year, the imperial government to pay the half of that amount. This policy is evidently aimed at the isolation which has gone far to ruin these colonies. Political considerations have forced this plan upon the home authorities; because it is evident since the Spanish-American war that unless Great Britain does more than she has been doing for her West Indian possessions, they are likely, of commercial necessity, to seek political affiliation with the United States.

As for the other policy-that of abandoning the sugar industry for alternative industries of an agricultural character-the time is not ripe and it cannot be done in a year. The single crop system seldom leads to the largest net returns, it is true; and the tendency is slowly away from cane-growing on less favored lands toward concentration upon the most favored districts for sugar production. Certainly in a territory where only 7.22 per cent. of the cultivatable area is actually in use there is room for variety in the employment of capital and labor. As Adam Smith pointed out in his memorable chapter on the division of labor, diversification of industries requires a widening range of market. And this is precisely what the newer policy means for these colonies. It simply spells opportunity-opportunity for regular access to several different markets with the products they now have to offer. Diversification will doubtless come with time. But the need of the hour is relief under present

conditions.

There are those who see little prospect of improvement in cane-sugar, because of the enormous gain made in beet-sugar during the past twenty years. In all this time the British West Indies have maintained the level of their average output of sugar, in hopes that in the near future the beet-sugar bounties would be abolished. Meanwhile the bounties have become a fixed feature of the world's sugar situation. Hence the policy that succeeds must reckon with them as such, for the present at least. The causes of the depression are internal-agricultural and industrial rather than commercial; and the remedies must be of a like character. Any other policy must become the sport of outside circumstances.1 Capital will follow business capacity to

'London Times, March 17, 1899: "England and the West Indies."

the British West Indies as readily as to any other cane-sugar fields, under equivalent opportunity for its profitable use. Of other economic resources they have more than enough for present needs. Fresh initiative, a better grade of organizing ability, and a prudent adaptability to changes in the long run must outweigh the advantage of export bounties. European bounties may have occasioned distress in not a few of the tropical sugar countries, but no country has yet been found in which these muchabused bounties have been the cause of the failure on the part of the tropical sugar industry to develop. Under precisely the same conditions cane-growing has prospered in hundreds of other tropical localities, by attention to improved methods of culture and manufacture. If the British West Indies fail to do this, it is because those who are responsible for development persist in standing in their own light.

New York City.

JOHN FRANKLIN CROWELL.

NOTES.

Social Economy at the Paris Exposition. The study of the exhibits in the field of social economy at the Paris Exposition is tiresome and often provoking. The materials are scattered through several buildings, are in many instances badly classified or not easily accessible, and are mixed with much advertising matter. One finds, for example, the material relating to the American negro in one building, and that relating to the American Indian in another, the exhibit of Hampton Institute being thus divided into two parts. A chart giving the per capita expenditure of boards of health in the United States is found next to a display of Swedish stoves; and the tables of female criminality in Boston are near neighbors to a group of American bath-tubs. In the United States exhibit, the most prominent place is accorded to the blazing display of a New York insurance company; while a case apparently devoted to statistical charts turns out on examination to be filled with the advertising matter of type-writer and sewing machine concerns. Moreover, relatively, considerable space-where space is very precious-is devoted to photographs of railways, which would

to have been more appropriately housed in the transportation section. We are not disposed to blame anyone for all this; the insufficient space accorded to the department of social economy, the obvious difficulty of defining clearly its limits and classifying its contents, the inclusion of this group-in the case of the United States-within that of education, as well as the inevitable though lamentable pressure, on all such occasions, of commercial and political interests, will go far toward explaining and perhaps excusing this condition of things. But it is none the less unfortunate.

