long discussion of corporal punishment; suggestion; imitation.

A notable feature of the book is 115 pages containing over 600 class exercises for discussion. These are arranged according to chapters averaging about forty to each chapter. The author says "only those exercises and problems have been chosen which upon trial have proven to incite observation and effective reflection on the part of students." Marginal analysis, about one and a half pages of fine-print résumé at the end of each chapter, and a select classified list of reference readings are useful phases of the book.

The volume is adapted to the ordinary parent or non-technical student; in this respect it resembles G. Stanley Hall's Adolescence and Youth and one feels that it possesses about the same degree of finality or reliability. It reads like the common-sense observation of a careful observer of children. One finds himself saying "Let me see, is that so?" and feels that his own reflection on his limited experience is as valid as the author's statement. However, the book is a useful non-technical treatment of topics on which little reliable scientific data exists.

S. CHESTER PARKER

A Documentary History of American Industrial Society. Edited by JOHN R. COMMONS, ULRICH B. PHILLIPS, Eugene A. GILMORE, HELEN L. SUMNER, AND JOHN B. ANDREWS. Prepared under the auspices of the American Bureau of Industrial Research, with the co-operation of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Preface by RICHARD T. ELY, and Introduction by JOHN B. CLARK. Cleveland: A. H. Clark Co., 1910. Vols. I and II, "The Plantation and Frontier, 1649-1863," by ULRICH B. PHILLIPS.

Nothing is more difficult than the reconstruction of the life of a people of a past era. Indeed it is difficult for students and publicists to understand the life around them, so great is the variety of thought, purpose, action, and manner of those who enter into the make-up of a nation. We are in the midst of modern and mediaeval civilizations all the while. The state of Illinois furnishes today illustrations of the evolution of Anglo-Saxon men and women from the conditions of Henry II to those of Fifth Avenue. From time immemorial men have tried to describe and explain "the people,"

but only in our day has this become the primary object of history. This ambitious undertaking, aided by appropriations from the Carnegie Institution, is one of those later-day efforts to show just how men have lived in this country-all classes of men. And the first two volumes are devoted to those phases of American life which now really appeal to historians more keenly than any other: the ante-bellum South. Mr. Phillips was undoubtedly the proper man to undertake this task and it may be said in the beginning that he has done his work well.

The Old South, the Lower South, and the Old Southwest are the sections he deals with; and in these three regions there lived to 1865 three distinct classes of people: the planters-tobacco, cotton, rice, sugar growers; the farmers, who occupied in the main the less fertile strips of land and the Piedmont hills; and the pioneers, who broke the way westward, first to Kentucky, then to Mississippi, and finally to Texas. About one-tenth of the total population were connected with the planters, while the other nine-tenths were farmers and pioneers—a population much like that which composed the major part of the Middle West prior to 1860.

Of the six hundred and fifty pages devoted to the documentary reproduction of the ante-bellum South, more than four hundred have to do with plantations, slaves, the slave trade, indentured servants, etc.; the "poor whites" are given four pages, free Negroes twenty-three, immigrants about twenty, and migration and frontier life something over a hundred; the remainder is devoted to a description of the manufacturing interests of the South prior to the War.

It will be seen that the slavery régime occupies the "main tent," and that is proper since the norm of the ante-bellum South was the plantation and since the commanding influence of that region was centered about the narrow "black belts" of the different states. The plantations were the "interests" who dominated legislatures and who controlled Congress in most crises between 1800 and 1861. Still the other nine-tenths interest us and one would like much to know more than these volumes offer about their life, their markets, and the effect of invention on their system of husbandry. The "poor whites," a term which the Negro was able to fix upon white people who did not own slaves but who lived in the vicinity of the plantations, merit more space than they receive. And the immigrant, who at the beginning of the Revolution composed 14 per cent. of the population of Virginia and almost as large an element of the Caro

linas, also deserves much space. It is difficult for us to realize that the South was once the "West" of the new-comer to America, that there one traveled scores of miles in well-settled regions without hearing a word of English! It is easy to understand then that the new-comer, the German, the French, and the Scotch-Irish, was once "a problem" in that region. It is unfortunate that we have so little about this element.

But "short and simple are the annals of the poor," and perhaps Professor Phillips found it impossible to obtain in greater abundance material illustrative of the life of these great masses of the southern people, just as a hundred years hence the investigator will easily find the records of our capitalist régime but will with difficulty locate the evidences of the life and activity of the rest of us. And of course it must be said that the story of the common people of the South finds some place in the accounts of the plantation.

The treatment of the plantation is thorough and the documents are unusually well selected. One now sees what the aristocratic South was, what men like Washington did with their Negro slaves; how slaves regarded themselves, both on the plantation and as they were driven hundreds of miles from old to new lands; how the overseer did his work and what he thought of both master and slave. And what makes the picture the more complete is the inclusion of indentured servants, the run-away Negroes, free Negroes, criminals -in fact the “seamy side" is given with reasonable fulness and accuracy. Never before have the records of the plantation been so clearly and historically put before us.

