Primitive rules of warfare, treatment of prisoners of war, types of weapons, and strategy are other subjects considered. Leaving criticism of the facts to the anthropologists, one can raise the question whether the method is calculated to present a wholly adequate picture of the motives of primitive warfare. One often feels that instances are cited out of context and that the motives of action cannot be understood until one has before him the place of warfare in the entire culture of the tribe. This criticism is one extremely difficult to avoid in a comparative study, yet suggestions as to the function of war in typical cultural patterns would have been informing. Furthermore, the method of citing instances is likely to give a false impression of the statistical situation. This book leaves the impression that primitive warfare is almost universal, is generally very bloody, and usually has an economic motivation in the sense that it has been made to acquire heads, bodies, cattle, land, slaves, or other material things considered valuable. Instances are given of tribes that do not fight or who fight by champions or without serious casualty. Instances are also given of war for sport, for prestige, for revenge, or for other motives not usually classed as economic. Other writers on the subject have suggested that these latter types of war are the most common and that economic war has a comparatively limited distribution. Attempts at more precise quantitative analysis would be interesting. In the concluding chapter the writer stresses the function of war in societal evolution. He finds it the means of keeping population down, of promoting cultural dispersion, of stimulating inventiveness in social organization and technology, and of preventing indolence and stagnation. He believes that with the advance of economic, political, and social organization war becomes less and less useful, and more and more wasteful. To him progress is marked by the steady encroachment, not only of industrialism upon militarism, but also of co-operation upon competition. Thus the writer goes farther than Spencer or Sumner, indebtedness to whom he frequently admits, and verges on the philosophy of Kropotkin. He is convinced of the continuity between primitive and civilized warfare, and his book is full of suggestions for studies of the latter. The statements are witnessed by voluminous citation, and the book includes a long Bibliography in which, however, some well-known names, like Malinowski and Fay-Cooper Cole, do not appear. QUINCY WRIGHT UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO lation diminishes as the complexity or sensitiveness of the price trend is increased until, as in the case when the Rhodes curve is used, the very existence of a correlation becomes somewhat doubtful. 2) The lower the correlation between X and Y, the greater the divergence between the coefficients of elasticity derived from the ordinary lines of regression. The common practice of arbitrarily selecting one of the variables as the independent variable, without considering the effect of the selection on the elasticity of demand, is apt to lead to erroneous conclusions. 3) Even if we choose the worst trends, thereby obtaining a low correlation between the resulting series of trend ratios (see column 5), recourse to the "line of best fit" still yields a fair approximation to the best value of the coefficient of elasticity of demand. (Compare column YR with column Y..) In fact, the lower the correlation between the variables, the more necessary it is to use the line or curve which makes the sum of the squares of the normals a minimum. 2. THE PROBLEM OF SELECTING A GOOD DEMAND CURVE Having thus determined the trends of consumption and prices which are most satisfactory for our purposes, we are in a position to consider somewhat more fully than we have had occasion to do heretofore the further steps in the statistical determination of the law of demand by the method of trend ratios. In Table II of Appendix II there are recorded, for the period from 1890 to 1914, the observed consumption and the observed prices of sugar; the "normal" consumption and the "normal" prices as determined from the most satisfactory trends; and the consumption ratios (X) and the price ratios (Y). The consumption ratios and price ratios are highly correlated, the coefficient of correlation being, as we have already pointed out, -0.78. A graphic presentation of this inverse relationship is to be found in Figure 10. In Figure 11 the ratios are plotted on a scatter diagram. This diagram is a graphic representation of the observed relation between consumption ratios and price ratios during the pe Part II is devoted to "Regional Production of Pig Iron." This brings together, as no other book has done, data showing the shifts in the locale of pig-iron production over a period of eighteen to twenty-five years. Even in this relatively short time there has been a "relentless shift," a "persistent migration" "from the North Atlantic region toward the industrial areas along the Southern shores of Lake Erie and Lake Michigan," as well as "vigorous growth" around Birmingham. Not only does Part II show, by data on furnaces in operation and on output, the trends of these shifts, but, what is equally if not more interesting, the similarities or marked differences between the cycles of iron output in the various regions covered. This part deserves much more extended comment than can be given to it here. The authors of course intersperse tables, maps, and charts with interpretative comment on the data. It seems to the reviewer that one of the principal criticisms of the book is to be made of this part; namely, that all too little is said of the influence of the consuming industries-in other words, of