Commission and of the advocates of restriction. It is impossible at this distance to verify his British figures, but his American figures are sometimes misleading. On page 296, for example, he undertakes to give the net addition to population by immigration in 1910. In doing so, he mixes up two tables, the one dealing with race, and the other with country of last residence. He takes the igures for the Russians, Italians, British, Austrians and Hungarians from the latter table, and those for the Germans, Scandinavians, Croatians and Slavonians, Greeks and Hebrews from the former. Thus, he gives the Russians as 169,908 and the Hebrews as 78,392, without explaining that the total Russian immigration included 15,000 Finns, 10,000 Germans, 22,000 Lithuanians, 64,000 Poles, only 15,000 true Russians; and 60,000 of the Hebrews he mentions as a separate class, less, of course, those who returned. Undoubtedly, at the beginning of an agitation for restriction in any country, the statistics are incomplete, and important considerations are left out of account by both sides. This, at least, has been true in the United States. On the other hand, as Gobineau and Houston Chamberlain have pointed out, there are undesirable racial and individual qualities which perhaps never get into definite classification at all, but which impress themselves forcibly upon the public. It is absurd on the face of it to contend that the presence of less than half a million aliens should have led to such radical legislation, unless there were some good grounds for it.

Those grounds do not, however, appear in this book. On the contrary, the author has apparently sought merely to bring together everything that could be said in favor of the Jews in England; the other aliens he barely mentions, except the Americans, whom he considers the worst class of all. He combines his material with much ingenuity, and, if one were to take his statements at full value, one would be forced to conclude that the aliens, or rather the Hebrew aliens, were far superior to the natives in every respect. Doubtless some of them are; but one would like to have at hand some such book as Mr. Arnold White's The Modern Jew to learn the other side of the matter.

Part II is entitled "The Remedy," and contains chapters on legislation, including the report of the Royal Commission in 1903, the working of the act, proposed legislation, and the status of the alien. An appendix gives the text of the Aliens Act, 1905, and of the rules and orders adopted under it. The author, although strongly in favor of the deportation of criminals, bitterly assails those executive powers on the part of officials which are considered, both in England and in this country, to be necessary to render such acts workable as to aliens generally; and he advocates cumbersome judicial machinery which would go far to nullify the advantages of the law.

The book as a whole is a comprehensive and masterly statement of the aliens' side of the question.

PRESCOTT F. HALL.

Les Naissances en France. La Situation, Ses Consequences, Ses Causes. Existe-t-il des Rèmedes? By RAOUL DE FELICE. (Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie. 1910. Pp. 370.)

The value of the book lies mainly in its survey of the numerous discussions of the French birth-rate, many of them ephemeral or inaccessible to foreign students. The thought is balanced and sane, the style lucid and dignified, penetrated with a profound conviction that his country's fate is trembling in the balance. For his purposes and for the foreign reader the abundance of quotations which has been criticised in France is a merit, because in a problem of this description it is not what any one man thinks but rather the general trend of public opinion and discussion that counts.

An epitome of the concluding chapter will give the best taste of its quality: The controlling influence leading to the decline of the French birth-rate is human choice. The main motive for that choice is prudence and the desire for an easy life for themselves and for their children, a desire strengthened by many features of the French economic and fiscal system. Formerly the quality preeminently French was courage, l'audace. This quality must be revived by teaching the masculine joys of responsibility freely accepted.

All remedies proposed by the writer may be grouped under one head: the father of a large family should receive from society, as he does not now, compensation, economic and moral, for his labor in rearing his children. The legality and wisdom of a special tax on bachelors are doubtful, but, the ability to pay being an important element, fathers of families should be taxed more lightly than bachelors. The father of an illegitimate child should be compelled to provide for its support, and if the father cannot be determined perhaps those who might have been the father should be compelled to pay the charges jointly. This would be a deterrent to irregular relations and to the procurement of abortion. The legal formalities now required for marriage should be reduced and a written promise to marry signed before an officer should furnish a basis for a legal claim if a birth follows, thus diminishing the danger and the evil of seduction under promise of marriage. Employers might be induced to prefer married employees by a modified pension system, whereby the contributions of employer and of employee decrease with the increase in the number of children in the employee's family, the difference apparently to be made up by increased payments from the state. Import duties should be reduced; octroi duties and duties on certain prime necessities abandoned. An income tax graded in amount partly according to the number of children should make up the loss in revenue. The tax on tenement houses might be less as the average number of persons to a family in it was greater. The pay of public employees might be graded partly according to the number of children. The demand of such employees for pay enough to maintain a family might be granted for all who really have families, without ruinous increase of the budget, and might influence private employers to imitation. The amount of an old-age pension should depend in part upon the number of children reared, on the theory that the fewer the children, the better his opportunities for saving. Regarding inheritance laws it is proposed that the estate of a decedent leaving children should be divided into three parts: (1) a legal reserve beyond the testator's control and going to the children if there are any; (2) a part subject to the decedent's will and to go to the children or to third persons as he may designate; (3) a part subject to the decedent's will but to go to some public object which he may designate. If there were four or more children the last part would fall to zero and as the number of children was less the proportion of the estate falling under (3) would increase and that falling under (2) would decrease, (1) being in all cases one half of the estate.

