recoveries through judgments in the courts in the case of death or serious injury than through settlements between the roads and the injured persons.

In the opinion handed down on October 30 in the case of Southern Railway Co. vs. The United States (No. 28, October term, 1911), the Supreme Court of the United States has taken a new position with respect to the definition of interstate carriers that is likely to lead to some important results. The case in question related to the use of safety appliances under the national safety-appliance act. In moving a trainload of freight from one point in the state of Alabama to another point in the same state, the Southern Railway employed one or more cars that were not equipped with safety appliances in accordance with the act of Congress. When suit was brought, the contention of the railway was that it was not subject to the act in question because it was moving goods entirely in traffic between two points in the same state. The Supreme Court now affirms the decision of the lower court to the effect that the railway was actually subject to the terms of the Federal SafetyAppliance Act, and much of its decision is devoted to a discussion of the scope of the power of Congress in regulating the affairs of railroads engaged in interstate and intrastate traffic. It reaches the conclusion that the act in question-and the power of Congress- "embraces every train on a railroad which is a highway of interstate commerce without regard to the class of traffic which the moving cars are." In answering the question "Is there a real or substantial relation . . . . between what is required by these acts in respect of vehicles used in moving intrastate traffic and the object which the acts obviously are designed to obtain, namely, the safety of interstate commerce and of those who are employed in its movement," the court says: "Congress possesses. . . . power to regulate interstate commerce which is plenary, and competently may be exerted to secure the safety of the persons and property transported therein and of those who are employed in such transportation, no matter what may be the source of the dangers which threaten it." This lays the foundation for a very large extension of the interstate commerce power should Congress care to act upon the authority thus recognized.

....

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTICES

Le mouvement physiocratique en France, de 1756 à 1770. Par GEORGES WEULERSSE. Paris: Félix Alcan, 1910. Vol. I, xxxiv, 617 pp.; Vol. II,

768 pp.

The Physiocratic system, most students of economics now realize, is worthy of more serious study than has been devoted to it in England and America. It was a system sui generis; few of its elements were fitted to enter into the structure of classical thought, and hence it was naturally ignored by the classical writers. But economic science is now endeavoring to establish itself upon a broader basis. It is subjecting its assumptions to a philosophical analysis; it is attempting to gauge the influence exerted upon the structure of its thought by contemporary, and probably transitory, conditions. Modern critical economics concerns itself less with the eternal verities and more with the "point of view."

Whatever the validity of the results of the analysis of the Physiocrats, there can be no doubt that the whole group succeeded in viewing the complex of economic phenomena from a single, determinate angle. Their philosophical presuppositions are well wrought out. The relation of the Physiocratic doctrines to the practical conditions of the day is easily established. For these reasons a study of the system should go far toward placing the student at a point from which he can view with impartiality the current economic formulation.

However profitable a study of the Physiocrats may be, it has, until recent years, involved difficulties that for most of us were almost insuperable. What did the Tableau économique signify without its historical setting? How many of us realized that the table was based upon an assumption of a price level calculated by Quesnay to be the average world price level, and upon an assumption of agricultural methods then employed? How much did we get out of the Philosophie rurale or the L'ordre naturel ? We needed to know the evolution of the school, the practical problems presented by the times, the character of the contemporary critical literature, of which there was an immense volume. The publication of Oncken's work made many things clear that were before unintelligible; but it is noteworthy that the most recent history of economics published in English still persists in classing with the Physiocratic school Gournay, the founder of the most formidable school of contemporary criticism that the Physiocrats encountered.

We now possess, in Professor Weulersse's volumes, an illuminating account of the Physiocratic movement down to 1770. One-third of the first volume gives the history of the school; the rest of the volume offers a systematic analysis of its economic doctrines and its program for practical reform: the encouragement of capitalistic agriculture; tax reform; the methods of raising the price of grain. To those of us who have a vague notion that the Physiocrats, through a process of abstraction, evolved the produit net and the impôt unique, it will be somewhat surprising to learn how wide a range of ideas entered into the discussion and what a wealth of practical information was enlisted in the service both of the Physiocrats and of their critics.

The second volume is devoted mainly to the political and philosophical views of the Physiocrats; to the practical results of their propaganda, and to the opposition to

the school, theoretical and practical. The volume closes with the author's criticism of the Physiocracy.

