BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

THE CITY

There is no adequate literature of cities in America. Some of the larger cities possess guide-books and local histories; but the most valuable illuminations on the history and development of the American city lie buried in contemporary papers, narratives of travel, and speeches. The reader who wishes to explore the ground farther should dip into volumes and papers drawn from all periods. The recent editions of “Valentine’s Manual” should be interesting to those who cannot consult the original “Manual of the Common Council of New York.” During the last twenty years a great many reports and surveys have been printed, by city planning commissions and other bodies: these are valuable both for showing the limitations of the established régime and for giving hints of the forces that are working, more or less, for improvement. “The Pittsburgh Survey” (Russell Sage Foundation) is the great classic in this field. A compendious summary of American city developments during the last generation is contained in Charles Zueblin’s “American Municipal Progress” (Macmillan). Standing by itself in this literature is a very able book by Paul Harlan Douglass, called “The Little Town,” published by Macmillan. (A book which shall deal similarly with the Great Town is badly needed.) The best general approach to the city is that of Professor Patrick Geddes in “Cities in Evolution” (Williams and Norgate, London.) Those who are acquainted with Professor Geddes’s “A Study in City Development” or his contributions to “Sociological Papers” (Macmillan, 1905, 1906, 1907) will perhaps note my debt to him: I hasten heartily to acknowledge this, as well as my debt, by personal intercourse, to his colleague, Mr. Victor V. Branford. If the lay reader can learn nothing else from Professor Geddes, he can learn the utility of throwing aside the curtains of second-hand knowledge and studying cities and social institutions by direct observation. The inadequacy of American civic literature will not be altogether a handicap if it forces the reader to obtain by personal explorations impressions which he would otherwise get through the blur of the printed page. Every city and its region is in a sense an exhibition of natural and social history. Let the reader walk the streets of our cities, as through the halls of a museum, and use the books that have been suggested only as so many tickets and labels. Americans have a reputation in Europe as voracious sightseers. One wonders what might not happen if Americans started to see the sights at home—not the Grand Canyon and the Yosemite, but a “Broadway,” and its back alleys, and the slums and suburbs that stretch beyond. If observation led to criticism, and criticism to knowledge, where might not knowledge lead?

L. M.

POLITICS

The standard works on the history of American politics are so well known (and so few) that they scarcely need mention. Bryce, Ostrogorski and de Tocqueville, I assume, have been read by all serious students, as have also such personal memoirs as those of Blaine and John Sherman. Bryce’s work is a favourite, but it suffers from the disingenuousness of the man. Dr. Charles A. Beard’s “Economic Interpretation of the Constitution” is less a complete treatise than a prospectus of a history that is yet to be written. As far as I know, the valuable suggestions in his preface have never inspired any investigation of political origins by other American historians, most of whom are simply unintelligent school-teachers, as their current “histories” of the late war well show. All such inquiries are blocked by the timorousness and stupidity that are so characteristic of American scholarship. Our discussion of politics, like our discussion of economics, deals chiefly with superficialities. Both subjects need ventilation by psychologists not dependent upon college salaries, and hence free to speak. Certainly the influence of religious enthusiasm upon American politics deserves a careful study; nevertheless, I have never been able to find a book upon it. Again, there is the difficult question of the relations between politics and journalism. My belief is that the rising power of newspapers has tended to drive intelligent and self-respecting men out of politics, for the newspapers are chiefly operated by cads and no such man wants to be at their mercy. But that sort of thing is never studied in the United States. We even lack decent political biography, so common in England. The best light to be obtained upon current politics is in the Congressional Record. It costs $1.50 a month and is well worth it. Soon or late the truth gets into the Record; it even got there during the war. But it seldom gets into the newspapers and it never gets into books.

H. L. M.

JOURNALISM

I know of no quite satisfactory book on American journalism. “History of Journalism in the United States” by George Henry Payne and “History of American Journalism” by James Melvin Lee are fairly good in their treatment of the past, but neither of them shows any penetration in analyzing present conditions. The innocence of Mr. Payne may be judged by his opinion that the Kansas City Star, under Nelson, exemplifies a healthier kind of “reform journalism” than the Post under Godkin! “Liberty and the News” by Walter Lippmann is suggestive, but it does not pretend to contain any specific information. More specific in naming names and giving modern instances is a short essay by Hamilton Holt, “Commercialism and Journalism.” “The Brass Check” by Upton Sinclair contains much valuable material, and perhaps what I have said of it does not do it justice; certainly it should be read by everybody interested in this subject. Will Irwin published in Collier’s Weekly from January to July, 1911, a valuable series of articles, “The American Newspaper: A Study of Journalism.” I cannot find that these articles have been reprinted in book form. There is some information in autobiographies and biographies of important journalists, such as “Recollections of a Busy Life” by Horace Greeley, “Life of Whitelaw Reid” by Royal Cortissoz, “Life and Letters of E. L. Godkin” by Rollo Ogden, “Life of Charles A. Dana” by J. H. Wilson, “Life and Letters of John Hay” by William Roscoe Thayer, “An Adventure with Genius: Recollections of Joseph Pulitzer,” by Alleyne Ireland; also “The Story of the Sun” by Frank M. O’Brien. Biographies, however, celebrate persons and only indirectly explain institutions. A useful bibliography, which includes books and magazine articles, is “Daily Newspapers in U. S.” by Wieder Callie of the Wisconsin University School of Journalism. But after all the best source of information is the daily newspaper, if one knows how to read it—and read between the lines.

