currency. Reduction of the volume of currency notes and of the velocity of circulation of bank deposits followed, but only after the economic depression had set in. As might be expected of a French writer, Mr. Lazard emphasises as a distinctive characteristic of British policy during this stage of deflation the efforts made to free the public finances from resort to borrowing. During the period from 1922 to 1924 the domestic consequences of the crisis, in unemployment and loss of profits, strengthened the hands of the industrialists, and increasingly persistent demands for stabilization resulted in its temporary adoption as the basis of monetary policy. The decision to return to the gold standard in 1925 was not, therefore, the result of a sustained effort to follow out the policy of the Cunliffe Committee. It was the result of the reassertion of the "city" point of view at a time when the exchange value of sterling had been raised to par by heavy remittances from New York to London, owing, more particularly, to changes in American banking policy and to the confidence in European investment which followed upon the acceptance of the Dawes Report. Mr. Lazard compares this sacrifice of British industrial interests to the sacrifice of her agriculture to her industry a hundred years earlier. He argues that the decline of industry will deprive London of the large annual volume of savings available for investment upon which basis alone it can remain an important financial center. Ultimately concentration in Great Britain upon trade and finance may, by divorcing its people from reality, restrict their power to act, and, by bringing riches without effort, undermine their morality. While the dominance of traditional attitudes in the recent history of Great Britain, both monetary and industrial, has been the cause of much of her distress, it is easy to attribute too much of the industrial depression to monetary policy and to assign too little as the inevitable consequence of the industrial development and policy of the nineteenth century. Moreover the savings from industry carried on in Great Britain are not the only possible basis for an investment market in London. Nor does the moral future of Great Britain yet appear to be seriously threatened by easy riches from mercantile and speculative activities.

The second section of the book dealing with monetary theory during the same period is seriously lacking in balance in that it is concerned almost exclusively with the theories of Messrs. Keynes and Hawtrey.

Mr. Lazard writes with ease and precision, and his French background gives especial interest to his conclusions and comments. ARTHUR R. BURNS

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

factor, however. A comparison of annual growth and annual cut shows which countries are increasing and which countries are decreasing their ultimate reserves. The United States, cutting or wasting its timber four times as fast as it is growing, stands at one extreme; Russia, accumulating an increase of timber by natural growth faster than it is being cut, stands at the other. In between are the European countries where scientific forestry preserves a nice balance between annual growth and annual cut.

The United States is the leading lumber country, producing and consuming roughly one-half of the world's annual output of saw timber. Russia has the greatest timber reserves. Great Britain, almost denuded of forests, is the leading timber importer, and before the war she drew those imports from the most logical source-Russia. Continental European countries like Germany, France, Italy, and Belgium whose state forests do not supply their entire demand make good their deficits by importing from Norway, Sweden, Finland, or the succession states of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Timber is thus in the main consumed in or near the country where it is produced.

These two volumes, pointing out the foregoing and other significant conclusions, containing a mine of information for the student of forestry, and presenting detailed statistics that will be the necessary basis for any constructive forest policy, are of interest to the economist because they tell the story, in painstaking and careful detail, of one of our leading natural resources. With similar exhaustive studies of other natural resources at their command, the economists can write a clearer and more convincing picture of that vague “nature” that plays so important a rôle as a factor of production. In the realm of forestry, this work is a monumental contribution. For the economist this work furnishes the technical knowledge necessary for the understanding of forest conservation as one phase of social control.

HOMER HOYT

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI

Money. By WILLIAM TRUFANT FOSTER and WADDILL CATCHINGS. Houghton Mifflin Co., for the Pollak Foundation for Economic Research, 1923. Pp. viii+409. $3.50.

An excellent book on the subject of money is this one by Foster and Catchings. In the first eight chapters the authors discuss, pri

marily, the place of money in the present economic organization, and, in a most lucid manner, some of those hoary monetary fallacies which seem to have an inexhaustible fund of vitality. In this latter connection an entire chapter of considerable length is devoted to the subject of "Money and the Commodity Basis," Mr. Edison's proposals being used by way of exemplification of some of the errors to which the mind is subject.

The remainder, and somewhat more than half of the book, deals with various aspects of the relation between money and prices and between money and the business cycle. The authors reject the quantity theory in such form as given (p. 162) by a quotation from Cassel on the ground "that other factors never do remain exactly the same." On this topic it seems to the reviewer that the authors, as well as a host of other writers, pay far too great homage to the sway which a logically consistent system of any kind holds over our minds, and that a far more desirable method of attacking the problem of changes in the price level is to consider in a realistic way the actual processes by which changes in price levels come about. To some extent such consideration is given the question when the subject of the "circuit flow of money" is discussed; and the matter here emphasized is the chief reason for according to this work some degree of significance.

