MACKENNA, J. Agriculture in India. (Calcutta: Supt. of Gov. Prtg. 1915. Pp. 106. 4 As.)

PICARD, H. K. Copper from the ore to the metal. (London: Pitman. 1916. Pp. ix, 130, illus. 85c.)

ROUSH, G. A., editor. The mineral industry; its statistics, technology, and trade during 1915. (New York: McGraw-Hill Bk. Co. 1916. Pp. xx, 241. $10.)

DE SCHMID, H. S. Feldspar in Canada. (Ottawa: Dept. Mines. 1916. Pp. viii, 125, xxiii.)

TICHENOR, W. C. Farm contracts between landlord and tenant. (Lebanon, O.: Author. 1916. Pp. xii, 245.)

TURNOR, C. Our food supply. (New York: Scribner. 1916. Pp. ix, 171.)

WERTHNER, W. B. How man makes markets; talks on commercial geography. (New York: Macmillan. 1917. Pp. ix, 200. 40c.) WILSON, L. M., compiler. Petroleum and natural gas; a short treatise on their early history, origin, distribution, accumulation and surface indications. (Houstan, Tex.: L. M. Wilson. 1916. Pp. 64. 65c.) WOLSELEY, VISCOUNTESS. Women and the land. (London: Chatto & Windus. 1916. Pp. xi, 230.)

The extension service of the Massachusetts Agricultural College. What it is and what it does for the commonwealth. (Amherst, Mass.: William D. Hurd. 1917. Pp. 7.)

Plantation farming in the United States. (Washington: Bureau of the Census. 1916. Pp. 40. 10c.)

Preliminary report of the mineral production of Canada during the calendar year 1916. (Ottawa: Dept. Mines. 1917. Pp. 25.)

Manufacturing Industries

History of Manufactures in the United States, 1607-1860. By VICTOR S. CLARK. With an introductory note by HENRY W. FARNAM. (Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington. 1916. Pp. xii, 675.)

To say that Mr. Clark's book is the best in its field would be faint praise, for there is only one other that covers the field, and that was written nearly sixty years ago. When the Carnegie Institution included manufactures in the general plan of its Contributions to American Economic History, it hoped to fill a yawning gap in the organized and systematic knowledge of our country's past. Professor Farnam tells us that Mr. Clark has been in charge

of the work for a decade, bringing to it a valuable training and broad preparation. That he has been able to carry it no further than the Civil War is due to the enormous growth of manufacturing since that time and the vast accumulation of materials relating to it. The materials for the first two and a half centuries of our industrial growth, though naturally scantier than for the later period, are yet abundant enough to require a very great expenditure of time and labor.

It is difficult to write economic history without showing a predilection for any public policy, a partiality for any social class or branch of industry. But Mr. Clark's book is singularly free from bias or prejudice. He does not omit description of some political and social movements and endeavors; but he leaves us with the impression that, clamorous and exciting as these have been, their influence was relatively slight, and that the forces really determining our industrial growth have been strictly economic. Indeed, he wishes his book to be considered the work of an economist rather than that of a historian; his purpose is "not solely to present a picture of the past, but to interpret selected historical data as illustrating phases of economic progress"; and to that end he adopted not a narrative and chronological but a "topical method" of presenting his subject.

The "topics" that he selects for methodical treatment are six in number: (1) foreign influence, (2) domestic policies and legislation, (3) the influence of natural resources, (4) transportation and markets, (5) capital, profits and wages, (6) the technology and organization of manufactures. He discusses these topics first for the colonial period and afterward for the nineteenth century. In addition there is a brief introductory chapter on the European background, a review of contemporary accounts of colonial manufactures, a description of the propaganda of home manufactures during the Revolution; and the three concluding chapters give the distribution and volume of manufactures, and sketch the history of the manufacture of metals and textiles. To some readers a different selection and arrangement of "topics" might commend itself, but those of the author are not illogical, and afford a framework for presenting all the information he has gathered.

The quantity of facts assembled in this framework is very great, for the writer's researches have been wide and laborious. But they are not always interpreted, and sometimes several pages of specific facts are given that have little apparent significance. The reader rather gets the impression that the author was unwilling to

omit from his book any authentic fact, whether it was informing or not. Thus six pages with about a hundred citations are devoted to "manufacturing profits" in the nineteenth century, but one struggles in vain to find the significance of the confusing mass of names and figures that are given. Indeed, if they have a meaning the author himself does not know it, for he reaches the erratic conclusion that "Necessarily capital earned as much in manufactures as in banking and commerce, and in other branches of production; otherwise it would not have been invested." He closes the discussion by saying that during a decade $20,000,000 of New England manufacturing capital earned 10 per cent, which "is probably as good a clue in this direction as we possess." If this is true, the reader might have been spared the preceding tedious enumeration of names, places, and figures. But strain on the reader's attention is not the chief objection to burdening the text with such material; more important is the likelihood that it will lead to false conclusions. Thus in speaking of intercolonial trade the author gives about five pages of statistics and examples, a number of them merely sporadic and anomalous, that convey, in the reviewer's judgment, an exaggerated impression of the activity of this market for home manufactures. This defect in presentation was clearly shown in the work of about twenty graduate students, who used the book during the present college session in connection with a course offered by the reviewer on the growth of American industry and commerce. It might have been much ameliorated by transferring to footnotes any facts not essential to the argument.

