at whatever cost. Not to do so is to nullify completely the good that will come from coöperation between public officials and college or university experts; not to do so is to make impossible the socialization of the specialized knowledge and services of these experts. Without this right the professor is put into the class of the third American sex having and deserving the contempt of all.

FIFTH. The chief purpose of practical work by the college or university expert is to assure better teaching.

Good teaching! This is one quality which students, parents and public must demand. The best teaching particularly in the social sciences will usually be by the teacher who has the practical contacts necessary to make a man of action rather than a man of straw. Neither can there be good teaching when all or a major portion of one's energies go for research, or for that matter into public service. The clear recognition that first and foremost the business of the university teacher is to teach will prevent many an awkward situation for all parties concerned.

OTHER PUBLIC SERVICES

The above has to do particularly with the practical coöperating work of the expert in social, economic and political science whether in coöperation with public officials or groups of citizens or expressed in other ways. There is still another method of socializing the knowledge of the university expert and that is through popular lectures, books, magazine articles and newspaper stories. The chief obstacles here lie within the traditions of the profession itself. One of these traditions is that the written output of the professor should be stupid and useless to all save other university professors who have to read their printed pages in order to "keep up with the literature." The phrases accepted by the profession for expressing this idea are that these works should be "scientific" and "scholarly," as though that meant that they could not as well be lucid and humanly interesting. The result is the lack of the ability or the desire to so state learned truths that he who runs may read. Or perhaps if simply stated many learned social "norms" would turn out to be simple (and therefore valuable) folklore. But given practical contacts, the college or university professor will soon master the means of humanizing technical knowledge.

This socializing of the specialized knowledge of the university

expert does not assume that the university professor has some special gifts from on high that need but translation to be of benefit to the "lower classes." It means that each science has its own phrases with an exact meaning only to those accustomed to them. It means that human limitations make it easier for the expert to slide along in well worn grooves. It means, of course, that technical phrases must be used in standard technical works. It also means, however, that good teaching and good work and better social and institutional standards will all be furthered by at least a greater effort to put the conclusions of scientific scholarship into simple lucid language with homely illustrations.

It is not that other people perish for want of the knowledge of the university expert-though this has actually happened in too many cases; death itself has too often come from the want of popular knowledge of what is commonplace to the expert. But for his own growth and development the university expert must be enticed out of the institutionalism that occasionally enmeshes him. Nor is it necessary that all yield to this enticement; a bare 20 per cent will suffice.

Better teaching and better human beings for both the teacher and the taught are in this movement for the greater public service of the college and university expert.

BOOK DEPARTMENT

GENERAL WORKS IN ECONOMICS

FETTER, FRANK A. Economic Principles. (Volume I.) Pp. x, 523. Price, $1.75. New York: The Century Company, 1915.

Professor Fetter's latest work is remarkable for the logical consistency of its theoretical structure. Beginning with a discussion of value, he abandons the terminology of the hedonistic, "marginal utility" treatment for one in which choice, based on considerations of varying desirability among goods, is fundamental. Margins, however, still mark equilibrium points, and the new terminology is really less vital in the changes it affects than might seem at first glance. But this does not affect the course of the general argument. The starting point is with the consumer. He sets into motion "waves of value." At a middle point stands the enterpriser. Consumers express through him their estimates of indirect goods and services, which get their prices from those of expected products. Rent is the direct payment for an instrumental use. Wages are a payment for services, direct or indirect. The rate of payment is a reflection of the value of these services to the purchaser of the ultimate product. This usually involves anticipated rather than immediate values. The enterpriser is intermediary in the estimate-making process. Interest is the outcome of time preference, and the rate of interest is an index of marginal preference. Costs never determine prices or values, but values do determine whether or not costs shall be incurred. An enterpriser's costs determine whether or not he can make a profit. Profits are consequently a residual, variable, "non-contractual" share of final values. Such are some of the essential conclusions of Fetter's static analysis. It does much to clear up theoretical ambiguities and inconsistencies, but to a beginner it will doubtless be forbidding. There is a quality of simplicity about the whole treatment that suggests ease of assimilation on the part of a student. But this simplicity is more seeming than real. It results from an abstruseness of treatment and a use of distinctions often so broad as to give to the student or general reader the impression that economics is a discipline both unreal and impractical.

The final book (Part VI), dealing with economic dynamics, shows a different trend. Real problems of vast social import are discussed in an absorbing way. The handling of diminishing returns (which are not), and of the Malthusian doctrine of population (which functions not) is admirable in the telling distinction. that are made; and the last chapter, which deals essentially with the relations of theory to progaganda, affords an admirable summary of economic backgrounds. Professor Fetter's coming volume will be awaited with interest. It will complete what is indeed a magnum opus.

R. C. MCCREA.

Columbia University.