J. M.

THE LAW

“Bryce’s Modern Democracies,” Chapter XLIII, is a recent survey of the American legal system; Raymond Fosdick, “American Police Systems,” Chapter I, states the operation of criminal law. For legal procedure, see Reginald Heber Smith, “Justice and the Poor,” published by the Carnegie Endowment for the Advancement of Teaching and dealing with legal aid societies and other methods of securing more adequate legal relief; Charles W. Eliot and others, “Efficiency in the Administration of Justice,” published by the National Economic League; Moorfield Storey, “The Reform of Legal Procedure;” and many other books and articles; the reports of the American and New York Bar Associations are of especial value. John H. Wigmore, “Evidence,” vol. V (1915 edition) discusses recent progress; see his “Cases on Torts, Preface,” on substantive law. A very wide range of topics in American law, philosophical, historical, procedural, and substantive, is covered by the writings of Roscoe Pound, of which a list is given in “The Centennial History of the Harvard Law School.” The same book deals with many phases of legal education; see also “The Case Method in American Law Schools,” Josef Redlich, Carnegie Endowment. For the position of lawyers, the best book is, Charles Warren, “A History of the American Bar;” a recent discussion of their work is Simeon E. Baldwin, “The Young Man and the Law.” No one interested in this field should fail to read the “Collected Legal Papers of Justice Holmes;” see also John H. Wigmore, “Justice Holmes and the Law of Torts” and Felix Frankfurter, “The Constitutional Opinions of Justice Holmes,” both in the Harvard Law Review, April, 1916, and Roscoe Pound, “Judge Holmes’s Contributions to the Science of Law,” ibid., March, 1921. A valuable essay on Colonial legal history is Paul S. Reinsch, “English Common Law in the Early American Colonies.” A mass of material will be found in the law reviews, which are indexed through 1907 by Jones, “Index to Legal Periodicals,” 3 vols., and afterwards in the Law Library Journal, cumulative quarterly.

Z. C., Jr.

EDUCATION

The ideas contained in the article are so commonplace and of such general acceptance among educators that it is impossible to give specific authority for them. In addition to the articles mentioned, one of the latest by Dr. D. S. Miller, “The Great College Illusion” in the New Republic for June 22, 1921, should be referred to. For the rest the report of the Committee of Ten of the National Education Association, and the reports of President Eliot and President Lowell of Harvard, President Meiklejohn of Amherst, and President Wilson of Princeton, may be cited, with the recognition that any such selection is invidious.

R. M. L.

SCHOLARSHIP AND CRITICISM

There has been no really fundamental discussion of American scholarship or American criticism. Those who merely seek a good historical sketch of our older literary scholarship, along conventional lines, will find one in the fourth volume of the “Cambridge History of American Literature” that is at all events vastly superior to the similar chapters in the “Cambridge History of English Literature.” But more illuminating than any formal treatise are the comments on our scholarly ideals and methods in Emerson’s famous address on “The American Scholar,” in “The Education of Henry Adams,” and in the “Letters” of William James. The “Cambridge History of American Literature” contains no separate chapter on American criticism, and the treatment of individual critics is pathetically inadequate. The flavour of recent criticism may be savoured in Ludwig Lewisohn’s interesting anthology, “A Modern Book of Criticism,” where the most buoyant and “modern” of our younger men are set side by side with all their unacademic masters and compeers of the contemporary European world. All that can be said in favour of the faded moralism of the older American criticism is urged in an article on “The National Genius” in the Atlantic Monthly for January, 1921, the temper of which may be judged from this typical excerpt: “When Mr. Spingarn declares that beauty is not concerned with truth or morals or democracy, he makes a philosophical distinction which I have no doubt that Charles the Second would have understood, approved, and could, at need, have illustrated. But he says what the American schoolboy knows to be false to the history of beauty in this country. Beauty, whether we like it or not, has a heart full of service.” The case against the conservative and traditional type of criticism is presented with slapdash pungency in the two volumes of H. L. Mencken’s “Prejudices.” But any one can make out a case for himself by reading the work of any American classical scholar side by side with a book by Gilbert Murray, or any history of literature by an American side by side with Francesco de Sanctis’s “History of Italian Literature,” or the work of any American critic side by side with the books of the great critics of the world.

