like that of Freiland. Unfortunately a knowledge of reading and writing, or even of many other arts, will not give a man common sense or take from the ambitious the desire to overmatch, even by unfair means, their fellows. There is to be no master of labor, no entrepreneur who can crush with low wages his workmen. Instead there will be a labor organizer and director, chosen by the members of the association for his fitness, subject to removal by them and having his reward fixed by them. It is difficult to believe that men would know their interests well enough to put the best man into the most important place. Nor can competition of the ablest bring about this result. In real society there is always a dearth of men of prime executive ability, but never a lack of those who are willing to use every art, fair and otherwise, to force themselves into positions of honor, profit and responsibility. Many co-operative establishments are even now, under the present system of society, meeting with success; the failure of others is due as much to the character of the men undertaking them as to the unfavorable form of our present society. The solution of our present social troubles involves a change in the characters of the wealth producers, and I do not see that this is provided for in Freiland, though the author thinks that he has appealed to the every-day motives that influence human conduct, and on which are built our present form of economic society.

The author's discussions are many of them very suggestive. For instance, the one regarding the advantages of publicity in all business calls attention to what seems to be a tendency of the day, as the sphere of the state's control is widening. It is probable that more publicity regarding business might be a sufficient check to some of the greater combinations in business, trusts etc., if such publicity could fairly be secured. Certainly much has been done in controlling railways simply by this means.

As a whole, however, when one considers the author's purpose and the range of influence that he ascribes to his ideas, the book must be judged deficient. As a novel it is not a success, and, in my judgment, his reforming schemes are founded on untenable assumptions regarding human nature.

JEREMIAH W. JENKS.

Der Moderne Socialismus in den Vereinigten Staaten von AmerVon A. SARTORIUS FREIHERRN VON WALTERSHAUSEN, Berlin, Hermann Bahr, 1890.

ica.

Even the special student of economic and social questions in the United States will be grateful to Sartorius von Waltershausen for his conscientious and painstaking study. The book has excellences that no other single volume supplies. A large correspondence with the Ger

mans in America who have been at the front in the socialistic agitation men like Mr. Sorge of Hoboken furnishes material of first-rate importance. No one has so exhaustively exploited the socialistic press as the author. No one has shown with such thoroughness the political affiliations of the movement, or brought out in sharper outline both the strength and the weakness of the distinctively foreign element. In point of accuracy the book fulfils what we have long been taught to expect from all serious German studies. We are a little startled to hear Wendell Phillips called a famous politician, but upon the whole the reader wonders how the author could attain such skill of touch and handling where a foreigner so easily goes astray.

The first excellence of the book is the severely objective spirit in which it is written. It is happily free from both praise and censure of an emotional type. The author is wholly true to Spinoza's superb text: "In order to investigate political matters with the same intellectual freedom as the problems of mathematics, I have taken pains neither to ridicule human actions, nor to bewail nor abhor them, but to understand them." This is the spirit of science. Only such a spirit can keep us in close relation

to all the facts.

The first three chapters are historical, bringing us to the formation of the Socialistic Labor Party in 1874. Though there is little new here, no one has shown so clearly the conflict between the ideas brought by German refugees and "advanced ideas" that were of American growth. The Germans were pleased to call themselves "idealists," and were naturally bitter against the practical realism of the Yankee. The Germans. fret at these obstacles precisely as continental socialists always have done in their relations with the stolid matter-of-fact English unionist. Groups and "parties" are formed in this history again and again upon "general principles" or under the touch of a new enthusiasm, only to be scattered by the first sharp contact with any experience which brought to the surface the real motives and aims of the members. There are few in any agitation who see to the end what they want. Some of the German leaders like Dr. Douai and Sorge, who really knew their Marx, realized that the end meant the destruction of private interest and rent and the establishment of the International. Either of these ideas, if pressed strongly enough to the front, frightened both the tinid and the prudent. The "national" idea is always in conflict with the international and dissolves many a coalition. Politics too raises havoc in proportion to the size and strength of the association. If Schaeffle could have studied his problem of the socialistic ideal in contact with an extreme democratic society, he would have stated his conclusions in the Aussichtslosigkeit der Social-Demokratie even more strongly than he has. Whatever a very distant future may have in store for socialism of the

German type, it is impossible to see anything but a very dismal failure of its ideal in this American history. There is almost no relation between things popularly called "socialistic" (like state management of telegraphs and railroads) and the final purpose of German socialism. The clear advantage of the present "nationalist” agitation will be to show finally to the public what the real end of socialism is. When the American workman understands that he is to have neither rents nor interest on his savings, he will see that the problem is quite different from exciting debates about municipal control of gas and street railways. book has better brought out these issues through the simple telling of the history than the work under review.

There is in the second chapter some excellent criticism upon the philosophical basis of socialism. No one has yet adequately shown the hopeless weakness of Marx's philosophy, as philosophy. He accepted as a sort of finality the crude materialism that was in vogue before 1854, after which date almost every first-rate scientific mind in Germany came to see and to acknowledge that this type of materialism failed wholly to meet the facts. Marx never got beyond his earlier training, but continued to the end to express his thought in forms of this naïve materialism. No one would claim now that even strictly economic concepts could be cribbed in such formulas. This seems the more strange in Marx because of his insistence upon the relativity of our knowledge. It would seem natural that he should allow in his own system for an elasticity and flux which the principle of relativity implied. In all his thinking, however, Marx was an absolutist and "wrote his qualities upon every page."

