not known before? Machinery, he thinks, displaces skilled workmen by unskilled (p. 210). Apart, however, from devices to utilize the unskilled immigrant influx, it is far from clear that the tendency is stronger than its opposite. The sexual life is disturbed by late marriages; these are due largely to "the growing inadequacy of wages," in which the factors are rising prices and rising standard of life (p. 211). Ignorance disposes to disease, but education is a social function (p. 213). Of the human or individual factor little is left. The state clearly may go wrong, but the individual's mis-expenditures and indulgences only reveal him to be a victim of the state. The state, as it happens, is-all of us. And if all of us are to blame-but that is anticipating! That "the problem of sickness relief and of sickness is a national and not an individual problem," is bluntly stated (p. 245). In these chapters again, the analysis of institutions is in the main good. Some errors of fact deserve note. The British friendly societies may not discriminate against applicants by reason of advanced age (p. 255). Sick-insurance of domestic servants in Germany, though accepted in the law, has met difficulties in enforcement (p. 256). Salaried administrative employees earning 2,500 marks, not 2,000, are excluded in Germany (p. 257). The Swiss law is held to be original in providing for non-occupational accidents (p. 266). But the German, French, and English invalidity provisions likewise dealt with the consequences of these. It is not the case that in Germany all benefits for industrial accidents are paid by the sick-funds for thirteen weeks; from the fifth to the thirteenth week, the mutual associations pay part, and where the workman is not in a sick-fund (a common thing in the past) the employer pays all (p. 267, cf. 268). Old age, like sickness, is held to be a social problem. Mr. Rubinow is not anxious that workmen should save. Where others see education and discipline in thrift, he is led to speak of the "depressing effect of the saving habit upon the standard of life" (p. 313), and elsewhere he discountenances the practice. As he believes in compulsory sickness insurance, so he believes in compulsory old-age insurance. Why? Workmen are destitute in old age. So much is simple, but might mean only a demand for humanitarian charity. "Service," length of productive activity is another reason (p. 386). But then classes above wage-earners should be included. Elsewhere, however, the Austrian law of 1906 providing pensions for salaried employees is almost passed over as "outside social insurance" (p. 346). Or, workmen are "unable or unwilling" to act of themselves. But these alternatives, upon which the character of legal provisions must depend, Mr. Rubinow does not separate. If workmen earning $6 a day are unable, are those also who earn $8, $10, $15? If the scheme is to be subsidized, in what ratio? Mr. Rubinow does not make clear; ideally, we may suppose, the social causes of old age should measure the social burden. Sometimes the language of "deferred wages" is used, but it throws little light on the attempt to relate cause and burden. In the United States, Mr. Rubinow thinks the opportunity for oldage pensions will come with the inevitable decline of the warpension appropriations. Unemployment has been well handled in English books. Mr. Rubinow's chapters cite liberally from Beveridge, and also from the admirable monograph of Gibbon (who is uniformly miscited as J. G. Gibbon). How far, and on what basis insurance should be subsidized are again questions obscurely handled. An echo of earlier chapters is in the position that unemployment is not, or is only slightly, figured in wages (p. 452). As a matter of fact, where the entire social insurance burden is equivalent to only a slight percentage of wages, and where wages vary greatly, who shall say that it is not contained in the rate of wages established by competition? The material in the final chapter of the book, The Social Import of Social Insurance, is vital, but insufficient and inconclusive. The vexed question of the basis of the state's subsidy gets a partial answer: it is a substitute for earnings inequitably withheld under the capitalistic system (p. 481). We are still not told what should be the basis of the workman's share. Social insurance gives relief in destitution (p. 481). So do charity and the poor law. But the purpose of these is "to grant the necessary minimum for a physiological existence, and that only." Would modern charitable institutions accept this formulation? Yet it is contrasted with the "ideal purpose" of social insurance, which is constructive interference, prevention, and not even with actual insurance, which the author admits to be often as inadequate as poor relief. I confess to not seeing why, with Mr. Rubinow's argument, the best arrangement would not be a kind of glorified destitution relief system, much simpler than insurance, dealing with all the social causes of destitution. Relief has been degrading, he urges. It is not essentially so, and need be no more so than the community desires. The final chapter briefly answers the Friedensburg attack upon insurance, but does nothing with the much abler presentation by Bernhard (p. 495). The latter has created a much greater stir in Germany than Friedensburg. The question of the influence of the insurance system on the family is rather summarily dismissed. So also is the question of a state machine as instrument of the servile state, against which in late times opposition has been so extensively spreading in England. The incidence of the financial burden of insurance is not clear. I hope this emphasis upon shortcomings may not obscure the impression that Mr. Rubinow's virtues make his work decidedly useful. With his recommendations I am in frequent accord. But his eagerness to support them, his candidly admitted bias, must check acceptance of them by many. Finally, in