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development of Dutch shipping, in the profitable location of Dutch capital and in the employment of young machinists, etc.

These three companies, the Lloyd-Nederland, the Paketvaart and the projected American line should work in harmony for the development of Dutch shipping. If the regular Suez-boats do lose a small part of their carrying trade because of the new line, they can make it up by carrying the tapioca meal now carried by foreign ships. There is room also for the Netherlanders in the trade in Java rice; figures for this article are given:

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Wages in Copenhagen. The Nationalökonomisk Tidsskrift (3die Hefte, 1900) reviews "Arbejdslönnen i Köbenhavn med Nabokommuner i Aaret 1898" (Köbenhavn, 1900, Lehman and Stage) by Cordt Trap. The method of investigation has been modelled on those of 1882 and 1892, but has been much more complete. In 1892 questions were addressed chiefly to foremen and large employers; in 1898 chiefly to organizations, both of laborers and employers. Use has been made of special minor investigations conducted by the organizations themselves. Answers have had to do with wages, work-time, Sunday labor, annual income, etc.

For journeymen the average daily wage is $1.02, the average piece-wage (weekly) $7.40. The latter form of payment is more common (55 vs. 45 per cent.). For common workmen and for women, corresponding figures are: workmen, $0.82; $5.85; women, $0.44; $3.13. Apprentices receive an average daily wage of $0.24. Rise in wages since 1892 is for journeymen 15-19 per cent., for common workmen 18 per cent., for women 15 per cent.; the rise has not been a steady one. As to over-hours and Sunday labor, the general tendency is toward restriction.

Several figures are given, showing the number of idle days per man; days lost because of military service are not counted: members of unions of smiths and machine-laborers, 10 days of idleness (1898); book-printers, 20 (1897); house-carpenters, 55 (Nov., 1897-Oct., 1898).

Tables for annual wage eliminate the confusion of the day and job wage, and show the following figures: Journeymen, $318.60; common laborers, $247.05; women, $135. A twelve-hour workingday with ten hours effective labor is the commonest arrangement. Several trades show the following figures on wages:

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In some of these cases, irregularity of employment considerably

affects the average wage.

On the whole the picture is one of a strong economic advance for almost all classes of the laboring population,—a witness to growing strength and soundness in the life of labor. The investigation proves the non-existence of a lower class of labor which is forced down by organized labor so as not to share in the economic advance. Taking $324 as the average annual wage of a laborer with a trade, it is seen that of 7,500 journeymen, 243 (34 per cent.), in seven different trades, receive under $162, while 190 (22 per cent.), in 19 different occupations, receive over $486. Thus about 6 per cent. of the skilled laborers have incomes diverging more than 50 per cent. from the normal.

The writer wishes a series of monographs to be written, which shall deal with individual laborers and shall go more into detail.

Yale University.

A. G. KELLER.

Swedish Nobility. "Sveriges Adel" (Förste Delen: Atternas Demographi. Lund, 1898), by P. E. Fahlbeck, is reviewed in the Nationalökonomisk Tidsskrift, 3 die Hefte, 1900. This is a study in the life and decline of the noble classes and may be regarded as history or sociology. The first volume, now appearing, contains a

number of facts witnessing to the decline of the several noble families.

This decline is thought to be due to natural causes, not to the artificial one of war. Mortality and average life-period of the noble families are discussed. The author regards their disappearance as due to celibacy and to declining power of propagation. Families that died out in the fourth generation show in the first four children per marriage, in the third, 2.6, and in the fourth not over 3/4ths. Celibacy shows a corresponding increase; in a series of four degrees the second and third have one celibate for three grown men, the fourth two. The number of childless marriages increases from degree to degree; 11, 17, 21 and 62 per cent. Since a family is genealogically dead when there are no male children, the proportion of the sexes also enters here; in a series of four generations, the second showed five boys and four girls, while in the fourth this proportion was reversed.

