Representative Government in Industry. By JAMES MEYERS. New York: George H. Doran & Co., 1924. Pp. 249. $2.00.

Labor Disputes and the President of the United States. By EDWARD BERMAN, PH.D. New York: Columbia University Press. "Studies in History, Economics and Public Law." Volume CXI, Number 2; Whole Number 249, 1924. Pp. 284. $3.00. It is well known to all those who have carried on systematic study or reading in the field of "labor problems" that the now very extensive literature of the field includes articles and volumes written by authors of many different points of view. In the face of this protean material, the sociologist who is interested in the subject may well find it convenient for his own purposes to classify together, in his files and in his memory, volumes of ostensibly very divergent character. In the opinion of the reviewer, this might be done with the two most recent works which have been sent him.

James Meyers, author of Representative Government in Industry, has had his knowledge of the field of industrial relations developed by his experience of several years as "executive secretary of the Board of Operatives, Dutchess Bleachery, Incorporated." This is to say, adopting for the moment the average employer's point of view, that Mr. Meyers is labor manager, or head of the personnel division, of a mediumsized industrial plant which is and has been for some years carrying on an experiment with a comparatively radical plan of "employee representation." He is by no means narrow, however, in his point of view, and his book might very well be classified under the heading of what Glenn Frank has labelled, in his recent volume of that title, "the politics of industry." What Mr. Meyers sees quite clearly, and sets forth in extremely readable fashion, is that we have in modern industry a problem of group control, and that the problem of control is not entirely solved in any group until all the social forces in the group are co-ordinated with reference to some one group objective and program. Employee representation is one of the concrete methods which have been tried for promoting this end. Mr. Meyers' book is popular in style. He presents a quantity of concrete material, but frequently, in fact mainly, not in such form that it can be verified-a fault which is perhaps inevitable in the present stage of evolution of the study of industrial relations, due to the reticence of participants in various situations to reveal details which might weaken their strategic positions. He is somewhat prodigal with general opinions about the broader aspects of the field with which he is concerned, and it

may be taken for granted that these opinions will be very differently received by different readers, according to the bias which each one has.

Dr. Berman's Labor Disputes and the President of the United States, as the title and classification of the volume in the Columbia University Studies might suggest, is a typical academic study of a carefully limited topic. It is an excellent example of this class of studies, well written and thoroughly documented. Like Mr. Meyers' smaller volume, it might be classified by the sociologist under the category, "the politics of industry," but in this case, as the title clearly indicates, it is more specifically the governmental aspect of the problem of industrial control which is in question. For the sociologist, both of these volumes, but the latter one particularly, should be valuable mainly as sources of raw material. Both are worth while also as sources from which one may amplify his appreciative contact with the general subject of industrial relations.

MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE

FLOYD N. HOUSE

Town Planning and Town Development. By S. D. ADSHEAD. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. Pp. xvi+204. $5.00.

This is the first of a series of books on town planning by the professor of town planning in London University. It is a textbook based on experience in teaching the subject. The matter is gained from the preparation of actual planning schemes.

Of special significance in the book is the broad view taken of planning. It has always seemed to the reviewer that in England town planning was largely housing and in the United States largely zoning or traffic control. Although a large share of the book is given to the English Housing Acts and Planning Acts, yet Professor Adshead shows by his first chapter that his own thinking is not confused by the usual aberrations. He places housing and planning in their proper place in community development.

American city planners and sociologists can be saved from current aberrations by reading chapter I, entitled, "The Sociological Basis of Town Planning." To indicate the broad basis upon which the book is written, note these quotations: "Town planning and regional planning is very dependent upon the older and more abstract science of sociology" (p. 1); also, "Architecture, engineering, law, and sociology are arts and sciences which it is necessary to know something about in order to deal satisfactorily with the complex problem of Town Planning, but the

application of these is, after all, dependent upon conditions arrived at by study of the science of sociology" (p. 2).

So significant is this first chapter that it might well have been read at a joint meeting of the American Sociological Society and the National Conference on City Planning, to the profit of the members of both organizations.

Aside from the first chapter the book deals with English housing legislation and town-planning acts and the way the acts have been carried out. The book is carefully prepared, giving the salient points on these important and usually confused subjects. It is timely for the United States because we must soon seriously face the problem of housing legislation, and such books will greatly aid us in profiting by the experience of England.

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

SCOTT E. W. BEDFORD

The American Labor Year Book, 1923-24. Edited by SOLON DE LEON. New York: the Rand School of Social Science, 1924. Pp. 548. $3.00.

