alliance as one including Great Britain, Germany, France and the United States.

On the Latin Union episode Mr. Shaw merely sums up the results of recent controversy. He produces, however, a variety of less familiar pieces of information on the break-down of the bimetallic system in other Continental states notably Germany, Holland and Portugal. Germany, up to 1838, presents a picture of industrial chaos and paralysis quite similar to the situation of Europe as a whole two centuries before. The commercial isolation of the few great seaboard cities from the German communities of the interior is as marked in the history and literature of 1840 as in that of 1640. From 1838 to the Franco-Prussian war, we have a series of conferences, appeals, shifts and changes in the ratio, and finally the adoption of gold monometallism in 1870. How far the memorable awakening of German commerce and finance in the last quartercentury had its origin with the adoption of that single standard, and how far with political reconstruction only, may be left for historical critics to determine. But it will hardly be questioned that the nation's present financial prestige could not possibly have been built up on the shifting sands of 1830, with or without the recent violent breaking away of the silver ratio. The patent fact is that each successive nation which has adopted the gold standard on a scientific basis, has thenceforward enjoyed immunity from currency disturbance. Mr. Shaw's work is on the whole well constructed. Its index is perhaps less complete and systematic than a standard of authority deserves. A few defects in the text ought to have been avoided. The word "prices" is used somewhat at random to describe both the market movement of commodities and the mint rate or tariff on coins, and this notwithstanding the limitation of the word, in a note on page 59, to rating of coins. The result is often confusing to the reader. "Rate of exchange" is similarly used, and quite superfluously, to denote the ratio of gold to silver. The vocabulary of finance is certainly wide enough to avoid such complications. Reference to increased currency as the basis not only of commercial progress, but of even that "literary growth and expansion which have made the Elizabethan age the glory of our history" (p. 133), and description of gold as being "through all history the most potent factor in civilization" (p. 3), smack rather of Sir Archibald Alison than of a mature-minded contemporary investigator. But these are minor faults. ALEXANDER D. NOYES.

NEW YORK CITY.

Public Finance. By C. F. Bastable. Second edition, revised and enlarged. New York and London, Macmillan & Co., 1895. — xx, 716 pp.

The Science of Finance. By GUSTAV COHN. Translated by The University of Chicago Press, 1895.—xi,

T. B. VEBLEN.

800 pp.

Natural Taxation. An Inquiry into the Practicability, Justice and Effects of a Scientific and Natural Method of Taxation. By THOMAS G. SHEARMAN. New York and London, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1895. 239 PP.

The second edition of Professor Bastable's Public Finance contains some forty additional pages, and is in some respects even better than the first. Not the least useful addition for practical purposes is an index. Merely bringing the book down to date was a matter of some importance, for the three years which intervened between the two editions were eventful ones in the world of finance. The legislative changes of those years involved such mooted questions of principle as progression and differentiation, and showed certain welldefined tendencies. The revision of the death duties and changes in the income tax in England, the reorganization of the tax systems of Prussia and Holland, and the ill-fated attempts in America to establish an income tax for the federal government and a progressive inheritance tax in Ohio all took place in the interval, and called for amendments or additions.

There are two new chapters, one treating of "The Canons of Taxation," the other of "Taxes on Successions." In the former, which takes the place of a brief appendix in the first edition, the author examines the maxims of Adam Smith, Sismondi, Wagner and others, and after separating the wheat from the chaff suggests that six rules are worthy of retention, namely, the canons of productiveness, economy, just distribution, elasticity, certainty and convenience. The other new chapter is expanded from a few sections which in the first edition were included in the chapter dealing with "Taxes on Communications and Acts." The author approves of inheritance taxes only within moderate limits, and hence cannot sanction the recent increase in the English death duties. He maintains that high inheritance taxes tend to diminish capital and discourage saving, press heavily upon direct heirs, and result in evasion. These arguments against high rates he applies also to progressive rates.

Professor Bastable is magnanimous enough to acknowledge his

indebtedness to his critics, but it is only in some very minor points that he has adopted their suggestions. For the terms forward and backward incidence he has substituted the more correct expressions forward and backward shifting, and the treatment of international double taxation has been slightly expanded. But in other cases the author replies to his critics in footnotes, and leaves the text unaltered. In three and a half pages of fine print he defends his original classification of public revenues against the criticism of Professor Seligman, and declines to give a prominent place to fees and special assessments. He has, however, after reading Dr. Rosewater's monograph on Special Assessments, added a section on that topic to his chapter on local taxation.

In his new preface Professor Bastable makes the significant prediction that the chief points of controversy in the near future will refer to local finance; but except for the two or three pages devoted to special assessments, there is no corresponding recognition of the importance of municipal problems in the body of the work. Neither in the classification nor in the chapter on local revenues is there any mention of revenue from municipal franchises; it is not even suggested whether the receipts from this source are to be considered as corporation taxes, license fees, rent, or the profits of a delegated municipal undertaking. It still remains for some one to develop a complete theory of municipal economy.