Prof. Westergaard, who reviews the work, asserts that Fahlbeck has not considered sufficiently the multiplicity of causes nor the presence of deeper-lying causes. He claims that much of the decline, apparently due to pathological conditions, is explicable under the laws of probability. The causes of the deaths of individual members of the various families should be thoroughly investigated. This, he hopes, will be done in the next volumes.

Yale University.

A. G. KELLER.

BOOK NOTICES.

Government or Human Evolution. Justice. By Edmond Kelly, M.A., F.G.S. N. Y., Longmans, Green & Co.-1900, 8vo, xi, 360 pp.

The rather unusual title of this book is on the whole apt and affords a key to its contents. The author was led to attribute the difficulty of securing good government in New York city to disagreement over fundamental principles, particularly as to the nature of justice. These he proceeded to investigate in the light of evolution with the result that he finds restraint or government to be the most characteristic fact of human evolution and justice the essential end of government.

The work thus falls into two rather distinct divisions, one historical and scientific dealing with the origin and evolution of government, the other philosophical being an analysis of the idea of justice.

The first book, upon Nature, is an admirable discussion of natural law and natural rights, with the conclusion that "there is such a thing as a law of nature; there is no such thing as a natural right; these last two words taken together are as inconsistent as the words 'round square.'" The author distinguishes nature from art, as follows: "the word nature cannot consistently be admitted to include the conscious effort of man to subdue nature whether intellectual or moral."

The author next discusses the doctrine of evolution as the "one law of nature which underlies and envelops our political systems." This is preliminary to the consideration of the true relation of nature to government. Progress is secured through evolution of more and more complex forms out of variation, struggle, adaptation, selection and the survival of selected individuals. The process is frightfully cruel and involves degeneration rather than progress wherever the environment is unfavorable.

Is humanity subject to this law throughout? The answer is, no. Man freed himself by his capacity for conscious effort.

Man became an animal that sometimes acted in opposition to his physical needs, and the struggle was softened until, ultimately, the very principle of struggle was attacked. Life was moralized. History becomes intelligence swayed by religion. Climatic selection is changed in import as man by effort created his

own climate. Similarly the selective effect of competition with other animals became different as man triumphed over his animal rivals and even made them his slaves. Between man and man the struggle is not now for life, but for wealth, and the weaker are no longer eliminated, just as the weaker nations are in a measure respected.

Among human beings sexual selection resulted in monogamy involving self-restraint and "moral qualities which are engaged in creating a moral environment-the result no longer of a natural process, but of one that is human and, as the religious idealist would add, divine." In short, man has by the institution of a monogamous marriage reversed the order of nature. If such has been the power of effort with the imperious sexual passion, what further results may we not hope for?

The author next considers the operation of evolution upon the human environment. Two environments are distinguished; a primary "created by every community for itself" and a secondary composed of the relations to other communities. Within the former there is "practically nothing left of that survival of the fit so characteristic of natural selection, because there is little or no destruction of the unfit."

The force that replaces the survival of the fittest in our civilization is wealth. "The influence of wealth on type is paramount. The selective agent in our modern civilization favors not the strongest, nor the most intelligent, nor the most moral, but the type which has the faculty for making and keeping wealth." This is the new environment under which human nature is developing at a slow, yet relatively rapid rate.

The relation of government to this environment is next discussed. Those communities have survived "which have combined selfrestraint in marriage and self-sacrifice in politics." Both involve conscious effort in contrast with the methods of unconscious nature.

The measure of success attained by ancient governments was due to intelligent state intervention. In this idea of organized effort is found the essence of government.

The second part of the work, on "Government," is only a development of this thought. "Human government is purposive, not merely instinctive. It is the result of intellectual effort, not that of mere habit; and it is intellectual effort engaged in making its own. environment, and no longer the unconscious result of the environment furnished by nature." Laissez faire is regarded as a failure of effort and a relapse into a condition of nature.

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