wasteful private expenditure in " riotous living that impairs our health, in foolish extravagancies that actually lessen our aggregate enjoyment etc. What is really needed is "a progressive transfer of more and more of the national income from individual to collective channels." But has the progressive increase of taxation ever yet diminished riotous living, and has it not for some years past caused progressive emigration of capital from both Great Britain and France? He would be a bold man who should answer the first question in the affirmative, and there are American, Swiss, and Canadian financiers who know that the second question cannot be answered in the negative.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY.

C. J. BULLOCK.

Principles of Economics. By N. G. PIERSON. Translated from the Dutch by A. A. Wotzel. London and New York, The Macmillan Company, 1902, 1912.-Two volumes, xxx, 604; xxiii, 644 pp.

These volumes, by the scholarly prime minister of Holland (now deceased), appeared in Dutch in 1896 and 1902. The lapse of ten years between the translations of the first and second volumes has prevented most reviewers from undertaking a consideration of the work as a whole, and the present reviewer will therefore deal with both volumes, calling attention, however, to the fuller review of volume i which appeared in this QUARTERLY (volume xviii, page 706), by Professor Seager. The translation has been approved by competent critics as a faithful rendering of the original, and the reviewer has found the English version on the whole animated and clear.

Pierson's Principles is useful as an addition to English economic literature, first of all, as presenting the continental point of view in economics-America and England do not occupy the foreground or supply the main problems or illustrations. The work will supplant the one volume translations of Gide in performing this service for American students. This is no slight matter. It must be said, however, that the doctrinal sympathies of the author are English rather than continental. But the main value of the work rests on no such special consideration as this. Pierson is a great practical statesman who is willing to let theory guide his practice, and whose wide scholarship, clear thinking, and practical wisdom have produced a book of permanent significance. His contributions to pure theory are not important. His ultimate concepts are not always very clear-in fact are sometimes quite faulty. There are no striking doctrines to be associated with his name. But the book, in its detailed discussions, is marvellously sane, and in its total effect is truly impressive.

Pierson associates himself with the Austrians in value theory. He follows the Austrians in the conventional exposition of diminishing utility, and is guilty of the usual confusions of utility curves with demand curves and of marginal utility with value (I, 57, and II, 33-35)But he really does not go very far with the Austrians in value theory. There is no inkling of the Austrian doctrine of costs as foregone positive values. Pierson's cost concept is a useless invention of his own— neither entrepreneur-outlay, nor psychological sacrifice, nor labor time. Costs for Pierson consist of the physical items of wealth that are used up in the production process (I, 62). A notion so little susceptible of precise manipulation naturally plays a small rôle in the subsequent analysis, and Pierson later develops the notion of "labor price," which appears to be roughly identical with the entrepreneur-outlay cost-concept, and which the translator informs us is in common use among the Dutch economists (I, 386, n., and II, 176.) This concept is employed by Pierson chiefly in connection with the theory of international trade. In interest theory, Pierson follows Böhm-Bawerk, but at a considerable distance, paying little heed to theoretical subtleties and difficulties, and apparently seeing nothing of the capitalization problem. Pierson defines demand as "amount needed. . . if the goods were to be had for the asking" (I, 48.) This, with no reference to Adam Smith's notion of effectual demand, to Mill's precise formulation of the demand concept, or to Cairnes's criticism of Mill, to mention no later discussions, would alone suffice to show that Pierson's interest and importance must lie elsewhere than in the realm of pure theory. His strength is in the judicious application of what may be called the secondary body of theory, the practical theory of the English school, together with a wealth of pertinent facts, to the refutation of economic fallacies and to the solution of practical questions.

The treatment of protection is a case in point (II, 171-219.) Pierson assumes first the standpoint of the ordinary business man, enmeshed in mercantilist fallacies, and analyzes each point fully. There is doubtless an echo of political contests in this part of the book, and one can imagine that Pierson must have been an effective political debater. The case is not quite typical, however. Pierson is more doctrinaire in discussing protection than in treating most other questions. The English economics of competition and self-interest is generally subjected to a great deal of criticism and modification in his handling.

Malthusianism bulks large in Pierson's view-the land is crowded in the Low Countries. And production, in his view, is a much more im

portant problem than distribution. The economic situation, again, forces this upon him. Whatever else a crowded laboring class needs, it needs first to increase the total social dividend. Significant of this view is the fact that he groups many of the most important problems under the head of production: the tariff, socialism, the land question, population. The all-important question asked of every social program is: how will it affect the productive capacity of society, and the ratio between population and wealth? There are only three or four pages on the tariff in connection with the theory of international trade, and but little mention of the tariff in connection with distribution. Its effects on production are the significant matter. Trades-unionism also receives as much consideration under this head as it does in connection with wages. It is worthy of note that Pierson has little to say about trades unions, and treats the subject academically, the problem evidently not being of much local importance (II, 75.) He is much impressed with the importance of economizing public domains, and laments the prodigality with which the United States have scattered their princely resources. The single-taxer will be interested in Pierson's preference for the long-time leasing of public lands, as in the Dutch East Indies (II, 351.) The single-taxer will not be pleased with Pierson's brusque dismissal of Henry George's scheme as "an absurdity" (II, 263), but will find matter of great importance in the realistic treatment of the rent of lands and houses (I, 79–175), and in the admirable historical survey of land tenure (viewed from the standpoint of the productive efficiency of different systems) in volume ii, covering 121 pages.