Le mouvement physiocratique, one recognizes at a glance, is a work of erudition. The notes, of which there is a generous supply, give evidence of a vast amount of study of the literature-judicious study, for none of the notes is without pertinency. But the work is not merely erudite. There is far less of mere detail and trifling personalities than is to be found in many of our shorter accounts of the Physiocrats. As was to be expected in a work of this magnitude, many of the Physiocratic writers who are ordinarily disposed of in a sentence assume the proportions of contributors of weight. After reading this work one no longer feels that the Physiocracy was a one-man party. Mirabeau and Mercier de la Rivière especially gain in our respect; but we come to feel that even Dupont de Nemours had some originality. The Physiocrats were, after all, a valiant group of men; in view of their scanty numbers and the difficulties under which they labored, their achievements, both theoretical and practical, were wonderful.

To those who are interested in the relations between eighteenth-century philosophy and economics, Professor Weulersse's treatment of the philosophical doctrines of the Physiocrats will be disappointing. Not much is said of natural law and natural rights. Much, to be sure, is said of the natural rights of property and liberty, but the economic aspect of these dogmas alone receives emphasis. This is a result of the author's apparent conviction that the philosophy of the school was an afterthought, as it were. Certainly, the political and moral philosophy of the Physiocrats received definite formulation only in the later period of its history, and as a logical result of its economic doctrines. The Physiocrats were, first, financial reformers; second, agrarian reformers; third, economists; and fourth political philosophers and metaphysicians. Not that philosophical preconceptions were absent even from the earliest formulations of the doctrine. We all know that Quesnay was strongly influenced in his political views by his contemplation of a natural order in the physical world. But the ideas of the sacredness of property and liberty, and their corollary in politics, free trade, in the widest sense of the term, received their significance in the system from the practical object of the school: Restore financial equilibrium by making agriculture pay. Under modern conditions, the author suggests, the Physiocrats would probably have been agrarian protectionists, and would have accepted all the limitations upon the rights of liberty and property that protectionism implies. Their political philosophy would have been adjusted to the needs of their economics.

The work of Professor Weulersse goes far toward destroying some of our illusions about the school. Have we not thought of them as at least well-meaning friends of man, defenders of the oppressed? According to Professor Ingram, they were inspired with a sincere desire for the public good, "especially for the material and moral elevation of the working classes." Professor Weulersse shows that the Physiocrats were the exponents of capitalism, none the less ruthless because confined to the field of agriculture. The laborer, in their perfect and eternal order of society, was never to have more than a bare minimum of existence; their antipathy to the corporations of arts and crafts was largely due to a feeling of outrage that some laborers, protected by monopoly, received more than a subsistence minimum. Their attack upon the privileged workers was not animated by sympathy for the mass of laborers excluded; it was animated by a feeling that the high wages of the privileged were prejudicial to the produit net. If the Physiocrats approved of rising money wages, it was because they believed that the laborer would become a more liberal purchaser of agricultural

products, and increase the produit net. Rising prices of grain-even famine prices— were viewed by them with unmixed satisfaction; among the gains from rising prices were reckoned the increasing efforts the laborer would make to keep body and soul together. The Physiocrats begrudged the laborer his holidays, and used their influence with the church to cause feast days to coincide with Sundays. They rejoiced in the transformation of the landholding peasantry into a landless proletariat. They disapproved of wholesale inclosures and dispossession of the peasantry, to be sure, but this was only because such a policy was in contravention of the sacred right of private property-a good more essential to their system than was large-scale agriculture.

The author places in a new light the relations to the Physiocracy of Gournay and his school. The latter, too, were exponents of capitalism-industrial and commercial. They were moderate protectionists, not because they were doctrinal conservatives, but because the interests which they defended were not so clearly benefited by free trade as was agriculture. Fundamentally, it was not the antithesis of theory and practice that distinguished the schools; it was the opposition between practical interests. ALVIN S. JOHNSON

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Land and Labour: Lessons from Belgium. By B. SEEBOHM ROWNTREE. London: Macmillan, 1910. 8vo, pp. xx+633. $3.50.