demand and its geographical shifts and cyclical movements on both the regional trends and the regional cyclical fluctuations portrayed. This in spite of the concluding sentence of the preceding paragraph. While at times the book is fairly tantalizing to a student in its failure to go just one step farther in analysis, and while issue may be taken with some of its premises and conclusions (and with a few typographical errors), it presents a unique study in highly valuable and decidedly readable form. Many an industry's executives might well wish that they had at their command similar volumes of data equally well digested, for their own industries. Indeed, one may suspect that the book was written for executives in esse, or in the making, more than for academic students as such. NEW YORK CITY F. E. RICHTER BOOKS RECEIVED Artman, Charles E. Industrial Struc- Compton, Ralph Theodore. Fiscal The Money Value of a Man. (New York: Ronald Press Co., 1930.) Ethical Problems of Modern Finance. (Lectures delivered in 1929 on the William A. Vawter Foundation on Business Ethics, Northwestern University School of Commerce.) (New York: Ronald Press Co., 1930.) Evans, Griffith C. Mathematical Introduction to Economics. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1930.) Fairchild, Fred Rogers, and Compton, Ralph Theodore. Economic Problems (rev.). (New York: Macmillan Co., 193o.) Faris, Ellsworth; Laune, Ferris; Todd, Arthur J. (ed.). Intelligent Philanthropy. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930.) Fegiz, P. Luzzatto. La Popolazione di Trieste (1875-1928). (Trieste: Istituto Statistico Economico, 1929.) Gini, Corrado; Nasu, Shiroshi; Baker, Oliver E.; and Kuczynski, Robert R. Population. (Lectures on the Harris Foundation, 1929.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930.) Giulio, Scagnetti. Produzione della ricchezza e ripartizione del reddito nelle imprese. (Rome: Angelo Signorelli, 1930.) Grant, Eugene L. Principles of Engineering Economy. (New York: Ronald Press Co., 1930.) Holmes, Frank. One Job for Price. (Boston: Meador Pub. Co., 1930.) Iddings, Elizabeth S. Current Research in Law for the Academic Year 1929-1930. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1930.) Jordan, E. Theory of Legislation. (Indianapolis: Progress Pub. Co., 1930.) Karraker, Cyrus Harreld. The Seventeenth-Century Sheriff. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1930.) McGarry, Edmund D. Mortality in Retail Trade. (Buffalo: Bureau of Business and Social Research, University of Buffalo, 1930.) Niehuss, Marvin L., and Fisher, Ernest M. Problems of Long-Term Leases. (Ann Arbor: Bureau of Business Research, University of Michigan, 1930.) Percy, Lord Eustace. Maritime Trade in War. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930.) Pomfret, John E. The Struggle for Land in Ireland 1800-1923. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1930.) Prickett, Alva L., and Mikesell, R. Merrill. Introduction to Accounting. (New York: Macmillan Co., 1930.) Rice, Stuart A. (ed.). Statistics in Social Studies. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1930.) Secrist, Horace. Banking Ratios. (Stanford University: Stanford University Press, 1930.) Taylor, Paul S. Mexican Labor in the United States-Dimmit County, Winter Garden District, South Texas. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1930.) Thomas, Benjamin Platt. Russo-Amer ican Relations 1815-1867. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1930.) Timoshenko, Vladimir P. The Rôle of Agricultural Fluctuations in the Business Cycle. (Ann Arbor: Bureau of Business Research, University of Michigan, 1930.) Vernadsky, George. A History of Russia (rev. ed.). (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930.) Wagemann, Ernst. Economic Rhythm. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1930.) Whale, P. Barrett. Joint Stock Bank ing in Germany. (London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1930.) Williams, Mary Wilhelmine. The People and Politics of Latin America. (Boston: Ginn & Co., 1930.) Wu, Chao-Kwang. The International Aspect of the Missionary Movement in China. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1930.) Giants out of the earth An Advertisement of the American NO AGE but ours has seen so swift and complete an application of natural forces to the doing of daily tasks. Man's leaping knowledge . . . embodied in industrial plants and laboratories, airplanes and electric locomotives... has won new power and freedom. Machines are the symbols of a new relationship with nature. They are the servants of this civilization... helping men to extend the limits of their opportunities, to change the character of their life. Americans have been pre-eminent in this change, for in whatever they do they seek to utilize nature to the utmost. They have taken the power out of the earth and from the running streams. They have made it turn the products by rail and road. Telephone and Telegraph Company have spun metal in slim wires to carry their voices anywhere with the speed of light... and make neighbors of the scattered millions of America. Joining homes and work places, towns and distant cities, the Bell Telephone System has furnished a new communication for this new age. Forwarding the growth of the nation, giving better and more complete service in advance of the demand, its function has become the indispensable one of furnishing the means of social and business contacts in crowded cities and scattered villages over the length and breadth of a continent. The Bell System is constantly improving the scope, speed and accuracy of its service. Its work wheels of their industry and move their of contributing to the welfare and They have made color and variety out of chemistry. They |