy and the one on "Commercialism Rampant.' Another group includes the studies on the falling birth-rate, divorce, women in industry, and the suppression of important news, while a third contains an attempt at interpreting the social characteristics of the Middle West.

This book is likely to augment the prevailing regret among sociologists that Professor Ross has latterly chosen to turn his attention away from strictly scientific work in order to reach that larger public which demands striking popular presentation rather than fundamental analysis. Much may doubtless be said for the popularization of sociological knowledge, but the present state of sociology is such that what is most needed is expert knowledge of the social situation. Now the sociological expert, owing to the character of his subject-matter, is in peculiar danger of ceasing to be an expert if he listen to the allurements of popular applause. Professor Ross of course possesses an amazing faculty of vivid imagery, and there are throughout these pages brilliantly illuminating flashes of insight which are almost uncanny in their power of characterization. But his fatal gift of phrase-making leads him constantly into the danger of making generalizations whose chief merit is that they are well put.

One might easily make an anthology of his sayings that would add interest to the popular phrase-books. Thus, "science pricks certain pink balloons of pretension"; the feudal classes "spoiled the people like a Front de Boeuf, the corporations today filch from us like Fagin"; "the real enemy of the dove of peace is not the eagle of pride or the vulture of greed but the stork"; divorce is "matrimonial surgery"; the present is the "glacial epoch of journalism"; certain middle-western communities "remind one of fished-out ponds populated chiefly by bullheads and suckers"; the ranks of wealth in the east "are continually reinforced by coupon-clippers 'sugared off' from the rest of the country"; impecunious western students "by stretching on tiptoe contrive to pluck the college sheepskin"; costly pleasure-centers are "the cream-pots of the country's wealth-production.'

While his tone is rarely pessimistic, Professor Ross has often unconsciously fallen into the spirit of the "literature of exposure." Sometimes, too, he openly deprecates the critical attitude toward social problems. Of his own position he says: "I can look back to the time when I thought that certain abstract principles were the thing; that we did not have to consider what degree of happiness they gave to people,

but that, planting ourselves upon these immutable principles, we should just shut our eyes, go ahead, and all would be well. I assure you the older I grow and the more I explore different social systems the more fluid these principles become, until now, in social policy, I do not see anything at stake but the welfare of men and women and children."

It is to be hoped that all sociologists agree with him in this view of the final purpose of investigation, however much they may insist that scientific principles are the prime essential in achieving the welfare of people.

The papers on the spread of democracy are thoroughly typical of both the sound and the specious elements in the current discussions of that over-abused subject. Always virile in his thinking and vigorous in expression, Professor Ross escapes most of the prevailing sentimental cant about democracy. He wisely says that democracy is not the sovereignty of the average man, who is a rather poor creature, but of a matured public opinion which at its best "substitutes the direction of the recognized moral and intellectual élite for the rule of the strong, the rich, and the privileged." Moreover, this is no longer the era of crowds, but of publics. But in the paper on "Commercialism Rampant" he has indulged in a bit of sublimated muck-raking by falling back on the assumption which he so fully exploited in Sin and Society, that social and economic abuses are wholly personal to rich offenders and not in any degree inherent in the social system. Demos is not always and necessarily right and oppressed. To prod his ignorance and self-satisfaction is as useful a task as to lash the buccaneering high-financier.

It is with more satisfaction that we turn to the studies of the birthrate and divorce. Here Professor Ross goes definitely counter to popular judgments and discards the prevailing shibboleths. The lessening of fecundity among occidental peoples, although it has some pathological aspects, is shown to be predominantly beneficent. It enhances the value of man, and it is the deadly foe of poverty and war. Likewise is the growth of divorce, evil as are some of its aspects, both a cause and a proof of the enhanced value of woman. The paper on "The Suppression of Important News" has already, since its periodical publication, aroused much healthful discussion of the whole modern newspaper situation. Whether or not one accept the author's plea for an endowed press, there can be no question of the gravity of the evils he discloses.

It is exactly because they best appreciate the value of the scientific work which Professor Ross has done that sociologists claim the family privilege of chiding him for work like much of this; not that it is poor of its kind but that he is capable of better things. However sane his

own point of view, it is inevitable that his authority as a leader of sociological thought should be exploited by less balanced exponents of emotional and ill-digested social philosophies.

THE UNIVERSITY OF INDIANA
BLOOMINGTON, IND.

U. G. WEATHERLY

Beyond War. A Chapter in the Natural History of Man. By VERNON LYMAN KELLOGG, Professor in Stanford University. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1912. Pp. 172. $1.00.

Professor Kellogg has in this little book performed a service which he was encouraged to undertake by the president of the university, David Starr Jordan, the author of The Blood of the Nation and The Human Harvest-the two books which heretofore have constituted almost the only studies of the biological effect of war. To the pacifist the book should prove thoroughly satisfactory; in those whose sociological interest lies in other fields, the regret cannot but arise that the author confined himself within so strict a limit. Probably nowhere else in so brief and non-technical a form can a survey of biological evolution be found. Professor Kellogg applies this excellent review of a difficult branch of science only to the extinction of war, but he who is interested in eugenics or any branch whatever of "social altruism" will find no difficulty in using the material for his own purposes.

