she will specialize in the vue d'ensemble the value of which will be no less significant to the social arts than to the social sciences. All this is most interesting, especially so when we note, as note we must, that the course of human thought is setting hard toward synthesis today. The mass of existent data, the systems of formulated laws, were once so limited that it could be said of one great mind that he knew all that was worth knowing in the world. That hour is past. In vain shall we wait for some super-mind to attempt what Spencer attempted with the then existing knowledge in his day. The synthesizing agency of the future will not be a single intelligence, but a science dedicated to this one great task, or rather perhaps a trio of sciences functioning for the three great divisions of research. Without in any sense misreading the clamorous movements of our time for more and more dictionaries, more and more encyclopedias and lexicons, and withal the striking phenomena of comparative studies on every hand, we may affirm that analysis has passed its zenith, and that the long awaited synthetic period is just over the horizon. In this light Worms may appear indeed like a herald when he announces the candidature of sociology for this new exalted rôle. Meanwhile those who cherish less ideal, and more attainable ambitions for sociology as an integral social science with a definable. sphere and province, may well continue their researches. Why try to decide the whole thing now? Sociology, whatever her fortunes or misfortunes, will be all the better for the varied and painstaking investigations of the thousands who work under the name. Perhaps the prolongation of infancy she is now experiencing may be prophetic of her exceeding greatness in the maturer days to come. But to return briefly to our author. La Sociologie is a work of far greater importance than its number of pages might possibly indicate, and than this review thus far might lead one to suppose. Marked by fairness to men of other schools (among whom are cited our own Ward and Giddings in America), it is clearly, carefully and concisely written by one who thinks long while writing little. Perhaps it is in his chapter on sociological laws that Worms is at his best, and here, with characteristic modesty, he introduces a very real contribution to the laws of social evolution, i. e. that l'unité et la multiplicité constitute a simultaneous process in society. The examination of the various conceptions of sociology, the analysis of the content and the relationships of the subject, are so thoroughly done as to predispose the reader to the larger acceptation of the the great term which Worms proposes, and which after all, as he submits, is but a reversion to the earlier view of Comte himself founder of sociology. Striking and illuminating as is the subject matter, no less attractive is the admirable spirit of the volume, and those who, grown weary of controversy and conflict, are ready to welcome a voice of conciliation and a plea for sympathetic comradeship in science, will discover here a treasure in delightful French. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SAMUEL H. PRINCE Boston and Liberalism and Industry. By RAMSAY MUIR. There are signs that Liberalism is again raising its head in England. In Manchester, the historic center of English Liberalism, a group of manufacturers and tradesmen have been discussing economic problems and elaborating a program of social reform. This program has now been put in writing by Mr. Ramsay Muir, with the assistance of Lord Haldane, and has received the endorsement of the General Council of the Manchester Liberal Federation. It is Liberalism in the sense that it combats State Socialism on the one hand and Anarchism on the other. It is Liberalism also in the sense that it is inspired by the spirit of "Liberty". But much water has gone under the bridge since the days of Cobden and Bright, and the new Manchester School is far removed from the old. Either might say of the other, "Liberty, Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name." The old Liberalism championed the classical political economy of Adam Smith and David Ricardo-laissez-faire and individualism, freedom of trade and freedom of contract. Outside of the protection of private property, all state interference in economic matters was anathema. The new Liberalism, as set forth by Mr. Muir and his Manchester friends, frankly recognizes that those earlier doctrines tended in practical operation to justify "a very narrow and selfish view of a man's duty to his fellows" and to encourage "the acceptance of conflict instead of cooperation as the natural relationship between the organizers of industry and the workpeople". The new Liberalism therefore starts with the assumption that it is the duty of the state to secure for all its citizens such conditions of life as will make real liberty possible. Intellectually Mr. Muir is the heir of Sismondi and Michael Sadler, the foes of historic Liberalism; and the Liberalism which he proclaims is indebted less to the precepts of Smith and Ricardo than to the theories of Guild Socialists and even State Socialists. "Capitalism" is to be retained but it is to be profoundly modified. In every organized industry there should be a standing Council including not only trade-union representatives and spokesmen of the managerial and organizing side of industry but also directly appointed representatives of the brain-workers in the industry. Such a Council should have power to determine "living family wage-rates or salary-rates" for each type of labor, whether of hand or brain, the hours of work, the methods of workshop organization, and, in short, all the problems affecting the worker in his relation to industry. The agreed decisions of these Councils should, after being reported to the Ministry of Labor and laid upon the table in Parliament, be made binding as minimum conditions upon all concerns engaged in the industry. For dealing with unemployment, a system of state insurance, supplemented by other forms of state action, should be continued, but "it is unwise to trust to state action alone, or mainly, for the solution of the problem". The primary responsibility should be thrown upon each industry, on the principle that every