As a rule the sanity and conservatism of the author's conclusions and the evidence adduced to support them leave nothing to be desired. That there are occasional exceptions is not unnatural. Thus, except for a very short time, it was not the Navigation acts but the prevailing credit system that compelled colonial tobacco planters to sell in a monopoly market. Again, it is a mistake to say that until the Civil War, in the textile industry "the supply and distribution of labor remained as it had been since 1820." Furthermore, the reviewer doubts the statement that "in producing durable goods for ordinary uses. . . the equipment of American mills and factories was not excelled." The spirit of the age demanded speed of production rather than durability. So swift was the growth of cities, the change of habitation and the progress of invention that one decade frequently saw the work

of the previous decade swept away and substituted by new creations. In consequence, what the consumer demanded was not apt to be durability of materials and processes; he wanted a thing adapted to meet an immediate and temporary need, a thing that could be exploited and used up before the progress of invention and the appearance of new wants made it expedient to abandon it. What chiefly amazed European travelers, especially Germans, was the speed with which the American workman turned off his work. American tools and processes were mainly adapted to that end, and work was rushed to completion with a rapidity that usually prevented the durability that was demanded in the Old World.1

If the reviewer may be pardoned yet another illustration of the author's occasional inaccuracy, he ventures to disagree with the assertion that "the operative population remained of native stock, with some recruits from Great Britain and Ireland." During the forties the labor supply was already changing rapidly. By 1854 half the operatives in the Lowell mills are said to have been Irish; and at Fall River six years later the British and Irish workers were a majority. In 1858, 70 per cent of all the employees of the Cambria Steel Company were Welsh. At that time a molder of native birth was hard to find anywhere in America. In 1870, for the country as a whole, natives composed only 61 per cent of the textile operatives and about 56 per cent of those in iron and steel works. This was, it is true, a decade after the period described by the author, but it indicates that "some recruits" hardly expresses the degree to which we were fulfilling Hamilton's prediction that for manufacturing labor we should "trade upon a foreign stock." We could wish that the author had given fuller treatment to the important question as to whether immigration has "displaced" American labor in manufacturing or has merely "replaced" it, as Americans rose to higher pursuits.

Mr. Clark's book is far from being the "final word" on his subject, but it is the most considerable contribution to it that has ever been made. He has brought evidence for many beliefs and organized much information already current among scholars, and he has added no little that is new. That the reader may find treated inadequately or not at all some phases of industrial growth particularly interesting to himself, should not detract from his

1 Cf. Büchele, Land und Volk der Vereinigten Staaten; Jörg, Briefe aus der Ver. Staaten; Fröbel, Die Deutsche Auswanderung und ihre Culturhistorische Bedeutung; et al. plur.

appreciation of the discriminating judgment and scholarly efficiency with which the author has performed his work. The book will long remain indispensable to students and investigators and will give invaluable aid to all that are interested in the economic development of this country.

University of Virginia.

THOMAS W. PAGE.

NEW BOOKS

CHERINGTON, P. T. The wool industry. Commercial problems of the American woolen and worsted manufacture. American industries; studies in their commercial problems, no. 1. (New York: A. W. Shaw Co. 1916. Pp. xvi, 261. $2.50.)

To be reviewed.

TRIBOT-LASPIÈRE, J. L'industrie de l'acier en France; simple exposé technique et économique. (Paris: Vuibert. 1916. Pp. vii, 355, illus. 3 fr.)

Census of manufacturers: 1914. Vermont. (Washington: Bureau of the Census. 1917. Pp. 25.)

Transportation and Communication

State Regulation of Railroads in the South. By MAXWELL FerGUSON. Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, Vol. LXVII, No. 2. (New York: Longmans, Green and Company. 1916. Pp. 228. $1.75.) This monograph is preliminary to a larger study dealing generally with the regulation of railroads in the South and its scope is confined to states east of the Mississippi and south of the Ohio. Thus, Maryland, Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas are not considered, but the omission is not important as their experience furnishes nothing unusual in railway control.

The larger part of the present study is given over to a description of commission regulation, the problem in each state being separately discussed. Only introductory are the first four chapters on Charters, Early General Laws, Constitutional Provisions Affecting Railroads, and Recent General Railway Legislation; but these embody material which is as interesting as any in the history of railroad development in the South, which has never been adequately treated, and which might well be returned to when Mr. Ferguson publishes his larger work.

In granting their first charters, the southern states attempted