day succeeding, rather than preceding, the meeting of the planters and adventurers at Sir John Wolstenholme's. For the use of the word Canada (I, 239 and elsewhere) where Acadia is meant, very slight justification could be produced. The authority on which the statement is based I have not at hand, but I query whether the words expressly disallowed by the commissioners of the customs " (II, 464) could in any case correctly describe the action of that board upon a colonial law. That power belonged to the king in council, while the commissioners of the customs were subordinated to the treasury board, and had no control over legislation except through report and advice. HERBERT L. OSGOOD.

66

The Building of a Nation: The Growth, Present Condition and Resources of the United States, with a Forecast of the Future. By HENRY GANNETT, Chief Geographer of the Geological Survey and of the Tenth and Eleventh Censuses. New York, The Henry T. Thomas Company, 1895. - 252 pp.

This book consists principally of a recapitulation of the chief results of the last census of the United States, profusely illustrated with maps, charts and diagrams. In the first fifty pages the author deals with the geography of the country, the organization of the federal, state and territorial governments, public debts, the budget, the army and the navy, pensions and public lands. Then comes a lengthy treatment of population, followed by shorter sections on agriculture, manufactures, mineral resources, transportation, and finance and wealth. The whole is put together in such a way as to give the impression of a book made to sell rather than of a serious effort to portray scientifically the progress of the country. A man of Mr. Gannett's official position should have given his readers the benefit of his training and experience so as to save them from the danger of confusion of facts, illogical inferences and unfounded assumptions. The book suffers from comparison with similar work done by the official statisticians of other countries, such as Rauchberg's Bevölkerung Oesterreichs, de Foville's La France Économique, Bodio's Di alcuni Indici Misuratori del Movimento Economico in Italia, and (in a more restricted field) Giffen's Growth of Capital. He might have learned something also from the recent work of his own chief, Carroll D. Wright, in the Industrial Evolution of the United States.

This may seem to be a harsh judgment of a book that is intended

to be popular; but at the present time surely the world demands that even a book intended for popular use shall be scientific in method and tone. I think Mr. Gannett has failed to use his material with the necessary care and discrimination. He masses together the results of the Eleventh Census without much regard to their validity or relative importance; and in many cases he does not exercise the critical acumen necessary in dealing with the very complicated phenomena of population in the United States. Many examples of weakness in these two directions might be cited. He drags in the calculated "center of population," which never has had and never will have the slightest importance. He distributes the population according to altitude, to temperature and to rainfall, without explaining the connection of the two things in each case. Urban population is elaborately treated, but nothing is said in regard to the importance, cause and influence of the wonderful growth of the cities. Size of families is dismissed with a single page, although it receives great attention in the census. The preponderance of males in the United States is attributed solely to immigration, although an excess is found among the native-born both of native and of foreign parentage, where immigration cannot be a cause. Mr. Gannett's method of wage statistics (p. 178) is antiquated and fallacious; and his method of dividing the product between employees and capitalists has been denounced by his own chief and is calculated to give rise to all sorts of misconceptions.

Some of Mr. Gannett's conclusions seem to rest on inadequate data. Thus on the basis of the mortality returns of large Southern cities, he attributes to the colored race a mortality "little less on the average than double that of the whites." Surely such evidence is not conclusive as to the general mortality of the blacks. Again, after comparing the very doubtful death-rate calculated by the Eleventh Census with the rates of European countries, he says: "From this showing it would appear that the Americans live longer than the citizens of any European country" (p. 156). But even if our deathrate were entirely trustworthy, that would not necessarily mean a longer average duration of life. So, in showing that the foreignborn are more numerously represented among criminals and paupers than in the population as a whole, the author forgets that the age distribution has a powerful influence on the numbers. Finally, the “distribution of wealth" (p. 228), certainly one of the most important considerations in reviewing the progress of the nation, is based 1 Bulletin of the Department of Labor, No. 3, March, 1896.

on estimates whose source and validity we have absolutely no means of testing.

The book is doubtless intended to be popular, in the ordinary sense, but even here the author overshoots his mark. The introduction declares: "In numbers, wealth, industry, enterprise, ease and dignity of living-in short, in all that goes to make civilization-the American Republic, at the end of the first century, stands the acknowledged leader of the nations of the earth." Elsewhere (p. 16) the author describes our country as "facile princeps in all the elements of national greatness." One reason for this prosperity the author alleges to be "wise and liberal legislation "; yet he believes in free trade, thinks the Indian has been badly treated, and is in favor of restriction of immigration.

