achievements of his church and a resulting tendency to favor her claims. Of this fact he is confessedly conscious in his introduction. He has "kept a steady eye on the religious particulars"; he admits the "religious trend" of his work; but at the same time he has made it his duty to hear the testimony of dissenting and infidel authors." He apologizes for quoting so frequently H. H. Bancroft and W. H. Prescott, "two authors whose religious ideas are either extremely vague or absolutely null when not inimical to Christianity."

Quite naturally the author's conclusions on a majority of the questions concerning primitive days are based upon the Scriptures. For instance, after examining the opinions of a multitude of scientists as to the probable time of the appearance of man on the earth, and summing up their widely divergent opinions, the author refuses to steer his "exploration bark" by their figures, and decides "for prudence to seek safety in the harbor opened to us by that venerable book," etc. Similar discrepancies existing among Bible students upon this point he easily disposes of by the statement that if we knew more about the Scriptures we could the better explain them.

Aside from the criticism that the work is more of a Middle Age church disquisition than a modern historical essay, one must note the difficulty that always attends such obsolete methods the impossibility of rendering by them a verdict upon any mooted question. The mind is lost in uncertainty between the legendary and the authentic. Only when resting upon Scriptural ground does the author venture beyond the highly probable. In general, he rarely states a fixed opinion. Thus, of the texts of the Scriptures he finds that "which one is right and which wrong will most likely ever remain a matter of dispute "; the time and circumstances of the disappearance of the so-called Mound Builders are "involved in as deep mystery as those of their first appearance"; while concerning the supposed evidences of the Norsemen in Massachusetts, "explanation strictly historical is now impossible."

On the other hand, it should be said that no previous work has disclosed to the general reader so many disquisitions on the possible Christianization of the Western world before Columbus, nor made so full a compilation of the many opinions on this vexed question. The volumes will be read with interest even by those who lament that the author did not con

fine himself to a narrower field and a less pre-judged attitude. Mention should be made of the several charts accompanying the descriptive matter. In closing, the author announces a similar work upon the spread of Christianity in America after Columbus. EDWIN ERLE SPARKS.

Two BOOKS ON BANKING.*

The compiler of a history of banking in the United States is confronted at the outset by a difficulty inherent in the material with which he has to deal. Should the treatment be chronological? or should the subject-matter be divided into histories of banking in each of the States, with a separate section for banks chartered by the Federal government? The latter plan is the one followed by Mr. Knox in the work before us. This plan facilitates the tabulation and orderly arrangement of the vast array of details which defy all attempts at condensation; but on the other hand it makes the coördination of the material a practical impossibility and precludes the comprehensive view that is essential to complete understanding. The aim of the author was to gather all the information possible "upon every phase of banking in every State of the Union." This work, left unfinished at his death in 1892, has now been revised and brought up to date under the editorship of Mr. Bradford Rhodes and Mr. Youngman of the "Bankers' Magazine," with the assistance of "a corps of financial writers" who have furnished sketches of banking history in the several States. The result is a stout octavo volume of eight hundred and eighty closely printed pages, which, although it contains much information not elsewhere accessible, is not so much a connected history as a collection of material for one. To a certain extent the book has the advantage of being the work of a banker of training and ripe experience, who had, moreover, during his long service as Comptroller of the Currency, exceptional opportunities for familiarizing himself with the varied details of his subject; nevertheless, it

*A HISTORY OF BANKING IN THE UNITED STATES. By the late John Jay Knox; assisted by a corps of financial writers in the various States. Revised and brought up to date by Bradford Rhodes and Elmer H. Youngman. New York: Bradford Rhodes & Co.

CLEARING HOUSES: Their History, Methods, and Administration. By James G. Cannon, Vice-President of the Fourth National Bank of the City of New York. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

is on the whole disappointing. The desire of the editors (it is impossible to determine the extent of Mr. Knox's authorship) to chronicle the facts without bias may be assumed to be the reason why all statement of basic principles and explanation of events by reference thereto is, as far as may be, omitted. This is somewhat like the play of "Hamlet" with Hamlet left out.

