REVIEWS

Property and Contract in their Relation to the Distribution of Wealth. By RICHARD T. ELY. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1914. Two volumes; xlvii, vii, 995 pp.

The time has long been ripe in the United States for a serious and scientific treatment of the relation between private property and contract and the distribution of wealth. Students of social politics were naturally filled with great expectations when a work on that subject by Professor Ely was announced, for the learning and researches of the author seemed to guarantee, besides thoroughness and scholarly finish, that fine detachment so necessary to a satisfactory analysis of so controversial a theme. But, painful as it is to say it, they will be necessarily disappointed with the imposing volumes now submitted. Instead of a closely-knit and logical work, serried by statistics and buttressed by reference to the cold historical facts in the accumulation of riches, they will find a collection of discursive essays containing much that is pertinent and wise, but for the most part made up of general reflections, moralizings, and cautions that have been familiar to all students of political economy for the last half-century. They were already old when Professor Ely gathered them from Wagner, Schmoller, and Knies many years ago.

The whole work might be summed up in a paragraph like this: Property is socially useful. So is contract. But the rights of property and of free contract may be pushed beyond the bounds of genuine utility. In fact, at the present time, property is so narrowly concentrated as to deprive vast numbers of people of private property. But we should be cautious in attempting to tamper too much with the historical distribution of wealth. Sometimes the courts have been a little too restricted in their view of private rights, and they need some social as well as legal training.

No one can hope to come to a just understanding of the present status of property without an examination of the precise historical origins of property in land and the exact processes of capitalist accumulation; but we look in vain in these pages for an illuminating discussion— for any real discussion in fact-of these momentous matters. The distribution of wealth is a statistical matter, but there are no original contributions to the statistics of wealth in Professor Ely's work. Vast

masses of property are becoming socialized, but there is here no statistical evaluation of this movement. This is a matter of commanding importance and Professor Ely does not overlook it. He meets the demand for a material analysis of it, by reminding us that the picture galleries and some of the parks of European monarchs have been thrown open to the public-socialized (pages 477-481)-and that Lady Warwick has determined to make her historic castle a "benefit to others." At the close of his survey of property Professor Ely thus summarizes his fundamental conclusion:

This concludes our study of property. Where do we now stand? We find that distribution takes place as the result of the struggle of conflicting interests on the basis of the existing social order, and of this social order we have examined the main feature, namely, private property and public property. Distribution takes place then not on an exclusive basis of private property, for we also have public property. Moreover, private property itself is not absolute but limited in intensivity. This, then, is the point that we have reached in our study of distribution.

Surely this is not a striking conclusion to reach at the end of 549 pages. At the close of two hundred additional pages, containing a valuable but by no means new survey of contract, particularly as understood under the Constitution of the United States, Professor Ely comes to another fundamental conclusion :

To strike at the roots of all contract is to strike at the foundations of society. To uphold the sanctity of contracts is doubtless a prime business of government, but it is no less its business to provide against contracts being made, which from the very helplessness of one of the parties to them, instead of being a security to freedom, becomes an instrument of disguised oppression (page 750).

Surely this is a principle which has commanded the allegiance of all thinking persons for many a generation.

There is no doubt that Professor Ely has made important contributions to American thought; probably he has done more than any other economist to moralize the crude Manchesterism which flourished in the United States a generation ago and which even now may be found in many by no means obscure circles where Cobden and Bright are still oracles. But the work before us falls far short of that real greatness in treatment which the theme invited and which the author might have brought to it. CHARLES A. BEARD.

The Origin of Property and the Formation of the Village Community. By JAN ST. LEWINSKI. Studies in Economics and Political Science, London School of Economics, No. 30. London, Constable and Company, 1913.-xi, 71 pp., maps.

The problem of the origin and development of property rights in primitive agricultural communities has been studied in recent years from two different sides. Medieval historians have faced it in tracing the rise of the manorial group in northwestern Europe, and have exhibited admirable patience and erudition in their attempts to disentangle the web of influences of which the manor was a resultant. The author touches this aspect of the question with occasional references— not always above reproach, it must be said, for Maurer and Nasse have lost their standing as authorities on medieval conditions—but his main contribution is of a different kind. He takes his stand, namely, with Hildebrand, Simkhovitch and others who approach the problem from a study of the recent and existing land systems of eastern Europe and Asia. His little book is rich in extracts from Russian publications, official and other, describing the development of land tenures among the less advanced peoples of Russia and Siberia, and will be of interest and value to the student of institutional history even though the author's interpretation of the facts may not be entirely acceptable.

