BOOKS

ByH. G. Wells. B. W. Huebsch. 61 pp. Price $.60;by mail ofThe Survey$.65.

This is a small book, sixty-one pages of large type, containing an address delivered at the Royal Institution in England. But the value of the publication is out of proportion to its size. Here is the abundant Wells literature of the last two decades in a compact and highly concentrated extract form. And this means, as every lover of this English author will know at once, a wealth of suggestive speculation and stimulating idealism.

The thesis of the book is that we now have the materials in hand for a systematic and accurate “exploration of the future.” There is no reason why we should not be able to forecast the future development of society, by a critical study of operative causes, as definitely as we now reconstruct the past conditions of the race by a critical study of the geological and archeological record. What the scientist now does in the fields of physics or astronomy, we ought to be able to do just as easily in the field of social life. “Suppose,” says Wells, “that the laws of social and political development were given as many brains, were given as much attention, criticism and discussion, as we have given to the laws of chemical combination, and what might we not expect?” Here, evidently, is the philosophical justification of The War of the Worlds, Anticipations, The Future in America, New Worlds for Old, and many another fascinating volumes from Wells’ pen which might be mentioned.

This thesis, however, constitutes only a part of the book’s abundant material. A keen psychological discussion of the two divergent types of mind, the forward-looking and the backward-looking, into which all men may be divided; a passing glance at the pragmatic standard of “it works”; a survey of the great-man theory versus the economic theory of social determinism; an incisive critique of positivism; a bold and eloquent prophecy of the future destiny of man upon this planet—here are only a few of the “extras” which are contained in this distillation of the Wells philosophy. About as good an example ofmultum in parvoas I have ever seen!

John Haynes Holmes.

ByHugh H. Lusk. Sturges & Walton Co. 287 pp.Price $1.50; by mail ofThe Survey$1.62.

Looking back as an old man upon the record he himself has helped to shape, Hugh H. Lusk, in his Social Welfare in New Zealand, points out the significance, particularly for the United States, of that method of government which he calls State Socialism. Nothing so annoys New Zealanders as the ever-recurring criticism that their experiments have been carried out upon too small a scale and under conditions too unusual to be of value to the great remote countries whose single cities contain more people than the whole dominion of New Zealand. Yet doubters still will question, and standpatters will refuse to be moved, by this account of actual accomplishments. He who is not blind, however, to the evils which have followed private profit in public utilities, and who has seen governments conferring special privileges upon the few at the expense of the many, as he turns here again to New Zealand may well find inspiring faith in the ability of a whole people to legislate toward the common good.

Mr. Lusk shows how in New Zealand, government-built railroads became a necessity in a sparsely settled country where private capital would not venture, and how an extensive scheme of legislation for the benefit of settlers on the land was forced upon a people whose appetite for mutual help grew with what it fed upon. Each piece of legislation had in view no more than the meeting of a definite difficulty as it arose. Yet step by step New Zealanders went on in the same direction, until they had reached the point where, somewhat to their own surprise, they found themselves famous and envied in the world at large. Some of that surprise is due to the fact that politics, even as we know them here, are there recognized to have played an important part in shaping the destinies of those islands. “Dick” Seddon and his followers appreciated to its full, the vote-getting value of land reform, progressive taxation and public improvements. Mr. Lusk makes too little of this significant lesson from New Zealand.

And by one who understands the “States” so well, and who is writing for our encouragement and warning, it is surprising that more emphasis is not placed upon methods of administration. To me, as I came to appreciate the New Zealand civil servant, his integrity, his ability, the esteem with which he is held, it always seemed that in him more than anywhere else was to be found the secret of such success as New Zealand has attained. Turn the present corps out and put in such incompetents and grafters as we have in many of our state departments in America, and the whole New Zealand structure would come tumbling down immediately. Not until law and public opinion make it possible, can we have here such administration of labor laws, for instance, as Edward Tregear has given these many years to New Zealand, and not until then will new labor laws be of much more avail to us than old ones are now.

