between France and Germany the latter could command a more numerous army, but the former could prolong the conflict more on account of the superiority of its wealth" (p. 98). The great danger of the present day, he wisely holds to lie in the deterioration of the quality of the population, rather than in a falling off of its numbers. The new science which must deal with these matters he calls viriculture. The three leading problems which this science must solve are: first, to find the means of maintaining the equilibrium between the population and its markets; secondly, to find the means necessary to prevent degeneration; thirdly, to find the means of suppressing or checking prostitution. The first problem he thinks can be solved by cheapening the cost of production of children through the application of credit and insurance, just as the cost of production of commodities has been cheapened by the same agencies (p. 143.) The second can be solved by the progress of science, which will teach people more of the laws of heredity, and also by making the improvement of the race profitable, just as the breeding of improved races of cattle has become profitable. How this is to be done we are not told, but the author thinks that the mere existence of the necessity will produce the remedy. The third problem can be solved, he thinks, by the application of economic forces; that is, by opening new occupations to women which will lessen the temptation to lead a life of vice; and also by encouraging athletic exercises, which he is sanguine enough to believe will check the passions. It is perhaps too much to expect that three short chapters will solve the extremely difficult moral as well as economic problems outlined above; but the plan to increase the population of France by diminishing the cost of production of children seems singularly inadequate, when we consider that the diminished birthrate is most noticeable precisely among the classes who are wellto-do, and upon whom, therefore, the cost of raising children falls. lightly. Many other proposals of the book indicate an optimism which, in our view, is hardly justified by the facts. M. de Molinari has invented a clever term to express what Malthus called, somewhat clumsily, the principle of population; and he has sketched in a very readable manner some of its more important problems. He has not, however, gone far towards the solution of these problems. Indeed, in the limited space which he set for himself this was hardly possible. We still await that thorough and profound statistical treatment of the subject which will do for the end of the XIXth century what the work of Malthus did for the end of the XVIIIth. H. W. F. Le Trade-Unionisme en Angleterre. Par Paul de Rousiers, avec la collaboration de MM.Carbonnel, Festy, Fleury et Wilhelm, Bibliothèque du Musée Social. Paris, Armand Colin et Cie, 1897-8vo, xi, 356 pp. In 1895, the Musée Social, to which we are indebted for many interesting social investigations, sent over to England five gentlemen with instructions to make a report upon the trade unions of that country. They have produced a volume of which the introduction, the chapters on the necessity of labor organization, and the causes of the success of trade-unionism in England, the conclusion, and two of the special chapters are written by M. de Rousiers, while his colleagues divided among themselves the labor of writing about the several unions which each one of them especially studied. The book is, therefore, a collection of monographs written by different authors; but a certain unity is given to it from the fact that the writers all made their investigations in the same spirit and for the same purpose, and reached in general very similar conclusions. The aim of this committee was not to write a history of trade unionism in England, but rather to give to their compatriots an account of the movement as it exists at the present day. For this purpose they wisely decided to select certain typical unions, study these in detail, and describe them, in preference to attempting any general summary of the English unions as a whole. We find, therefore, no general statistics of trade unionism, though we find an excellent general characterization of their aims and methods. The unions specially selected for study are those in the building trades, the agricultural unions, the dockers' unions, the miners' unions, the ship builders' unions, the amalgamated engineers, and the unions in the textile industry. These unions differ greatly among themselves in respect to their strength, their policy, and their organization, but the French visitors were evidently strongly impressed with the good sense, the practical wisdom, and the ability of the leaders with whom they came in contact. And there is undoubtedly in this respect a great difference between the English unions and anything in France. The very title of the book shows how impossible it was to even express the subject of the investigation by any purely French term, and to readers who are familiar with the English literature of the subject the most valuable part of the book lies in the almost unconscious contrasts which the authors are constantly drawing between French conditions and English. This contrast came out sharply at the time of the International Congress of Textile Workers of 1894. The Englishmen told how they had succeeded in raising their wages and bettering their conditions solely through their own personal efforts and by means of the contributions which they had levied upon themselves. But the French delegate thought that political action was more productive than the independent action of the unions, and that it was better to have deputies who were workingmen than money in the treasury of the unions. The last chapter brings out clearly the distinction between the old and the new trade unionism, which is not as deepseated as it is sometimes supposed to be. Indeed it is not improbable that the contrast will disappear as time goes on, the older unions becoming more ready to adopt new ideas and a more liberal policy towards unskilled laborers, while the new unions will with experience become more conservative. But a real danger lies in the spirit which has embodied itself in the Independent