Lewinski is frankly rationalist in his attitude; one is tempted to say that he belongs to the Austrian school of village-community theorists. He starts with "the assumption that man's relation towards material goods is determined by the economic principle, the desire to obtain the greatest possible quantity of objects necessary for the satisfaction of his wants, with the least possible effort." He believes that he can explain the development of different forms of property from the combination of four simple elements: (1) the economic principle, (2) the principle of numerical strength, (3) the growth of population, (4) the relation of nature towards human wants." The reader must be referred to the book itself for further explanation and application of these terms. They appear to the reviewer to be very far from "simple,” to resolve themselves, in fact, into the great aspects of history: economic, political, social and technical. It is dangerous to attempt to reduce history to a formula, even when it is expressed in the broadest terms, and it is hard for the reader to shake off the uneasy feeling that facts cited from the Slavic authorities may have taken on a subjective coloring from the author's prepossessions. Still it must be said that the author appears to be entirely candid and shows in general such com

mon sense that one is strongly tempted to accept the concrete contributions that he makes from the Russian sources, if not their general interpretation.

In the most primitive stage the author finds no property in land. Ownership attached first to individuals, not to communities, and grew up piecemeal on different kinds of land. Communal land tenure was a later development, forced by the increase of population, and marked by successive stages of public control: (1) restriction of the right of free occupation; (2) transfer by the community of landed property from one person to another; (3) periodical division of the land among members of the community.

The noteworthy feature of Lewinski's view is that which makes communal ownership the result of a social revolution, carried on by the poor against the rich who had appropriated more than their share of the land. However this may be in Siberia, we shall want further evidence before accepting it as a true picture of the development in Russia. Simkhovitch has given a very different explanation of the Russian communal tenure, tracing it to influences working down from the higher political organization rather than up from the people at the bottom. Lewinski has not attempted to combat in detail the evidence which connects the Russian communal tenure with the institution of collective responsibility under a growing burden of taxes, and his assertion that direct attempts of the government to introduce or extend the communal tenure have failed does not touch the heart of the matter. In Java, where the institution of communal property in land may be studied almost if not quite as well as in Russia, the evidence is strongly opposed to Lewinski's view. The reviewer remembers to have found only one district in which the process of development of communal tenure seems to have followed the course that Lewinski supposes. In a number of villages in Madioen, men holding land by individual hereditary tenure were forced by a majority vote of the villagers, including the landless proletariat and a considerable share of newcomers, to surrender the land into communal ownership. (Eindresumé van het onderzoek naar de rechten van den inlander op den grond op Java en Madoera, Batavia, 1876 ff., vol. 2, p. 201). Even here, however, the evidence connects the change in tenure with the extension of the culture system; and in general there is abundant proof in the Eindresumé and also in the administrative reports, printed in Raffles's Substance of a Minute, that the burden of taxes and of forced services was the active cause of the introduction of communal tenure. Furthermore, in connection with Lewinski's theory that the growth of population was an important

element in leading to the substitution of communal for individual tenure, it should be noted that the natives of Java testified in some cases that the communal tenure was the result of a decline of population, due either to epidemics or to emigration. (Cf. Eindresumé, vol. 2, pp. 70. Tegal: 101, 103, Banjoemas; 162, Japara; 185, Rembang.) This would be the natural result if an attempt were being made to apportion the land so as to raise to the highest the tax-paying capacity of the community; but if we attempt to apply Lewinski's theories, while we can see some reason for a fresh distribution of the land, no reason whatever appears for the introduction of the communal tenure.

With all that the author says in criticism of the theory that communal land tenure is a product of racial peculiarities the reviewer is in hearty sympathy. But when the author closes his book, as he began it, by asserting that the evolution of property in land “is the result of the combination of four simple elements" the reviewer believes that he is deluded: that his elements, in general, are not simple, and that, in particular, they are not all properly applicable.

YALE UNIVERSITY.

CLIVE DAY.

The Financial System of the United Kingdom. By HENRY London, Macmillan and Company, Limited, 1914.-x,

HIGGS.

218 pp

The character of this work is properly described in the preface as a summary exposition of the British financial system, its organization, methods and forms of procedure. It deals with public and not with private finance, and emphasizes expenditures rather than revenues. It has practically nothing to say about banking or the money market and little to say about taxation.

The book contains nine chapters and fourteen helpful appendices. Three chapters dealing with "estimates," their preparation, presentation and procedure in Parliament are followed by a single chapter on the budget and a detailed description of the accounts under which the financial operations of the United Kingdom are recorded and presented to Parliament. The organization and work of the principal financial departments are then described in two chapters; and the book concludes with two chapters on public credit-one dealing with the administration of the national debt and the other with public-work loans and special accounts. The appendices include important laws or orders dealing with financial organization and procedure, illustrative forms and accounts, and occupy more space than the text proper.