ance of the English scholar well in command of his subject; and his generalizations will prove of interest to those who find problems of political and economic interrelation significant and who have followed the theorizing in this field by the Webbs, G. D. H. Cole, Wallas, Laski and others. The fact that no American edition of the book is projected indicates the comparative interest on both sides of the Atlantic in speculation on the larger implications and trends of current economic developments.

Mr. Hitchcock has performed a most valuable service for all interested in the technique of personnel administration by assembling good samples of all the many forms and records typically utilized in the personnel work of factories and stores. The specialist will only regret that the volume could not be twice as long and contain more sample forms from which to draw suggestions.

Mr. Lee is another Englishman who, although himself in a managerial position, writes with the wider sweep and tolerance of the mature student of industry. His volume, Management, although as yet hardly noticed in this country, is one of the sanest and wisest discussions of management's problems of organization, coordination and personnel supervision which have appeared. Comparable to Mr. Webb's, The Works Manager Today, it is a much deeper book in its consideration of the nature of such things as discipline, promotion, morale etc. The greatest value of the study lies, perhaps, in its insistence that an organization is essentially an organization of minds and wills. Every teacher of the science of administration will profitably ponder the many truths in this book, and be the gainer by the adoption of the psychological point of view which underlies all its presentation.

Professor Vernon has now brought together in book form the results of his war studies and subsequent researches. And he has the wisdom to caution the applied scientist at every stage as to the practical results as yet obtained from the study of industrial fatigue. Indeed, he concludes frankly that "for technical reasons it may be almost impossible at any time to secure the evidence [of fatigue] desired, or it may take years to accumulate it." The present study is nevertheless of more than usual practical interest because of its presentation of methodology in this field and because of its interesting chapters on rest periods, limitation of output, the six-hour day, the causation of industrial accidents, etc. Professor Vernon is a careful scientist whose conclusions are to be relied upon because they are so conservatively and judiciously arrived at.

A conspicuously useful service both to teacher, student and business reader is rendered by Professor Edie's compilation of articles in the psychological field that are of industrial and managerial interest. He seems to have included practically all of the papers of the last few years which a complete collection should contain and his arrangement, if not necessarily growing out of any inner logic, is clear and comprehensive. It is specially interesting to see, after a résumé of all the material, to what a marked extent the psychological diagnosis of the numerous writers comes to the same thing. Again and again it is pointed out (1) that security of employment is an essential attendant condition of a productive attitude of mind; (2) that the present enforced cooperation must in some way give place to a state of mind in which the workers are voluntarily cooperating; (3) that the work process must in and of itself give some satisfaction to the workmen-be truly self-expressive; and (4) that the worker must be assured of a status in society which does not offend his dignity and does not make him feel that he lives in an atmosphere of servility and inferiority. As in so many of the current volumes of compilations, however, each individual excerpt is cut down to extreme brevity. Why cannot articles be reproduced more in extenso and thinner paper be used to avoid an unwieldy bulk?

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK
NEW YORK CITY

ORDWAY TEAD

Railroads and Government: Their Relation in the United States, 1910-1921. By FRANK HAIGH DIXON. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1922.-xvi, 384 pp.

Professor Dixon's book is largely an historical review of events and conditions leading up to government operation of railroads, and the transportation results and problems which have developed during and since the war. The narrative is clear and impartial, and very little of the author's text can be controverted by anyone either favoring or opposed to the government's railroad policies. Professor Dixon's close association with railroad affairs just prior to the entry of the United States into the war furnishes him with the proper perspective for approaching the discussion of the problems that have. arisen from government war-time operation and control of the nation's transportation facilities. It is this section of the book (The War Period) which opens up a controversial field. Whether the

railroads were operated efficiently or not during the war period will probably never be known, since the transportation conditions then were without precedent and there is no basis of comparison. Mr. Walker D. Hines, the former Director General of Railroads, delivered an elaborate defense of his administration before the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce. Railroad executives, on the other hand, have vehemently asserted that the inefficiency and excesses of government management have been responsible for the serious operating and financial conditions in which the transportation companies found themselves immediately following the return to private ownership. Professor Dixon makes no attempt to uphold either party to the controversy. He points out several instances of effective reforms and operating economies introduced by the Railroad Administration. Yet, in his concluding chapter he is inclined to favor the private operation of transportation agencies. This is further indicated in the chapters discussing the Transportation Act of 1920. He offers little in the way of criticism of the new railroad legislation. He fails, moreover, to point out forcefully the fundamental economic fallacy of the rate-making provisions, whereby railroad charges are to be raised or lowered in accordance with the "fair value" of the property investment and the prevailing rate of income return on capital, rather than on a basis that will furnish concurrently a maximum of traffic with a maximum of profit to the carrier. Regardless of the many conflicting railroad-rate theories, the only practical basis of transportation charges under private operation is that which affords a profit both to shippers and to carriers alike. Any other basis will either reduce the volume of traffic or discourage the provision of adequate transportation facilities.

