AGRICULTURE, MINING, FORESTRY AND FISHERIES

ADAMS, FREDERICK UPHAM. The Conquest of the Tropics. Pp. xii, 368. Price, $2.00. Garden City: Doubleday, Page and Company.

If some experienced writer should go to the Standard Oil Company, get from it a collection of facts about its development and the life history of its founders, he could make a very interesting story of the development of the oil industry and the great economic services it has rendered.

Doubtless, certain ethical, legal, political and social matters of common knowledge and great interest would be omitted from the narrative.

Keeping the above facts in mind, one interested in the development of the tropics, of the banana industry, or in mere stories of achievement, will find much interesting reading in Mr. Adams' "Conquest of the Tropics" which is nothing more than the history of the United Fruit Company, its enterprises and founders, from data furnished chiefly by themselves. Mr. Adams doesn't emphasize the fact that it is often called the "Banana Trust" but he does lay stress on the point that the enterprisers needed great rewards for the risks they ran.

When one starts out to judge this company as a social or political phenomenon he should remember that the comparison should be made not with the absolute, whatever that may be, but with what would otherwise have prevailed. The United Fruit Company's political and economic achievement in the lands of a dozen Diazes and Carranzas and Villas is a commanding achievement as a type of the tropic industry of the future. It needs to be studied and Mr. Adams has given us some very interesting material with which to start.

It is suggestive to see how these Yankee enterprisers sent to the Orient for scientists and physicians, how they started an American university to studying tropic diseases, how they were the pioneer sanitarians of the American Tropics and how their costly researches at sugar making in Cuba promise to supply the world with cane fiber paper and spare our forests a heavy drain. An enterprise that employs 60,000 men in a dozen different countries might be classed as one of the Powers. In the lands along the Carribean it is more than that in the opinion of some travellers. This book shows the economic basis of that power.

University of Pennsylvania.

J. RUSSELL SMITH.

HARRIS, FRANKLIN S. and STEWART, GEORGE. The Principles of Agronomy. Pp. xvi, 451. Price, $1.40. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1915. The purpose of the book as laid down in the introduction, is to "give the beginner in agricultural study a general idea of the successful production of crops and to furnish him a basis of study in other branches of agriculture."

Dr. Harris and Mr. Stewart have divided their material under the four main headings-the plant, the soil, the field crops, and field management.

Under the first heading, there is a general discussion of the plant and its environment, including the factors of growth. Then there follows a rather detailed description of plant structure setting forth the use of each of the parts described, and a description of the various plant functions. With these factors brought out, there comes a chapter drawing a rather happy analogy between the plant and the factory, showing how the plant manufactures the three chief elements of the food of men and the lower animals, viz., proteids, carbohydrates and fats.

The next section deals with soil. The origin and formation of soils are taken up, including a description of the rocks from which soils are made and the different types of formative agents. The physical properties of the soil are considered, and a rather detailed analysis of the methods of the control of water is given, particular emphasis being laid on irrigation and dry farming. The plant food of the soil, soil bacteria, manures and fertilizers, and tillage and crop rotation each receive a share of attention. The last chapter is given over to a discussion of special problems such as erosion, acidity, etc., and methods of dealing with each problem are recommended.

Crops is the title of the third main division. Wheat, corn and other cereals such as barley, rye and oats, and their varieties are described, and some time is devoted to the methods of planting, the factors of production, the care of the crop and something of the climatic requirements of each. Root crops, grasses, sorghum and millets, the fibrous crops are treated separately, and various other crops are mentioned. The general plan of discussion for the latter groups is the same as for the cereals.

Under the caption of Field Management, the amount of planning, the kind of crops to grow and farm equipment are each taken up in turn. The book closes with a brief summing up of the factors that go to make for crop success, making the customary suggestions which are undeniably good but so seldom followed.

This work lays down an excellent foundation for a high school course or even, perhaps, for an elementary first-year course in college. Excellent supplementary readings are suggested at the end of each chapter. Furthermore, parts of the book such as the chapter on specific soil problems and the recommendations in regard to them, the section on dry farming and irrigation, have a practical every-day value.