The author succinctly describes the natural history of man, in whom he finds a growing altruism due in this age somewhat to his gregarious specialization. He says (p. 166):

Man should help men-wisely. Charity should be reasoned. Men should take a special care of all useful individuals, of all clean-blooded, clear-minded, strong-bodied, disease-resistant, long-living individuals. From them should the race find its chief renewal, for through them, and through them alone can the race actually advance; advance in terms of evolutionary time and evolutionary progress. This is the biological basis of rational eugenics. This is the biological basis of rational socialism, internationalism, pan-humanism, or whatever we may call the encouragement of and movement toward men's general kindliness, helpfulness, and fraternation toward all other men. And this is the biological reason why the opposite of all these things is subversive of human evolutionary progress.

It is obvious that a study whose conclusion can be as broad as these quotations indicate should contain many suggestions for social workers other than those to whom it is specifically addressed, the pacifists. As an argument that war is an anachronism doomed to extinction, the book

is conclusive. Throughout, the author has taken pains to show what part the warlike instinct has played in the past, and then shows that at present resort to arms is already an evolutionary vestige.

The author, considering that he is a scientific man, has a very good popular style. He is perhaps more fond of technical terms and casual references than he should be. Biologists entirely unknown to the general reader, to whom the book is directed, are casually mentioned by the score and by their last names only. Such a book is designed to excite the readers' interest and it is regrettable that either footnotes or a bibliographic note was not added to the volume.

WORLD PEACE FOUNDATION
BOSTON, MASS.

DENYS P. MYERS

A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil. By JANE ADDAMS, Hull House, Chicago, Ill. Macmillan, 1912. Pp. 219.

The characteristic quality of this small volume is its truthfulness enlivened by hope and illumined by knowledge. It is utterly free from the morbid taint which lessens the value of much recent writing on the subject. The book grows out of the author's first-hand contact with neighbors whose daughters are, by their poverty, peculiarly exposed to the ravages of this ancient evil. Miss Addams' personal acquaintance of more than twenty years with a congested neighborhood is supplemented by active work in the Juvenile Protective Association, an organization unique in all the world in its scope and its efficient protection of the youth of the city which is its field of activity.

The author's thesis is that there "are many indications of a new conscience, which in various directions is slowly gathering strength and which we may soberly hope will at last array itself against this incredible social wrong, ancient though it may be."

The argument is suggested by the six chapter heads as follows: A new conscience in regard to an ancient evil (1) as inferred from analogy; (2) as indicated by recent legal enactments; (3) as indicated by the amelioration of economic conditions; (4) as indicated by the moral education and legal protection of children; (5) as indicated by philanthropic rescue and prevention, and finally (6) as indicated by social control.

The volume contains no bibliography, no analysis of the existing literature of the subject, no statistics. It makes no attempt to deal with the quantitative aspects of the evil. It is wholly human and interpretative and, like all the author's work, it is an appeal to the social

and ethical forces of our time for fresh zeal and energy applied to the transition from our social chaos to that noble and orderly social life of the future which inspires our hopes.

NEW YORK

FLORENCE KELLEY

The Boy and His Gang. By J. ADAMS PUFFER. With an introduction by G. STANLEY HALL. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1912. Pp. 12+187. $1.00.

In this book, after thoroughly familiarizing himself with the literature pertaining to the subject, and out of a first-hand acquaintance with, and appreciation of, boy nature, Mr. Puffer has made a valuable contribution to the thought of parents, teachers, and all workers with adolescent boys, in calling attention as well as he has to the gang instinct as an important social factor in boy life which has not been sufficiently recognized in home, school, and church.

G. Stanley Hall quite appropriately says in the introduction: "Now that we are coming to understand and realize what the gang life means, and what can be done with it, the surprise grows that until so recently it has been left almost entirely out of account in the work of helping and saving boys."

Perhaps no other author has so well placed before the reading public the meaning and possibilities of the gang as a basic element in the social control of the growing boy.

The practical and universal adoption of the point of view here presented will lead to reforms in dealing with normal boys which are as radical as the reforms we have experienced in the past few decades in dealing with defectives: the reforms in both instances having their impetus in the turning-on of more light.

The testimony of sympathetic and intelligent students of boy life is that the gang often has more influence over the boy between the ages of ten and eighteen than any other social force. Granting the truth or even the partial truth of such opinion, this book is deserving of wide and careful consideration.

The statistical data in several chapters form an important part. These data show that while some gangs are predominantly hurtful to their members, and others are predominantly helpful, all gangs are alike in that they exist for the sake of a definite set of activities which are as natural for the boy as caring for a doll is to the girl, and which are in large degree wholesome, or may easily be made so. The ordinary