J. E. S.

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE LIFE

The “distinguished Englishman” to whom the Martian refers is of course Viscount Bryce, whose “American Commonwealth” discusses the external aspects of our uniformity, the similarity of our buildings, cities, customs, and so on. Our spiritual unanimity has been most thoroughly examined by George Santayana, both in his earlier essays—as notably in “The Genteel Tradition”—and in his recent “Character and Opinion in the United States.”

For all the welter of writing about our educational establishment, only infrequent and incidental consideration has been bestowed, either favourably or unfavourably, on its regimental effect. As custodians of a going concern, the educators have busied themselves with repairs and replacements to the machinery rather than with the right of way; and lay critics have pretty much confined themselves to selecting between machines whose slightly differing routes all lie in the same general direction. The exception that proves the rule is “Shackled Youth,” by Edward Yeomans.

But undergraduate life in America has a genre of its own, the form of fiction known as “college stories.” Nearly every important school has at some time had written round it a collection of tales that exploit its peculiar legends, traditions, and customs—for the most part a chafing-dish literature of pranks, patter, and athletic prowess whose murky and often distorted reflection of student attitudes is quite incidental to its business of entertaining. Owen Johnson’s Lawrenceville stories—“The Prodigious Hickey,” “Tennessee Shad,” “The Varmint,” “The Humming Bird”—are the classics of preparatory school life. Harvard has “Pepper,” by H. E. Porter, “Harvard Episodes” and “The Diary of a Freshman,” by Charles Flandrau, and Owen Wister’s “Philosophy 4,” the best of all college yarns. Yale has the books of Ralph D. Paine and of others. The Western universities have such volumes as “Ann Arbor Tales,” by Karl Harriman, for Michigan, and “Maroon Tales,” by W. J. Cuppy, for Chicago. George Fitch writes amusingly about life in the smaller Western colleges in “Petey Simmons at Siwash” and “At Good Old Siwash.”

The catalogue of serious college fiction is brief, and most of the novels are so propagandist that they are misrepresentative. For example, Owen Johnson’s “Stover at Yale,” which was some years out of date when it was published, misses the essential club spirit in New Haven by almost as wide a margin as Arthur Train’s “The World and Thomas Kelly” departs from the normal club life in Cambridge; both authors set up the straw man of snobbery where snobs are an unimportant minority. Two recent novels, however, deal more faithfully with the college scene for the very reason that their authors were more interested in character than in setting: “This Side of Paradise,” by Scott Fitzgerald, is true enough to have provoked endless controversy in Princeton; and “Salt: The Education of Griffith Adams,” by Charles G. Norris, is a memorable appraisal of student ideals in a typical co-educational institution. Dorothy Canfield’s “The Bent Twig” is also laid in a co-educational college. Booth Tarkington’s “Ramsay Milholland” attends a State University; and the hero of “Gold Shod,” by Newton Fuessle, is a revelatory failure of the University of Chicago regimen. To these add an autobiography—“An American in the Making, The Life Story of an Immigrant,” by M. E. Ravage, whose candid report on his fellows at the Missouri State University is a masterpiece of sympathetic criticism.

C. B.

THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE

To attempt to give references to specific books on so general and inclusive a topic would be an impertinence. But one may legitimately suggest the trends of investigation one would like to see thoroughly explored. In my own case they would be: (1) a study of the pioneer from the point of view of his cultural and religious interests, correlating those interests with his general economic status; (2) a study of the revolutionary feeling of America (not formulas) in psychological terms and of its duration as an emotional driving force; (3) a study of the effects of the post-Civil War period and the industrial expansion upon the position of upper-class women in the United States; (4) a study of sexual maladjustment in American family life, correlated again with the economic status of the successful pioneer; (5) a very careful study of the beginnings, rise, and spread of women’s clubs, and their purposes and accomplishments, correlated chronologically with the development of club life of men and the extent of vice, gambling, and drunkenness; (6) a study of American religions in more or less Freudian terms as compensations for neurotic maladjustment; (7) a study of instrumentalism in philosophy and its implications for reform; (8) a serious attempt to understand and appraise the more or less disorganized jeunes, with some attention to comparing the intensity of their bitterness or optimism with the places of birth and upbringing. No special study of American educational systems or of the school or college life would be necessary, it seems to me, beyond, of course, a general knowledge. The intellectual life of the nation, after all, has little relation to the academic life.