Labor Party and which is directly opposed to the principles of self help which have built up the great unions of the present day. H. W. F. A Handbook of Greek Constitutional History. By A. H. J. Greenidge, M.A., Lecturer and late Fellow of Hertford College, and Lecturer in Ancient History at Brazenose College, Oxford. New York, The Macmillan Co., 1896—12mo, viii, 276 pp. This is an excellant number in the useful series of inexpensive handbooks of Archæology and Antiquities so well begun by the Macmillan Co. It is "meant to be of assistance to those who find difficulty in mastering" what is certainly "the least understood portion of Greek history." It is written from competent knowledge of the sources, both literary and inscriptional, and of the work of other scholars. Yet it is not a rival or substitute for such works as Gilbert's or Thumser's Staatsaltertümer. These aim to collect with substantial completeness all the fragments of knowledge attainable on the subject; but in reading them one may easily fail to see the wood for the trees. Hence a briefer outline may really supplement the larger manuals, as this one does, by selecting a different view-point, from which we may obtain a better perspective. The special merits of Mr. Greenidge's book are these. First, the author has generally chosen the most significant facts, and, without losing himself in detail, has made clear the salient features, the main tendencies, of Greek political institutions. And when looked at in this way, those institutions are seen to present an unexpected symmetry and logical coherence, which are the result of natural growth rather than of conscious intention. Secondly, the actual working of the various constitutions is presented more clearly than by most larger works. And when thus presented and understood, Greek public law is seen to deserve more respect than it commonly receives. The Roman system of law is so great, so perfect, and above all so much better known in its late forms, that the very different Greek system, so full of varied life, whose development was cut short at a period when the Roman was far behind it, suffers unfairly in the comparison. Thirdly, certain phases often overlooked receive here due emphasis. For example, the fallacy of "the strange notion that Greek society 'subordinated the individual to the state"" in some different sense from that in which modern society does, is pointed out, and the origin of the notion is explained. And especially is it made evident that the city-state, the mós, as a wholly independent political unit is, in Greece proper, "something of a fiction." In the middle of the fifth century B. C. "we find no less than five systems of federal or tribal government in existence, in Thessaly, Boeotia, Achæa, Acarnania, and Aetolia; one compact nation composed of many cities, that of the East Locrians; and some smaller, such as the Malians and Oeteans." And Athens cannot be treated properly apart from her empire, nor Sparta apart from her confederacy. It is a pity that this constant tendency towards the formation of larger aggregates should be so generally made light of or forgotten, merely because no one of these combinations reached a degree of size or strength which would have enabled it to withstand Macedon successfully. The book is well printed, but the Greek accents display that uncertainty that too often disfigures English works; occasionally a reference is too vague, or does not quite bear out the inference drawn from a passage; the name of Thumser is wrongly given as Thuemser. But the reader of this Review will not care for a fuller list of minor slips and errors. Yale University. T. D. GOODell. Specimen Theoriae novae de Mensura Sortis. By Daniel Bernoulli. Commentarii academiae scientiarum imperialis Petropolitanae. Tomus V. Petrop. 1738, pp. 175-192. Translated by Dr. Alfred Pringsheim under the title Versuch einer neuen Theorie der Wertbestimmung von Glückfällen. Introduction by Dr. Ludwig Fick. Leipzig, Duncker und Humblot, 1896-61 pp. This short work, now first made accessible to the public through the translation of Pringsheim, is interesting chiefly because one of its conceptions very nearly coincides with Jevons' final degree of utility. The author commences by reviewing the usual formulæ for determining the probability of a certain throw at dice. Thus two persons may agree to a rule by which the one shall win on all even throws, the other on all odd. This would appear at first sight to be absolutely just, for during a considerable period the winnings of each would be approximately equal. Bernoulli acknowledges the truth of this law but draws a distinction between what is called absolute gain and moral advantage. This latter is conditioned on a different factor and he posits his fundamental hypothesis that each increment of winning has a utility directly proportional to the stake but inversely to the property of the gambler. If one person has property valued at $10,000 and an annual income of $2,000, while another is worth $5,000 with an income of $1,000, an additional dollar possesses twice the moral advantage or utility to the latter party which it does to the former. Bernoulli perceives very clearly that value is not a property inherent and invariable in any substance, but that it depends on the amount of it under consideration. In his assumption of the inverse proportionality of the utility of an increment of gain to the present property of the subject, we find the outlines of the final degree of utility of Jevons, and the rareté of Walras. The author sees clearly the decreasing utility of each increment of money but fails to take the next step and transfer the law to other goods to which it will apply equally well. Bernoulli admits that his hypothesis is not always verified by the actions of individuals; that a miser with considerable property may place greater value upon one more dollar, than a spendthrift with only a few cents in his pocket. But this is partially rectified by the fact that he who judges the utility of the additional dollar to be small is generally little affected by a similar loss. His law would be universally applicable only in case mankind was composed entirely of normal individuals. Yale University. W. B. BAILEY. |