Strange as it may seem, the principles of sound banking have never been well understood in the United States, even by bankers themselves. As a consequence there has been nothing in the nature of progressive development with gradual addition of desirable features and elimination of defective ones. Instead, we have but a sorry record of the practical trial of almost every conceivable theory in regard to banking and credit. No other country has been the field for such a variety of foolish legislation upon the subject. Good banking systems in some of the States and bad systems in other States have existed side by side, yet seemingly with little or no comprehension, ou the part of bankers, legislators, or the public generally, of what constituted the vital difference between them. At no time has a thoroughly sound, well-considered, and comprehensive system, adapted in all respects to the needs of the country, been in operation. The National Banking Law brought order out of the chaos which preceded its enactment, and has many excellent features, yet it is far from creating an ideal system. Its very success in protecting the note-holder from loss is responsible for the prevalence of erroneous ideas in regard to the true character of the note-issuing function. This function has always been one of the chief stumbling-blocks in the way of an understanding of banking principles. Ignorance of these principles led to the enactment of laws in some of the States, of which unscrupulous men were quick to take advantage, and "wildcat banks" and "stumptail currency were the logical sequence.

Even in the States in which the note issues were on a sound basis, the volume in circulation was regulated more by accidentas, for example in New England, through the development of the Suffolk Bank redemption systemthan as the result of a clear conception of the governing principle. This principle, stated briefly, is that no bank should pay out over its counter other bank notes than its own, and that provision should be made for daily redemption in all the commercial centres. In

this way only can true "elasticity" be secured and the volume of the currency be automatically adjusted to the needs of the community.

In a book more than half of which is made up of articles by some twenty-seven different authors, consistent exposition in the light of any one view of what is the true explanation of the occurrences described, is not to be expected; and it is not surprising, therefore, to find effects attributed to entirely different causes, as on page 458, where one author thinks the panic of 1857 was due to the low tariff then in force; while another writer, on page 512, expresses the opinion that inflation of the currency was the cause. Such differences of opinion are perhaps inevitable in a work by so many hands. The editors, however, must be held responsible for not eliminating, so far as possible, the jargon of "the street and adopting a scientific terminology in its place. To speak of "money," when "free loanable capital" is the correct phrase, may be sufficiently intelligible to the man who borrows or the banker who lends the capital; but the use of such language in a history is in the highest degree misleading. What wonder is it that when people are informed that "money is scarce they should jump to the conclusion that the volume of the circulating medium is inadequate? Yet the simple truth is that it is not money but loanable capital that has become scarce, because the free capital of the country or the locality-which free capital may consist either of money or credit — is in use owing to increased business activity, or is locked up through apprehension on the part of its owners. It is true that money and capital and credit are, under some circumstances, interchangeable terms; but that need not here be taken into consideration, this not being the place for extended discussion of the

relation between them.

Comment in detail upon the many topics treated in this volume would expand these remarks far beyond the limits of available space. As a storehouse of information, it is a welcome addition to banking literature. Many of the separate articles are ably written and are worthy of separate reviews. Much pains appears to have been taken to secure accuracy of statement. While there are occasional slipsas, for instance, on page 192, where it is a little surprising to read that the Metropolitan National Bank of Chicago failed in the year 1888,- such mistakes are remarkably few for a work of such magnitude.

The utility of the Clearing House as a laborsaving and time-saving device in banking is now well understood. Curiously enough, although the idea of offsetting mutual demands against each other and settling them by payment of the resulting balances only, is simplicity itself, the methods by which it is put into practice vary widely. Mr. Cannon has performed a service which bankers will appreciate, in setting forth in detail, in his book on "Clearing Houses," the machinery in use for this purpose in the different cities in the United States, and also in London, in Canada, and in Japan. The work is that of a banker thoroughly familiar with his subject and careful in his presentment of it.

Clearing Houses in their inception were the outgrowth of a practical necessity. The same consideration has led most of these institutions in the United States to assume functions other than the primary one for which they were established. Many have become to a greater or less degree a medium for united action on the part of their members. Rules regulating collection charges, rates of interest on deposits, banking hours, and other matters, have been adopted in many cities. The most important of the added functions is the pooling of resources in times of financial stress through the issue of Clearing House loan certificates. This contrivance, the most ingenious which has been evolved from the banking methods in vogue in the United States, affording as it does a partial remedy for the lack of elasticity in our currency, is discussed at length by Mr. Cannon. While pointing out the great benefit which has accrued from the resort to such certificates in critical times, he omits to indicate the disadvantage which their use implies. There can be no doubt that the issue of loan certificates by the New York banks in 1893 relieved the acuteness of the distress then prevalent; but it is true also that it intensified the currency famine and subjected bankers and merchants throughout the country to a heavy tax by causing an abnormally large discount on New York exchange. Alone among banks in the leading commercial centres, the Chicago banks have never made use of this device. There are many reasons for this; among them, the certainty of inducing a scarcity of currency, which could not fail to bear with severity upon the great market-place for products always bought and sold for cash, has ever been a potent consideration.

