controlled by groups of workers, has yet been published. The account gains in coherence and intelligibility from the general thesis which the author has used to determine a point of view and a method of approach to the material: The following pages will endeavor to show that with every change on the economic or political horizon, the educational motives and methods of the working class have changed. The only constant among many variables has been working-class demand for knowledge and a certain tendency on its part, first, to trust education only when administered by itself; second, to frame the content of education toward ultimate working-class control of government and industry. Oriented by this thesis, the book becomes of value as a fresh line of approach to the study of the social significance of educational institutions in general in the Anglo-Saxon countries, as well as those designed to meet the supposed needs of wage-workers. The volume is adequately documented and is supplied with a collected bibliography of some seven hundred titles. It is at least worth a place in every college library, and should attract many private purchasers. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO FLOYD N. HOUSE Organized Labor and the Law. BY ALPHEUS THOMAS MASON. Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 1925. Pp. x+265. $2.50. The title of this book is perhaps somewhat misleading. It is a study, from the juristic point of view, of the development of the law affecting the activities of labor-unions, both as regards legislative enactment and through the decisions of the higher courts. It covers the important English and American cases and statutes. So far as the present reviewer is competent to judge, the author has performed very effectively the task he set himself; the ground covered, however, is not new. The general thesis which is sustained is that the decisions of the courts in cases involving labor organizations have not displayed a marked bias, on the whole and in the long run, but have been a consistent expansion and application of fundamental legal principles. FLOYD N. HOUSE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Opium as an International Problem: The Geneva Conferences. By W. W. WILLOUGHBY. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1925. Pp. 16+585. $4.50. This book consists of a thoroughly documented account of the two opium conferences recently held in Geneva, Switzerland. The more important statements made by the various delegates are reproduced and the general situation is surveyed as in 1924. For the research student who might have a special interest in this problem, or for the theoretic student interested in type cases for the study of international aspects of the political process, this book should be very useful. The general treatment of the subject-matter is formal throughout. Inferior Criminal Courts Act of the City of New York. Annotated. By W. BRUCE COBB. New York: Macmillan, 1925. Pp. 529. $4.00. The title of this volume is almost sufficient to indicate its nature. The book gives the Act in its regular consecutive form, as an appendix, together with other related statutes and regulations. The main body of the volume consists of notes and comments upon the Act, section by section. Secret Societies and Subversive Movements. BY NESTA H. WEBSTER. New York: Dutton & Co. Pp. xii+419. $7.00. This is one of a series of historical investigations, by the same author, of the rôle which secret societies have played in revolutionary movements. Two earlier volumes, The Chevalier de Boufflers and The French Revolution: A Study in Democracy, dealt with activities of secret associations in fomenting the French Revolution. A third, World Revolution, is concerned with the history of Bolshevism. The present volume seeks to carry the original inquiry back to the earliest times; back, in fact, to the obscure origin of the Jewish Cabala. It is the conviction of the author that from the earliest times to the present Jews have played a leading rôle in these secret and subversive societies. It is this conviction that binds together the widespread net of circumstance and surmise of which this volume is composed. This book is not history in the ordinary sense of the word. The author has a theory, and her studies have been frankly directed in making out a case. What she seeks to establish is the existence of an age-long conspiracy which has been "perpetuated and handed down by a succession of recent societies which have appeared from time to time in the course of history and have shown such continuity of procedure and homogeneity of doctrine as to prove that they were directed by some secret cult whose masters have never come into the open." One difficulty which the unromantic reader will have in accepting this thesis is the fact that no adequate human motive is established for a conspiracy so vast as this volume assumes to exist. In the end, the author herself is driven to assume "the existence of an Occult Power at work in the world? Individuals, sects, or races, fired with the desire of worlddomination, have provided the fighting forces of destruction, but behind them are the veritable powers of darkness in eternal conflict with the powers of light." On the whole, this conclusion seems inevitable if we are to accept the author's theory. It is not possible to maintain so monstrous a conception of human history except on the assumption of some diabolical power working behind the scenes. This, however, is no longer history, but theology. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ROBERT E. PARK The Southern Oligarchy: An Appeal in Behalf of the Silent Masses of Our Country Against the Despotic Rule of the Few. By WILLIAM H. SKAGGS. New York: Devin-Adair Co., 1924. Pp. xii+472. $5.00. This volume is an attempt to show that the "appalling criminal record, the backwardness, financial dependence, delinquencies, and defaults" of the southern states are due to the rule of a relatively small group"the triumvirate of the landlord, the money-lender, and the lawyer," into whose hands the power of the former slave oligarchy has descended. The author reviews the history of reconstruction and disfranchisement, but does not explain why 3,650,298 of the 5,506,355 voters believe their most fundamental political interest is to preserve the existing caste system, which relegates the Negro to an inferior political and social status, and characterizes as disloyal a vote for any other than the Democratic party. The volume is, as the author explains, an indictment. It is an indictment based upon conditions which have existed a very long time, but which are, happily, changing under the influence of forces working within those "silent masses" in behalf of whom this book is an appeal. ROBERT E. PARK UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Negro Yearbook (an annual encyclopedia of the Negro). 7th ed., 1925-26. BY MONROE N. WORK. Tuskegee Institute, Alabama: Negro Yearbook Publishing Co., 1925. Pp. viii+545. Paper, $1.00; board, $1.50. The Negro Yearbook is still the most interesting and, of the new books, the most widely read volume on the Negro and his problem. The seventh edition, in addition to the social statistics of the former volumes, contains a topical survey, for the years 1922 and 1924, of the events affecting the life and fortunes of the race in every part of the world. The editor, Monroe N. Work, has made extensive additions during the past two years to his excellent classified bibliography of the Negro. The list of new books includes twenty-nine by Negro writers in America. The list of Negro notables includes eighty-one whose names are published in Who's Who in America for 1924-25. ROBERT E. PARK UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Wages and the Family. By PAUL H. DOUGLAS. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1925. Pp. xiv+290. $3.00. This volume presents a significant treatment of the problem of wage policy in the United States. Professor Douglas finds in a system of family allowances "a way out of the impasse in which the living-wage principle finds itself." The book is divided into three parts, the first dealing with the problem of the living-wage, the second with the operation of family allowance systems abroad, and the third with some larger aspects of the family allowance system. In the first part, Professor Douglas raises two questions, viz.: (1) Can industry pay adult workers enough to support the standard family of five? and (2) Is such a family typical of our wage-earning population? To each question he gives a negative answer. He estimates the national income in 1920 as $71,000,000,000, and the amount necessary to pay a living wage for a family of five to all adult workers as $58,000,000,000. This leaves but $13,000,000,000, an amount obviously inadequate to pay differential wages, interest, profits, and rents. His conclusion as to the inadequacy of the national income is substantiated by application of this method to specific industries. But in this connection it may be pointed out that he fails to give adequate consideration to the enormous waste in industry (cf. pages 270-71) and to the possibility that necessity may be the mother of invention. Nor does he consider the question raised by Mr. Soule in the New Republic as to whether an increase in wages with resulting "increase in purchasing power would be translated into a real increase in consumer's goods and services" and therefore into an increase in the national income. In examining the second question-whether the family of five is typical-the author points out that several investigations have shown that while about a third of the families have three or more children, only about 15 per cent, or less, are of the exact composition of the "standard family." Though these investigations are hardly inclusive enough to justify final conclusions, he feels that "To pay all workers enough to maintain a family of five would mean saddling industry with the maintenance of over forty-five million fictitious wives and children." (Cf. p. 38.) In the second part, the author describes and evaluates the operation of family allowance systems in France, Belgium, Germany, CzechoSlovakia, Holland, and other European countries, and points out that a similar system is likely to be adopted in Australia. He recognizes, however, that these systems have been tried only in poverty-stricken countries with inadequate national incomes and unbalanced budgets. Increasing prices were followed by a feeling that wages could not be increased to meet needs, and the family allowance seemed to be an economical way of carrying on in a more or less hopeless after-the-war situation. It has nowhere developed under conditions similar to those in the United States today. In the third part, Mr. Douglas deals with two basic issues, viz.: (1) the feasibility of the administration of such a system, and (2) the desirability of such a plan "in its broad outlines." Though cognizant of many difficulties in administration, he feels that all can be met. The co-operation of several firms in the establishment of a clearing fund for the payment of the allowances would prevent the individual firm from discriminating against those with dependents, but would it prevent the |