ence of opinion is shown with reference to the question how a limitation should be effected, whether by an educational test or by actual limitation of numbers. The view is strongly intimated that the increase in the number of immigrants has tended to keep down wages and to prevent the raising of general standards of living-very mild conclusions considering the character of the data developed in the report itself.

President Taft's message to Congress (December 6, 1910), although one of the longest of such documents ever submitted, is regarded as a decidedly colorless document. Its chief significance from an economic standpoint is found in the guarded character of the attitude which is adopted therein as contrasted with the position accepted in the message of a year ago. The President now recommends that the anti-trust legislation and in the main the railroadrate legislation of the country be permitted to rest in its present condition for a time in order that the effect of more rigid enforcement of the laws may be ascertained, and while he renews his suggestion of last year that a federal incorporation law be enacted, the suggestion is evidently only made pro forma. President Taft has now definitely accepted the plan of a permanent tariff commission or board and recommends it in his message. He has progressed very far from the state of mind indicated in his Winona speech of September, 1909, in which he spoke of the present tariff as the best ever passed. He now feels that the duties need revision and in many cases reduction. The recommendations of the President in favor of a ship-subsidy scheme are the same that he has made in the past, although they are now renewed with greater positiveness in view of the passing of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. A physical valuation for railroad operating properties is a step in the direction of "radicalism" which the President has hitherto avoided but to which he now commits himself. All in all, the message, on these as well as on other points, represents a decided change from the point of view of a year ago and is indicative of the instinctive alteration which is coming over the face of things in national administration.

Comptroller of the Currency Murray's annual report to Congress concerning the status of the national banking system is likely to receive considerably more than passing attention. The report

marked a distinct step forward in the control of national banking from Washington, and at the same time affords information concerning important measures designed to change the basis of note issue. Under the latter head must be placed the actual organization, now formally announced by the Comptroller, of national currency associations in several parts of the country thus completing the machinery necessary to the control of emergency note issues should conditions at any time warrant or demand such a step under the onerous terms laid down in the Aldrich-Vreeland law. By way of better control, the report notes important progress in cooperation with state bank supervisors designed to prevent the entry of weak or dishonest institutions into state and national systems, the establishment of a much more stringent system of oversight of reserve agents (those banks being rejected as agents which do not conform to the requirements of the national act), the abolition of the custom whereby officers and employees of national institutions performed much of the essential work of bank examination, and various other changes. Despite this decided forward movement in bank control the comptroller's figures relating to general conditions none the less show the inadequacy of the present system of reserves and of currency and seem to indicate that conditions are gradually working toward another period of inflation and overissue such as preceded the panic of 1907. True, the banks during the past summer showed a material power of recovery and of self-protection but there are evidently limits to what can be done by the wiser bankers of the community toward toning up conditions throughout the system. These are far too largely dependent upon the will of the multitudinous smaller institutions to permit of their being easily supervised by the Comptroller or controlled by the conservative action of the stronger bankers of the country.

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTICES

Wool-Growing and the Tariff. A Study in the Economic History of the United States. By CHESTER WHITNEY WRIGHT, PHD. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1910. 8vo, pp. xii+362. $2.00.

In this volume we have an excellent example of the kind of study which needs to be made of all our leading industries. The author has given a very full account of the development of wool-growing in this country throughout the whole period of our history and has considered with due care all the circumstances which have influenced it, giving especial attention to the effect of the protective tariff duties. To do this satisfactorily he has been led into a much broader field than the main title of his book would indicate. The industry he undertakes to investigate turns out to have wider relations and to be affected by a greater variety of influences than a cursory view of it would lead us to expect. The importance of foreign competition has compelled him to study the national wool market and to note the conditions affecting the production of wool in the world at large. He has had to trace the rise of wool manufacture in the United States almost as fully as that of wool-growing. The fact that sheepraising is only one of many industries to which the labor and capital of our farmers may be turned has compelled him to consider the general agricultural situation in order to explain the growth and decay of the industry in different sections at different periods. For similar reasons he has had to give attention to such broad features of our economic development as the growth of improved transportation, the settlement of the West, and the rise of internal commerce, with the change which it brought from a condition of local isolation with only domestic or town industry to an organized national economy. The results of this broad treatment of his subject justifies his subtitle of "A Study in the Economic History of the United States." It is the multiplication of just such studies of our principal industries which will make possible the writing of that general economic history of the country for which there seems to be so great a demand. It is to be hoped that similar volumes may speedily be forthcoming on the cattle and meat industry, wheat and flour, tobacco, lumber, and coal, not to mention purely manufacturing industries like silk, boots and shoes, and many others.

