The Charities Review, which for five years has been favorably known to charity workers, now appears in a new dress and enlarged form under the editorship of Dr. F. H. Wines. It is still published by the Charity Organization Society of New York, but has absorbed Lend a Hand, and has secured as associate editors Edward Everett Hale, Jeffrey R. Brackett, John Graham Brooks, P. M. Wise, John H. Finley, Francis G. Peabody, Charles L. Birtwell, Z. R. Brockway, and Homer Folks. The first number of the magazine contains seven leading articles besides book reviews, extracts from exchanges, "Editorial Chit-Chat," and 16 pages of "News and Notes." The new magazine thus starts out under extremely favorable auspices and able editorship, and promises to be indispensable to all who take an intelligent and scientific interest in charitable matters, and social problems.

Municipal Affairs is the title of a new quarterly magazine, the first number of which was issued March, 1897, by the Reform Club of New York. The first number of 224 pages is devoted entirely to an elaborate bibliography of municipal administration and city conditions. In view of the great importance of municipal questions the establishment of a magazine on what promises. to be so thorough a basis is to be warmly welcomed.

Work and Wages of Men, Women, and Children. The May number of the Bulletin of the Department of Labor contains a short abstract of the forthcoming 11th Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor. Comparing the men and women over 10 years of age engaged in productive enterprises, it appears that from 1870 to 1890 the percentage of women employed has increased from 14.68 to 17.22, while the percentage of males has decreased correspondingly from 85.32 to 82.78. While this would seem to indicate that women are supplanting men in some occupations, it also indicates that in the aggregate this movement is very small, and it is by no means uniform in different occupations. In domestic and personal service, for instance, the percentage of women employed fell from 42.09 to 38.24 per cent. The largest gain was in the department of trade and transportation, where so many women are used as clerks. A very instructive part of the tables, which, we understand, has been prepared

by Miss De Graffenried, is that which relates to the comparative rates of pay of men, women, and children. The Bureau has undertaken the difficult task of comparing not only the rates of wages but also the efficiency of labor, in order to ascertain whether men receive higher wages than women where the grade of efficiency is the same. On the whole the tables corroborate the popular impression that the men are paid more, but this is a rule which is subject to many exceptions, and in many occupations it appears that women are paid more for the same grade of labor than men. In the aggregate, however, out of 782 instances in which men and women work at the same occupation and show the same efficiency, men receive greater pay in 76.1 per cent. of the cases, and women receive greater pay in 16.5 per cent., while in 7.4 per cent. they receive the same pay for the same work.

The Padrone System in the United States. The March number of the Bulletin of the Department of Labor contains an instructive and interesting article by Mr. John Koren on the methods by which Italian workmen are hired in this country. The padrone in the strict sense of the word was a man who engaged laborers or whole families to come to this country, rented their services, and then paid them a mere pittance. They were virtually his bondsmen.

This abuse fortunately exists no longer, the government as well as philanthropic organizations having put a stop to it. Its place, however, has been taken by the boss system, which though not quite as bad, still presents abuses that are quite glaring enough to deserve correction. Under this system the boss is a man who engages laborers for contractors doing work for railroad companies and corporations. The men pay him a bonus or commission which goes by the name of bossatura, and the amount of which depends upon the period of employment, the wages paid, and whether the men are to find themselves or not. It ordinarily varies from $1 to $10 per man, the latter sum being considered a reasonable fee for a job lasting five or six months. This, however, does not end the transaction, for the boss usually undertakes to transport the men to the place of labor, and in addition frequently boards them, buying this privilege from the contractor. He has an opportunity to make a profit both out of their railroad fare and out of their board, and charges exorbitant

prices for the provisions which are usually furnished in a raw state, being cooked by the men themselves. If the men refuse to buy at the boss's price, they can easily be intimidated by the threat of dismissal. Some examples of price are given by Mr. Koren; macaroni which can be bought in the market for 3 cents is sold to the laborers for 10; lard which can be bought for 6 cents is sold for 20; a 5 cent postage stamp costs 10 cents at the 'shanty," and an envelope 5 cents.

