book is remarkably free from bias. The great bulk of the economic theory stated is sound and is presented in a refreshingly clear manner.

While Mr. McPherson's book can be heartily recommended to the general reader, it is not at all the type of book for use as a class-room text. Mr. O'Hara, on the other hand, has presented a treatise primarily useful to the student.

The book is not without its weak points. The relationship between subjective value and market value is not made plain. The equation of exchange is wrongfully identified with the quantity theory of money. The controlling influence of the standard of life and the laws of population upon wages is not brought out. Land ownership is, by inference, identified with monopoly. But most of these are but minor points, and the accuracy of the statements in general compares favorably with the majority of modern texts. The theory presented is of the orthodox eclectic type and is stated in unusually lucid form. The striking feature of the book is its brevity, and hence the treatment of each subject is necessarily confined only to principal points and is much condensed. This new text will, therefore, prove useful to those teachers who find it necessary to cover the general field of economics in one semester, for its style and pedagogical form are admirable.

Public Health Statistician, Spartanburg, S. C.

WILLFORD I. KING.

MONTGOMERY, ROBERT H. 1917 Income Tax Procedure. Pp. x, 461. Price, $2.50. New York: The Ronald Press Company, 1917.

"This is not a treatise on the income tax. It is not a history. It is not a digest. It does not even purport to contain all of the Treasury Department regulations and decisions. It will, however, answer about 98 out of 100 anxious questions. It mentions some of the difficulties which lawyers and accountants have in trying to understand the law. It suggest some improvements in the law and in the Treasury Department's interpretations of the law. It criticizes the law and other persons and things and is subject to criticism. Any kind of criticism, destructive or constructive, will be welcome."

The above breezy paragraph, which is the opening one of a rather long preface, gives the reader the atmosphere and purpose of the work. It is a manual and at the same time not a manual; it is both technical and critical, but illustrative rather than comprehensive. Chief attention is paid to the Federal Income Tax Laws of 1913 and 1916, though chapters are devoted to the Corporation Excise Tax, the Munition Manufacturers' Tax, state and municipal income taxes. Frequent comparisons are made with our Civil War income tax and the British income tax, both as regards practices and court decisions.

The writer is an attorney and a certified public accountant. The book is written from the point of view of one with such training and interests as this implies. The work will be helpful to those not familiar with the preparation of income tax returns, but it will not take the place of a lawyer and an accountant where the problems are complex. The author does not hesitate to uphold the law and related rulings where he deems them justifiable, nor to criticize where he

thinks they are not what they should be. Most of the criticisms are well taken, but not all of them are expressed conservatively and judiciously.

ROY G. BLAKEY.

University of Minnesota.

RYAN, JOHN A. Distributive Justice: The Right and Wrong of Our Present Distribution of Wealth. Pp. xviii, 442. Price, $1.50. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916.

KLEENE, G. A. Profit and Wages: A Study in the Distribution of Income. Pp. iv, 171. Price, $1.25. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916.

These volumes alike attest the return of economic theory to a formal consideration of the problems of welfare. They have more in common with the classics in which ethical considerations were explicit than with the more modern positive studies in which they are implicit.

Dr. Ryan essays the task of passing upon the justice of the existing distributive scheme. To that end he grounds an ably sustained and highly articulate argument upon the double basis of the economics of neo-classicism and the ethics of established catholicism. The materials and criteria from these sources together lead him to the conclusion that each of the traditional shares in distribution, rent, interest, profits, and wages, is justified, but that each is susceptible to abuse. Towards the eradication of "wrongs" he advocates a certain amount of state interference, presumably upon the basis of the existing institutional system. But this is evidently a mere makeshift, for he is convinced that their source lies in personal immorality. Their elimination, therefore, requires a higher personal morality, towards which "the most necessary requisite is a revival of genuine religion" (p. 433). Typical of his argument is an omission of any discussion of the population question, evidently upon the ground that numbers are not, or should not be, subject to human control. In fact, despite elaborate arguments, it is evident that the real questions at issue are all contained in his assumptions. The volume bears the nihil obstat and imprimatur of the church.

