alternating periods of want and plenty through which the laborer passes. Concerning this matter, he says:

The life of a laborer is marked by five alternating periods of want and comparative plenty. During early childhood, unless his father is a skilled worker, he probably will be in poverty; this will last until he, or some of his brothers or sisters, begin to earn money and thus augment their father's wage sufficiently to raise the family above the poverty line. Then follows the period during which he is earning money and living under his parent's roof; for some portion of this period he will be earning more money than is required for food and lodging and clothes. This is his chance to save money. If he has saved enough to pay for furnishing a cottage, this period of comparative prosperity may continue after marriage until he has two or three children, when poverty will again overtake him. This period of poverty will last perhaps for ten years, i. e., until the first child is fourteen years old and begins to earn wages; but if there are more than three children it may last longer. While the children are earning, and before they leave the home to marry, the man enjoys another period of prosperitypossibly, however, only to sink back again into poverty when his children have married and left him, and he himself is too old to work, for his income has never permitted his saving enough for him and his wife to live upon for more than a very short time.

A laborer is thus in poverty, and therefore underfed, (a) in childhood when his constitution is being built up; (b) in early middle life-when he should be in his prime; (c) in old age.

Miss Addams, who has already criticised the attitude of the ordinary charity visitor, holds well-grounded views upon the advantages of early marriages. In this study of Mr. Rowntree it is shown that it is wise for the ordinary working man to marry early, since at an age of thirty-five years or thereabout his income is sure to decrease and he will need the support of his children at that time.

The book is well worth reading by all students of social and industrial conditions. While it is of special importance to England, it is of utmost significance to us. Until we have had like studies for this country, no real comparison between our conditions and those existing in England can be made. But now that London has had such an inquiry, and it has been followed by one in York, we can hope for a like work to be done in this country before many years have passed.

ROBERT HUNTER.

Municipal Sanitation in the United States. By CHARLES V. CHAPIN, Superintendent of Health of the City of Providence. Providence: Snow and Farnham, 1901. 8vo, pp. 970.

THIS encyclopedic study will be welcomed, not only by American sanitarians, but quite as heartily by specialists in the various fields of social science. American sanitary treatises are deficient both in quantity and quality, as is our literature of economics and political science without the practical references to public hygiene which have aided greatly in the dissemination of advanced sanitary ideas in Europe. The tardiness of our writers is not due to want of problems nor even to ignorance of the social importance of these problems, but rather to a reluctance to undertake the herculean task of opening up the field and providing the materials from which a bibliography could be built up. This pioneer work Dr. Chapin has courageously undertaken and performed. Profiting by his detailed studies, specialists can now, from concrete data, discuss the limitations of governmental authority in sanitary matters, the social and economic need of protecting life capital, and the expansion of political concepts to guarantee such protection. Likewise practical sanitarians can exploit the various more limited fields of administration, urge the adoption of wise methods, condemn antiquated practices, and base useful propagandas upon undisputed and unbiased facts presented objectively with a view not to reforming but to instructing.

Aside from a general introduction which defines the fields of legislation and administration occupied in practice by our local, state, and national governments, the author confines description and comparison to the powers and methods of local health authorities. How boards of health are organized, where authority, executive, legislative, and judicial, is lodged, what salaries are paid, the extent and methods of administration in scores of municipalities form the main subject of the book. These facts are treated under the general headings, registration of vital statistics, nuisances, plumbing, foods and provisions, communicable diseases, and refuse disposal. With reference to each subject a comprehensive discussion of legislation and interpreted powers precedes the detailed description of administrative methods. In addition to numerous illustrations throughout the text, a valuable appendix exhibits model forms indicating the development of labor-saving devices for procuring and classifying information.

Of greater immediate interest to the general reader and perhaps to

the specialist in sociology is the chapter on miscellaneous sanitary work where are treated governmental activities in relation to the diseases of animals, school hygiene, medical inspection, public baths, urinals, control of barbers, gas fitting, baby farms, lying-in hospitals, excursions for sick children, protection of children in factories and institutions, sick poor, tenements and lodging houses. The author makes here a strong appeal for specially trained health officials, for official libraries, for a professional zeal that will not only map out facts but study the map, for a social sense that will reward the student-official who uses his field as a laboratory where he can help discover means to save life capital to the nation.

It appears that vital statistics, the "firm basis on which the whole structure of sanitary science and practice must rest," is at the present time for the most part neglected. The author not only adduces most cogent reasons for emphasizing this fundamental factor in sanitary administration, but he gives an elaborate explanation of the method in which statistics should be gathered, registered, compiled, and applied. He goes further and urges uniformity of method and content of reports by the various municipalities. To enlist the interest of the business world and to emphasize the important relation between prosperity and health, he would have health reports include the population, area, parks, streets, sewer connections, vaults, wells, houses, tenements, and a statement of the expenses of the health department. Furthermore, reports should be vivid, practical, readable, interesting.