As a piece of literature the book is open to some criticism. In a great many places there is a lack of balance. For example, Chapter 10, part II, on the control of soil water, covers some twenty pages, while the discussion of plant food of the soil, seemingly of equal importance, is accorded but six. Again, it might perhaps be better to lay more stress on climatic conditions required for the growth of various crops, giving more specific illustrations.

The arrangement, too, while excellent in the main, is not ideal. The need of the chapter entitled, What Soil Is is not entirely clear. The chapter devoted to potatoes precedes the one on root crops, and as a result there is some confusion as to whether the potato is to be classified as a root crop or not. Again, a discussion of pastures, meadows and soiling systems (24, part III) is put between the chapter on grasses and that on sorghum and millets. A discussion of pastures might well follow grasses, but in that case, by putting these two last, the matter would be clarified in the mind of the reader,

University of Pennsylvania,

J. S. KEIR.

ROBINSON, EDWIN VAN DYKE. Early Economic Conditions and the Development of Agriculture in Minnesota. Pp. v, 306. Price, $1.50. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1915.

This big folio volume of 300 pages is a cross between a census report and the work of a German scholar. It is a storehouse of knowledge for the student of economic history, economic geography and agriculture. Its character is well indicated by its evolution. It started out to be a statistical atlas but the increasing realization that these maps, charts and graphs needed to be explained caused the author to dig and delve into contemporary publications, correspond with many of the men who had pushed along the developments, and thus he added many thousand words of text. Even the chinch bug has a map, as have practically all of the factors of agricultural development at each census period. Climatic data are also carefully mapped. The book is one that must be consulted by almost every person venturing to speak of Minnesota in any careful way. It is a matter of great regret that this is the last work of Professor Robinson who died a few months after the book appeared.

MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY

J. R. S.

NYSTROM, PAUL H. Textiles. Pp. xviii, 335. Price, $1.50. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1916.

This book presents in concise form the essential facts regarding the ordinary textiles of commerce, with especial attention to the leading members of this group; namely, linen, wool, cotton and silk. The chapters deal with the sources of the raw material, the methods of marketing and manufacture, the tests to determine quality, and the economic aspects of textiles.

The author states in his preface that he intended to interest retail and wholesale salespeople, housewives, educational institutions and the general public. It is an exceedingly difficult task to write a book for an audience so diverse as this and have the work profitable to all its readers upon all its pages, and Dr. Nystrom has not mastered the complications of his undertaking; hence no one who picks up the book will be completely satisfied with it.

Furthermore, the author touches upon so many topics that it is inevitable that his work will contain not a few inaccuracies; such as, confusing wool with hair, and declaring that cotton comes from the seed of the cotton plant, or drawing the inference that because labor is minutely subdivided in the manufacture of shoes and men's clothing that it is equally specialized in all industries. From the closeness with which Dr. Nystrom follows standard authorities upon the chief textiles, we are at liberty to suppose that he himself is none too familiar with his subject; and moreover he limits himself to statements of facts with almost no explanation of the factors of causation behind those facts, a flaw most noticeable in the chapters on the Geography of the Cotton Trade and the Geography of Wool Production.

While writing, the author must have had most prominently before his mind the retail salesgirl portion of his audience for the literary style of the book nowhere advances beyond the intelligence of such a person.

Notwithstanding these objections to the book, it may be of real service as a class room text, for it summarizes most of the important facts in regard to textiles; retail and wholesale salespeople and housewives, also, would profit greatly by giving it a careful study.

University of Pennsylvania.

COMMERCE AND TRANSPORTATION

MALCOLM KEIR.

KIBLER, THOMAS L. The Commodities' Clause. Pp. 178. Price, $3.00. Washington: John Byrne and Company, 1916.

Professor Kibler presents a brief but adequate history of the attempts of transportation companies in the United States to engage in the business of mining and manufacturing commodities to be transported by their own lines; and of the attempts to prevent such combination of interests. He takes a strong and effective stand against combinations of this kind.