This volume, like its four predecessors, is a book that is of inestimable value, packed full as it is of information bearing upon the labor movement, both in this country and abroad. In addition to containing an international labor directory which lists all trade unions, labor political parties, workers' educational institutions, co-operative and labor papers and magazines, it reviews with exceeding compactness and thoroughness the industrial and social conditions of 1923-24; distribution of incomes, concentration of industry, census of wage-earners, wages, cost of living figures, hours of work, unemployment, child labor, immigration, convict labor, housing and living conditions, and a vast array of similar topics. In it are summarized the major trade disputes of the period, all legislation affecting labor, all court decisions, and the activities of labor in politics. The present status of workers' education, labor banking, and co-operative movements are treated. A chapter on civil liberties contains a record and summary of the important free-speech cases and court decisions. The international labor movement is adequately discussed, as well as trade unionism and trade-union political activity in all foreign countries.

The volume is highly documented and shows every effort at careful compilation. The arrangement of material is excellent, and a sixteenpage Index adds to the ease of use. This book, perhaps better than any

other single publication, will serve to give an understanding of the present state of the labor movement, with its gains and losses. There is no other comparable summary of the activities of labor during the past two years. The book is quite indispensable to the reference shelf of the sociologist.

DARTMOUTH COLLEGE

MALCOLM M. WILLEY

Du Tsarisme au Communisme. La Revolution Russe ses Causes -ses Effets. By GREGOIRE ALEXINSKY. Paris: Armand Colin, 1923. Pp. 288. 8 francs.

The Russian debate still goes stirringly on. Not the least sturdy contribution is this excellent, compact, and clearly written essay by a well-known publicist, member of the Duma, emigré, uncompromising anti-Bolshevist. He marshals the old familiar characters in reviewRasputin, the Empress, Korinlov, Kerensky, the Soviet leaders, and the Tsche-Ka. The fundamental causes of the revolution are traced to the land problem, the weakness of the middle classes, the rotten bureaucracy of the ancien régime, the lack of any considerable self-sufficing industry, a working class not strong in itself but able to profit by the weakness of its bourgeois enemies. What are its results? Foremost, the end of the great landed estates; next, the change from big to small industry and commerce. Both of these changes spell conservatismpolitical and economic. What does this augur for the soviet régime and the future of Russia? "The Russia of tomorrow will be a country truly democratic and free, whose chief economic and social principles will be private initiative and free competition in every domain. . . . . Russia tomorrow will be the country of all most radically hostile to "stateism." But Russia will not become anarchistic. "To the contrary, after her recent experiences, after the 'autocracy without autocrat' of Nicholas II, the mild anarchy of the provisional bourgeois government of Lvov Milioukov, the criminal weakness of Kerensky's socialism, and the hell of the soviets, she will tend to settle on a strong national state with firm authority and will obey it not by fear but by conscience." The implications are obvious. Monarchy there might be of the English type, but autocracy nevermore, whether of Czar or Bolshevist. The revolution destroyed the one and showed up the other. The judgment of a wellinformed emigré, one-sided perhaps, but candid, and with the ring of authority.

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

ARTHUR J. TODD

Workmen's Compensation. By E. H. DOWNEY, PH.D. New York: Macmillan Co., 1924. Pp. xxv+223. $2.00.

With splendid preparation in his earlier studies and with long experience with the Wisconsin Industrial Commission and as compensation actuary of the Insurance Department of Pennsylvania, Dr. Downey was without question the person best qualified to write a book on workmen's compensation in the United States. From every point of view— style, the mastery and handling of detail, critical analysis, soundness of view, guidance to further reading-this is an excellent piece of work. It is an exceedingly good book and fills a long-felt need for a treatise which would set out a complicated matter clearly and succinctly in a way any intelligent reader will enjoy, and which would at the same time withstand critical examination by the expert.

In successive chapters the author deals with the social cost of industrial injuries; the scope of workmen's compensation; the scale of compensation benefits; the administration of workmen's compensation; compensation insurance; the prevention of industrial injuries; and the American compensation system.

Those interested in labor legislation, in social work, or in the formulation and administration of compensation systems will find this a very useful and authoritative book. It will also serve well the needs of classes studying labor problems.

H. A. MILLIS

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

The Political Party as a Social Process. By VIVA BELLE BOOTHE. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1923. Pp. 130.

In this monograph the social process is conceived of as the formal result of the customary political activities of a people as they are developed by a series of reactions and adaptations to environmental conditions. This is rather an unusual view to take of the social process. A political party is certainly one of the functional forms in the social process, but it seems to be straining the point to say that the party is a process itself. The results of social adaptations are commonly called institutions or organizations.

Dr. Boothe outlines an ambitious program in her introduction for the study of political institutions and processes in the United States. While the program is only partially fulfilled in the pages that follow, the attempt is a distinct contribution to political science and sociology. A mass of statistical material has been skilfully organized to show the rela