Pending such change in the laws the efforts of individuals may accomplish something. Heads of workmen's families might cooperate with one another and with their employers in the effort to determine where new workers are needed, direct their children towards such openings and perhaps pay apprenticeship charges. Domestic industries, aided by small motors, might revive in the country districts and increase the value of children in the home. The dread of child-bearing might be diminished by providing a rest after it of some weeks with continuance of wages or an equivalent from the state or from some insurance fund. Maternity hospitals and societies for helping nursing mothers should be increased. But the main thing is to reëstablish equality, real equality, in the economic burdens of bachelors and of fathers of families.

The question discussed is of great and growing importance not only for France but for western Europe and the United States, but in each country it takes a slightly different form. In the United States argument has centered largely about the relative increase of the old native stock and of the immigrants of various classes. In England it has turned upon the rates of increase of different social and economic groups and the displacement of the middle class by less valuable strains. Neither of these phases of the problem is emphasized in the present work, the sombre tone of which perhaps merely anticipates by a few decades that of similar discussions in other countries when their conditions approach that of France. Nor does the writer challenge or discuss the assumption that an increasing population is desirable, an assumption hardly open to doubt in an era of war or preparation for war and for a country hemmed in by dangers, but far from necessary if other ways could be devised for settling international controversies. Cornell University. WALTER F. WILLCOX.

NEW BOOKS.

BEALE, O. C. Racial decay; a compilation of evidence from world sources. (London: King. 1911. 5s.)

Author was a royal commissioner of the commonwealth of Austria in 1907, and of the state of New South Wales in 1908. BERTILLON, J. La dépopulation de la France. Ses conséquences, ses causes mesures à prendre pour la combattre. (Paris: Alcan. 6 fr.) JENKS, J. W. and LAUCK, W. J. The immigration problem. (New York: Funk & Wagnalls. 1911. $1.75.)

NEUHAUS, C. Die berufliche und soziale Gliederung des deutschen Volkes. Die deutsche Volkswirtschaft und ihre Wandlungen im letzten Vierteljahrhundert, Vol. I. (Munich: M. Gladbach. 1911. Pp. xv, 278. 4.50 m.)

To be reviewed.

PRATT, E. E. Industrial causes of congestion of population in New York City. Columbia University studies in history, economics, and public law, Vol XLIII, No. 1. (New York: Longmans. 1911. Pp. 259. $2.00.)

To be reviewed.

WELTON, T. A. England's recent progress. (London: Chapman & Hall. 1911. Pp. lxiv, 742. 10s. 6d.)

An investigation of the statistics of migrations, mortality, etc., in the twenty years from 1881 to 1901 as indicating tendencies towards the growth or decay of particular communities.

Social Problems and Reforms

The Social Engineer. By EDWIN L. EARP. (New York: Eaton and Mains. 1911. Pp. xxiii, 325. $1.50.)

This book is intended as a text to be used by those preparing for social service, with particular reference to the needs of workers in religious organizations. The function of The Social Engineer as explained in this volume is the organization and direction of social forces. His work is analogous to that of the mechanical engineer in the industrial world, who so organizes and directs the activities of the laborers employed in vast construction undertakings, that all moves smoothly and no energy is lost. Social engineering then is the art of "making social machinery move with the least friction and with the best result in work done." The first part of the book is concerned with a discussion of social forces, their nature and operation, by way of grounding the student in the principles underlying the practice of social engineering. In the second part the author outlines the field in which the social engineer is to work, and suggests, by concrete example, the tasks awaiting him and methods of handling them. Especial emphasis is placed upon "religious social engineering," and the opportunities for the church to engage in a broader social service by a proper utilization and direction of the energies and religious zeal of its members. In discussing the machinery of social engineering, the author takes a position which will be welcomed by workers already in the field, secular and otherwise, when he deplores the tendency to duplicate organization. He urges that the church avail itself of machinery already created, and work with those societies already established, rather than form new ones to perform similar services. The doctrine of conservation, he believes, should be applied to social work through a closer coöperation on the part of those who are interested in social betterment, and by putting the emphasis upon preventive rather than remedial agencies.

This book offers no new social philosophy nor any new solution for social problems, but attempts rather to present in convenient