When such special studies had been finished by sympathetic investigators, probably one of several writers could synthesize the results and give us a fairly definitive essay on the intellectual life of America. Such studies, however, have not yet been done, and without them I have had to write this essay to a certain extent en plein air. Thus it has been impossible entirely to avoid giving the impression of stating things dogmatically or intuitively. But as a matter of fact on all the topics I have suggested for study I have already given much thought and time, and consequently, whatever its literary form, the essay is not pure impressionism.

H. E. S.

SCIENCE

There is no connected account of American achievement in science. Strangely enough, the most pretentious American book on the history of science, Sedgwick and Tyler’s “Short History of Science” (New York: Macmillan, 1917), ignores the most notable figures among the author’s countrymen. A useful biographical directory under the title of “American Men of Science” (New York Science Press, 1910, 2d edition), has been compiled by Professor James McKeen Cattell; a third revised edition has been prepared and issued this year prior to the appearance of the present volume.

On the tendencies manifest in the United States there are several important papers. An address by Henry A. Rowland entitled “A Plea for Pure Science” (Popular Science Monthly, vol. LIX, 1901, pp. 170–188), is still eminently worth reading. The external conditions under which American scientists labour have been repeatedly discussed in recent years in such journals as Science and School and Society, both edited by Professor Cattell, who has himself appended very important discussions to the above-cited biographical lexicon. Against over-organization Professor William Morton Wheeler has recently published a witty and vigorous protest (“The Organization of Research,” Science, January 21, 1921, N. S. vol. LIII, pp. 53–67).

In order to give an understanding of the essence of scientific activity the general reader cannot do better than to trace the processes by which the master-minds of the past have brought order into the chaos that is at first blush presented by the world of reality. In this respect the writings of the late Professor Ernst Mach are unsurpassed, and even the least mathematically trained layman can derive much insight from portions of his book “Die Mechanik” (Leipzig, 7th edition, 1912), accessible in T. J. McCormack’s translation under the title of “The Science of Mechanics” (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co.). The section on Galileo may be specially recommended. Mach’s “Erkenntnis und Irrtum” (Leipzig, 1906) contains most suggestive discussions of the psychology of investigation, dealing with such questions as the nature of a scientific problem, of experimentation, of hypothetical assumptions, etc. Much may also be learned from the general sections of P. Duhem’s “La theorie physique, son objet et sa structure” (Paris, 1906). E. Duclaux’s “Pasteur: Histoire d’un Esprit” has fortunately been rendered accessible by Erwin F. Smith and Florence Hedges under the title “Pasteur, the History of a Mind” (Philadelphia; Saunders, 1920). It reveals in masterly fashion the methods by which a great thinker overcomes not only external opposition but the more baneful obstacles of scientific folk-lore.

R. H. L.

PHILOSOPHY

The omission of Mr. Santayana’s philosophy from the above account indicates no lack of appreciation of its merits. Although written at Harvard, it is hardly an American philosophy. On one hand, Mr. Santayana is free from the mystical religious longings that have given our Idealisms life, and on the other, he is too confident of the reality of culture and the value of the contemplative life to sanction that dominance of the practical which is the stronghold of instrumentalism.

The only histories of American Philosophy are those by Professor Woodbridge Riley. His “Early Schools” (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1907), is a full treatment of the period in question, but his “American Thought from Puritanism to Pragmatism” (H. Holt, 1915) is better reading and comes down to date. These are best read in connection with some history of American Literature such as Barrett Wendell’s “Literary History of America” (Scribner’s Sons, 1914). Royce’s system is given in good condensed form in the last four chapters of his “Spirit of Modern Philosophy” (Houghton Mifflin, 1899). Its exhaustive statement is “The World and the Individual” (2 vols., Macmillan, 1900–1). The “Philosophy of Loyalty” (Macmillan, 1908) develops the ethics, and the “Problem of Christianity” (2 vols., Macmillan, 1913), relates his philosophy to Christianity. Hocking’s religious philosophy is given in his “Meaning of God in Human Experience” (Yale University Press, 1912). His general position is developed on one side in “Human Nature and Its Remaking” (Yale University Press, 1918). Anything of James is good reading. His chief work is the “Principles of Psychology” (H. Holt, 1890), but the “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and Some of Life’s Ideals” (H. Holt, 1907) and the “Will to Believe” (Longmans, Green & Co., 1899), better illustrate his attitude toward life. “Pragmatism” (Longmans, Green & Co., 1907) introduces his technical philosophizing. His religious attitude can be got from the “Varieties of Religious Experience” (Longmans, Green & Co., 1902). Dewey has nowhere systematized his philosophy. Its technical points are exhibited in the “Essays in Experimental Logic” (University of Chicago Press, 1916). The “Influence of Darwin on Philosophy” (H. Holt, 1910) has two especially readable essays, one the title-essay, the other on “Intelligence and Morals.” The full statement of his ethics is the “Ethics” (Dewey and Tufts, H. Holt, 1908). He is at his best in “Education and Democracy” (Macmillan, 1916). “German Philosophy and Politics” (H. Holt, 1915) is a war-time reaction giving an interesting point of view as to the significance of German Philosophy. “The New Realism” (Macmillan, 1912) is a volume of technical studies by the Six Realists. “Creative Intelligence” (H. Holt, 1917), by John Dewey and others, is a similar volume of pragmatic studies. The reviews are also announcing another co-operative volume, “Essays in Critical Realism” by Santayana, Lovejoy and others. In a technical fashion Perry has discussed the “Present Tendencies in Philosophy” (Longmans, Green & Co., 1912), but the best critical reaction to American philosophy is that of Santayana: “Character and Opinion in the United States” (Scribner’s Sons, 1920). Santayana’s own chief philosophic contributions are the “Sense of Beauty” (Scribner’s Sons, 1896), and the “Life of Reason” (5 vols., Scribner’s Sons, 1905–6). The first two chapters of his “Winds of Doctrine” (Scribner’s Sons, 1913), on the “Intellectual Temper of the Age” and “Modernism and Christianity,” are also relevant. Brief but excellent expositions of Royce, Dewey, James, and Santayana by Morris R. Cohen have appeared in the New Republic, vols. XX-XXIII.