Mr. Lusk’s moral is, “Go thou and do likewise.” By law prevent the accumulation of inordinate riches and provide for the general diffusionof the sum total of prosperity. But when we find that, putting the best construction upon available data, the definition of a man or woman not in receipt of an income of more than $975, “in New Zealand, practically includes all classes and persons engaged in laboring or mechanical pursuits as well as junior clerks or school teachers,” we wonder, after all, whether New Zealand’s road is the one for others to follow. There is many and many a man and woman in that country to whom $975 a year is undreamed of comfort. If this is all that reform can do under the best of circumstances, is this particular game worth the candle? The New Zealand worker just now is saying rather vociferously that it is not. There lies the real hope for reform, that it does not stop, even though it falters. The final lesson from New Zealand is beyond what we are here told. Surely it is that those who will may preach reform and State Socialism to their hearts’ content, but that the workers of other countries must not imitate the mistakes of their New Zealand brothers, neglecting political and industrial organization and leaving it to others to decide what is the public welfare.

Paul Kennaday.

ByEdward F. Croker.Dodd. Mead & Co. 354 pp.Price $1.50; by mail ofThe Survey$1.

Fire Prevention, by Edward F. Croker, formerly chief of the New York Fire Department for almost twelve years, is a presentation of the principal safeguards against loss by fire. In it ex-Chief Croker tells in a readable way what, from his long experience as a fire fighter, he considers the most effective ways to extinguish fires.

Most of all he emphasizes the necessity of preventing fires. “If I had my way about it,” he says, “I would not permit a piece of wood as big as a man’s finger to be used in the construction of any building in the United States which had a ground area larger than twenty-five by fifty feet and was more than three stories in height.” He calls attention also, to a point which has been emphasized many times when he declares that “it is not so much the buildings which should receive added protection but the contents and the inmates of them. We must add to the term ‘fire-proof,’ the terms ‘death-proof’ and ‘conflagration proof.’”

Perhaps to a lay reader to whom some of the intricacies of steel construction, high pressure, and fire-fighting apparatus are not plain, the most interesting chapters are those which deal with housekeeping whether in the home, store or workshop.

In his chapter on Prevention of Fire in the Dwelling, Mr. Croker gives a number of simple suggestions which would prevent most of the thousands and thousands of fires in the 11,000,000 wooden buildings in this country and save a financial loss which in two years equals the cost of the Panama Canal. Concerning these suggestions there can be little disagreement, although those which he makes for additional laws may not win as unanimous support.

James P. Heaton.

ByErnest K. Coulter. McBride, Nast & Co. 277 pp.Price $1.50; by mail ofThe Survey$1.62.

ByElizabeth McCracken. Houghton Mifflin, RiversidePress. 191 pp. Price $1.25; by mail ofThe Survey$1.35.

To gain the sympathetic and accurate knowledge of children shown in his book, Mr. Coulter stood on the reviewing stand for ten years. His was the eye to see and the heart to feel from the first, but as clerk of the Children’s Court in Manhattan for ten years he had the unique opportunity of looking into the faces of a procession of 100,000 dependent, neglected and delinquent children as they filed by the judge and told their stories.

These stories he often verified in alley, street, tenement, station house, reformatory and prison. He shows how crowded streets, lack of play space, poverty, sickness, insanitary houses, criminal companions and parental neglect provide a fruitful soil in which to breed neglected and delinquent boys and girls. These conditions he charges to the greed of individuals and to the careless, neglectful indifference of society.

As a means of helping individual boys who need the personal touch of a friend right now, Mr. Coulter started the Big Brother Movement, which is spreading all over the country. His permanent remedy for the woes of children, however, requires not only the love of Big Brothers, parents and friends, but also sanitary houses, good food, playgrounds, fresh air and sky. Mr. Coulter’s pen pictures of Children in the Shadow challenge us all not to rest until all such children are brought out into the sunlight.

Miss McCracken’s book is a reprint of articles which originally appeared in theOutlook, and deals with actual children and parents of rather exceptional intelligence in both city and country. What these exceptional American parents do for their children in home, play, school, library and church is told in such a way as to appeal to and educate parents who are not exceptional.

What children do for their parents is also set forth. The real message of the book is that the reciprocal relation of children and parents can be and should be one of the most beautiful and helpful that this old world knows. The title might have been True Stories of Parents Who Knew How to Live with Their Children.

Henry W. Thurston.

ByJames Ford. Introduction by Francis G. Peabody.Russell Sage Foundation Publication, Survey Associates,Inc. 300 pp. Price $1.50, postpaid.