the absence of a pure-advertising law, Mr. Rubinow's publishers deserve a word of censure for advertising as "treated exhaustively and authoritatively for the first time in English" the various topics of the book. There exist ampler and good discussions of many subjects that seek impartiality where Mr. Rubinow-not perhaps to his discredit -confesses to pleading. Harvard University. ROBERT F. FOERSTER. Die Reichsarbeitslosenversicherung. By KARL KUMPMANN. (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr. 1913. Pp. viii, 150.3 M.) The author of this interesting study disavows any intention of attempting to solve the difficult questions connected with unemployment insurance. He endeavors to bring together views of what has been done and to discuss the arguments for and against the plans which have been pursued. He recognizes the difficulty of applying the insurance principle to unemployment on account of the incalculable factors which enter into the risk. The four divisions of the book deal respectively with the problem of unemployment, the control of unemployment, unemployment insurance, and the necessity of government unemployment insurance. The causes of unemployment are considered as either subjective or objective. The former includes such cases as inability to work and unwillingness to work; the latter, inability to find work and absence of work. The author admits there is great difficulty in distinguishing these two causes in particular cases, but holds that unemployment insurance should apply only to the objective causes, the subjective causes being provided for in other manner, as, for example, by charitable and reformatory institutions of the state. He also holds that no plan of unemployment insurance can be successful unless labor employment bureaus are organized in connection with it. These should be municipal, provincial, and federal, each correlated into a unity of organized administration. The labor organizations should be encouraged to do what they can to prevent unemployment of their members, by encouraging individual saving and by mutual aid in supporting and in finding work for their members. The cost of unemployment insurance should be borne by the employee, the employer, and the state. In this connection it may be pointed out that not a few results of plans of social insurance in various countries tend to show that a mistake has been made in not requiring the insured to bear a part of the cost of the insurance. The author rightly argues that the workman must be regarded as a citizen and a human being with all the responsibilities which this implies. Workmen should be located in a community and become a part of it, for a floating population is dangerous to community well-being. Each worker should have a chance to work, and the state should endeavor to make the work and position as permanent as possible. The author states that the common arguments against unemployment insurance are: (a) that it is too socialistic; (b) that it is a means of securing support for a political party; (c) that it is not ethical. He meets each of these arguments, showing first that it is not essentially socialistic, but only a means of securing social benefit by encouraging great social efficiency of a social class; second, that while it may have been used to secure political support, yet the more fundamental well-being will be furthered and that such insurance can only be provided by coöperation on the part of all under government direction; third, that no necessary undermining of the desirable characteristics of individualism need result, but that, on the contrary, a higher type of individualism should result. The book is a valuable addition to the literature of the subject and is unusually free from the exaggerated claims and estimates of much of the literature on unemployment insurance. Washington University. W. F. GEPHART. T NEW BOOKS BARNETT, S. The statements of a life insurance company, including the gain and loss exhibit. (Atlanta, Ga.: Samuel Barnett. 1913. Pp. 57. $3.50.) BEHRENS, F. Die deutsche Volksversicherung. (Berlin: Vaterländische Verlags- und Kunstanstalt. 1914. Pp. 36. 0.80 м.) DOMIZLAFF, K. Die Feuerversicherung. Versicherungs-Bibliothek, 2. (Berlin: Mittler. 1914. Pp. ix, 185. 4 Μ.) GLEIZE, H. Application de la loi sur les retraites ouvrières et paysannes. (Privas: Volle. 1914. Pp. 115. 4.50 fr.) JOHNSON, W. Das Versicherungswesen. (Leipzig: A. T. Engelhardt. KOBURGER, J. Versicherungsbuchführung. Versicherungs-Bibliothek, POHL, K. Die Anfänge des deutschen Lebensversicherungswesens. WILLIAMS, T. H. The fire insurance contract, with legal decisions. (San Francisco: Underwriters' Report. 1918. Pp. 102. $1.50.) Lois russes d'assurance ouvrière. (Paris: Dunot & Pinat. 1914. Pp. 98. 6 fr.) Untersuchungen über das Versicherungswesen in Deutschland. Schriften des Vereins für Sozialpolitik, 137, part 4. (Munich: Duncker & Humblot. 1913. Pp. v, 362. 9 Μ.) Versicherung und Krieg. Veröffentlichungen des Deutschen Vereins für Versicherungs-Wissenschaft, XXVI. (Berlin: Ernst Siegfried Mittler. 1914. Pp. 133.) This work consists of eight lectures given at a recent convention of the German association for insurance science; they treat of various phases of the relationship of insurance and war. As shown by the phenomena attending the Morocco crisis and the Balkan wars, insurance companies exercise great power in steadying the money market. They are not so easily affected by psychological influences and do not join to any large extent in a general selling of securities. The strains which insurance must be prepared to stand in a period of financial disturbance immediately preceding or following the outbreak of war are due to the withdrawal of cash values and a falling off in receipts. At the time of the Franco-Prussian war the withdrawals increased from about 3 per cent of the receipts to about 10 per cent. Interesting statistics are given in regard to the five |