unemployment; there is seldom a great amount of unemployment in a centralized industry.-Max Lazard, Journal de la Société de statistique de Paris, January, 1912. E. H. S. The Recruiting of the Employing Classes from the Ranks of the WageEarners in the Cotton Industry. The extent of the vertical mobility of labor is of great importance in economic theory, in social policy, and in the question of conflict of classes. A statistical study of the cotton industry of Lancashire by means of questionnaires and interviews shows that about 65 per cent of the employers had risen to their positions from the ranks of operatives in the cotton, or some other, business. The avenues by which they have risen are: securing loans, renting plants, purchasing shares in the business, selling on commission. Trade unionism is not opposed to this upward passage, but assists it by technical education.-S. J. Chapman and F. J. Marquis, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, February, 1912. E. H. S. La morale des nations contemporaines.-The emancipation of the American colonies and the development of commerce and communication have played the principal rôles in the international organization of the nineteenth century. The moral idea which inspired this organization has been the example of the New World and the personal influence of authors.-G. Olphe-Galliard, La science sociale, March, 1912. E. H. S. Wage Boards in England.-By act of 1909 the Board of Trade was authorized to establish trade boards to remedy long hours and low wages in the tailoring, boxmaking, lace-finishing, and chain-making trades. These boards consist of Board of Trade appointees, and representatives of employers and employees-women being eligible for membership. The trade boards fix the minimum time rates for their trades and may fix the general minimum piece rate. The rates have an immediate limited operation which is made obligatory after six months by the Board of Trade unless it seems undesirable. The experiment has stimulated useful organization among both masters and workers; has considerably increased the average rate of wages; has not as yet had any ill effect on trade; has promoted a better organization of the trade. Probably more work will be driven into the factories, which would be desirable. The trade boards should be given wider powers. The act is an assured success with respect to chain-making and lace-finishing, and the initial difficulties have been overcome in all four trades. It promises to destroy one of the worst evils of our industrial system.E. F. Wise, American Economic Review, March, 1912. A. H. W. Domestic Life and the Consumption of Wealth.-Three accusations hold against economics, especially the orthodox type: the treatment of consumption of wealth is perfunctory; there has been little concrete content given to the terms "labor or subsistence wage"; and the industrial relations have been treated abstractly and as universal. LePlay for the first time attempted to work out the technique of the detailed study of expenditure or the consumption of goods by monographs on typical families. His method may still be of use, but extensive methods must also be used and the researches extended to all classes. Investigation of the facts of consumption gives added insight into social conditions and reveals the inadequacy of many economic formulae. Mabel Atkinson, Sociological Review, January, 1912. A. H. W. The Story of a Children's Care Committee.-The committee has been in operation three years. In investigation and treatment it has endeavored to follow the principles of differentiation of state department functions, all possible control by parents over assistance offered, and relief according to standards prevailing in the district. The committee deals with a district containing about 2,300 elementary-school children. The numbers aided vary from 90 (March) to 50 (July) per day. The only aid given is simple breakfasts on school mornings. Cases are turned over to other charitable agencies for further and fuller relief, after investigation into the individual circumstances. The number of necessitous families investigated was 224. Nearly all their working members belonged to the unskilled class. Unemployment, invalidity, widowhood, and desertion were disclosed as the causes of the need. The act under which this work is being done is not entirely satisfactory.-Henry Iselin, Economic Review, January 15, 1912. A. H. W. The Primitive Conception of Death.-The attitude toward death has been used by the Durkheim school as evidence that the primitive thought is not subject to the law of contradiction, and that the English anthropologists are not justified in assuming logical processes in primitive men. Among the Malanesians the apparent contradictoriness in the conception of death is the result of a conception of death widely different from our own-not unique and catastrophic, but merely the usual passage from one condition of life to another-and once this difference is recognized, there is not only no contradiction, but it becomes probable that the logical processes involved in the beliefs and activities connected with death differ in no essential respect from our own.