Individualism is generally assigned as the primary cause of the failure of co-operation to gain a more extensive foothold on American soil. But to the student of the subject this off-hand explanation is far from conclusive. For not only have Americans been the leading exponents of political, social and religious co-operation, but they have likewise shown marked aptitude for economic co-operation. Our verynational life is purely co-operative. Our big business is, though not in a strict sense, in a large sense co-operative. Furthermore, were the traditional American individualism the sole or even the main cause, why has co-operation in this country met with no wider acceptance or greater success among the immigrants coming from countries where co-operation is practiced to a very high degree? We must therefore look for other reasons to account for the bankruptcy of co-operative effort in this country. These are set forth by Dr. James Ford in his book Co-operation in New England.

The first co-operative movement in the New England States, the New England Protective Union stores, began in 1845 and ended in 1857. The second movement, the Sovereigns of industry, which was launched in 1874, had an equally brief history. The first had at one time as many as 700 stores, of which but two remain; while five are left of the 280 of which the latter movement once boasted. At the present time urban co-operation is practically confined to immigrants, largely non-English speaking. Their efforts have not met with much greater success than those of New England’s native sons. All told, there are about sixty co-operative stores throughout New England. Most of them are too young, too small, and too isolated to be dignified as a movement.

The meagre results of distributive co-operation are only exceeded by those of co-operation in manufacture. All effort in that direction has been abortive, and “true co-operative production does not exist in New England.”

The author finds greater cause for encouragement in rural co-operation. “The farmers’ movement,” he says, “which is much more influential in the industrial world, not only penetrates, by means of co-operative creameries, almost every township of western New England, but through association for co-operative sale extends to many other large territories.” Co-operation among farmers consists of co-operative buying of supplies, co-operative marketing of products, and co-operative production in the way of butter and cheese making. He estimates the number of more or less co-operative creameries throughout New England at 125, although probably not more than twenty-five of these are purely co-operative. “There are many indications today,” continues the author, “that rural New England has reached a point not only desirable but increasingly practicable.” With a large American commission now abroad for the special purpose of studying agricultural co-operation, it is to be hoped that this movement will be accelerated.

The really important part of Dr. Ford’s hook is his discussion of general co-operative principles. The economic conditions for successful co-operation are wanting in this country. People will co-operate either because they are driven to it by necessity, as is the case in Europe, or because they see in it special inducement to make it worth their while. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately, these conditions do not exist in the United States so far. In a country where every workingman carries the baton of a captain of industry in his dinner pail, it is not surprising that he will not set aside the opportunities of individual effort in favor of the uncertain, remote, and, at best, meagre returns of co-operative endeavor. All other reasons, such as the mobility of our population, our improvidence, and our lack of co-operative spirit must give way before this one fundamental reason.

The conditions that are responsible for the heavy mortality of co-operative enterprises in this country are rapidly changing. The obstacles in the way of co-operative success are gradually disappearing. Once the point is reached in New England as it has been abroad, at which societies of like interest federate for educational and trade advantage, these smaller federations “will in turn unite in a general co-operative union with common funds to sustain societies that are weak, and promote development on lines of common importance, an immense force will be set at work for the moralization of trade, the reduction of the cost of living, and the socialization of the people.”

As the title indicates, the book deals only with co-operation in the New England states. The author further limits his research to “associations for the production and distribution of the immediate necessities of life.” Notwithstanding this limiting of the inquiry both in scope and extent the book should prove of value to the student of co-operation in this country. The facts have been painstakingly collected. The author’s insight is keen and penetrating, his deductions are clear and logical, and his hopeful tone is most invigorating.

Leonard G. Robinson.

ByA. Conan Doyle. George H. Doran Co. 103pp.Price $.50; by mail ofThe Survey$.57.

The case of Oscar Slater, sentenced in the High Court of Edinburgh to life imprisonment for the murder of an old lady in Glasgow, was some time ago brought to the attention of the famous writer of detective stories, together with certain circumstances which cast doubt on Slater’s guilt. With a sincere desire to clear the man, the creator of Sherlock Holmes set to work to examine the evidence and testimony presented at the trial, and to analyze the conduct of the case and the decision of judge and jury.

The result is a convincing argument for the man’s innocence of the offence for which he was convicted and an arraignment of the ineffective methods of the police who were engaged in the investigation, both in Scotland and in this country.

The undeniably bad character of the suspect created so strong a presumption of guilt that even the total refutation of the strongest piece of evidence and an obviously false accusation by the judge in his final charge, secured only a commutation of the death sentence to life imprisonment when an appeal was made.

It will be interesting to know whether the detective knight’s efforts toward securing justice meet with success.

May Langdon White.

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