Professor Kleene's volume must be classified as a contribution to economic criticism. He passes in review the various systems of distribution which have been advanced in recent years. His attention falls largely upon their assumptions and implications. He exposes the inadequacy of the rationalistic and utilitarian bases from which such schools as the Austrian, the American productivity, and their many variants proceed, protests against the assumption that the problem of distribution is contained in the problem of value, and insists that by implication modern "positive" schools justify the existing order. On its constructive side the book is fragmentary and lacks coherence. It doubtless will prove useful both to those who are insisting upon a return of theory to the problems and methods of classicism and to those who are demanding a newer institutional economics. If the book is far weaker as a constructive study than as a critical attack, the result is not evidence of personal weakness on the part of the author. Rather it affords testimony to the existing state of economic theory.

In view of their problems it is unfortunate that both volumes reveal a lack of

familiarity with the writings of the school of English economists who recently have been giving their attention to the subject of welfare, and who of all current theorists seem to be most fully conscious of what they are doing.

WALTON H. HAMILTON.

Amherst College.

SCHEFTEL, YETTA. The Taxation of Land Value. Pp. xv, 489. Price, $2.00. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Company, 1916.

Miss Scheftel has prepared a judicious, well-balanced treatment of landvalue taxation in those countries where the scheme has been chiefly tried. The history of Australasian land taxes, German taxes on value increment, English land-value duties, and municipal land taxes in Canada is carefully outlined. Study is also given to the fiscal, economic and social effects of such taxes.

Although single taxers have generally welcomed the adoption of land-value taxation as a vindication of their doctrines, the author points out that "not only in method of assessment and levy, but also in their rationale great differences exist" between the single tax and land-value taxes. Advocates of the single tax urge their plan as "a weapon with which to clear the way to their Utopia," whereas land-value taxes have been adopted in part for fiscal purposes, in part for social reform. Nor is the difference between the two systems one of degree merely: "the doctrine of abolishing all (other) taxes is foreign to the principle of the tax on land value, as is the confiscatory feature of the single tax."

The conclusion is reached that land-value taxes have failed to produce vital social reform. Only to a brief extent have they checked land speculation, reduced rents or ameliorated housing conditions. On the fiscal side their success has been somewhat more pronounced.

The final chapter in the volume deals with the expediency of taxes on land value in the United States. A valuable bibliography is appended.

F. T. S.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

BIGELOW, JOHN. Breaches of Anglo-American Treaties. Pp. xi, 248. Price, $1.50. New York: Sturgis and Walton Company, 1917.

Major Bigelow attempts to defend the United States against charges made by certain English newspapers and authors that the policy of the American government has been to regard treaties as binding only when it suits its convenience to observe them. He reviews in turn the history of all treaties, conventions and other agreements that have been concluded between the United States and Great Britain since the beginning of our national existence, violations of which by either of the contracting parties have been alleged, examines the infractions charged in each case and strikes a balance of the accounts with a view to determining which party has been the greater offender. The result of his findings is that during the one hundred and thirty years between 1783 and 1913 about thirty separate and distinct compacts that may properly be considered as treaties were entered into

between the two countries and that of these, eight were violated by Great Britain: the treaty of peace, 1783, the Jay treaty, the treaty of Ghent, the Rush-Bagot agreement of 1818, the Fishery Convention of 1819, the Indemnity Convention of 1823, the Clayton Bulwer treaty of 1850 and the treaty of Washington of 1871. Of these, the first, second, fourth and fifth may be regarded as having been violated by the United States but with the possible exception of the fifth the American violations took place only after the treaties had been violated by Great Britain, and consequently the United States cannot be justly reproached for disregarding obligations which Great Britain had declined to observe. No treaty, he adds, appears to have been violated by the United States alone.