H. C. B.

LITERATURE

Perhaps the most illuminating books for any one interested in the subject of the essay on literature are the private memorials of certain modern European writers. For a sense of everything the American literary life is not, one might read, for instance, the Letters of Ibsen, Dostoievsky, Chekhov, Flaubert, Taine and Leopardi—all of which have appeared, in whole or in part, in English.

V. W. B.

MUSIC

What little there is that is worth reading concerning American music is scattered through magazine articles and chapters in books upon other musical subjects. Daniel Gregory Mason has a sensible and illuminating chapter, “Music in America,” in his “Contemporary Composers.” The section, “America,” in Chapter XVI of the Stanford-Forsyth “History of Music” contrives to be tactful and at the same time just. Two books that should be read by any one interested in native composition are Cecil Forsyth’s “Music and Nationalism” and Lawrence Gilman’s “Edward MacDowell.” Rupert Hughes’s “Contemporary American Composers” is twenty years old, but still interesting; it contains sympathetic—not to say glowing—accounts of the lives and works of an incredibly large number of Americans who do and did pursue the art of musical composition. To know what an artist means when he asks to be understood read pages 240 and 241 of Cabell’s “Jurgen”—if you can get it; also the volume, “La Foire sur la Place,” of “Jean Christophe.”

D. T.

POETRY

Bodenheim, Maxwell: “Minna and Myself” (Pagan Publishing Co.); “Advice” (Alfred A. Knopf).

“H. D.”: “Sea-Garden” (Houghton Mifflin).

Eliot, T. S.: “Poems” (Alfred A. Knopf).

Fletcher, John Gould: “Irradiations: Sand and Spray” (Houghton Mifflin); “Goblins and Pagodas” (Houghton Mifflin); “The Tree of Life” (Macmillan); “Japanese Prints” (Four Seas Co.); “Breakers and Granite” (Macmillan).

Frost, Robert: “North of Boston” (Holt); “A Boy’s Will” (Holt); “Mountain Interval” (Holt).

Kreymborg, Alfred: “Plays for Poem-Mimes” (Others); “Blood of Things” (Nicholas Brown); “Plays for Merry Andrews” (Sunwise Turn).

Lindsay, Vachel: “The Congo” (Macmillan); “The Chinese Nightingale” (Macmillan).

Lowell, Amy: “Men, Women and Ghosts” (Houghton Mifflin); “Can Grande’s Castle” (Houghton Mifflin); “Pictures of the Floating World” (Houghton Mifflin); “Legends” (Houghton Mifflin).

Masters, Edgar Lee: “Spoon River Anthology” (Macmillan); “The Great Valley” (Macmillan); “Domesday Book” (Macmillan).

Pound, Ezra: “Umbra” (Elkin Matthews); “Lustra” (Alfred A. Knopf).

Robinson, Edwin Arlington: “Children of the Night” (Scribners); “The Town Down the River” (Scribners); “The Man Against the Sky” (Macmillan); “Merlin” (Macmillan); “Captain Craig” (Macmillan); “The Three Taverns” (Macmillan); “Avon’s Harvest” (Macmillan); “Lancelot” (Scott and Seltzer).