There

The book contains little that is new on the theory of money. is a loosely-stated version of the quantity theory; and some sceptical remarks about index numbers appear. But there is a lot of exceedingly well chosen historical and descriptive matter on money and banking, interspersed with sane practical analysis, which is valuable even though already partly out of date.

Practically half of the second volume is given to public finance. Volume i treats of value and distribution, and money and banking; volume ii, of production and public finance. The reviewer foregoes further details. A book of 1244 pages, whose chief significance lies in the superb handling of familiar materials, rather than in a striking, original, central theory, is not to be treated adequately in a review of any length. Pierson deserves to be read. It is to be regretted that there is no index.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY.

B. M. ANDERSON, JR.

The Tinplate Industry. By J. H. JONES. London, P. S. King and Son, 1914.-xx, 280 pp.

This is a careful monograph on the history and present organization of the Welsh tinplate industry by a student who knows the business. A brief sketch of the technique of production is followed by a study of the period of British monopoly down to 1890, and then of the period of competition ushered in by the passage of the McKinley tariff. The four chapters on organization deal with the localization of the industry, the structure of the business unit, the combination of producers, and always, and perhaps chiefly, the organization of labor.

Like most careful students, Mr. Jones, while agreeing that our tinplate industry offers a striking illustration of the successful application of the infant industry" principle, is inclined to give the McKinley tariff relatively small credit for the actual growth of the industry during the nineties. He points out that the fall in the price of steel here made even the reduced rates of the Wilson tariff sufficiently protective, and holds the Dingley rates primarily responsible for the formation of the tinplate trust. The distress occasioned in Wales by the loss of the American market and the subsequent recovery of the Welsh industry to its present prosperous condition are described in a chapter that shows interestingly the possibility of fighting protective tariffs with the weapon of free trade. Mr. Jones believes that the abolition of protection here would mean a rapid growth of the American tinplate industry at the expense of the Welsh (page 100).

The varying fortunes of the unions of tinplate workers are traced in some detail, and the conditions of successful unionism in an industry such as this are pointed out.

One of the merits of the book is the manner in which it relates concrete industrial facts to economic theory. For example, Mr. Jones's study of market demand, as opposed to total demand over a long period, and of the relation between demand for tinplate and for the consumption goods packed in tin, leads him to some suggestive conclusions as to the possibility of enlarging the market and increasing the prosperity of the industry by cutting wages during depression. Such detailed industrial studies as this put a solid foundation under economic theory and suggest the limits of its generalizations. The reviewer has noted one or two apparent slight slips in the discussion of American conditions, but the author appears to have done his work with much care, thoroughness and caution.

H. R. MUSSEY.

The Evolution of Industry. By D. H. MACGREGOR. New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1914.—254 pp.

Rarely is more well-digested information and sound judgment packed into a small volume than will be found in Professor Macgregor's little work. It gives an excellent survey of the changes in economic organization that came with the industrial revolution, and of the complex problems of industrial and social organization that have followed in its train. One is grateful to the author for devoting his attention to modern questions rather than to the remote historical problems that might be suggested by the title.

After defining the idea of industrial evolution, Professor Macgregor devotes two chapters to an outline of the important economic and social changes that have made the England of today what it is. he states the root problems"-health, education, minimum conditions-in a word, those which concern the possibilities and capacities of the individual life. Next he examines the question of the system itself, stating the criticisms of our existing industrial arrangements, particularly as they affect the laborer. The land question, the monopoly problem, and the question of methods of control of industry in turn receive attention, and a good chapter on democracy and leadership ends the book.

The unifying idea of the work is that of on-going industrial development, with a correlative process of social adjustment forever under way, and at present largely in arrears by reason of the rapid industrial stride of the nineteenth century. The evolutionary point of view of the author is illustrated by his statement that in the nineteenth-century régime we must regard wages as a provisional payment to labor out of the national income, a supplementary distribution being made in the form of public services or gift, which last-mentioned items he estimates as high as fifteen per cent on the wages bill. The whole discussion of wages and systems of payment should prove suggestive to economists trained to think, even today, of wages as far more rigidly determinate than is probably the case.

The analysis of competition, again, its persistence under whatever forms of combination, and the possibility of securing effective personal competition by getting rid, so far as may be, of existing individual handicaps, is in accord with the best of recent thinking on this subject, and is free from any tendency to regard existing forms of competition. as final. The same flexibility of thought characterizes the treatment of the vexed question of public versus private management of various in