As the title suggests, Mr. Rowntree's study of Belgium is directed especially upon her system of land-tenure, with the purpose of drawing some lessons pertinent to the labor situation in England. The author pursued his investigation with great thoroughness; he devoted four years to his task, and had every assistance which public officials and private scholars could render. The result is an illuminating account of the social and economic life of modern Belgium from the point of view of the welfare of labor.

A description of the Belgian system of land-tenure is the foundation of the whole work. On the basis of an independent and most laborious investigation, conducted with the co-operation of the government, the number of landowners is estimated at 719,986, or 10 per cent of the total population. Three-quarters of these landed proprietors own less than five acres apiece; the size of the average holding is 9.5 acres. The average size of the plots cultivated as separate undertakings is 5.7 acres, and two-thirds of these plots are less than 2.5 acres in extent. Of the cultivators, 72 per cent are renters, 28 per cent, owners.

The cause of this minute subdivision of the land is found in the laws of succession, which provide that when a man dies his estate is to be divided equally among his children. The effects of this system of small holdings are far-reaching. It tends to increase the intensiveness of cultivation, to check the drift of population to the cities, to lower urban rentals, to mitigate the hardships of unemployment, and to raise wages in the towns. On the other hand, it has its share in raising agricultural rents, which are twice as high as in England.

Not less beneficent is the Belgian system of transportation, with its well-built highways, its main and narrow-gauge railroads, and its convenient waterways. Of especial importance are the low commutation fares, permitting factory-workers to

live in the country, and the light, narrow-gauge lines which bring every farm within reach of a market. Commendation is given also to the institutions for co-operative credit, which enable the farmer to borrow on easy terms to buy a cow, or the artisan to build a house.

Co-operation in other forms, and labor unions have by no means the importance in Belgium that they have in England. They are overshadowed by the claims of party allegiance, which compels Liberals, Catholics, and Socialists to maintain separate labor organizations. Education, too, does less to improve the laborer's efficiency than in many countries, while poor-relief is administered in such a manner as to encourage dependence, and even to depress wages. Mr. Rowntree refers the lower rates of wages, as compared with wages in England, to three chief causes: (1) lower efficiency of labor owing to lower standard of living; (2) aim of employers to secure a market through cheapness rather than through excellence of product; (3) weakness of the trade unions.

Two instructive chapters (xxiii and xxiv) are devoted to the "Standard of Comfort and the Cost of Living." Seventy family budgets were obtained by Mr. Rowntree's staff, compiled from account-books kept for four or five weeks under careful supervision. This method gives reliable results as to food and rent, although a longer period is desirable if data equally accurate are to be obtained regarding expenditures for clothing and for other objects for which payments are made at irregular intervals. The dietary analysis shows underfeeding in the majority of families having a weekly income of less than twenty-five shillings. The minimum wage necessary for mere physical efficiency is estimated, for the typical family of five, at 16s. 4d. a week. An interesting comparison is made with Mr. Rowntree's estimate of the minimum for a similar family in York, England, the sum in this case being 22s. 9d. It seems to the reviewer the extreme of caution to exclude from such an estimate as does the author, any allowance for the maintenance of health and the burial of the dead. The estimate of twenty-six shillings for the year's expenditure for clothing for a man seems to an American extremely low. Nevertheless, this minimum of sixteen shillings a week is above the predominant wage for unskilled labor, and more than the prevailing wage in certain skilled trades. Housing is discussed in a separate chapter, and the conclusion is reached that, owing largely to the relief from congestion afforded by the facilities for building outside of crowded centers, the Belgians, notwithstanding occasional slums, are better housed at less expense than the English workers.

In his final chapter Mr. Rowntree summarizes his work and draws from it his lessons. He would have Belgium improve her educational system, cultivate temperance, improve her factory laws, strengthen her labor organizations, and tax the unearned increment of her lands. England is strongly advised to introduce small holdings of land on a wide scale (with taxation of the unearned increment), and, as subsidiary to this measure, to promote popular education in intensive agriculture, institutions for co-operative credit, the afforestation of waste lands, and the building of light railways.

In thoroughness of research and clearness of presentation, Land and Labour is a worthy companion to Poverty: a Study of Town Life; it is a masterpiece in the application of scientific method to the analysis of social phenomena.

BELOIT COLLEGE

ROBERT C. CHAPIN