centage of employees injured, and the decrease in the percentage of employees killed was due largely to the decrease in the volume of traffic and the consequent decrease in the number of employees required for those years; the number of employees required for 1908 being 235,799 less, and for 1909 being 169,251 less than for 1907.

Moreover, the figures for 1910, which it would appear Mr. Dewsnup has not seen, seem to indicate a very discouraging relapse on the part of railways; the number of killed among passengers and employees having risen from 2,791 in 1909 to 3,868 in 1910 and the number of injured having increased from 63,920 in 1909 to 84,440 in 1910-an increase in one year of nearly 33% per cent in the injured, and of over 331⁄2 per cent in the killed. Try as railroad apologists may, the disgraceful fact cannot be denied or explained away that we are still behind nearly all the other civilized nations in the matter of safety in railway travel and employment.

As to Mr. Dewsnup's inference that England's record is more satisfactory than are those of the various continental state lines, I can only say that there exists no statistical justification for any such inference. In the comparisons which I made (p. 185) as to the relative safety of railway travel in the United States, Belgium, Germany and Austria, I did not include England for the simple reason that it was impossible to get statistics as to the "number of passenger miles travelled for each passenger killed" in England, which undoubtedly is the fairest and most satisfactory basis upon which a comparison can be made. But it is only fair to add that such statistics as are available, go to show that the English railway accident record is decidely less satisfactory than is that of the state-owned roads of Germany or Belgium. A careful comparison of the accident statistics of British and German railways, recently has been published in the 1911 Report of the Minister of Public Works in Prussia (1900-1910). On pp. 240 et seq. the whole matter is gone into in great detail, and so far as the figures are available, they are very decidely against England and in favor of Prussia, as well as of Germany as a whole.

Mr. Dewsnup's remark about the "contradiction afforded by the Belgian private companies" in the matter of railroad accidents, is about as happy as is that concerning the English accident record. In neither case does he seem to have based his assumption upon an examination of the facts.

Perhaps this one highly typical example of Mr. Dewsnup's work may be sufficient to enable the reader to make a fair estimate of the scientific value of his critical conclusions.

CARL VROOMAN.

Report of the Barge Canal Terminal Commission of the State of New York. Two volumes. (Albany: J. B. Lyon Company, State Printers. 1911. Pp. 521; 637.)

A commission was appointed in 1909 to devise a plan for the construction of terminals for the new Erie Canal, for which the State of New York is expending $108,000,000. As the commission reports, a waterway is as useless as a railway, without terminal facilities; a transportation system consists of both roadbed and terminals. By terminals is meant the provision of facilities for longer or shorter storage, under shelter, and for transshipment from the waterway to the rail and ocean carriers.

The commission recognizes the importance of coöperation between rail and water carriers. It explains that the canal will never interchange freight with the railways and the lake boats in Buffalo unless physical contact is secured between the canal boat and the railway car, the canal boat and the lake steamer, the canal boat and the warehouse. This contact is now almost completely lacking. There are few grain elevators in Buffalo which deliver grain to canal boats except at the bidding of the railroads. But this physical contact between car and canal boat in Buffalo will not suffice. The railroads must be compelled by legislative enactment to prorate and throughrate with the canal lines, just as they do with their most favored railway friends.

This part of the program is the crux of the whole matter. It is easily possible to construct a canal terminal in Buffalo and compel the railroads either to run their lines into it or build a belt line connecting with them. It will be most difficult to compel a railroad rate policy which will condemn the railroads to hauls ending at Buffalo. In the decision that the long and short haul clause of the Interstate Commerce Act does not apply when water competition is present, the prerogative of the railway to compete against the waterway was established.

The report recommends a bill, since passed by the legislature, appropriating $16,500,000 for the construction of terminals in Buffalo, various points on the new Erie Canal and in New York city. In New York there is to be provided at the north end of

Manhattan, North River, a port of call where barge tows will be broken up or formed. Several slips and wharves on all sides. of Manhattan are to be used as canal terminals and there is to be a large terminal in Gowanus Bay, on Long Island, apparently for the transfer of bulk freight from barge to tramp steamer. The barge canal will perhaps be done in 1914-1915, and will take barges of 2,500 tons capacity (at present 250 tons). Its fate will be watched with the keenest interest. Volume I contains a map of the course of the Erie Canal and plans for the various terminal improvements.

The commission visited numerous European sea and river ports and includes reports on them in its first volume. Excepting for their excellent maps, these reports leave much to be desired in the accuracy of what they say, in what they take the trouble to include and in what they leave out. For instance, "The commission found it impossible to visit Mannheim" and so presents an inferior report from the consul there. Mannheim is the head of navigation on the Rhine and has a river borne traffic of ten million tons yearly. Slighting it is like slighting Duluth in a study of the Great Lakes. Moreover, in Mannheim is best seen that coöperation between rail and water carriers which the commission is so eager to attain.

