The Church and the Labor Conflict. By PARLEY PAUL WOMER. New York: Macmillan, 1913. Pp. 302. $1.50. This book is a sincere and intelligent attempt to accomplish the impossible task of continuing a system of ethical theology and a technical program of social politics in one small volume. It has been frequently undertaken with the same disappointing result. This author has made good use of well-known treatises, but one must go to the more thorough discussions for a full mastery of any one of the many subjects. One point requires critical examination: the exact task of the church. The author says that the church has no equipment for deciding controversies on economic, political, or legal matters, and this is evidently true. And yet this principle is not consistently carried out, and appeal is made more than once to a summary dogmatic mental process, as: "The church should be slow to pass criticism on the courts," but it should, apparently, attack the judicial use of the injunction in certain situations (p. 224). So the church should have something to declare about the open shop (pp. 196-97). This statement is open to criticism: "It is certain that the church cannot afford to withhold its sanction of needed social changes and reforms until the economic and political problems have been worked out." Would it not be better once for all to say that the church may well continue to inspire conscience and afford all possible opportunity for studying the scientific presentations of facts, without accepting responsibility for formulation of legislation which must be left to specialists? Policies and their results may be judged by an enlightened people; the church can help men to learn, but it has no competent organs for direct interference with government or business, and any claim to authority will be quickly and vigorously resented by the parties against whom the church decides, whether trade unions or corporations. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO C. R. HENDERSON Workmen's Compensation and Industrial Insurance. By JAMES HARRINGTON BOYD, A.M., Sc.D., Chairman of the Ohio Employers' Liability Commission and Member of the Toledo Bar. 2 vols. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1913. This work of patient compilation, legal analysis and economic criticism will be found indispensable for the student of social insurance in this country. The progress of public opinion is so rapid, and the legislatures are so busy with the subject that the present laws will soon be out of date; but the discussion of history and principles will remain useful, and the book will be a milestone for future students. One deplorable fact in the situation is brought out by the analysis of the laws thus far passed: they lack a unifying principle. There is no national and scientific investigation at the foundation of our laws; there is no agreement among legislators; there is only a hasty reflex response to the stimulus of a discovery of intolerable injustice in all past statutes and judicial decisions. We cannot hope for a really scientific system until the nation finds a way to control a movement in which state lines have not the slightest significance except as artificial barriers. Up to this time we must regard all laws yet passed as experiments in vivisection, inspired by the pious hope that out of this welter some order may at last be evolved, no one knows how. As evidence of a fine humanitarianism these acts are valuable; but the time is not distant when this entire contradictory mass of makeshifts must be cast aside for an adequate, consistent, scientific, national system. Such a system will include not only accident insurance but also sickness insurance which is vastly more important; and insurance of widows and orphans; unemployment, invalidism, and old-age insurance. No one has ever yet attempted to measure the annual loss from needless and preventable worry. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO C. R. HENDERSON Crime and Its Repression. By GUSTAV ASCHAFFENBURG; translated by A. ALBRECHT. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1913. The translation of this very significant German book will make it accessible to a wider public in the English-speaking world and enlarge its wholesome influence. In the realm of the abnormal the psychiatrist has a right to be heard, and the jurist ought to listen. The fundamental conception of this work is that criminality, anti-social conduct, is the effect of discoverable and already known causes; that the obvious duty and interest of society is to remove those causes or diminish their activity as rapidly as possible; that it is futile to attempt measured retribution according to the degree of ill-desert; that all our energy should be devoted to effective means for protecting society. Crime is not a disease transmitted by inheritance or inoculated by contact; it is an acquired habit into which people with weak character most easily fall under trying conditions. Alcohol and poverty are the chief incentives to harmful conduct; so that control of the liquor traffic and improved economic conditions are among the most hopeful methods of social defense. Imprisonment has little deterrent effect on those who are once or twice incarcerated, and it does not often reform. The reformatory effect would be increased by the indeterminate sentence which makes freedom depend on improved conduct. At this point ideas long since familiar and accepted in the United States are strongly defended. The statistics used in the study of crime causes are generally taken from the excellent German tables, with which, unfortunately, we have in this country nothing comparable. The author's treatment makes us eager to have similar figures for our own scientific studies of criminality. Taken altogether, this work is a notable contribution and the translation is a distinct public service. