climate are laid down: temperature ranging near 64 degrees, high humidity, and frequent variations without prolonged extremes of heat or cold. The next large division of the book delves into the mysteries of biological evolution and attempts to correlate the "pulse of life”—the number and importance of new species formed with climatic fluctuations. The discussion is highly interesting, but appears to a layman to rest upon somewhat speculative evidence, in the charting of which the personal equation of the investigator has wide scope. The book ends with discussions of particular countries: Rome, Turkey, and Germany and her neighbors, together with a final map charting the distribution of civilization throughout the world as compared to the distribution of climatic conditions favorable to human energy. The correspondence is close and does not seem to depend on warping the civilization chart to fit the author's climatic theory. All in all, the author presents a case worthy of serious consideration, but it would be highly desirable to have data based on a wider range of evidence and so correlated as to show to what extent they lend themselves to various rival hypotheses in any given case. ANDREWS AND HOBBS's Economic Effects of the War upon Women and Children in Great Britain THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, LONDON AND EDINBURGH 722 The Journal of Political Economy is published monthly, except in August and September, by the University of Chicago at the University of Chicago Press, 5750 Ellis Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. ¶The subscription price is $3.00 per year; the price of single copies is 35 cents. Orders for service of less than a half-year will be charged at the single-copy rate. ¶ Postage is prepaid by the publishers on all orders from the United States, Mexico, Cuba, Porto Rico, Panama Canal Zone, Republic of Panama, Hawaiian Islands, Philippine Islands, Guam, Samoan Islands, Shanghai. ¶ Postage is charged extra as follows: For Canada, 30 cents on annual subscriptions (total $3.30), on single copies 3 cents (total 38 cents); for all other countries in the Postal Union, 42 cents on annual subscriptions (total $3.42), on single copies 5 cents (total 40 cents). ¶ Patrons are requested to make all remittances payable to the University of Chicago Press in postal or express money orders or bank drafts. The following are authorized to quote the prices indicated: For the British Empire: The Cambridge University Press, Fetter Lane, London, E.C. 4, England. Yearly subscriptions, including postage, 145. each; single copies, including postage, is. 8d. each. For Japan and Korea: The Maruzen-Kabushiki-Kaisha, 11 to 16 Nihonbashi Tori Sanchome, Tokyo, Japan. Yearly subscriptions, including postage, Yen 6.85; single copies, including postage, Yen o.80. For China: The Mission Book Company, 18 Peking Road, Shanghai. Yearly subscriptions, $3.00; single copies, 35 cents, or their equivalents in Chinese money. Postage extra, if mailed direct outside of Shanghai, on yearly subscriptions 42 cents, on single copies 5 cents. Claims for missing numbers should be made within the month following the regular month of publication. The publishers expect to supply missing numbers free only when losses have been sustained in transit and when the reserve stock will permit. Business correspondence should be addressed to The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Ill. Communications for the editors and manuscripts should be addressed to the Editors of THE JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill. Entered as second-class matter, January 16, 1893, at the Post-office at Chicago, Illinois, under the Act of March 3, 1879 Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, authorized on July 15. 1018. PROBLEMS OF BUDGETARY REFORM The paper here presented, which deals with technical questions that arise in framing budgetary laws and budgetary procedure, is written from the point of view of American conditions. This is done primarily because the problem of budgetary reform, as it presents itself to governments of the American type, is a peculiar and, in some of its phases, a local problem. It would be an error to answer technical questions of financial procedure in the United States as they are answered in England, in France, or in Germany. For another reason, also, are American conditions of peculiar significance in the discussion of budgetary reform. During the past ten years the federal, the state, and the municipal governments in the United States have shown great interest in the betterment of financial machinery, and the discussions that have taken place, the programs that have been proposed, and the laws that have been enacted supply new and pertinent material for the study of budgetary problems. Just at present more can be learned from the analysis of American than of foreign conditions. GENERAL DEFECTS OF AMERICAN FINANCIAL PRACTICE The chief evils in American practice may be traced to a diffusion of responsibility for money bills. The several steps to be followed in financial procedure are not clearly defined, nor can there anywhere be found a definite expression of the authority which the various officials are at liberty to exercise in dealing with budgetary matters. "Congress habitually disclaims responsibility for the methods it employs. Responsibility is shifted from the House to the Senate, or from Congress to the Executive, or even to the mass of the people." The states and municipalities are, in this matter, no more fortunate than the federal government. Every student of financial procedure in these grades of government must conclude, as did the commission appointed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to compile information for the use of the Constitutional Convention, that, "in most of the states. . . . the function of making up the budget has been assumed by appropriation committees with the result that our government has on the whole been run without careful financial planning. The adoption of a budget system would greatly improve the conditions in this country by substituting business-like financial methods for the present unscientific, haphazard practices which are followed by both the Legislature and the appropriation committees." This diffusion of responsibility for financial methods may be traced to the eighteenth-century doctrine of Montesquieu relative to the separation of governmental powers. Definite expression of this doctrine is found in the constitutions of six of the states that were parties to the framing of the federal Constitution, and although no specific mention of that doctrine is to be found in the federal instrument, its influence in the organization of the new government is everywhere apparent. This fact is of prime importance at the present time in the study of budgetary reform inasmuch as it sets limits to pertinent suggestions for overcoming the evils incident to American practice. Budgetary reform must render effective the principle of responsibility under the conditions imposed by the American type of constitutional government. The diffusion of responsibility for finance bills, which seems to have reached its limit in the practice of the American Congress, shows itself in three ways: In the first place, the House and Senate are so organized as to distribute authority for the appropriation of public moneys between twenty-nine independent committees, of which fourteen I Ford, The Cost of Our National Government. |