industry ought to maintain its own citizens out of its own product. In many industries it would be possible for the Council immediately to work out a fair scale of unemployed pay which the state could make obligatory. Distribution of the returns on capital should be regulated. Bona fide new enterprises might be allowed a period of years, without limitation of profits, in which to establish themselves. Thereafter their ordinary shareholders might be limited to a defined rate of interest until a reserve fund had been built up equivalent to the amount of the total capital. The reserve should be regarded as the property of the concern as a whole-not of the shareholders. It might, in bad years, be drawn upon for the purpose of meeting the liabilities of the concern, including the payment of the defined rate of interest to the ordinary shareholders; but the shareholders should be forbidden to divide the reserve among themselves. After the reserve had been formed, all further profits beyond the defined rate of interest might be divided between the state, the workers in the concern, and the ordinary shareholders. Such an arrangement would provide a desirable substitution for an excess profits tax and would lead to genuine profit-sharing and copartnership. Railways and mines might properly be nationalized, but care should be taken not to overburden the Parliament and the political Ministry with their detailed management. They, and the postal service too, should be decentralized as far as possible and entrusted, as in Australia, to non-partisan boards of experts. Such a system "would avoid the Scylla of bureaucracy and ill-informed parliamentary meddling on the one hand, and the Charybdis of a producers' monopoly on the other ". Mr. Muir would grapple with the land problem chiefly through the taxation of unearned increment. Let every landowner be required, within a defined period, to assess the value of his own land, apart from the buildings on it, and let this valuation be accepted without question. On this basis the landowner will pay his rates; on this basis he will be taxed; and at this price the community can purchase his land when it is needed for commercial purposes. When the land changes hands either by inheritance or by sale to a private purchaser, there will be a new valuation, determined by the price obtained or by the valuation for probate. Any change in value as compared with the owner's original valuation will be due to one or more of three causes: to the expenditure of capital on the land; or to an alteration in the value of money; or to "unearned increment" due to the activities of the community. Let the changes in value due to the first two causes be allowed for, and any increase that remains will represent "unearned increment". The community may justly take the whole or any part of this increment. On the other hand there may be a “decrement", and in that case the new owner of the land is entitled to have his valuation for purposes of rates and taxes revised accordingly. With these provisions for the valuation and taxation of land should be coupled a drastic and uniform Land Purchase Act. The goal of English land reform must be a greatly increased agricultural production. With this purpose in view, the new Liberalism is willing to promote the establishment in England, as in France and Ireland, of small peasant proprietorship, with attendant landbanks and cooperative enterprise. It is even willing (shades of the anti-Corn Law League!) to have the state guarantee a price for foodstuffs and grant a bounty to farmers when the world price is lower than the guaranteed English price. The vision is long and wide. There must be a "wise and forwardlooking" policy for housing and the amelioration of cities and villages, for public health, for education of adults as well as of children, for the enlarging and refining of the arts, and for organized and systematic research. "Provision for these ends is essential to a sound industrial policy, though it looks to ends far wider than mere industrial success." Mr. Ramsay Muir's formulation of a social program is not so doctrinaire as perhaps the foregoing résumé indicates. It is characterized throughout by a modesty, by a sweet reasonableness, and by a felicity of phrase of which true Liberals in any country or in any age may indeed be proud. It is a sane and timely contribution to social theory and should have a sobering influence upon extremists whether "socialists" or "capitalists". CARLTON J. H. HAYES Contribution à la Théorie Générale de l'État spécialement d'après les Données fournies par le Droit Constitutionnel français. Par R. CARRÉ DE MALBERG. Paris, Libraire de la Société du Recueil Sirey, 1920-22.-xxxvi, 837 pp.; xiv, 638 pp. In these ample and well-written volumes Professor Carré de Malberg, of the University of Strasbourg, has begun what promises to be one of the most profound, as it certainly is one of the most pretentious, treatises on political theory. The first volume was written, and in part printed, before the Great War; although in an introduction supplied after the armistice the author gives it a fresh setting in the light of the stupendous political problems thrust into the foreground by the conflict. The second volume is of more recent composition; and others are expected to follow within such time as the magnitude of the task permits. The first volume falls into two unequal parts, the briefer dealing with the constituent elements of the state, the lengthier being devoted to state functions. The constituent elements are reduced to three, i. e., people, territory and power. The vexed question of the origins of the state comes in for only brief and somewhat inadequate treatment. But state unity is stressed in a keenly analytical chapter; and the lengthy discussion of the nature and basis of state power comprises one of the best expositions of the various theories of sovereignty, and of the nature of federal government, to be found in print. Particularly instructive is a section in which the French origin of the concept of sovereignty is convincingly described. From attributes the author passes to functions. Defining these as the several activities of the state "in so far as they comprise different manifestations, varied modes of exercise, of the state's power ", |