The limits of this review do not permit of an analysis, or estimate of the evidence which Major Bigelow brings forward in support of his conclusions but it may be doubted whether the case he makes out against Great Britain in some of the instances which he cites is conclusive. Thus, in the case of the treaty of 1783, it is true that the fulfillment of the stipulations regarding impediments to the collection of debts due British creditors devolved upon the States rather than upon the national government, but to invoke this circumstance in avoidance of the national obligation was to take advantage of a technicality and to rely upon the letter rather than the spirit of the treaty. It was, of course, the duty of the British government to evacuate all of the Western posts as soon as possible, as the treaty required, and as this was not done Great Britain's violation of the treaty may be said to have antedated the American violations. Nevertheless, the British government in the end performed its stipulations, even if tardily, whereas the States systematically interposed obstacles in the way of the execution of Article IV of the treaty. It is difficult for an unbiased mind to avoid the conclusion that the American offense was the more reprehensible of the two.

University of Illinois.

JAMES W. GARNER.

JONES, CHESTER LLOYD. Caribbean Interests of the United States. Pp. viii, 379. Price, $2.50. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1916.

Dr. Jones has written a valuable and stimulating work on a field of great interest, politically as well as economically, to the United States. His is practically the first work to deal in any comprehensive way with present important problems and capabilities of this increasingly strategic area. It is to be hoped that the further study of these will appeal not only to the student but also to the man in business and public life. The average American is poorly informed on the subject and can read with profit the significant facts that Dr. Jones has here so well brought together. Though the book is popular in form, a liberal use has been made of our Consular and Trade Reports, commercial relations and a good range of substantial authorities. While emphasis is given to economic conditions and to the trade relations of the West Indies, Central America, and northern South America with the United States in particular, the views expressed of our political and diplomatic interests in these regions will merit no less consideration.

J. C. B.

TREITSCHKE, HEINRICH VON. Politics (translated by Blanche Dugdale and Torben de Bille). (2 vols.) Pp. 1, 1049. Price, $7.00. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916.

It is in Treitschke's Politics that one finds a bold expression of all of the ideas now held to be typically Prussian. "We may say that power is the vital principle of the State, as faith is that of the Church, and love that of the family" says Treitschke (page 23). In the expression of this power "a step forward has been taken when the mute obedience of the citizens is transformed into a rational inward assent, but it cannot be said that this is absolutely necessary. Powerful, highly-developed Empires have stood for centuries without its aid. Submission is what the State primarily requires; it insists upon acquiescence; its very essence is the accomplishment of its will" (page 23). "Brave peoples alone have an existence, an evolution or a future; the weak and cowardly perish, and perish justly. The grandeur of history lies in the perpetual conflict of nations, and it is simply foolish to desire the suppression of their rivalry. Mankind has ever found it to be so" (page 21). One need not mention Belgium here.

In the first book (which forms Volume I) on The Nature of the State are chapters on: The State Idea; The Aim of the State; The State in Relation to the Moral Law; The Rise and Fall of States; Government and the Governed. In the second book on The Social Foundations of the State there are chapters on Land and People; The Family; Races, Tribes, and Nations; Castes, Estates, Classes; Religion; National Education; Political Economy. There is an introduction by Rt. Hon. Arthur James Balfour and a Foreword by A. Lawrence Lowell. Good clear type makes reading easy.

As a work of scholarship, Treitschke's Politics is neither important nor profound. Witness the following statement: "France always fluctuates between bigotry and a false Liberalism," (page 12). But Treitschke's Politics is famous for the national ideals to which it has or has presumed to give expression, not for its profundity or its intrinsic worth.

University of Pennsylvania.

CLYDE L. KING.

WEYL, WALTER E. American World Policies. Pp. 307. Price, $2.25. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1917.

A book on American World Policies written by Mr. Root, Colonel Roosevelt, or Mr. Taft would arouse varying degrees of interest according as one judged the ability of each of these statesmen to write authoritatively on so momentous a topic. So likewise one is bound to question the qualifications of Mr. Weyl. The author is primarily an economist. This accounts for both the strength and the weakness of the book. Its weakness consists in the author's tendency to interpret all international relations in economic terms. To such an extent does this carry him that he is led to make unfortunate comments of the following character: "Not until it was seen that they no longer paid did the Crusades end; not heavenly but earthly motives inspired most of these soldiers of Christ. It was business, the business of a crudely organized, over-populated, agricultural Europe” (page 23). Such an attitude of mind hardly qualifies one to preserve a proper sense of international values.