Sandburg, Carl: “Smoke and Steel” (Harcourt, Brace & Co.).

Stevens, Wallace: See “The New Poetry;” “Others” Anthology.

Teasdale, Sara: “Rivers to the Sea” (Macmillan).

Untermeyer, Louis: “The New Adam” (Harcourt, Brace & Co.); “Including Horace” (Harcourt, Brace & Co.).

Anthologies: “The New Poetry.” Edited by Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin Henderson (Macmillan); “An American Miscellany” (Harcourt, Brace & Co.); “Others for 1919” edited by Alfred Kreymborg (A. A. Knopf); “Some Imagist Poets” First, Second and Third Series (Houghton Mifflin).

Criticism: Untermeyer, Louis, “The New Era in American Poetry” (Henry Holt), a comprehensive, lively, but sometimes misleading survey.

C. A.

ART

The reader may obtain most of the data on the history of American art from Samuel Isham’s “History of American Painting,” and Charles H. Caffin’s “Story of American Painting.” Very little writing of an analytical nature has been devoted to American art, and nearly all of it is devoid of a sense of perspective and of anything approaching a realization of the position that American work holds in relation to that of Europe. Outside of the writing that is only incompetent, there are the books and articles by men whose purpose is to “boost” the home product for nationalistic or commercial reasons. In contrast with all this is Mr. Roger E. Fry’s essay on Ryder, in the Burlington Magazine for April, 1908—a masterful appreciation of the artist.

W. P.

THE THEATRE

The bibliography of this subject is extensive, but in the main unilluminating. It consists chiefly in a magnanimous waving aside of what is, and an optimistic dream of what is to be. Into this category fall most, if not all, of the many volumes written by the college professors and such of their students as have, upon graduation, carried with them into the world the college-professor manner of looking at things. Nevertheless, Professor William Lyon Phelps’ “The Twentieth Century Theatre,” for all its deviations from fact, and Professor Thomas H. Dickinson’s “The Case of American Drama,” may be looked into by the more curious. Mr. Arthur Ruhl’s “Second Nights,” with its penetrating humour, contains several excellent pictures of certain phases of the native theatre. Section IV of Mr. Walter Prichard Eaton’s “Plays and Players,” Mr. George Bronson-Howard’s searching series of papers entitled, “What’s Wrong with the Theatre,” and perhaps even Mr. George Jean Nathan’s “The Popular Theatre,” “The Theatre, The Drama, The Girls,” “Comedians All,” and “Mr. George Jean Nathan Presents” may throw some light upon the subject. Miss Akins’ “Papa” and all of Mr. O’Neill’s plays are available in book form. The bulk of inferior native dramaturgy is similarly available to the curious-minded: there are hundreds of these lowly specimens on view in the nearest book store.