While the book exhibits perspicuity of style and reveals sanity of judgment, it repeats a vast amount of material which has been many times written, although parts of it never so well as here. To put the matter succinctly, Messrs. Foster and Catchings have written a most excellent critical summary of our present knowledge on the subject of money; and therefore one's puzzlement when one recalls that their work is published by a foundation for economic research.

LLOYD W. MINTS

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

Farm Credits in the United States and Canada. By JAMES B. MORMAN, A.M. New York: The Macmillan Co., "Rural Science Series," 1924. Pp. xv+406. $3.50.

The purpose of this book as stated in the Preface is "to set forth briefly the principal features and the practical results" of "legislative efforts" of the "federal governments" of these two countries in providing systems of land mortgage and personal credit for farmers. This is the second printing of the author's book, which

was published in 1915. It has been brought down to date to the extent of including the statistics of farmers' indebtedness reported by the Census of 1920 and the intermediate credit legislation of 1923.

The book is an interesting historical story of the efforts to ameliorate agricultural conditions by credit legislation. Like most of the "Rural Science Series" it is journalistic and easy to read, intended for the general reader who does not seek to go into the complexities of the economic problems of financing agriculture or exact theories and methods of analyzing specific rural-credit problems.

It is elementary in character, and will fill a very important need by supplying in one volume a summary of the endeavors at ruralcredits legislation together with some account of the practices followed by the several schemes of providing credits for farmers.

It would seem, however, that more fundamental principles and rules for analyzing and solving credit problems on a sound economic basis should be included. Irrespective of politics, morals, and sentiment, such questions as the following should be answered: Should farmers have special favors not allowed other business men in matters of finances? How analyze a farmer's credit problems? What are the fundamental rules for valuing farms for mortgage loans? Under what conditions should the banker refuse loans to farmers?

A study of rural credits from the standpoint of the individual farm unit and agriculture as a consistent part of our economic structure remains to be made. Rural-credit problems will be solved by the same monetary theories and methods as other financial problems. A study along these lines will be a real contribution and interest the practical student.

IVAN WRIGHT

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

Cost Control for Foundries. By F. C. EVERITT and JOHNSON HEYWOOD. Edited by W. R. BASSETT. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1923. Pp. vii+226. $3.00.

This book, an outgrowth of a series of magazine articles on the same subject, meets a very definite need in the field of foundry costaccounting.

The principles underlying foundry cost-finding are explained. The material is presented in such a fashion that a foundry owner, with the aid of his bookkeeper and foreman, can prepare a satisfactory

cost system. The problems of a gray-iron foundry are stressed, but the necessary variations in the manufacture of malleable castings and steel castings are outlined.

The chapter devoted to the subject of departmental expense analysis is excellent. Space is given to the subject of "normal" and "abnormal" costs.

The Strike for Union. By HEBER BLANKENHORN. New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1924. Pp. ix+259. $2.25.

The literature dealing with strikes is not very rich. To be sure, there is an abundance of government reports, colorlessly accurate and studiously impartial; there are multitudes of propaganda pamphlets in which there is no lack of color but only stray bits of information; there are journalistic accounts of the spectacular and dramatic episodes; and there are numbers of "impartial" reports concerned with moral values and the assessment of praise or blame. But from them all there emerges no adequate picture of what a strike involves, and no one of them gives an adequate conception of the forces, especially the unseen forces, which determine the outcome. A description of a strike which departs in any measure from the conventional patterns does not have to attain a very high standard to make a real contribution to our understanding of a strike.

The Strike for Union is concerned with one corner of the great coal strike of 1922, the strike in the non-union Somerset fields of Pennsylvania. By a series of snapshots it succeeds in giving a very good picture of a number of the more or less spontaneous uprisings in isolated communities which made up "the strike," of the confusion which reigned, of the lack of preparation on the part of the leaders, and of their difficulty in keeping up with the daily calls for their services. In many ways this is the best work in the book, partly no doubt because the subject-matter lends itself to snapshot treatment, which is evidently congenial to the author.

The discussion of union politics as a factor in determining the issue of the strike is also a valuable feature, especially valuable perhaps for the naïve who think of "the union" as at all times one and indivisible in action and in opinion. How well the author has treated these political aspects is another question. He certainly had unusually good sources of information on one side, but it is not so clear that he understood the position of the international. Certainly he seems at times to forget that Somerset was but one of many fields and that it could not loom as