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO C. R. HENDERSON Le divorce des aliénés. By DOCTOR LUCIEN-GRAUX. Paris: Grand Librairie Médicale A. Maloine, 1912. In connection with drafts of law submitted to the French legislature, Doctor Lucien-Graux has brought together a large amount of important materials for a consideration of the complex question of divorce in case of insanity. The letters published represent all views of the subject of divorce in general and of this problem in particular. There is an evident desire to be impartial and to make a substantial contribution to the discussion. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO C. R. HENDERSON Sixth Annual Report of the State Probation Commission of New York. New York, 1912. This is an important document, including the report and statistics of the Commission of New York, the proceedings of the State Conference of Magistrates, and of the Probation Officers, and with a directory of officials and tables of statistics. It is one of the important contributions to the subject of probation. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO C. R. HENDERSON Die Berufsvereine. Von W. KULEMAN. Berlin: Leonard Simion, 1913. This work is described as the second and completely revised edition of the author's Gewerkschaftsbewegung. It contains descriptions and historical accounts of the organizations of employers and employees in all countries. In Vols. IV-VI, there are articles on these organizations in England, France, Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Russia, Finland, Servia, Bulgaria, Roumania, the United States of America, Canada, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and international organizations. The article on the United States is given ninety-eight pages. The difficulty of keeping up to date in such publications is seen in the treatment of social insurance which has advanced so rapidly with us since the author's materials were gathered. The work must prove to be exceedingly useful and convenient; it has been prepared with great care and enormous industry. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO C. R. HENDERSON Bulletin of the Department of Factory Inspection, State of Illinois. Vol. I, No. 1. October, 1913. The chief Factory Inspector of Illinois, Mr. O. F. Nelson, has begun to publish a very interesting and helpful bulletin dealing largely with occupational diseases and other risks of working-men. It is a great improvement on the ordinary reports which few people read with profit. The illustrations are telling and the information is good material for popular education. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO C. R. HENDERSON I" Congrés International des Tribunaux pour Enfants, Paris, July, 1911. Edited by MARCEL KLEINE. Paris: A. Dary, 1912. The literature of juvenile courts is enriched by the publication of papers, discussions, and resolutions of the first international conference on the subject. This document is the most convenient comparative exhibit of the legal doctrines and primitive experiments of an American invention which has been imitated, with adaptations, in many countries. C. R. HENDERSON UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Industrial Poisoning from Fumes, Gases, and Poisons of Manufacturing Processes. By DR. J. RAMBOUSEK; translated and edited by THOMAS M. LEGGE, M.D., D.P.H. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1913. Physicians in industrial establishments, factory inspectors, and students of the hygiene of industry will find in the volume of Rambousek a convenient summary of the subject treated. The work is divided into three parts: descriptions of the industries and processes attended with the risk of poisoning, pathology and treatment, and preventive measures against industrial poisoning. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO C. R. HENDERSON Religious Chastity. An Ethnological Study. By ELSIE CLEWS PARSONS. New York: privately published under the nomde-plume of John Main, 1913. Pp. xii+365; Appendix, Bibliography, Index. The spirit in which this work is evidently undertaken is explained by the statement, "similarities in culture point, not to the existence of set cultural stages through which all societies must pass, but to the homogeneity of human mind and its tendency to express itself, given like circumstances, in like ways." The author has taken considerable pains to get together a great mass of material from diverse primary sources which deals with human belief and practice centering around supposed relations of the living with the recently dead. From the comparison of different customs and ceremonies she educes additional evidence to substantiate the modern ethnological principle above enunciated. Fear of the recently dead leads primitive man to the invention of various schemes to trick or frighten away the importunate ghost. The widow, being especially liable to death infection, must be scrupulously disinfected by show of bereavement. The "haunted" widow has to undergo cleanings, else remarriage will be dangerous for her and her The exaggerated observance of mourning customs is usually incumbent upon the widow. Where ghost fear yields to ghost love, care for the comfort of the dead is paramount in funeral and mourning customs. The widow is the one who has special responsibility to cater to his daily need of food and drink, to be the custodian of his corpse or |