Nevertheless, no previous exposition has contained anything like the same amount of material illustrative of social conditions and activities, as this. The Palais de l'Economie sociale, et des Congrès-which, by the way, was itself built by several coöperative societies contains on the ground floor exhibits from thirteen countries, on the first floor several assembly rooms for the use of the various congresses which meet during the summer, and in the basement a small, unattractive and inaccessible space allotted to the École Internationale, whose officers and lecturers are engaged in the laudable but discouraging effort to make the treasures of the

Exposition available for the instruction of the multitudes who visit it. Of this Palais, France has reserved for her own exhibit half of the ground floor, besides the walls of the stair cases and assembly halls, thus leaving scarcely more than a third for other countries. In this absurdly inadequate space, Germany, Holland, Sweden, Austria, Belgium, Great Britain, Hungary, Portugal, Italy, Russia, Switzerland and the United States have gathered a large amount of instructive though miscellaneous matter. Germany, with characteristic discreetness and thoroughness, confines herself mostly to a single subject, and makes an admirable display of the methods and latest results of her system of workingmen's insurance. Italy sends an attractive collection of the statistical and other government publications for which she has such repute among scholars. Switzerland devotes much of her space to temperance, the peace movement and the Red Cross Society. The British section contains, among other things, a fine set of diagrams contributed by the Charity Organization Society of London, and Mr. Booth's unique social map of that city, some twenty feet square. France, which alone has space enough, has a very large collection of charts, diagrams, maps, models, photographs and printed reports, exceedingly suggestive pedagogically, and covering such themes as the housing of the working classes, apprenticeship, the education and protection of workingmen's children, private and public enterprises for the welfare of the people, profit sharing, coöperative associations, trades unions, provident institutions, insurance and employers' assistance. The United States section contains an excellent set of charts mainly illustrative of the geography of production, exhibits by the American Library Association-which would have more appropriately and advantageously been placed in the education section-by the League for Social Service, the Tenement House Committee of the New York Charity Organization Society, the Commercial Museum of Philadelphia, and the Labor Bureaus of Washington and of all of the States where they exist. Perhaps the most orderly and effective exhibit is that relative to the progress and present condition of the negro race in America; this, and the exhibit of the American Library Association, attract much attention from European visitors. The American section also contains a series of some twenty monographs, written by various authors and edited by Professor Herbert B. Adams and Richard Waterman, Jr., and covering such points in the social condition of the United States as it was thought would most interest foreign inquirers. The sections of hygiene and pub

lic charities, instead of being associated with that of social economy, as they manifestly should have been. are placed in an unfrequented gallery in the Champs de Mars, on the other side of the Seine. The Hawaiian exhibit is installed in the Trocadero.

Although the list of awards is not given out, it is understood that the United States will receive a larger number, and of higher grade, in the department of social economy, than any other country, after France. It is likely that many of the exhibits will go to increase the already important collections of the Musée Sociale, which owes its useful existence to the Exposition of 1889; and it is certain, considering the qualifications of those who have been selected to prepare them, that when the official reports appear, they will be of decided and permanent value. One may, perhaps, also mention here the exhibit made by the city of Paris, though this is installed in another building, and does not technically belong to the section of social economy. The student of municipal affairs in particular, and the sociologist in general, will be apt to find this the most interesting and instructive single feature of the Exposition.

W. F. B.

French "Assimilation." A colonial study,1 having particular reference to French methods of dealing with indigenous races, has recently been published by Léopold de Saussure, an author who seems to be able to take an unprejudiced and dispassionate view of his country's policy. Inasmuch as most works on colonization treat this question of racial contact fragmentarily and with scant attention, the present volume is somewhat unique. Though it has to do chiefly with the colonial policy and experiences of the French, the study is constructed on lines which make it valuable to any colonizing people.

The treatment is psychological in so far as the author insists upon the hereditary character of the mental traits of races and regards the various social phenomena, such as language, institutions, etc., as emanations of the type of mind peculiar to the people which exhibits them. In adopting these axioms, de Saussure avowedly, though with discretion, follows the lead of Gustave Le Bon. From the premises stated, the à priori deduction is, that language, institutions, etc., having developed through slow accumulation, generation by generation, cannot be hastily altered or supplanted by alien

'Psychologie de la colonisation française dans ses rapports avec les Sociétés Indigènes, Paris, 1899.