T. W. V. Μ.

MCFALL, ROBERT JAMES. Railway Monopoly and Rate Regulation. Pp. 223. Price, $2.00. New York: Columbia University Press, 1916.

A discussion of the various theories of railroad rate making, with an argument in favor of the cost-of-service theory. Dr. McFall points out the advance made in recent years in the use of cost as a basis for the determination of reasonable rates, and endeavors to show that the proportion of costs which can be definitely allocated is larger "than many would have us suppose." It is interesting to note, however, that in concluding his argument for an extension of the cost principle the author says that "the greater divisions of the service should have their contributions to total cost divided as far as possible on the basis of cost, but that the rates on minor divisions of the service should be differentiated not only on the principle of cost but also on the principle of demand." After all this is the position taken by the hardened traffic official who is guided by the principle of "what the traffic will bear."

In attributing virtually a complete monopoly power to the railroads Dr. McFall gives too little consideration to such factors as water competition (potential or active) and industrial and commercial competition-factors which often compel and justify the neglect of the cost-of-service principle.

The most valuable and interesting portion of this study is that dealing with valuation of railway property. The author's conclusions as to the value to be attributed to a railroad in considering the question of a "fair return" seem eminently sound. T. W. V. Μ.

PRATT, EDWIN A. The Rise of Rail Power in War and Conquest. Pp. xii, 405. Price, 7s. 6d. London: P. S. King and Son, Ltd., 1915.

In this instructive and timely work the author traces the beginnings and subsequent development of the use of railways in war. In this use no other nation has gone as far or proceeded with the scientific accuracy of the Germans. This it is the evident intention of the author, an Englishman, to prove. The entire work is in fact a carefully developed thesis showing how Germany has advanced step by step from a skeptical and tardy beginning until at the breaking out of the present war, passing far beyond the question of how its railways might be most efficiently used for its defense, it had constructed military lines not only to all the frontiers of its European empire, but to the important frontiers of its African colonies and to the most important trade and strategic points in Asiatic Turkey with the evident intent to use them for conquest.

A good deal of space is necessarily devoted to the American Civil War because that war was practically the first in which there was an extended and scientific use of railways, and because many of the problems connected with such use were either started in the United States or actually worked out there, precedent being established and examples set which the rest of the world had simply to follow, adopt or perfect.

It will surprise many to learn that the total mileage of the lines taken over by the federal government during the course of the war exceeded 2,100 miles; that in its operation of these lines it laid or relaid 641 miles of track, and that the lineal feet of its bridge construction was equal to 26 miles. It was this war, says the author, that was to elevate railway destruction and restoration into a science and to see the establishment, in the interest of such science, of an organization which was to become a model for European countries and influence the whole subsequent course of modern warfare. T. W. V. Μ.

SMITH, J. RUSSELL. Commerce and Industry. Pp. viii, 596. Price, $1.40. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1916.

This book is an abridgement of the large volume Industrial and Commercial Geography which has proved so successful as a college text. There are three parts. Part one deals with the United States by classes of commodities and industries, as the cereals, animal industries and so on, and covers a little more than half the text. Part two covers all the other countries, very briefly, necessarily, as only two hundred pages are devoted to them. Brazil, for example, has about four pages and Germany about seven pages. Part three, world commerce, is devoted mainly to the law of trade and trade routes.

The book is very readable; is effectively illustrated with halftones, maps and diagrams; and some useful statistics are collected in the appendix. Barring questions which hinge on difference of opinion about method and material, the only adverse criticism must be based on the many inaccuracies of statement concerning details, which probably do not seriously affect its usefulness as a high school text. W. S. T.

SPEARS, JOHN R. The Story of the American Merchant Marine. Pp. xxvii, 340. Price, $1.50. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1915.

The second edition of Mr. Spears' volume on The Story of the American Merchant Marine differs mainly from the first edition of 1910 in that it contains a lengthy introduction which gives a statement of recent events in the shipping