However, as Professor Dixon points out (p. 341), when rates are not sufficiently high to lead to substantial profits to the carrier, the remedy may be sought in reduced operating expenses rather than through increased charges. Further economies in operation, therefore, constitute the principal element in the present "railroad problem". Whether such economies can be produced through more cooperation among the carriers (as proposed by Professor Dixon), through consolidation, or through the elimination of duplicated services and other economic wastes in transportation, is still a large field for research and investigation.

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

A. M. SAKOLSKI

BOOK NOTES

Lord Bryce's last journey to the United States was undertaken in the summer of 1921 for the purpose of lecturing at the Williams College Institute of Politics. The lectures have now been published under the title, International Relations (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1922; xii, 274 pp.), and they will have a melancholy interest for American readers in that they are Lord Bryce's last contribution to political study in the United States. The subjects dealt with include the earlier relations of tribes and states; the Great War and its effects; non-political influences in international relations; the causes of modern wars; diplomacy and international law; popular control of foreign policy; methods of settling international controversies, and other possible methods of averting war. The point of view is conservative, but open-minded; there is no hint of the reactionary, but, on the other hand, there is no suggestion of the original thinker. Lord Bryce was pre-eminently an observer. His vast accumulation of knowledge has rarely been equalled, and in these lectures, as in his other books, he presents facts, arranging and connecting them in a manner which, while not superficial and not mechanical, hesitates, nevertheless, to interpret, to criticize, or to prophesy. The style rarely scintillates, but it is never slipshod. one of his countrymen said of him: "In an age of vulgarity and advertisement, it is a satisfaction to his friends to look back on a character of such simple dignity and a career of disinterested public service." American students count themselves as fortunate to have known such a character and to have enjoyed the fruits of such a

career.

As

An interesting but cursory survey of recent economic and political conditions in Europe is to be found in Lieutenant-Colonel Charles à Court Repington's After the War (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1922; xv, 477). As a correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph the author visited Paris, Rome, Athens, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Bucharest, Berlin, Sofia and Coblenz. He saw many important statesmen and in his diary reports his interviews with them. Clemenceau, for example, said that he could destroy many reputations with. a word, but that he would leave no records for a biography or a history of his share in the conduct of the war. There is also some

descriptive material of value on the political situation in the new states and on the economic collapse of Central Europe, but to secure it the reader must endure many irrelevancies. Colonel Repington was naturally interested in the excellence of his meals at particular restaurants; his ability to sleep on the trains, and the enjoyable qualities of his matutinal tub, but the interest of his readers is more doubtful. The last pages of the diary deal with the author's impressions of New York and Washington. He was present as a correspondent during part of the Arms Conference, but he discloses nothing of importance.

Whoever persuaded Professor Beard to publish his four lectures delivered at Amherst College in 1916 did a valuable service to the reading public; he may lay no claim to singular prescience, however, for it is obvious enough that a summary statement on The Economic Basis of Politics (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1922; 99 pp.) by the foremost American exponent of that thesis would find readers everywhere. It is a discussion in general terms and not concerned with the economic basis of any party, past or present. The author begins by summoning to the witness-stand as experts, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Locke, Madison, Webster and Calhoun, and finds them so satisfactory that he can dispense with any extended consideration of Bacon, Raleigh, Harrington, Montesquieu, “and a score of other great men who have speculated upon the origin, nature and fortunes of the state". The constitutions developed in England, France, Sweden, Austria, Prussia, Massachusetts, New York, Virginia etc., all contemplated government by one or more well-marked economic groups. "The governments founded and developed before the nineteenth century were in fact complexes of group interests. Nowhere was the representative system, in its origin, designed to reflect the opinions of mere numerical aggregations of human beings considered in the abstract apart from property and employment." In the United States, however, the abundance of land made these groups less apparent and important. The middle class, growing in power by commerce and feeling itself insufficiently represented, adopted the social contract and equalitarian doctrines. Old groupings were disturbed by the miracles of the steam engine, and slowly universal suffrage was evolved. But this very slightly dulled the consciousness of economic groups, and finally we have the soviet as "a simple and drastic attempt to dispose of the contradiction between political theory and economic facts." This is likely to fail because it seeks to abolish private property, which probably