It is difficult to avoid a critical word about the title of the volume under review. Though the author with some caution qualifies his use of terms, it is the general question of labor agitation in the United States with which he deals, far more than with socialism proper. There is an entire chapter upon the strikes of the summer of 1877; a chapter on anarchy, with a detailed account of the Chicago tragedy; and an account of the George movement and of the eight-hour agitation, as well as of trades unions, Knights of Labor and trusts. It is true that these things are considered in their relation to socialism proper, and yet often so independently and to such length that we quite forget the subject of the book. JOHN GRAHAM BROOKS.

The Economic Basis of Protection. By SIMON N. PATTEN, Ph.D. Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott Co., 1890.- 144 PP.

Professor Patten has endeavored in this book to present a new treatment of an old subject. That protectionists need a new statement of their doctrines to meet the difficulties of the situation into which

political controversy has forced them, cannot be doubted. Friedrich List's great work, National Economy, is no longer in harmony with the trend of protective legislation; and although practical men profess to disregard theories, practical legislation in any line cannot long sustain itself unless it rest on some comprehensive theory of society or of government. To supply this need, and to provide a basis in theory for the latest phase of the protective policy, was, as I understand it, the purpose of Professor Patten in writing The Economic Basis of Protection.

But in what particulars, it may be asked, does the latest phase of protectionist thought differ from that of the classic writers? It will be adequate to mention two characteristic points of difference. With the old writers, freedom in exchanges was the ultimate end to be attained by every nation. Protection with them was but a phase or stage of industrial development, its immediate purpose being the industrial education. of the people. The new leaders, on the contrary, urge protection as a permanent policy, and argue that it should not be abandoned even though the industrial skill of a nation comes to be greater than that of other nations. Indeed Professor Patten carries this so far as to claim that the loss entailed by trade between peoples of unequal industrial development is greatest for that people whose labor is the most efficient. Again, in the old scheme of protection it was thought to be illogical to obstruct free importation of raw material. "We have," says Friedrich List, "previously explained that free trade in agricultural products and raw material is useful to all nations at all stages of their industrial development." The arguments leading to this sentence strike the keynote of the old system of protection, but they are entirely ignored by the modern writers and wholly disregarded by current legislation. It may be doubted if Henry Clay would have accepted a nomination for the Presidency on a platform that endorsed such a tariff bill as the McKinley Bill.

If the above be a correct presentation of the situation, we are naturally led to inquire in reviewing Professor Patten's book, what new theory of social development is set forth to serve as the basis for this newest phase of the protective policy. No such theory is definitely stated (an omission which I regard as a serious error), but it is not difficult to discover certain phrases which our author believes to carry with them an adequate social theory. Society, he claims, should be kept in a condition of dynamic progress. This is the hook on which his entire argument hangs. He continuously brings into contrast the dynamic and the static theory of society, claiming that protection is in harmony with the former and free trade with the latter theory. Our ideal," he says, "must stand in sharp contrast with the statical ideal advocated by most free traders."

These words, "dynamic" and "static," were of course borrowed from current discussions on sociology, and in making use of them Professor Patten shows that he regards society as an organism whose development must proceed according to certain laws; and further, in professing himself an advocate of "dynamic progress," he asserts, by inference, that society, being an organism of the highest type, is capable of directing the course of its own development. From this it follows that social progress may be dynamic, that is to say, it may be directed by a conscious purpose which finds expression in law. In this manner there is discovered a logical basis for the claim of protectionists, since it is at least logical to assert that protective laws may be made an instrument whereby a government can direct industrial development into certain chosen channels.

It will be observed that this theory of society is very different from that which lies at the basis of English economy; and, in assuming it, Professor Patten successfully evades the ordinary criticisms of those writers who adhere to Manchester doctrines. This must be appreciated before his book can be understood. For myself, I am quite willing to admit that the standpoint of his treatise is in harmony with the permanent trend of economic thought. I cannot, however, regard it as a satisfactory treatise; for it does not seem to me to follow out in a clear and simple manner the line of reasoning imposed by the premises assumed. It is an open question whether or not the acceptance of the dynamic theory of society necessitates the acceptance of the policy of industrial protection. This is, however, asserted by our author without argument; and he most unfairly places the alternative before his readers of believing in protection or of confessing themselves adherents of social stagnation. By implication he denies that one who professes to believe in the theory of dynamic progress can advocate freedom in matters of trade. His treatise, instead of adding to our knowledge of the science of sociology by a discriminating application of its principles to the doctrine of protection, seeks merely to dignify the doctrine of protection by expressing its stock arguments in phrases borrowed from sociology. It does not seem to me that Professor Patten appreciates the broad and deep significance of the phrases he has borrowed.

If this book be regarded from the standpoint of the minor arguments it contains, there is much to be commended. Whatever Professor Patten writes is suggestive. His presentation of the changes that have taken place in economic doctrine during the last one hundred years, and the relation of those changes to the theory of protection, is most instructive. His argument to show that protection is opposed to monopolies is ingenious in the extreme. The exception which he files to the theory of comparative cost in its application to international trade