Volume II consists of proceedings before the commission, held in Buffalo, New York, etc. As is often the case, the proceedings are the most interesting part of the report. They contain a vast amount of miscellaneous information given by canal and ocean transportation interests.

New York University.

EDWIN J. CLAPP.

Public Ownership of Telephones on the Continent of Europe. By A. N. HOLCOMBE. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1911. Pp. xx, 482.)

This is a careful, thorough study of telephone conditions in Continental Europe, covering the ground even more completely than is indicated by the title. Portugal, Russia, and the small states of southeastern Europe are alone not embraced in the inquiry. Nearly one half of the book, however, is devoted to Germany, with considerable attention to France, a fair amount to Switzerland, and only a few pages to each of the other countries included. This apparently disproportionate space assigned to Germany is a merit rather than a fault, since it affords the author

an opportunity to treat some one country in considerable detail, and often thus in the case of other countries avoiding repetitions by merely pointing out resemblances and differences.

A second noteworthy feature is that Dr. Holcombe almost uniformly devotes himself to a lucid and ample statement of facts, together with a presentation of the arguments on both sides of controverted questions, and leaves the reader to draw his own conclusions. Occasionally one suspects on which side the author's judgment inclines, but this is rather a matter of inference than of direct statement. Fulness, clearness, and impartiality are the dominant characteristics of the book.

In addition to the treatment of the subject by countries, there is a brief and valuable introductory chapter on the Origin of European State Telegraphs, pointing out the influence of such systems on the introduction of the telephones, and three concluding chapters on Comparative Telephone Rates, Comparative Telephone Development, and Economy of Public Ownership. There are also, under the three countries most fully studied, noteworthy chapters on the labor situation in their respective telephone services, as well as chapters or sections dealing with the strictly technical and physical problems involved.

Practically every important phase of the telephone question is presented, particularly equipment, cost, service, rates, profits, ownership, management, supervision, and control. As would be expected from the title of the book, special attention is given to the comparative claims of free competition, private monopoly, and public ownership. Public regulation of private ownership is virtually non-existent in Continental Europe; for this and other reasons it is to be hoped that Dr. Holcombe may supplement his present excellent treatise with an investigation of the telephone question in the United States. According to statistics later in date than those quoted by the author, all Europe, with four or five times the population of the United States, has only about one third as many telephones. It would be a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the general subject to have an equally careful study made of our own country, which differs so widely from those principally examined by the author, in area, in density and distribution of population, in industrial and commercial conditions, and in governmental theory and relations.

CHARLES F. A. CURRIER.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Die Kabel des Weltverkehrs. By MAX ROSCHER. (Berlin: Putt

kammer und Mühlbrecht. 1911. Pp. x, 240; map. 8 m.) This book, begun as a doctor's thesis at the University of Berlin, is intended to be primarily a study of the economics of marine telegraphy (preface, p. v). The author divides the subject into five parts: (1) the natural and economic foundations of marine telegraphy; (2) its technique; (3) the history of ocean cables; (4) their economic, social and political influences; and (5) the industrial organization of marine telegraphy.

The first part serves as an introduction of a general nature. In this, as in the following parts of his book, the author relies largely upon German sources of information, making only a slight use of English materials, and no use of American or French. The second part of the book is of more interest to the engineer than to the economist. The third comprises a convenient summary of the main facts in the history of the construction of submarine cables in the several oceans, and of the development of the English cable monopoly. The author gives some attention to the history of the transatlantic pools, and of the recent attempts to break the English monopoly by the establishment of national cable systems, especially by the Germans. The influences noted in the fourth part are chiefly economic, the reduction and steadying of commodity prices in the international market, etc. The fifth part is perhaps the most significant.

Dr. Roscher rejects governmental ownership of marine cables from considerations of international law and politics, and because of the risk often involved in cable enterprises, together with the difficulty of securing a reliable civil service. He prefers the contemporary German policy (exemplified in the case of the GermanAtlantic Company) of guaranteeing minimum annual receipts and sharing surplus profits. His discussion at this point, as well as the subsequent discussion of rates, will seem superficial to the American student of the regulation of public utilities; and his conclusion on the subject of pools consists of a remark ascribed to Schmoller to the effect that pools are desirable or undesirable according as their managers are prudent or imprudent.

The final chapter is devoted to the relations between submarine telegraphy and radio-telegraphy. Dr. Roscher's view is that the wireless telegraph cannot compete with the ocean cable, because of its more limited radius of transmission, its unreliability, nonsecrecy, and inferior capacity. He concedes, however, that it is