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fashioned after the old traditions of the handicraft. The work of the chasers reveals an indisputable mastery. But the style," nouveau monde," of the American products is disconcerting to the eye. For this reason the clientele for American jewelry for a long time to come would seem to be limited to the people of the United States. There is no fear that the international market will be invaded by the variegated jewels, and the heavy gold pieces which are in favor on the other side of the ocean [pages 421-422].

One of the most valuable features of the book is a 29-page bibliography reasonably complete for works in French, German, English and Italian. The reviewer has noted a few important omissions.

On its mechanical side Mr. Touzet's book is open to criticism. The charts are often difficult to read, there are too many lines, the lines are often dim, and are so similar that it is very difficult to distinguish them. A book so large and covering such a variety of topics has its usefulness greatly impaired by the absence of an index.

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY.

E. W. KEMMERER.

Principles of Insurance. By W. F. GEPHART. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1911.—xv, 313 PP.

The development of insurance instruction in our universities in recent years has been greatly hampered by lack of adequate text-books designed to meet the needs of the elementary student. This has been especially true in life insurance. Several text-books dealing with actuarial science and intended for the beginner have appeared, but invariably they have been written by actuaries to whom the complex problems dealt with have become simple through long practice, and the authors have been handicapped by lack of experience in teaching. The result is that the most elementary and simple of these text-books have been too difficult for the average student, and progress with them has been slow. Other information of value to the beginning student in insurance, while existing in great quantities, has been so scattered in periodicals, addresses, pamphlets and government investigations as scarcely to be available.

Principles of Insurance, by Professor Gephart, is the first attempt made in the United States to supply the student with a text-book suited to his needs. It is admittedly an experiment, and the author suggests, in explanation of possible errors in treatment, that he had no precedents to follow. The greatest fault of the book, in the opinion of the reviewer, comes from the compression, into a space of 313 pages, of

material the adequate discussion of which for the university student should require a book twice the size. On account of its brevity, the book will probably be found much more valuable for high school work than for college instruction.

Criticism of the method of treatment used offers difficulties, because instruction in life insurance is still in such an elementary stage that there can scarcely be any agreement as to what subjects should be most emphasized and what least. But from the experience gained in dealing with insurance classes in the University of Pennsylvania it is felt that the devotion of a single chapter of twenty pages to the analysis of premium computations is entirely inadequate to a proper understanding of scientific rate-making and the knowledge of different kinds of policies that comes therefrom. Indeed, it may be questioned if the later subjects of reserves, surplus, dividends and investments can be properly understood without a reasonably careful study of rate-making.

For other chapters more can be said. Chapter ii, on the theory of life insurance, contains an excellent discussion of the factors necessary to make certain the application of the theory of probabilities, as for instance the necessity of a homogeneous group and the necessity of limiting the amount risked on a single life. The chapter on mortality tables contains an excellent summary of the methods of constructing these tables. The discussion of selection of lives in chapter iv is one of the best in the book.

Insurance for the wage-earners is excellently summarized in a chapter which traces the change in the position of the laborer from early industrial society to the present time, and then describes different methods of insuring him against industrial hazards, such as old-line industrial insurance, voluntary organizations of workers, fraternal societies, trade union insurance, relief departments of large corporations, employers' liability insurance, and government insurance of industrial classes. The impression left from the statement of the law of negligence, the development of which brought employers' liability insurance into being, is that this law, as elaborately modified by the several employers' defenses, finds definite expression in Roman law. It is hardly believable that the author could have intended this, for it is well known that the development of employers' defenses began with the case of Priestly v. Fowler in England in 1837.

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.

BRUCE D. MUDGETT.

Vers le salaire minimum. By BARTHÉLEMY RAYNAUD. Paris, Recueil Sirey, 1913.-xi, 518 pp.

M. Raynaud has presented us with an extensive treatise on the minimum wage, written mainly from an historical and administrative point of view. As he explains, he is interested neither in making a new plea for an old cause, nor in adding a new theory where none is wanted. His purpose is to trace the evolution toward the ideal of the living wage as it has expressed itself in the facts of contemporary social life.

In this respect M. Raynaud has succeeded very well. His large volume is an exhaustive and fairly systematic survey of the main developments toward a living wage throughout the entire world. traces the evolution of the minimum-wage idea in the contractual relationships of labor unions and employers, in public contract work, in work carried on directly by the state, and finally in measures of social legislation. The material presented is gathered from the original sources of the principal countries of the world, mainly, however, from England, France, Germany, the United States and Australasia. Conditions are described in detail in those countries and in those industries where progress toward the minimum wage has been greatest.