The laborer, owing to his ignorance of the language and to the influence of the boss, has practically no redress, especially if, as in numerous cases, the boss is aided in his business enterprise by an Italian banker. The abuses here described are most flagrant in New York, but a similar system exists in other large cities such as Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, New Orleans, and Chicago. In its most favorable aspects this system is one which should not be tolerated in a free country, still less when it is supplemented, as it often is, by downright fraud on the part of the boss.

BOOK NOTICES.

The Historical Development of Modern Europe from the Congress of Vienna to the Present Time. By Charles M. Andrews, Associate Professor of History in Bryn Mawr College. New York G.: P. Putnam's Sons, 1896-8vo, v, 457 pp.

The author has before him a magnificent task. It would be difficult to imagine a richer or more stimulating subject. While the period included in the volume before us-1815 to 1850—is inferior in political and dramatic interest to the later period-1850 to 1897-of which his second anticipated volume is to treat, the whole is part of an epoch for which all antecedent history is the preparation. It is the "heir of all the ages" in a larger and more concentric sense than any preceding epoch has been.

It is true that this epoch, much of it contemporary with our own day, does not end with us. Its conclusion lies far in the future, and hence any treatise upon it must be incomplete. It is none the less true that we already observe in it the initial, experimental working of hitherto untried systems and ideas placed over against all the ideas and systems of the past in every form of abandonment or transition. The history of Europe during the last century is as confused as an ethnographic map of the Balkan Peninsula in its jumble of deeds, claims and contradictions which encroach upon each other and startle by their discordance. Main facts and principles stand out prominent and distinct, but the writer of to-day is too near at hand to always fairly judge or measure their relative importance. This is his misfortune but not his fault. Narrators of more remote history have an immense advantage. They are not themselves tossed hither and thither by the billows on which they gaze.

The author of this volume brings to his task many qualifications of a high order. He is patient and painstaking in research. Without affectation he shows himself a learned scholar. He scrupulously strives to be impartial. He seldom allows himself to be diverted from his impassive recital by flight of imagination, and permits himself small use of epigrams. When he does so, however, he is not always strictly accurate. One may doubt the truth of his exclamation, "He (Napoleon) was not the child of the Revolution. He was its Nemesis." On the other hand at

times, in a few trenchant words, he sums up great and unfamiliar truths. Thus he declares in a sentence, seldom so clearly put, that the "ultimate cause of the uprising of 1830 was .... the attempt to bring into harmony the political ideas of two periods of time separated by the revolution of 1789."

Professor Andrews has done well in his endeavor to restrict his task. Realizing its immensity, he has limited it as far as possible. Equal success was attainable in no other way. Nevertheless, in consequence the printed title of his book becomes a misnomer. He resembles a preacher who, after announcement of a text, discourses only upon one of its paragraphs. "The Direct Results of the French Revolution" is his subject rather than "The Historical Development of Modern Europe." His focal thought is the French Revolution. His geographic center is Paris. It is hardly too much to say that, except as they are connected with this focal thought and geographic center, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, England, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, even Portugal and Spain, are rarely mentioned on his pages, and are absent from his mind. Yet they cover far more than half the territory of Europe, and each of them has a peculiar historical development of its own. A historical development of Europe, which practically takes no account of England and Russia, is circumscribed and incomplete from the start. Prefixing the word Continental before "Europe in the title would have justified the comparative omission of Great Britain though not of her Muscovite rival and antagonist. The Treaty of Adrianople, despite its large consequences, is not even referred to. He does speak inferentially of the Greek Revolution, but the word Greece does not appear in his careful and comprehensive index. This is not criticism, but only demonstration that the title of his work is inappropriate.

One-fifth of the volume is occupied by a summary of that tremendous quarter of a century, 1789 to 1815, although we are given by the title-page to understand that the author proposes to discuss only the years between 1815 and 1850. It is surprising that, with so much later ground to cover in the contracted space of two volumes, the author should have allowed himself to introduce those two chapters on topics most familiar, and in discussion of which he bestows upon his readers little that is original or Five of his ten chapters are devoted to France. This is not disproportionate as one realizes the real object he has in view. It is a question what impression his four hundred and forty

new.