G. J. N.

ECONOMIC OPINION

The literature of economic opinion in America is almost as voluminous as the printed word. It ranges from the ponderous treatises of professed economists, wherein “economic laws” are printed in italics, to the sophisticated novels of the self-elect, in which economic opinion is a by-product of clever conversation. Not only can one find economic opinion to his taste, but he can have it in any form he likes. Perhaps the most human and reasonable application of the philosophy of laissez-faire to the problems of industrial society is to be found in the pages of W. G. Sumner. Of particular interest are the essays contained in the volumes entitled “Earth Hunger,” “The Challenge of Facts,” and “The Forgotten Man.” The most subtle and articulate account of the economic order as an automatic, self-regulating mechanism is J. B. Clark, “The Distribution of Wealth.” An able and readable treatise, characterized alike by a modified classical approach and by a recognition of the facts of modern industrial society, is F. W. Taussig, “The Principles of Economics.” The “case for capitalism” has never been set forth as an articulate whole. The theoretical framework of the defence is to be found in any of the older treatises upon economic theory. A formal apologia is to be found in the last chapter of almost every text upon economics under some such title as “A Critique of the Existing Order,” “Wealth and Welfare,” or “Economic Progress.” A defence of “what is,” whatever it may chance to be, characterized alike by brilliancy and ignorance, is P. E. More’s “Aristocracy and Justice.” Contemporary opinion favourable to capitalism may be found, in any requisite quantity and detail, in The Wall Street Journal, The Commercial and Financial Chronicle, and the publications of the National Association of Manufacturers. The Congressional Record, a veritable treasure house of economic fallacy, presents fervent pleas both for an unqualified capitalism and for capitalism with endless modifications. The literature of the economics of “control” is beginning to be large. The essay by H. C. Adams, “The Relation of the State to Industrial Activity,” elaborating the thesis that the function of the state is to regulate “the plane of competition,” has become a classic. The best account of the economic opinion of organized labour is to be found in R. F. Hoxie, “Trade Unionism in the United States.” Typical examples of excellent work done by men who do not profess to be economists are W. Lippmann, “Drift and Mastery,” the opinions (often dissenting) delivered by Mr. Justice Holmes and Mr. Justice Brandeis, of the United States Supreme Court, and the articles frequently contributed to periodicals by T. R. Powell upon the constitutional aspects of economic questions. The appearance of such studies as the brief for the shorter working day in the case of Bunting v. Oregon, prepared by F. Frankfurter and J. Goldmark, and of the “Report on the Steel Strike of 1919,” by the Commission of Inquiry of the Interchurch World Movement indicates that we are beginning to base our opinions and our policies upon “the facts.” Among significant contributions are the articles appearing regularly in such periodicals as The New Republic and The Nation. At last the newer economics of the schools is beginning to assume the form of an articulate body of doctrine. The books of T. B. Veblen, particularly “The Theory of Business Enterprise,” and “The Instinct of Workmanship,” contain valuable pioneer studies. In “Personal Competition” and in the chapters upon “Valuation” in “Social Process,” C. H. Cooley has shown how economic institutions are to be treated. The newer economics, however, begins with the publication in 1913 of W. C. Mitchell, “Business Cycles.” This substitutes an economics of process for one of statics and successfully merges theoretical and statistical inquiry. It marks the beginning of a new era in the study of economics. The work in general economic theory has followed the leads blazed by Veblen, Cooley, and Mitchell. W. H. Hamilton, in “Current Economic Problems,” elaborates a theory of the control of industrial development, interspersed with readings from many authors. L. C. Marshal, in “Readings in Industrial Society,” attempts, through selections drawn from many sources, an appraisal of the institutions which together make up the economic order. D. Friday, in “Profits, Wages, and Prices,” shows how much meaning a few handfuls of figures contain and how much violence they can do to established principles. The National Bureau of Economic Research is soon to publish the results of a careful and thorough statistical inquiry into the division of income in the United States. Upon particular subjects such as trusts, tariffs, railroads, labour unions, etc., the literature is far too large to be catalogued here. There is no satisfactory history of economic opinion in the United States. T. B. Veblen’s “The Place of Science in Modern Civilization” contains a series of essays which constitute the most convincing attack upon the classical system and which point the way to an institutional economics. Many articles dealing with the development of economic doctrines are to be found in the files of The Quarterly Journal of Economics and of The Journal of Political Economy. An excellent statement of the present situation in economics is an unpublished essay by W. C. Mitchell, “The Promise of Economic Science.”

W. H. H.

RADICALISM

For exposition of the leading radical theories the reader is urged to go, not to second-hand authorities, but to their foremost advocates. “Capital” by Karl Marx (Charles H. Kerr) is of course the chief basis of Socialism. There is nothing better on Anarchism than the article in the “Encyclopedia Britannica” by Prince Kropotkin. For revolutionary industrial unionism it is important to know “Speeches and Editorials” by Daniel de Leon (New York Labor News Co.). De Leon was one of the founders of the I.W.W., and his ideas not only influenced the separatist labour movements in the United States but the shop-steward movement in England and the Soviets of Russia. “Guild Socialism” by G. D. H. Cole is the best statement of this recent theory, while “The State and Revolution” by Nikolai Lenin (George Allen and Unwin) explains the principles and tactics of modern Communism. To these should be added another classic, “Progress and Poverty” by Henry George (Doubleday Page).

On the origins of the American government it is important to read “Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy” and “Economic Interpretation of the Constitution” by Charles A. Beard (Macmillan).

The “History of Trade Unionism” by Sidney and Beatrice Webb (Longmans, Green), is an invaluable account of the growth of the British labour movement, which has many similarities to our own. “Industrial Democracy” by the same authors, issued by the same publisher, is the best statement of the theories of trade unionism. The “History of Labor in the United States” by John R. Commons and associates (Macmillan), is a scholarly work, while “Trade Unionism in the United States” by Robert F. Hoxie (Appleton), is a more analytical treatment. “The I. W. W.” by Paul F. Brissenden (Longmans, Green), is a full documentary history. Significant recent tendencies are recorded in “The New Unionism in the Clothing Industry” by Budish and Soule (Harcourt, Brace). The last chapters of “The Great Steel Strike” by William Z. Foster (B. W. Huebsch), expound his interesting interpretation of the trade unions.

For a statement of the functional attitude toward public problems one should read “Authority, Liberty and Function” by Ramiro de Maeztu (Geo. Allen and Unwin). For a brief and readable application of this attitude to economics, “The Acquisitive Society” by R. H. Tawney (Harcourt, Brace), is to be recommended.

