He notes the measures taken by California to meet this situation, citing the Anti-Alien Land Law of 1913, which provides that foreigners ineligible to naturalization may neither buy nor inherit land in California, and the more recent amendment which prohibits the leasing of agricultural lands by aliens ineligible to citizenship and which forbids such aliens to become guardians of minors in whose names such lands are purchased. This amendment, Mr. Kuno believes, will prove to be as ineffectual as the law of 1913. He says: "There are at present more than a thousand native sons of Japanese parentage in California who are steadily approaching maturity and who will have legal right to organize corporations and thereby purchase land." In this statement he is quite right; Japanese born in the United States are American citizens and can purchase or lease as much land as they like.

In the chapter on "What the Japanese Want in the Pacific Ocean" Mr. Kuno has anticipated in part the provisions of the recent Washington Naval Agreement requiring the preservation of the status quo as regards the fortification of insular possessions in the Pacific.

As regards China, he falls into some errors. On page 53 I read:

When the decision on the Shantung question was made public, a number of United States senators and other statesmen of prominence voiced unqualified denunciation, stating that by that decision several millions had been made slaves of Japan and that several hundred miles of Chinese territory had been placed under Japanese control, while in fact the district in dispute comprises but a few hundred square miles and is inhabited by not more than twenty to thirty thousand Chinese.

The Leased Territory of Kiaochow, it is true, contains but 400 square miles; its population, however, is 227,000. But the whole. area affected by the lease must include the Neutral Zone. With this the area is 2,900 square miles and the population 1,200,000.

The Chinese, however, whose lives have been affected by the Japanese possession of the Kiaochow Leased Territory are not merely those living at Tsingtao, the port of the territory, for Japan took over a railway extending 254 miles inland, supplanted many Chinese employees by Japanese, placed Japanese troops along the line. and at the provincial capital, and used the troops and railway in such a manner as to dominate very largely the life of the province of Shantung, which contains thirty-seven millions of people.

It is painful to find Mr. Kuno in this chapter making serious reflections upon the morality of the majority of European residents in the Far East. On page 65 he states: "The larger percentage of Occidentals who live in China and Japan live there in a manner quite different from the way they would live at home. The truth of this is attested by the large numbers of Eurasian children in those countries without legal fathers." It is impossible to allow Mr. Kuno's statement to pass uncontradicted since a very large proportion of the Europeans and Americans in China are missionaries with their families, and neither they nor their compatriots in mercantile and official life deserve the reproach put upon them by Mr. Kuno.

The author very wisely discredits the widely circulated report that Japan's density of population requires an outlet for emigration. Mr. Kuno regards as more important to the prosperity of Japan an assurance that she can obtain the raw materials needed for her industries. He calls attention to the economic changes that have been taking place. Japan is becoming a great manufacturing country, instead of remaining as in the past devoted chiefly to agriculture, and is capable therefore of supporting a much larger population than was formerly thought possible. Mr. Kuno also points to a well-established fact, not so well known as it ought to be, that the birth-rate of Japan is declining.

Concerning the government of Japan, Mr. Kuno recognizes that at present it does not really represent the people of Japan. "The Government," he says, "is more cautious and less radical than are the people as a whole." What Japan wants at home, he thinks, is an increase of the franchise. This has been greatly increased of late by reducing the tax qualification from $5.00 per annum to $1.50. But it is in his opinion still too limited, so much so that unscrupulous candidates are able to buy the votes needed for their election.

Mr. Kuno has made an interesting and valuable contribution to the discussion of Japan's relations with the rest of the world and his book deserves to be widely read.

E. T. WILLIAMS

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Argentine International Trade under Inconvertible Paper Money, 1880-1900. By JOHN H. WILLIAMS. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1920.-xiv, 282 pp.

This monograph is addressed to the economist, rather than to the political scientist or to the historian, but it is a useful book for all three. Its purpose is to "make an inductive examination of the theory of international trade and foreign exchange under a régime of depreciated paper money." It is of peculiar interest and importance, therefore, at this moment when most of Europe finds itself in a predicament somewhat similar to that of Argentina in 1891, only much intensified.