-W. H. R. Rivers, Hibbert Journal, January, 1912. L. E. Attitude of Massachusetts Manufacturers toward the Health of Their Employees. In the latter part of 1908 a movement was inaugurated among the manufacturers of Worcester County, Massachusetts, to help pay for the care of tubercular employees. Some of the manufacturers give little concern to this and object to all legislation along that line; others, principally the larger manufacturers, recognize that their own interests are identical with those of their employees and that money invested for the maintenance of sanitary and healthful conditions in their establishments is profitable. Many of them have trained nurses and a physician, and some send the tubercular employees to the state sanitarium.-William C. Hansen, Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, September, 1911. L. E. The Instinctive Element in Human Society.-Instinct has come to be recognized as an all-important factor in mental life by psychologists, but certain sociologists question its importance as a factor in social life. This is because of misunderstanding of the term instinct and misconceptions of its nature. The modern concept is wholly biological. All the habits of the individual rest, in the last analysis, upon the native impulses. If instincts are the starting-point for man's mental life, they must be for his social life, also. The workings of instinct may be seen most clearly in the simpler forms of human association, the family, etc. The recognition of instinct as a factor would broaden and deepen sociology and all the other social sciences, and make more effective the plans for social reorganization. When the instinctive element is thoroughly understood it certainly can be controlled through a system of scientific education.-Charles A. Ellwood, Popular Science Monthly, March, 1912. A. W. H. Organisierbarkeit der Arbeiter. Within the supposed community of interests of all labor, a number of types of interest are distinguishable to which correspond as many different relations to the trade-union movement. Women are more difficult to organize than men. Young men previous to military service are refractory material for organization, though susceptible to particular methods of propaganda. Those over 40 years of age are not readily amenable to organization, while those between 25 and 40 are the most useful as well as responsive. These again are differentiated according to occupation and skill, permanent or casual employment. The combative attitude of the employer and the organization of the industry or the size of the establishment are either aids or obstacles to trade unionism. Home workers are incomparably harder to organize than artisans, and these than factory employees. Like the system of production so the method of remuneration affects the organizability of the workers. Birthplace, residence, and education are also significant in this connection.-Adolf Braun, Annalen für Sozialpolitik und Gesetzgebung, August, 1911. P. W. Ueber Werturteile in der Volkswirtschaftslehre.-In spite of the relatively great age of Political Economy, there exists a hopeless diversity of opinion among economists. The great complexity of economic phenomena, the instability of causes, the scholar's forming part of his own problem, the difficulty of eliminating errors from secondary evidence, and of controlling this wealth of evidence cannot suffice to render unanimity impossible. The real reason lies in the attempt of economists to teach what should be instead of simply ascertaining the facts and stating their causal relations. This confusion of ends produces an irreconcilable conflict on account of the individual oppositions of ideals. If confined to the examination of what is economic science would by no means lack practical value by abstracting from the immediately desirable, economic thinkers will again attain unanimity of opinion.Lujo Brentano, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, November, 1911. P. W. Technik und Kultur.-Every field of culture can supply interests to shape technique in a certain direction, but technique itself exerts a profound influence upon the development of human culture. Marx's technological conception of history is a one-sided hypostatization of an absolute standard of technological causation, whereas technique cannot be conceived of outside of a material and ideal culture. The economic system of a period is not a mere function of its technique. The unique function of technique as indirectly involved in all cultural phenomena should not serve as a methodological distinction. Mental type is determined by the dominant technique, through its use as well as through its indirect action on the individual. Technical possibilities or achievements may have either determining or conditioning significance for the various cultural fields: (a) institutional, economic production, state, church; (b) mental: science and art; (c) personal: taste, thought currents, feeling, value judgments, education.—Warner Sombart, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, September, 1911. P. W. Le Repeuplement des campagnes.-In practically all the countries of Europe, laws have been passed to stimulate the buying and improving of farms by the laboring class. Money is loaned by the state in most cases directly or in other cases the state furnishes the land for colonization and the peasant pays a certain share until he has paid for his farm. E. Schwiedland, Revue d'économic politique, January, 1912. L. E. BIBLIOGRAPHY Adam, H. L. Woman and Crime. London: T. W. Laurie. Pp. 346. 10s. 6d. Alberti, Mario. Il costo della vita, i salari e le paghe a Trieste nell' ultimo quarto di secolo. Trieste: E. Vram. 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