His "forecast of the future" is optimistic. The government will increase in strength as the nation increases in numbers and in wealth; it will develop, but not on socialistic lines; the spoils system will be abolished; the masses of the people will be better fed, clothed and housed; immigration will be closely restricted; pauperism and crime will diminish; woman will no longer be secondary to man, but his equal, or rather his supplement, taking an active part in business and in government; spelling reform will be carried out; government will assume control of corporations as they increase in wealth and power; free trade will be established; we shall colonize Canada, Mexico and Central America; electricity will do all our work, from rocking the cradle to drawing the hearse, from running a sewing machine to operating a railway system.

This prognostication seems to be the subjective speculation of the author rather than a conclusion drawn inductively from the previous portions of the book.

RICHMOND MAYO-SMITH.

State Railroad Control, with a History of its Development in Iowa. By FRANK H. DIXON, with an Introduction by Henry C. Boston, Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1896. — 251 pp. and

Adams. map.

This volume, the ninth in the Library of Economics and Politics which is being published under the direction of Professor Ely, treats of that important part of railway transportation which is conducted within the territorial limits of single states and is consequently subject to the legal restrictions and conditions imposed by state laws.

The circumstances surrounding railway transportation in Iowa do not differ very materially from those in any other portion of the United States except, perhaps, in New England and on the Pacific Coast. Iowa is the sixth state in respect to length of railways, the fourteenth in ratio of mileage to population, and the eleventh in ratio of mileage to area. It is traversed by lines competing vigorously for the traffic of centers of population located without its borders, and by others depending principally upon the revenue to be derived from local business. It participated in the craze for railway construction that characterized the early period of railway development, and in the "granger" movement which followed. It substituted a railway commission, in 1878, for a maximum-rate law that had not proved satisfactory in practice. The law creating this commission was based upon that under which the Massachusetts commission had attained a high degree of success. Annual statistical reports, examinations of roads, rolling stock and bridges, and investigations of complaints were provided for; discriminations were prohibited; and the commission was required to report to the governor and the legis lature. This statute remained in force slightly more than ten years, and was superseded by one establishing a commission with power to prescribe reasonable maximum rates and a classification for freight.

The history of each of these commissions and of the circumstances which led to the substitution of the stronger for the weaker form is carefully told by Dr. Dixon; and in making selections from the vast quantity of available material relating to the subject he has shown a degree of wise discrimination that should make the work of value. to all interested in the problems of transportation, whether as legislators, railway managers or students. The author's conclusions would seem to favor the establishment of commissions under laws similar to those of Iowa and Illinois in all states except those located along the Northern Atlantic seaboard. He realizes, however, that the regulation of intrastate traffic is but a small part of the problem to be solved, and that adequate authority rests alone in the federal government.

Professor Adams's introductory sketch of the development of public sentiment regarding the proper relationship of government to the means of internal communication adds materially to the value of the work. H. T. NEWCOMB.

WASHINGTON, D. C.

Zur Gemeindesteuerreform in Deutschland, mit besonderer Beziehung auf Sächsische Verhältnisse. Von FR. J. NEUMANN. Tübingen, Verlag der H. Laupp'schen Buchhandlung, 1895. - xii, 303 pp.

La Progressività dell' Imposta, studiata sotto il Profilo Etico

Economico. Da FRANKLIN DE GROSSI. Con Prefazione del Prof. FERDINANDO PUGLIA. Palermo, Alberto Reber, 1895. — 227 pp.

Both these monographs are studies in what has been aptly termed the distribution of taxation—in other words, the problem of just taxation. In method they differ widely: one, by a well-known author, is largely statistical; the other, by a novice, is chiefly theoretical.

The text of Professor Neumann's monograph is in two parts; the first contains the substance of a lecture on the reform of local taxation in Germany, delivered by the author at Meissen in the summer of 1894, and the other is a most exhaustive description of the existing situation in Saxony. In preparing this descriptive matter the author not only examined the various local tax regulations, budgets and reports, but sent to the officials of all the towns and of the more important rural communes a circular requesting additional information on particular points. A vast amount of this detailed information, especially with regard to the relative importance of various forms of taxation in the different towns, is presented in voluminous notes which practically form a statistical appendix. Finally, there are four bibliographies, devoted respectively to taxation in Saxony, local taxation in general, German and Swiss "household budgets" and general works on taxation.

Family expense accounts are of interest to Professor Neumann chiefly because they enable him to show the regressive effect of taxes on consumption. For this purpose he selected 526 such accounts from various compilations which he considered reliable, but chiefly from Kuhna's Die Ernährungsverhältnisse der industriellen Arbeiterbevölkerung in Oberschlesien. The 526 families were then divided into six classes, graded from the rich and well-to-do, with incomes of more than 10,000 marks and of from 4,000 to 10,000 marks respectively (Classes I and II), down to the poor, with incomes of less than Soo marks (Class VI). Upon comparing these six classes with reference to their consumption of salt, sugar, coffee, petroleum, tobacco, liquors, bread and bread-stuffs and certain animal products, and estimating the enhancement of price in each