The year 1880 marked a turning point in the history of the Argentine republic. It ended sixty years' struggle between two political groups, the Unitaries of the capital and the Federalists of the provinces, a struggle which closed with the "confiscation" of the metropolis, Buenos Aires, as a federal district by the nation at large. Having put their house politically in order, the Argentine people found time and energy to develop the latent natural resources of their country. And they applied themselves to this new task with an ardor and a recklessness that resulted a decade later in one of the most spectacular economic crises of recent history. The price of land rose enormously, foreign capital flowed into the country, especially from England, and railways and public works were projected on a lavish scale. In an era of speculation, the banknote circulation was allowed to increase out of all proportion to the gold reserves in the country, and by January of 1885 the government was forced to decree the temporary suspension of specie payments. The situation differed from that of present-day Europe, however, in that foreign exchange was soon restored to a gold basis. During the incompetent administration of President Celman resumption of specie payments was indefinitely postponed, and the policy of wholesale borrowing from abroad continued unabated; while unscrupulous politicians exploited the occasion for their private benefit and the banks were prostituted to illicit ends. In the years 1886-90, Argentina, with a population of approximately three millions, borrowed 668,000,000 pesos gold. The crash came at the end of 1890, when Baring Brothers of London, financial agents of the Argentine government, were forced into bankruptcy. In 1891 the government defaulted on the service of the national debt, and virtually all of the national guaranteed banks collapsed. The his

tory of Argentina from that time to 1899, when the present Conversion Law was enacted, is mostly the story of a slow and painful pilgrim's progress back to national solvency.

Professor Williams works out, in the light of fact and theory, the interrelations among the three most important features of this stage of Argentine development: depreciated paper money, foreign borrowings, and the course of foreign trade. His aim is to show that, under a régime of depreciated paper, the balance of international payments (in Argentina governed by the influx of foreign capital) exercised a dominant effect through the gold premium on the value of paper money, and through the rise or fall of the latter on the balance of international trade. Other factors being equal, a favorable balance by increasing the gold supply in the country lowered the premium, and a falling premium through its effect on prices and costs stimulated imports and discouraged exports. An unfavorable balance had the contrary effect. The relation between foreign exchange and international trade was therefore the same as in goldusing countries, but the mechanism was different.

The mechanism is here described as it operated in Argentina. The arguments and the facts are laboriously marshalled and reiterated, and the work is well done. But one is left with the impression that the author wrote in great haste, not leaving sufficient time for revision. The consequences are redundancy in exposition, occasional loss of clarity in the use of language, and sometimes a lack of proper articulation between footnotes and text. The index and the bibliography (about 200 titles) also leave something to be desired in the matter of form. A few slips have escaped either the author or the proofreader. On page 58 the note circulation on December 31, 1886 is given as 80,251,380 pesos, and on page 60 as 89,197,000 pesos. On page 182 the average figure for imports in 1866-70 should read 42,000,000 pesos gold, instead of 32,000,000, and for exports the reverse. The fourteen provinces of Argentina united to form a confederation in 1859, not in 1861 (p. 27); Argentina's war against Paraguay began in 1865, not in 1864 (ibid.); and Buenos Aires "was declared the federal capital" in 1880, not in 1881 (ibid.). These, however, are obviously but minor faults. Everyone interested in South American political and economic history is under obligation to Professor Williams for a very competent and useful piece of work.

YALE UNIVERSITY

C. H. HARING

The Stock Market. By SOLOMON S. HUEBNER. New York, D. Appleton and Company, 1922.-xv, 496 pp.

The Work of the Stock Exchange. By J. EDWARD MEEKER. New York, The Ronald Press Company, 1922.-xxiii, 633 pp.

Usually, when a professor and a business man discuss the same economic subject their methods of treatment are very different. The difference, generally speaking, is that the business man's treatment is more theoretical and more idealistic. The academic economist has become increasingly timid in making sweeping generalizations. He is so impressed, not to say confused, with the complexity of economic forces that he frequently refuses to venture any conclusions or to pass any judgments, contenting himself rather with a detailed description of practical operations. Much bolder, however, is the business man and his representative, the business journalist. He still sees the economic order dominated by a few grandly simple, eternal laws-laws that bring swift retribution upon those who defy them. But not only is the business man more of a theorist than the professor; he is also more of a moralist. Instead of contenting himself, as the professor is apt to do, with a discussion of how men act and why they so act, he is almost certain to pass a moral judgment on their actions. Matters are considered in terms of "right" and of "wrong". Much is said of the "sacred" right of the laborer to contract freely, of the "sheer robbery" of progressive taxes that "confiscate" the property of the wealthy, and of the "indecent extravagance" of the lower classes who use their excessive wages to buy silk shirts. If anyone doubts this idealistic tone in the business man's point of view, let him but read the editorials of such a representative journal as the Commercial and Financial Chronicle. A perusal of these editorials, bristling with wholesome advice and courageous rebukes to the laboring classes, gives one much the same feeling of elevation that one receives at an inspiring church service.

But all this, I fear, is beside the point except to show that it does not apply to the present case. For although one of the two recently published books on the stock exchange-that by Huebner-is written by a professor, and the other that by Meeker - is written by a representative of the New York Stock Exchange, nevertheless they agree closely in their general viewpoint. Both books defend vigorously, not only the principle of stock speculation, but also the present methods of the organized American stock markets. To be