Under democratic institutions, the larger the governmental body, the less economic and more political it becomes, and the more energy is wasted in accomplishing little. To blaze the trail is the work of a select few, not of the people en masse. The electrical industry as all industries which reach their perfection will be developed by personal genius and individual effort, urged on by the desire to serve, no doubt, but more potently stimulated by the prospect of material rewards (p. 368).

This is rather a "large" conclusion for the concluding paragraph of a monograph based on the study of about six dozen electric plants in one state. The whole book bears out the inference that these sentences reflect the "point of view" from which the work was done rather than a scientific conclusion based solely on the facts developed. However, the author has done better work even as to his conclusions than most authors in this field have done, while but few equal him in the accuracy and completeness of details and of presentation.

CLYDE L. KING.

NEW BOOKS

BOUGLÉ, C. Chez les prophètes socialistes. (Paris: Alcan. 1919. 3.50 fr.)

DEBS, E. V. Before the court Nearing. (New York: People's Print. 1919. Pp. 19. 10c.)

HALSTEAD, W. R. The tragedy of labor; a monograph in folk philosophy. (New York: Abingdon Press. 1919. Pp. 107. 50c.) HICKEY, M. J. Bolshevism. Self-defined and self-convicted. A collection of official decrees. (Washington: Nat. Assoc. Manufacturers. 1919. Pp. 28.)

LAIDLER, H. W. ́Study courses in socialism. (New York: Intercollegiate Socialist Society, 70 Fifth Ave. 1919. Pp. 32. 10c.) LANZILLO, A. La disfatta del socialismo: critica della guerra a del socialismo. (Florence: La Libreria della Voce. 1918. Pp. v, 301.)

LENSCH, P. Three years of world revolution. (London: Constable. 1919. 5s.)

MYERS, W. S. Socialism and American ideals. (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton Univ. Press. 1919. Pp. 100. $1.)

RUSSELL, B. Proposed roads to freedom; socialism, anarchism, and syndicalism. (New York: Holt. 1919. Pp. iii, 218. $1.50.) TEITSWORTH, G. W. Democracy against autocracy and socialism. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Pub. House. 1918. Pp. 122.)

TODD, A. M. Municipal ownership, with a special survey of municipal gas plants in America and Europe. (Chicago: Public Ownership League of America. 1918. Pp. 122.)

This is the second booklet published by the Public Ownership League of America in their efforts to carry on an organized propaganda, based on the "investigations" of "competent and reliable authorities," according to their own statement. The author, having stated in his preface that he has "for over thirty years made a special study of public utilities under both public and private ownership in our own and foreign countries," launches forth in the first chapter with the premise that "Public ownership is a natural government function and necessary to secure democracy." Three sketchy chapters follow on the development and scope of the gas industry in the United States. Other chapters deal in a most superficial fashion with the gas plants in Philadelphia (now privately owned), in Richmond and in Duluth (both municipally owned). One of the longest chapters is devoted to The Fight for Municipal Gas in Kalamazoo, which to date has been unsuccessful.. In the space of 15 pages there is an attempt to prove that public ownership of gas plants in Great Britain, viewed from every angle, has been a pronounced success as compared with private industry in the same field. Marked emphasis is placed upon one or two apparently successful examples of municipal ownership, while failures are ignored and no mention is made of successful private plants.

The point of view throughout is wholly partisan, and no fundamental analyses of the questions involved are presented. Important physical features of the business, very significant in making comparisons, are utterly ignored. The author's few secondhand figures are backed up by frequent quotations from the antiquated studies of James, Bemis, and Parsons, the most recent of which is 20 years out of date, and none of which were made without personal bias. Investigations by those opposed to public ownership are ignored, and their statements are gratuitously assumed to be "misleading" or dishonest. The notion is constantly stressed that our officials and legislators are too weak and unprincipled to withstand bribery by public service corporations privately owned, but it is further inferred that if such enterprises were entirely in public hands the character of these same wrong doers would be so thoroughly changed as to debar political corruption!

As there is so little of scientific merit in the book, it scarcely calls for further discussion. It is unfortunate, however, that at a time when the question of public ownership is of such vital importance, those who take the trouble to write on the subject should not study their fields more carefully and give their readers something really worth while.

EDMOND E. LINCOLN.

VANDERVELDE, E. Socialism versus the state. (Chicago: C. H. Kerr Co. 1919. Pp. 229. $1.)

VERINDER, F. Methods of land nationalisation: a brief, critical, examination of some proposals of the Land Nationalisation Society. (London: League for the Taxation of Land Values. 1918. Pp. 16. 2d.)

WILLIAMS, A. R. Russian soviets. Seventy-six questions and answers on the workingman's government of Russia. (New York: People's Council. 1919. Pp. 29. 10s.)

WOOLF, L. S. Coöperation and the future of industry. (New York: Macmillan. 1919. Pp. 141. $2.)