STAMP, J. C. British Incomes and Property. Pp. xv, 537. Price, 12s. 6d. London: P. S. King and Son, 1916.

This income study is the latest in the series of monographs by writers connected with the London School of Economics and Political Science. It is described in the author's own words as "the application of official statistics to economic problems." The author has taken great pains to compile the official figures dealing with property income, and to interpret them in terms of the problems in which he is particularly interested. He deals successively with Real Property, Income from the Use of Land, The Income Tax, Income from Securities, Business Profits, and Salaries of Officials. He then makes some application of the official statistics in his discussions of land values and the taxable capacity of Ireland, the national capital, the national income, the distribution of income among persons, and among income classes. Particular interest must attach to this work in the United States, first because of the thorough manner in which the study is presented, but chiefly because of the immediate application that this study must have to the problem of income and land taxes in the United States. The student who is acquainted with the sources of information available in the American government reports on the collection of the income tax is astonished at the wealth of material presented in the British reports. Furthermore, the author shows quite conclusively that tax dodging under the British Act has been largely eliminated. Although there have been a number of private endeavors to discover the income of the people of the United States, the government has made no serious effort to meet this situation, nor has it attempted to secure the maximum results in publicity by issuing a full statement of income tax figures. This study of the excellent British data furnishes an example that America ultimately must follow.

GEOGRAPHY

S. N.

HUNTINGTON, ELLSWORTH. Civilization and Climate. Pp. xii, 333. Price, $2.50. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1915.

How would you make a map of civilization and the degrees thereof? One man of whom I asked this question said he would base it upon the industrial productivity of the people. But the more I pursued him for details the less he thought of his method, and he finally abandoned it entirely. I have repeated this experience several times and always with the same result. There are too many modifying circumstances.

We are continually talking about civilization and never defining it. Definitions or measures of civilization that run into quantitative terms nearly always test out badly, yet, despite this fundamental difficulty, Dr. Huntington has made a map of civilization; but this was not his only recourse. In the absence of a definite basis of measurement he fell back on a consensus of opinion, expert opinion. This he obtained before the outbreak of the Great War from persons of wide knowledge living in nearly all civilized countries. These selected persons gave their answers to a series of questions, and Dr. Huntington merely tabulated and mapped the results, giving a map of civilization of great interest. Then he applied certain quantitative tests to this opinion map.

If we cannot define civilization we can perhaps agree that it is a function of energy-human energy, aided, of course, by a certain amount of economic resource. The vital thing then becomes human energy; what causes it? Dr. Huntington's great contribution is that he gives us an answer to this question based upon evidence, not opinion. He measures human energy by human output—the results of labor. After handling an appalling array of figures he finds a close relation between work and weather conditions. Girls and men in New England and in Florida factories work their best when the out-of-doors temperature is about 57° F. They hold that pace with little change til 70° is reached and then, with increasing heat, output declines. Most of us would have expected something like this but, a few, I think, had previously come to the opposite conclusion, namely that very cold weather produces a similar result. This means that central Siberia is to languish under a cold curse just as central Africa is to languish under a hot one.

Brain work, as measured in the mercilessly accurate marks of Annapolis and West Point, shows the same curve with the maximum about 38° F. Even low forms of animal life and the wheat plant show a similar curve.

The above mentioned collections of human data showed that change of temperature was a stimulus to greater action. Within limits, a change of temperature either way makes us more active, but the change must not be too great for after about 8° or 10°, the change becomes enough to depress. This means that, in addition to the changeable seasons, which had been generally regarded as the basal factor in higher human dynamics, we have the cyclonic storm-this cyclonic storm that dominates our weather in the Eastern United States and Northwestern Europe and of which we so chronically and so bitterly complain. This much berated thing is, according to Huntington, the greatest dynamo of civilization upon this earth. Superimpose these changes upon an average temperature, like that of England, Holland, Northern France and Germany and we have a perfectly simple explanation of the unexampled displays of human energy there manifested. It is not by mere accident that little Britain has been so big in history.

In his daring attempt to map the unmappable and compare things difficult of comparison, Dr. Huntington often lays himself open to the flaw picking critic, but perhaps the flaws would balance. We are more inclined to this view when we note the striking resemblance of his map of human energy as made by applying the work data to the facts of climate, with the civilization map as made up from expert opinion.

If we follow his conclusions to their logical limit, it means that, pending some change of climate, the dominance of the earth is to remain where it now is, in Northwest Europe and in North Central North America with a possible rival in China and Japan.

This is a book that should receive the attention of all economists, historians and sociologists and particularly those of missionary spirit. We have cast too many ethnic jewels into places where the prospect was less than that of the pearls before swine, for swine do not hurt pearls.

J. RUSSELL SMITH.

University of Pennsylvania.