Mr. Cannon very justly criticises the custom

which obtains among the Boston banks of lending to each other the credit balances arising from the clearing. In commenting upon a somewhat similar practice in Chicago, he does not appear to note the important distinction that the Chicago banks trade their balances merely as a matter of convenience and to avoid the risk of carrying large sums of money through the streets. The necessity of being always prepared to make cash settlements is not in the least done away with. Such settlements are liable to be insisted upon at any time, and especially in periods of stringency. FREDERICK W. GOOKIN.

FINDING A FRESH LAND.* In some glowing words concerning his country, an American poet sings:

"Here the last stand is made.

If we fail here, what new Columbus bold,
Steering brave prow through black seas unafraid,
Finds out a fresh land where man may abide

And freedom yet be saved?"

And the answer comes with no uncertain voice in the new book by Mr. Henry Demarest Lloyd, an amplification of his recent "Country without Strikes," and entitled, "Newest England, Notes of a Democratic Traveller in New Zealand, with Some Australian Comparisons." To those unfamiliar with the practical accomplishments of the statesmen guiding the destinies of the English-speaking people in the antipodes, the book will be a surprise; to all idealists and believers in human perfectibility it will be a delight; and to evolutionists generally it will be in a sense a stumbling-block. At the same time it is reasonable proof that many things we in the United States have been dismissing as utopian dreams are eminently practical in unselfish hands, requiring nothing more abstract than leaders of the people who have the welfare of the people first at heart, with intelligence enough to know where that welfare lies.

In 1890 the people of Australasia found the world slipping beneath their feet. A huge strike, extending through the Australian continent and its tributary islands, had been completely overthrown and the labor element left gasping with defeat. Concurrently, financial dishonesty and monetary stringency had paralyzed capital, so that in victory it was no

*NEWEST ENGLAND: Notes of a Democratic Traveller in New Zealand, with Some Australian Companions. By Henry Demarest Lloyd. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co.

happier than its opponent in rout. In this emergency, as Mr. Lloyd tells us, there arose in New Zealand a small body of men, themselves the sons of the people, but sons who had not forgotten their upbringing, who stepped into the gap. The Bank of New Zealand, whining patriotism while it plundered rich and poor alike, was taken out of a slough of despond into which its managers had plunged it, and the country was thereby enabled to weather the financial storms which all but wrecked the sister colonies. This accomplished, a series of reforms was set on foot, the end of which is not yet. It is with these that Mr. Lloyd is chiefly concerned, and they are already so numerous that little more than a summary of them can be given.

First of all, the New Zealand government, recognizing tramps, paupers, and workless laborers as symptoms of a disease infecting the body politic, was wise enough to regard it as only one of several symptoms, among which were also to be counted millionaires when made by turning over to private individuals any of the powers of government for the sake of private gain. The system of taxation was therefore reversed. The tax which bore most heavily on the improvements of land, and so on enterprise and thrift, was taken off, and the burden thrown on vacant land. If the holdings were large, the tax was proportionately larger; if owned by an absentee, larger still; and the right to purchase any given estate at a ten per centum advance on the valuation given in for purposes of taxation was legalized a measure which has given relief to scores of New Zealand families by enabling them to leave the overcrowded cities. Leases in perpetuity, with occupancy as an essential, make it impossible for the land to return again into the hands of the few. "No man now dreams," an eminent New Zealander is quoted as saying, "of founding a great landed estate in New Zealand."

"No

efficient ally of the State against the greed of employers is to be found, the one bulwark against the wholesale manufacture of men of broken wills and hopeless futures, the government set about restraining the power of both employers and employees for ill, passing a compulsory arbitration law which at a single move made strikes and the attendant abuses of public rights impossible, but limiting its beneficence to members of trades unions alone. A strike is not legally impossible in New Zealand, but a strike by organized labor—the only form of strike which has proved effective - is impossible. So a lockout by employers, singly or in combination, is not legally impossible, but may take place only when their employees have failed to join themselves to some labor organization. It is significant that both sides not only welcome this innovation upon what some economists style natural rights, but refuse to avail themselves of the recommendation of the court below, the powers of which are limited to conciliation, and carry their cases to the point where a compulsory decree of the court of last resort ends the litigation by final adjudication.

The railroads, prime cause of many great fortunes through partiality and private contract elsewhere, already belonged to the state in New Zealand, yet had been administered by a board remote from the popular will. The management was placed directly in the government, which is fully amenable to the will of the people as expressed at the polls. As a result, the rates are fixed regardless of the wealth of the shipper or the value and quantities of his shipments, and the poor farmer and the rich manufacturer have exact equality in getting their wares to market. A single policy is declared that of cheaper rates.