Number one of the Economic Studies of the University of Chicago is a translation, by Dr. T. B. Veblen, of Cohn's Science of Finance, approved by the author after a reading and revision of the proofs. It is not to be expected that the brilliant style of the original could be retained in the translation; but Dr. Veblen has succeeded in the difficult task of making a German philosophical work readable to Americans. In so doing he has performed a real service, for the work deserves to be more widely read than it ever would have been in German. It is not a discussion of taxation merely, but a comprehensive treatise on public economy. There are some weak spots in Dr. Veblen's English rendering, due to an over-close adherence to the German. Few Americans, for instance, would recognize in the "contribution" our "special assessment." Book III, which described the German tax system of seven years ago, is omitted from the translation because of important changes introduced by subsequent legislation. The wisdom of this omission is doubtful; for the historical, if now superseded, practices described therein are of the utmost value to the American student.

At the Washington meeting of the American Economic Association in 1890 Mr. Thomas G. Shearman read a paper which he entitled "Crooked Taxation." That was the vivid and opprobrious name which he applied to indirect taxes, whether tariff or excise. To this paper he has now added equally severe indictments of the taxation of personal property and improvements, concluding that the only "natural taxation" is the tax on land values. He includes, however, the taxation of railroads, telegraphs and municipal monopolies, showing that their franchises involve the right to use strips of land. The book is of interest as an authoritative presentation of the claims of the "single tax, limited." Mr. Shearman's method and point of view differ widely from those of Progress and Poverty. He begins by showing the vulnerable points in existing systems of taxation, and proposes the tax on land values not for the purpose of abolishing landlords altogether, but merely as a much needed tax reform. In opposition to many critics of the single tax, he calculates that all needed revenue would absorb less than one-half of the unearned increment. MAX WEST.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

Eighth Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of Illinois: Subject, Taxation. Springfield, Ill., State Printer, 1895. —xi, 491 pp.

For a bureau of labor statistics to devote an entire volume to the general property tax might seem, at the first blush, a work of supererogation. Not so, however; for the industrial salvation of the state of Illinois it is a work of necessity. The wage-earners of that state are in a condition of "industrial poverty," and "while the poverty of individual workingmen here and there may be explained by personal vices, industrial poverty cannot be so explained." "Tyranny" is "the cause of industrial poverty," and taxation is "the chief instrument of tyranny." Under such circumstances, it was clearly the duty of the bureau to "investigate and expose, in the interests of what is commonly distinguished as the laboring class, the liberty-destroying methods of taxation that prevail in Illinois."

By a large part of the newspaper press the present investigation and exposure, being the work of Governor Altgeld's appointees, will doubtless be dismissed with some wise remarks about socialists and anarchists. Nor can it be denied that the Report yields itself readily to flippant treatment; indeed, it almost invites ridicule. Still, in spite of the frequent crudity of its reasoning, and the general extravagance of its language, considerable portions of it deserve attention.

The Report is divided into three parts. The opening part first justifies, in the style above indicated, the bureau's choice of a subject for investigation. It attempts further to show the superiority of "benefit received" over "ability to pay" as a basis for the distribution of all taxation. And it closes with a brief account of the legal provisions regarding the general property tax in Illinois. The second part, curiously called "Analysis of Tables," gives a mass of figures regarding the true and the assessed value of different kinds. of property. The third part is devoted to "Evils and Remedies." The evils are the well-known deficiencies of the general property tax; the remedies resolve themselves into one - exclusive "site value taxation," with local option in taxation as a short cut thither.

The Report examines the operation of the property tax in great. detail. The familiar under-assessment of all property is once more detected; the well-known escape of personalty is again pointed out; and the expected discrimination in favor of Chicago appears. Nor is the subsequent comparison of the assessments upon different sorts of property altogether novel. But the exceptional value of buildings as well as of land in Chicago, and the praiseworthy liberality with which the "primary tables" of situation, area, ownership, valuation, etc., for each parcel of land and for each building are here printed at full length, impart to this Illinois Report an interest of its own. For example, the third chapter of Part II (with its primary tables on pages 401-430) enumerates "in detail every sale of property coming under the investigation of the Bureau,

giving the amount of the consideration as expressed in the warranty deeds, as of record in the office of the Recorder of Cook County, and the assessment of the same property for each of the years in which the property was sold." The area thus investigated extends from Fullerton Avenue south to Thirty-ninth Street, and from Western Avenue east to Lake Michigan. The examination covers the years 1870-1894, the number of sales tabulated is 3297, the average selling price of the properties is $11,032. How the searchers of the records discriminated full from partial considerations, the Report neglects to say. Taking the figures, however, as they stand, the equalized assessment varied from six-tenths of one per cent to one hundred and seven per cent of the selling price, and averaged 19.64 per cent of it an average fully as high as the common fame of Chicago assessments would lead a stranger to expect.

There was also undertaken an investigation of the value of the buildings in the same area, the method being to add "25 per cent,