But

While the purpose of the book precluded the possibility of including much social philosophy, it may yet be questioned whether the data are not presented too baldly, with too little relation to fundamental problems. A second writing would probably result, furthermore, in many revisions of style and in better organization of material. the student of social science will find ample challenge of his theories of groupal progress toward higher æsthetic and sanitary standards in the unadorned collection of facts. The writer on economics and politics can profitably observe the shrewdness of judgment which would impel American sanitarians to higher standards by citing American, not European, successes.

JERSEY CITY.

WILLIAM. H. ALLEN.

Principles of Western Civilization. By BENJAMIN KIDD. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1902. 8 vo, pp. vi+538.

STUDENTS of the theory of natural selection have observed and commented upon the fact that in the evolutionary process the interests of the individual are subordinated to the interests of the species. “Natural selection," said Romanes, "always works primarily for the life-interests of the species and, indeed, only works for those of the individual at all in so far as the latter happen to coincide with the former" (Darwin and after Darwin, p. 265). Herbert Spencer, both in his Principles of Biology and his Principles of Sociology, has shown how the welfare of individuals may be at variance with the welfare of the species, and viceversa. Darwin did not present this antithesis as clearly as might be expected, but that he was aware of it is obvious from many passages in his writings. Every student of biology must know that in the process of development the individual is subordinated to the group, the group to the species, etc. In social development, then, it appears that the determining center of the process is not the individual nor the group, but humanity; not in the present, but in the future.

Now, this commonplace idea is the basis of Mr. Kidd's philosophy of western civilization: The controlling center of the evolutionary process in our social history is, in short, not in the present at all, but in the future. It is in favor of the future that natural selection continually discriminates (p. 6). After heralding this proposition as the disclosure of something new in the intellectual world, Mr. Kidd proceeds to break up civilization into two great epochs, in the first of which the characteristic ruling principle was the supremacy of the causes contributing to social efficiency by subordinating the individual merely to the existing political organization (p. 145), and in the second, "the ascendency of the ruling causes which contribute to a higher type of social efficiency by subordinating society itself with all its interests in the present to its own future" (p. 148).

It is difficult to see any warrant for such a division, and still more difficult to understand why it was worth while to write a book about it. The causes subordinating the individual to the political organization become ascendant in every period in which group action is necessary, and even then "society with all its interests" is subordinated to its own future. Moreover, this future need not be, as Mr. Kidd supposes, an improved condition. "Natural selection," he observes, “works solely by and for the good of each being" (p. 42), and he seems to take it for

granted that social evolution must necessarily result in the realization of an ideal social condition. But natural selection works regressive as well as progressive phenomena. It turns out parasites as well as paragons, and in the regressive adaptation of an organism, biological or social, to its environment, the principle of subordination holds. Darwin, in the Origin of Species, warns us against the danger of personifying nature, and of regarding natural selection as a deity, but Mr. Kidd exalts the principle, which is absolutely indifferent to human welfare, into a continuously beneficent agent.

Not only is the philosophy of Mr. Kidd's book unsound, attenuated and comparatively inconsequential, but the style in which he presents his thoughts is to be abominated. It would be hard to find anywhere so much lofty and inflated presentation of the commonplace, so much straining to be impressive and startling, or so much tiresome repetition. "Never before has a principle of such reach in the social sciences emerged into view" (p. 4), he says, of his principle of "projected efficiency," and he introduces us over and over to the "most striking spectacle in history." Nothing, however, is clearly discerned. A truth "begins to be visible," " slowly rises into view," "begins to present itself in outline," "emerges into sight." This tends to produce an impression much like that obtained at a spiritualistic science. It is astonishing that a writer of Mr. Kidd's recognized ability could have foisted upon the world a book so artificially extended. All that he has to say might better have been said in one-third of the space.

66

I. W. H.

Democracy and Social Ethics. By JANE ADDAMS. New York : The Macmillan Company, 1902. 12mo, pp. 281.

AMONG the matters of particularly economic interest in Miss Addams's book is the discussion of the domestic service problem, in the chapter on "Household Adjustment." The family has given up to the factory most of the manufacture which contributes to the welfare of its members, but it retains the preparation of food and ministration to personal comfort, as essential to family life. This domestic industry is out of line with economic development, and is "ill-adjusted and belated." As a result the household employee is more or less isolated in the social world with whose growing democratic ideas the factory system is in harmony. She is discriminated against by the young men of her acquaintance, and has to work long hours and every day, with propor