The government itself, without the intervention of a banker, advances money on lands for purposes of the improvement thereof, and the mortgage shark has disappeared with the rack renter. Not only this, but the government finds a market in London for the products of New

signments, as of agricultural products, in its hands and inspected. The wild dream of the Western and Southern populist, which would have had the American government issue debentures based upon wheat and other grain in governmental warehouses to the farmer, is in New Zealand an accomplished fact.

Recognizing that in trades unions the only

Women vote in New Zealand, and every needy individual who reaches the age of sixtyfive is given a state pension of five dollars a

week, the moneys for this purpose being secured by a progressive income tax.

All these things have been "made to pay,' as Mr. Lloyd is at pains to prove. Within the short time they have been operative they have been profitable to the country, and taxation has decreased. It is not pretended that all abuses have been rectified. A highly protective tariff still exists, for example; but there is a perfect recognition on the part of the government that the effect of such a measure is to enrich the rich and deplete the purses of the poor, and compensating taxation is arranged for in view of that fact.

Nor is the country standing still. The programme of the future contains such items as state fire insurance; zone rates on railroads ; nationalized steamship lines, mines, and land; inexpensive law courts; state banking; and many more things of the sort, all of which seem to grow naturally out of existing conditions.

As will be seen, the book is of the greatest interest to all students of existing social conditions. It is written in Mr. Lloyd's simplest and best manner, and is, within certain limits, convincing. Yet there is too little stress laid on the fact that only ten years have elapsed since the beginning of these reforms was made

RECENT RELIGIOUS DISCUSSIONS.* The volume entitled "Evolution and Theology" is made up of a series of articles published at various times. It is vigorous, aggressive, and suggestive.

*EVOLUTION AND THEOLOGY, AND OTHER ESSAYS. By Otto Pfleiderer, D.D. Edited by Orello Cone. New York: The Macmillan Co.

THE RELIGION of a GentleMAN. By Charles F. Dole. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.

THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF HOLINESS. By E. H. Askwith, M.A. New York: The Macmillan Co.

THE SOUL OF A CHRISTIAN. By Frank Granger. New York: The Macmillan Co.

THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE. By John Watson, M.A., D.D. New York: McClure, Phillips & Co.

THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE. By Ernst Haeckel. New York: Harper & Brothers.

WHENCE AND WHITHER. By Paul Carus. Chicago: The Open Court Company.

The author occasionally pushes his view to a point that is self-destructive. Thus, he says: "If it is the methodic cardinal proposition of the science of to-day that we have to explain every condition as ceding one, this excludes the appearance of any the causally determined development out of a precondition, event, action, or personality, which is not explicable out of the factors of the preceding conditions and according to the laws of genesis in general" (page 9). This assertion leaves no standing-ground for human thought as a free, selfdirected process. All mental activity sinks to a series of causal events, each series on the same footing as every other series. The earth-worm leaves a shiny trail on the flag it traverses. The direction it pursues has no significance, has no rational basis. The movement, at its highest and its lowest expression, is merely an obscure fact with no quality in the realm of truth.

"The Religion of a Gentleman" — the religion of a man is admirable in purpose and in execu tion. The author is possessed of strong spiritual susceptibilities, ruddy life, and quick intellect. His aim is to unite these human endowments in one coherent self-sustaining whole. The book will be helpful to all who are struggling for such a reconciliation, and find themselves embarrassed by obtrusive irrational elements in religion. With sound substance of faith. common-sense, the author grasps at once the inner

"The Christian Conception of Holiness" is an effort to unite Christian doctrine and evolution in one harmonious conception. The intermediate thought by which this is done is "the gospel of creation," the development of a higher form of spiritual life. "God is a being whose every thought is love." "Creation is one great unselfish thought, the bringing into being of creatures who can know the happiness which God himself knows." The author has a vigorous hold upon his subject, and scatters light freely along the discussion. One who gladly accepts this general line of reconciliation will still be inclined to go farther, or less far, in the details of presentation, according to the degree in which he has worked out similar lines of inquiry. It is a bold region, full of various and captivating views. The manner of thought and expression is so isolated as to detract somewhat from the popular value of the discussion.

"The Soul of a Christian" is a book quite of its own order, and well deserves attention. The writer states his object in his first sentence in this wise: "It is the purpose of this essay to describe the Christian life, as far as possible, in the terms, and with the methods, of psychology." The method pursued is discursive. The chapters have no very close connection, and the discussion in each is free. It is a book that offers itself to a piecemeal perusal, and rewards it by many flashes of light. It cannot fail to help us to a better understanding of the connection of nervous and spiritual phenomena.