It is evident at once that the value and interest of this volume does not arise from the importance of sheep husbandry in our economic affairs. The raising of sheep for their fleece alone has never played a very large part in American agriculture. It cannot be compared with our other great agricultural staples: cotton, wheat, and that vast industry of cattle, hogs, and corn. Nor has it for long been equal in importance to dairying. Indeed from one point of view its history is a record of failure rather than of success. It belongs to a group of agricultural industries which were greatly stimulated by the industrial changes of the nineteenth century. The effect of the so-called Industrial Revolution upon agriculture was to create in western Europe a steadily growing market for raw materials and food. The demand was for cotton and wool at

first, the raw materials of the textile industries. Later on, with the growth of industrial centers having dense populations, it was for breadstuffs, meats, and dairy produce. Improved transportation facilities tended to give to the newly settled communities of the world the chief share in supplying this market, and this has been a large factor in their prosperity. From the very first, as the new demand arose, the United States has taken the leading position as a source of supply for cotton, breadstuffs, and meat products. In wool, however, she has not only failed to secure any share in the expanding international trade, but has not even been able to supply her own domestic needs. The explanation of our failure in this industry is scarcely less important or interesting to the student of our economic history than that of our success along other lines.

The author has spared no pains to investigate all the conditions which have influenced the industry in this country and helped to determine its status. Its failure to develop along with the other great branches of agriculture has not been due to a lack of natural resources adapted to it, nor to the failure of the people to appreciate its importance and make strenuous efforts to promote its growth. There are vast regions in this country with a climate and soil well adapted to sheep-raising, as is proven by the fact that in almost every part of the country our farmers have at one time or another kept a considerable number of sheep and in some regions a great many. No other industry has received more attention from enterprising individuals or from agricultural associations and state boards of agriculture. Moreover it is almost the only branch of agriculture to which the assistance of the federal government in the shape of protective tariff duties has been directly given. In nearly all other industries the farmer's share in the benefits of protection, such as they were, has been indirect. Protection has been expected to benefit him by the building up of a home market for his products. But the wool-grower, like the manufacturer, has been assisted directly by protection. Why in spite of all this has the industry failed to keep pace with the other great agricultural staples of the country?

The determining factors have apparently been two: on the one hand the competition of foreign countries either economically better adapted to sheep husbandry than our own, or less favorable to other branches of agriculture; and on the other hand the competition within our country of other branches of agriculture for the labor and capital of our farmers. The author has not given the first of these as much attention as it seems to me to deserve. In describing the changes which have taken place in the location of the industry within the United States he has incidentally pointed out the tendency of the industry in the world at large to move away from the densely populated regions with fertile soil and to fix itself in the more distant and inaccessible regions, where semiarid climate or backward social conditions render other forms of industry more difficult; and he has mentioned some of the reasons for this change. But his treatment is too brief to be satisfactory. He would have done well to give more attention to the conditions affecting the industry among our successful competitors. Why has wool-growing prospered so mightily in Australia, South Africa, and South America? Why is the industry carried on so extensively in Turkey, Russia, China, and India? The success of the industry in these countries is certainly one of the reasons for our failure to secure any share in the international wool trade.

In the author's opinion it is the second factor which has chiefly shaped the development of the industry in this country; and here he has left little to be desired in thoroughness and skill of treatment. Sheep-raising has at one time or another been carried on to a greater or less extent in every section of the country; but with one exception, to be noted presently, it has always been a part of a mixed system of agriculture. Nowhere has it been the dominant interest of the inhabitants over any large area of country. It has always been carried on in connection with the production of wheat and corn, with the raising of hogs and cattle, or with dairying, and usually several of these industries have been carried on together. It has always been a comparatively easy matter for the farmers to increase or diminish their flocks, and they have been quick to do this whenever the profits to be secured in sheep-raising seemed greater or less than were yielded by these other branches of agriculture. Whatever economic changes affected any of this group of industries was sure to affect the farmer's attitude toward the sheep industry and consequently to cause an increase or decrease in the flocks of the country. As might be expected under such conditions the course of development of the sheep industry has been very fluctuating. It has constantly changed its local situation; and its importance in the different localities has been continually changing. There was a time when its chief center was New England and the Middle States; and another when it was in the Middle West east of the Mississippi. At one time Texas and the Pacific coast were important seats of the industry. In none of these localities, however, has it been able to find a stable economic basis. Everywhere it has ultimately declined, being supplanted by one or more of those agricultural industries which constantly compete with it for the labor and capital of the farmers.

Such appears to have been the chief influence in determining the status of the industry everywhere except in the one section noted above. This is the high, semi-arid region of the far West. In this region the situation of the industry has been quite different. Here for the first time it has found an independent economic basis. It is not carried on in connection with other industries, and it is not possible to substitute other industries for it over a large part of this region. The only possibility of such substitution is the use of the range for grazing cattle instead of sheep, and this, we are told, cannot be done to any great extent. Here at last the industry has freed itself from that domestic competition which has steadily undermined it in other sections. Henceforth its status in this country will depend more upon the competition of wool-growers in foreign countries than upon the competition of grain, cattle, and hog production and dairying in our own country.

There is still a third kind of competition which has had considerable influence upon the woolgrowing industry at different times and still continues to affect it. It is the use of other materials in place of wool to satisfy the wants of consumers. The most important material substituted for wool has been cotton, the supply of which has often exerted an important influence upon the wool market. This substitution has sometimes come about by the public's preferring to buy cotton instead of woolen goods, and sometimes, especially of late, by the use of cotton as a material in wool manufacture. From the first this has been a common practice among American wool manufacturers. The cheap satinets and worsteds, so important a part of our domestic manufacture in early times, had