scribe the employers' attitudes toward labor and the significance of the traditional paternalism of feudal Japan in the labor relations of the present-day industry, the progress of the nation in labor legislation, the government's attitude toward organized labor and the severe restrictions that have been imposed against unionism by the government. In a final chapter the author summarizes his conclusions and makes some suggestions that are more ideal than practical. Starting with the premise that the major problem of industrial relations in Japan is less one of distribution of profits and more one of productivity, he points to the need for a thorough reorganization of industry with the emphasis on efficiency, to the lack of co-operation in industry, and to the need for educating labor in the principles of modern industrial organization. His suggestions are for more legislation and research-legislation compelling corporations in wage disputes to present, upon request from conciliatory labor delegations, a certified financial statement of the business; and research by the creation of an industrial research bureau, supported by capital, labor, and government, to study the economics of industry, the productivity of labor, health, sanitation, industrial welfare, and labor legislation. DOROTHY J. ORCHARD COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY participated will stress the ascendency of social over individual interests in public policy. This point of view is maintained throughout the fifteen chapters. The social ends of land utilization are stated to be: (1) a balanced production and distribution of wealth, (2) the conservation of land resources, and (3) the increase of the amenities of living so far as they are dependent upon the use of land. The means of social control to be used in the securing of these ends are stated as: (1) price fixing, or rate regulation by the government, which the authors believe should be used only with the greatest discrimination; (2) disseminating useful information; (3) adjustment of internal immigration policies and other policies to social needs; (4) the police power of the government; (5) the power of eminent domain; and (6) the power of taxation. Those who have sat in Professor Ely's classes and seminars will be interested in reading this book from the point of view of the author's success in reducing to elementary and semi-popular statements the economic analysis to which the senior author has devoted so large a part of his life. The book is characterized by its clearness of statement and the interesting presentation of vitally important material which the usual method of treatment makes obscure to the mind untrained in economics. It is perhaps impossible in an elementary work to do ample justice to the wide range of economic problems connected with the use and ownership of land. Nevertheless, readers will probably be surprised at finding no discussion of such important phases of the land problem as rent and the relations between landlord and tenant. These, evidently, are left for subsequent works. So far as the reviewer knows, this is the first work to appear under the title "Land Economics." The term itself has come into use but recently, and while some may object to it because it transfers emphasis from fundamental economic processes, such as consumption, production, exchange, and distribution, to one of the factors of production, yet it doubtless indicates a desirable shift of attention to a neglected field. The land problem is as old as civilization, but has been treated by economists in a haphazard and incidental way rather than systematically and comprehensively. The appearance of the further works of the Institute as projected will be awaited with interest. AMES, IOWA C. L. HOLMES Workmen's Representation in Industrial Government. By EARL J. MILLER. Urbana, Illinois: The University of Illinois, 1924. Pp. 182. $2.00. Mr. Miller's study is based primarily upon an investigation of the introduction of works councils and similar devices by non-union employers in the United States. His questionnaire was sent to a wide range of companies-though it missed the particularly interesting case of the Hapgood cannery-and the chapters that detail its results are useful and voluminous. They are flanked by summaries of "council movements" under union agreements in foreign countries and the United States, summaries that are dully written and frankly secondhand, but that are, nevertheless, essential to the development of the concluding chapter on "Trade Unions Versus the Non-Union Councils," toward which the entire argument is pointed. In spite of the fact that the main investigation is based entirely on employer sources, the author quite cold-bloodedly discounts the "industrial evangelism" that is so conspicuous in the literature of the subject. There have been "other important purposes" behind the movement, he says; "but the majority of non-union councils plans have been organized either to undermine existing unions or to avoid" the introduction of unionism. Moreover, the author finds no evidence thus far to support Professor Douglas' ingenious theory that these councils may at some time throw off their sheep's clothing, and face their employers as snarling and powerful unions; instead, he considers the council movement a "new and serious" threat to unionism, and discusses the two movements as "antagonistic and competing." His judgment as to their rival merits, and his grounds for judging, are therefore of real interest. The works councils, he thinks, do more than most present-day centralized unions to "counteract the deadening and dwarfing effect of minute subdivision of labor," by "extending to the worker a new opportunity to shoulder responsibility and to think and plan"; and on the whole they are more effective instruments of co-operation at the points where the workers' and employers' interests do in fact coincide. On the other hand, they do nothing, he says, to remove the more important "basic causes of inequality of bargaining power" between the individual worker and his employer. Moreover and here the argument is a less familiar one "those broader [political and legislative] functions performed in the interests of labor by the unions could never be performed by the local nonunion councils." For the workers, then, "such gains as [they] can hope to attain through the choice of localized collective bargaining under a non-union council must be purchased at a tremendous expense, and with a great risk." The argument is a realistic one, and an experiment that came too late to be recorded in the book suggests that certain leaders and advisers of the unions have analyzed the situation in much the same terms. For the Glenwood plan of co-operation instituted by the railroad shop crafts on the Baltimore and Ohio seems to meet all four of Mr. Miller's specifications. Its prime purpose is joint action to increase productive efficiency. Its method throws new responsibility upon the workers' committeemen. Yet it attempts to gain these advantages without sacrifice either of the immediate power or the larger aims of the labor movement. It is the more significant because it is the work of unions in special danger from the "open shop" campaigns; and its success, if it does succeed, will be proof that their leaders have learned an important lesson, if not from Mr. Miller's book, at least from the movement and the experience that he analyzes. CARTER GOODRICH UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN The Federal Reserve System. BY H. PARKER WILLIS. New York: Ronald Press, 1923. Pp. xiv+1765. $10.00. As an expert with the House Banking and Currency Committee during the evolution and passage of the Reserve act, as a member of the committee concerned with the organization of the Reserve system, as an official of the system down to 1923, and as an economist of international repute, the author's experience and wide acquaintance in political and financial circles make him the logical writer of this "inside story" of the Federal Reserve system. The book is divided into three parts and an appendix. Some idea of the vast amount of detail presented may be gained by noting that over 521 pages of Part I are devoted to the history of banking and currency reform from 1893 to 1922; the 278 pages of Part II to the problems of organizing the Reserve system; and the 650 pages of Part III to the Reserve system's operations down to 1922. In Part I the author presents almost verbatim the House committee's report on the act and a sixteen-page comparison of the various McGraw-Hill has recently published ECONOMIC FOREIGN POLICY of the UNITED STATES By BENJAMIN H. WILLIAMS Associate Professor of Political Science 429 PAGES, 6×9, $4.00 Dr. Williams' book offers a thorough, scholarly, interesting body of text material for courses in political science and in the international aspects of economics. It discusses the causes and forms of the new American economic diplomacy. The book has been widely and favorably reviewed. A few brief excerpts from reviews follow. American Economic Review: "The work has been well done. The volume is generously documented and shows discriminating use of official and private publications covering a wide range. It is carefully organized and thoroughly readable. It is realistic and fairly critical, but well-poised and unsensational." Political Science Review: "It is easily the best that has yet appeared on the subject." American Journal of International Law: .. admirable in tone, clear and readable in style, and adequately equipped with facts both historic and current." The Economist (London): "An admirable introduction to a complex and difficult subject." Journal of Political Economy: "A systematic and valuable text." See this on approval MCGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY, INC. PENN TERMINAL BUILDING 370 SEVENTH AVE. NEW YORK |