This is a solid contribution to the study of consumers coöperation. From The Roots of the Movement it carries the analysis into those aspects of the question that have left such confusion in most American literature on this subject. If any intelligible meaning is ever to get into that phrase now upon every tongue-"democratizing industry" very clear distinctions have to be made among a whole order of conflicting interests. The coöperators who have done more than any or all others to show the possibilities of democracy in business are those who approach it from the side of consumers. It required more than a generation of experiment and overheated discussion to clear up these understandings. Labor copartnership in all its forms; farmers, selling societies, citrus fruit associations, even bonus systems and profit sharing have been hopelessly jumbled with Rochdale coöperation. This book brings out these distinctions with admirable lucidity. What Beatrice Potter did nearly a quarter of a century ago in a study which Schmoller called "road-breaking in importance," this author carries out and brings up to date.

For the first time in the United States the tide of a working-class Rochdale coöperation is rising on a scale that has real promise. In the world turmoil, it is probably the most conservative movement now observable-conservative because it throws upon labor groups sharp and specific business responsibility. Except to take profits in the capitalistic sense, labor has to do about everything done in ordinary business. To succeed, it must outmatch capitalistic management in its own field. Much smug advice is being given to labor about its behavior. It will take very little of it. Labor is now to try its own hand in business and in politics. If it has more special need of "education" than any other class, this form of coöperation will furnish it more directly and more wholesomely than all other agencies combined.

The final chapter, on Coöperators and Political Action, carries the author into utopian expectations which will rouse criticism. He looks toward an industrial future directed almost absolutely by consumers. He does not flinch from the logic of this position. We must have "conscription of labor" (reminding us of William James's well known suggestion) in order to get the necessary amount of production, especially to get the harder and more distasteful labor performed. His harmonizing of interests between producer and consumer is too easily done. It not only runs counter to the whole mass of profit-making business, but quite as sharply against radical labor in the Syndical and New Guild movements. This flight toward things millennial should not, however, detract from the debt we owe to this study. JOHN GRAHAM BROOKS.

Les chefs socialistes pendant la guerre. (Paris: Nouvelle Librairie Nationale.

1919. 4.55 fr.)

The replies of the socialist parties of the Central Powers to the “memorandum on war aims." The preliminary draft of a peace programme by a committee of neutral socialists. An open letter on the 'new socialist peace conference" from M. P. J. Troelstra to the Right Hon. Arthur Henderson. (London: Labour Party, 33 Eccleston Square. 1919. Pp. 71. 6d.)

66

Statistics and Its Methods

Disabling Sickness Among the Population of Seven Cotton Mill Villages of South Carolina in Relation to Family Income. By EDGAR SYDENSTRICKER, G. A. WHEELER, JOSEPH GOLDBERGER. Reprint 492 from the United States Public Health Reports, vol. XXXIII. (Washington: Superintendent of Documents. Nov. 22, 1918. Pp. iv, 2031-2091.)

When Thomas R. Malthus published his treatise on population, he gave scientific form to the general belief that poverty and disease are inseparable companions. Since that date, this fact has probably been tacitly accepted by most thinking people; nevertheless, statistical proofs and mathematical measurements of this relationship have been most scanty, and, strangely enough, while everyone has been perfectly ready to admit that the relationship exists, it has in practice been virtually overlooked by many able investigators. Insurance actuaries, for example, have worked out elaborate tables to show the relationship of sickness and mortality to age, sex, and occupation, while ignoring entirely the income status of the individuals studied. This tendency has doubtless been accentuated by the difficulties involved in obtaining reliable information concerning income.

The authors of the pamphlet here reviewed recognized these difficulties fully and made a systematic effort to overcome them which proved completely successful. Family income was estimated by first getting the wages of mill workers from the payrolls and then adding thereto income from other sources as calculated from detailed estimates furnished by each family. But, since families differ greatly in size, total family income was useless as a criterion of welfare. Before it could be utilized, it was essential that the size of the family should be determined and that the total income in each instance should be divided by the relative size of the family. Since persons of different ages and sexes have decidedly different needs for articles of consumption, the mere number of persons in

a family is far from being a satisfactory gauge of the size of the family. As a result, it was decided to rate the size of each family in proportion to the number of "adult male units" that it contained according to the Atwater scale. This scale, while originally computed upon the basis of food requirements, is, nevertheless, roughly proportional to the general needs of persons of different ages and sexes. The income for each family for a half-month period was divided by the number of adult male units in that family. The families were then classified according to income per adult male unit and the sickness rate calculated for each class. Sickness was defined, not in terms of pain, but as inability to perform one's usual duties. The study covered 4,161 persons in 747 households of cotton mill workers, a number large enough to constitute a reasonably fair sample. It must be kept in mind that none of the families are more than moderately well-to-do and the conclusions, therefore, probably characterize the poorer classes rather than the general population of the United States. The results of the inquiry are most striking, as the following table shows.

CASES OF DISABLING SICKNESS PER THOUSAND PERSONS OCCURRING AT A GIVEN CENSUS
DATE IN THE LATE SPRING OF 1916 IN SEVEN COTTON MILL
VILLAGES OF SOUTH CAROLINA.

It thus appears that the sickness rate of the poorest class was approximately four times as great as that of the most prosperous class and that the difference was maintained for both wage-earners and non-wage-earners, though it was somewhat more marked in the case of the former. Supplementary tables in the bulletin show that the same higher rate appears for nearly all of the various ages and sexes and for non-mill workers as well as for mill workers. This proves that the inverse relationship existing between income and sickness is real and not merely apparent.

In collecting the original data, when cases of sickness were found, an inquiry was made as to how long the sick person had