On the basis of his extensive survey, M. Reynaud comes to the conclusion that the minimum wage is gaining ground everywhere and will in time become a recognized principle of industrial life. The conception of the minimum wage which is developing, according to M. Raynaud, is a complex one, based on a synthesis of the ideas of the just wage and of the minimum standard of living. The tendency is not toward a fixed amount, but toward a flexible and variable rate (piecerate) which would secure for the worker a weekly wage sufficient for decent standard of living. M. Raynaud also expresses his satisfaction with the tendency of the trade unions to assume greater control in matters of wages. In his opinion the problem of the minimum wage is mainly a problem of the organization of labor, and he believes that the trade unions will gradually bring the greater part of the field of industry under the domination of the minimum-wage idea. But where organization does not exist or is too weak, M. Raynaud considers the intervention of the law inevitable and desirable.

In several chapters M. Raynaud discusses the economics of the minimum wage and reviews the usual objections to the idea. The book has a good index and several appendices containing documents relating to the literature of the subject.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

LOUIS LEVINE.

English Economic History: Select Documents. Compiled and Edited by A. E. BLAND, P. A. BROWN, and R. H. TAWNEY. London, G. Bell and Sons, Limited, 1914.-xx, 730 pp.

Messrs. Bland, Brown and Tawney offer an apology for adding another to the existing historical source books. No apology was necessary; for this compilation of 730 pages on English economic history from 1000 to 1846 cannot fail to be of service to students working in any part of this period. The book is divided into three parts-part i extending from 1000 to 1485; part ii from 1485 to 1660; and part iii from 1660 to 1846. Each part is subdivided into sections. Those of part i are the early English manor and the borough, the feudal structure, the Jews, the manor, towns and guilds, the regulation of trade, industry and commerce, and taxation, customs and the currency. Part ii deals with rural conditions, towns and guilds, the regulation of industry by the state, the relief of the poor and regulation of prices, and the encouragement of industry and commerce; while for the period from the Restoration to the adoption of free trade, the sections are industrial organization and social conditions, agriculture and enclosure, government regulation of wages, conditions of employment and public health, combinations of workmen, the relief of the poor, and finance and foreign trade. In all, 344 documents have been reprinted—136 of the period from 1000 to 1485; 107 of the second period; and 91 of the period from 1660 to 1846. Almost every conceivable source has been drawn upon for these documents; and particularly good use has been made of the journals of the House of Commons, reports of parliamentary committees, evidence before these committees, and histories, biographies, and memoirs.

It is not difficult, of course, to suggest how a volume of this kind might have been extended. Any large extension would have made the book unwieldy and necessitated its publication in two volumes. But a second edition will surely be called for before long. Then the compilers may perhaps see their way to take note in part i of the tin industry and the stannary courts; and in part iii embody some of the documents concerning transportation of convicts and the press-gang system. Galt's correspondence with the Duke of Newcastle concerning the right of the United Provinces of Ontario and Quebec to frame a protective tariff without regard to the interests of British trade, came twelve years after the adoption of free trade by England in 1846. But this correspondence is the charter of the fiscal freedom of Great Britain's oversea dominions, and some brief mention of it would admirably round out the

last section of part iii-the section devoted to finance and foreign trade. The index is on a generous scale; and the arrangement of the book— divisions, grouping of sections, and numbering of documents-lends itself to easy use for reference.

HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT.

EDWARD PORRITT.

Railroad Finance. By FREDERICK A. CLEVELAND and FRED WILBUR POWELL. New York, D. Appleton and Company, 1912.— xv, 463 PP.

Corporate Promotions and Reorganizations. By ARTHUR S. DEWING. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1914.-ix, 615 pp.

All students and teachers of the subject of corporation finance will be greatly pleased with the publication of these two studies in a field to which comparatively little attention has been given.

Railroad Finance is the second of two volumes upon the subject of railroads in which Messrs. Cleveland and Powell have collaborated, the first volume, Railroad Promotion and Capitalization, having appeared in 1909. As Dr. Cleveland states in his brief preface, a preliminary draft of Railroad Finance was used as a series of lectures delivered at the Wharton School in 1901 and 1902. It will also be noted that in the chapter entitled "Protection of the Corporate Estate," the collaborators have drawn heavily upon the second of Dr. Cleveland's lectures on "The Management of Capital Account," delivered at Harvard in 1908 (lecture xiv of the Harvard Lectures on Corporation Finance). Chapter i in Railroad Finance is the same as chapter i in Railroad Promotion and Capitalization, while the section on underwriting and holding syndicates in chapter ii of the former volume is identical with the section of the same title in chapter xvii of the latter. The balance of chapter ii of the later work duplicates in condensed form much of the material contained in the earlier book.

Railroad Finance is divided into seventeen chapters, and an eighteenth devoted to a critical examination of the available materials for the study of railroad finance and an admirable bibliography of some sixty pages. To a considerable extent the treatment is historical in character in that the various phases of financing are most frequently approached from this angle.

Probably the most original and constructive portion of the volume is to be found in the treatment of capital. The authors think that the term "capital" of a corporation should" be confined to those assets

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