The sources of this vast amount of material are the contemporary newspapers, the various southern magazines such as De Bow's, publications of local historical societies, and scores of private collections to which historians have hitherto not had access. No student of American history has a better acquaintance with the materials bearing upon the Old South than Mr. Phillips; certainly none has made a closer search for such data and none has been so well rewarded. If there are any omissions it has been because the materials eluded the searcher and not because he was unwilling that they should come to the light. There are some surprises in the book; and many who have written history will find it necessary to revise certain opinions.

Some will say that the institution of slavery appears in too favorable a light, that there are no brutal overseers, few plantation tragedies, and little of the wickedness and immorality so commonly

associated with the old régime. And there is room for skepticism on this score; yet it must be remembered that records of such were seldom put down in black and white, and that most documents of this sort that ever had existence have likely been destroyed. It would be exceedingly difficult to locate papers of this kind in the South or elsewhere today. Possibly some of the court records might offer some such.

But for the darker picture Olmstead, Fanny Kemble, and Harriet Beecher Stowe still remain, and they must be used by the student who desires a complete picture. And as for the middle classes and pioneers, the records of the early Methodist circuit riders, the Baptist backwoods preachers too, may be consulted. Asbury's Journal, in three volumes, is a source of this sort of inestimable value; and it ought to be a part of any collection of southern source material that is brought together.

Aside from these natural and inevitable limitations, The Documentary History of American Industrial Society, in so far as it deals with the ante-bellum South, is of firstrate importance. It is a work which cannot be overlooked in the future by any class of investigators and it ought speedily to find its way to every good library in the country.

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

WILLIAM E. DODD

Religion in the Making: a Study in Biblical Sociology. By SAMUEL G. SMITH. New York: Macmillan, 1910. Pp. 253.

This book is an introduction to the study of the Bible from the sociological viewpoint. The author, who is a clergyman with a Bible class as well as a professor of sociology, realized after a number of years of alternate separate occupation with each line of his activities, that the sociology could be used to make his Bible-teaching far more fruitful. Hence this work which is fitted for the novice in Bible-study as well as the novice in sociology.

VICTOR E. HELLEBERG

The Immigrant Tide-Its Ebb and Flow. By EDWARD A. STEINER. New York: Revell, 1909. 8vo., pp. 370. $1.50.

This book is neither a statistical nor a scientific treatise. It is frankly interpretative. In the first part, the influences of the returned immigrant upon his peasant home and upon his social and national life are described. In the second part, the auhor interprets the attitude of the Slavs, Poles, Jews, and other races toward our ways and institutions. He analyzes the interacting influences. The idea is to "create contacts and not divisions; to disarm

prejudice and not give it new weapons" (p. 7). Our example acts contagiously upon the immigrant (p. 207), but we hinder the processes of assimilation by our injustices and prejudices. The immigrant is our brother; what we teach by precept or by example, he will become (p. 357). E.S.B.

Each for All and All for Each: The Individual in His Relation to the Social System. By JOHN PARSONS. New York: Sturgis & Walton, 1909. Pp. xiii+390. $1.50 net.

This is a book dealing with elementary sociological principles, written in a clear, simple style. It uses mainly physical analogies in describing social phenomena. The author's viewpoint is essentially individualistic, but it is the mild individualism of the churchman. There is much valuable illustration; but the scope of the work is limited, and accurate information is sometimes lacking.

L.L.B.

Americans-An Impression. By ALEXANDER FRANCIS. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1909. Pp. xi+256.

This is another instance in which a foreigner has come over to look at us— and to write about us. The analysis has most of the faults of predecessors of this type, but has the unusual merit of occasionally doing more than measure buildings and count people. There is a fair insight into the unobvious, sometimes coupled with a failure to see the obvious. The author hails our tendency toward administrative centralization as "ominous" for democracy (p. 19), and credits the sociologists and theologians with having introduced Marxism (p. 215). L.L.B.

Le chômage et la profession. Contribution à l'étude statistique du chômage et de son coefficient professionnel. Par MAX LAZARD, M.A., Columbia University, Docteur en Droit. FÉLIX ALCAN, éditeur. 8vo, avec graphiques. Fr. 7.50.

This book is a study of the fact of unemployment itself and especially its significance in the professions. The French and German censuses of the professions are the chief sources used, and from a detailed analysis of them the author concludes that the relative importance of unemployment which is different in each professional group, is a constant in each group considered by itself; he works this out mathematically and studies the courses of the differences between groups. The tables, the discussion of them, and the conclusions are interesting and important.

F. F.

Socialism and Society. B. J. RAMSAY MACDONALD. London: Independent Labour Party, 1905.

This is a rather moderate statement of the claims of socialism confronting the old political parties of England. It follows the conventional lines of argument of the school to which the author belongs. C.R.H.