“Modern Social Movements” by Savel Zimand (H. W. Wilson), is an authoritative guidebook to present radical movements throughout the world, and contains an excellent bibliography. And we must not forget the voluminous Report of the New York State Legislative Committee on Radicalism (the Lusk Committee), which not only collects a wealth of current radical literature, but offers an entertaining and instructive example of the current American attitude toward such matters.

G. S.

THE SMALL TOWN

Bibliography: “A Hoosier Holiday,” by Theodore Dreiser. “Winesburg, Ohio,” by Sherwood Anderson. “Main Street,” by Sinclair Lewis.

L. R. R.

HISTORY

The late Henry Adams had much in common with Samuel Butler, that other seeker after an education. He knew that he had written a very good book (his studies on American history were quite as excellent in their way as “Erewhon” was in a somewhat different genre) and he was equally aware of the sad fact that his work was not being read. In view of the general public indifference towards history it is surprising how much excellent work has been done. Three names suggest themselves when history in America is mentioned, Robinson, Beard, and Breasted. Their works for the elementary schools have not been surpassed in any country and their histories (covering the entire period from ancient Egypt down to the present time) will undoubtedly help to overcome the old and firmly established prejudice that “history is dull” and will help to create a new generation which shall prefer a good biography or history to the literature of our current periodicals.

The group of essays published last year by Professor Robinson—the pioneer of our modern historical world—under the title of “The New History” contains several papers of a pleasantly suggestive nature and we especially recommend “History for the Common Man” for those who want to investigate the subject in greater detail, and “The New Allies of History” for those who want to get an idea of the struggle that goes on between the New and the Old Movements in our contemporary historical world.

But it is impossible to suggest a three- four- or five-foot bookshelf for those who desire to understand the issues of the battle that is taking place. The warfare between the forces of the official School and University History and those who have a vision of something quite different is merely a part of the great social and economic and spiritual struggle that has been going on ever since the days of the Encyclopedists. The scene is changing constantly. The leaders hardly know what is happening. The soldiers who do the actual fighting are too busy with the work at hand to waste time upon academic discussions of the Higher Strategy. And the public will have to do what the public did during the great war—study the reports from all sides (the relevant and the irrelevant—the news from Helsingfors-by-way-of-Geneva and from Copenhagen-by-way-of Constantinople) and use its own judgment as to the probable outcome of the conflict.

H. W. V. L.

SEX

As might be supposed, there has been little writing on sex in this country—such discussion, more or less superficial, of the social aspects as may be found in books on the family, on marriage or prostitution, some quasi-medical treatises and of late a few books along the lines of Freudian psychology, that is all. Among all the organizations of the country there is no society corresponding to the British Society for the Study of Sex. I doubt if such a society or its publications would be tolerated, since even novelists who, like Dreiser, express an interest in sex comparatively directly, run afoul of public opinion, and a book such as “Women in Love” by D. H. Lawrence, its publisher felt called upon to print without his name.

It is not surprising, therefore, that in English the most adequate discussions of sex have been made by an Englishman, Havelock Ellis—“Studies in the Psychology of Sex.” Among less well known writing on the subject by Ellis I would note in particular an illuminating page or two in his essay on Casanova (“Affirmations”).

Discussion of the theories of distinguishing between mating and parenthood and of crisis psychology may be found in articles by the writer in the International Journal of Ethics, July, 1915, January, 1916, October, 1917, and in The American Anthropologist, March, 1916, and The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, March, 1918.

“The Behaviour of Crowds” by E. D. Martin, and “French Ways and Their Meaning” by Edith Wharton are recent books that the reader of a comparative turn of mind will find of interest, and if he is not already familiar with the writings of the Early Christian Fathers I commend to him some browsing in the “Ante-Nicene Christian Library” and the “Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers.”

E. C. P.

THE FAMILY

For statistical facts which have a bearing on the tendencies of the family in the United States, the following group of sources has been consulted:

“Abstract of the Census, 1910;” the preliminary sheets of the “Census of 1920;” Report on “Marriage and Divorce in 1916,” published by the Bureau of the Census; Bulletin of the Woman’s Bureau, U. S. Department of Labour on “What Became of Women Who Went Into War Industries;” Bulletin of the U. S. Department of Agriculture on “The Farm Woman;” Bulletin of the U. S. Children’s Bureau on “Standards of Child Welfare.” Economic aspects of the family and income data were acquired from “Conditions of Labour in American Industries,” by Edgar Sydenstricker, and “The Wealth and Income of the People of the United States,” by Willford I. King. For facts concerning longevity, the aid of the Census was supplemented by “The Trend of Longevity in the United States,” by C. H. Forsyth, in the Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 128. For the long biological perspective to counteract the near-sighted view of the Census, “The New Stone Age in Northern Europe,” by John M. Tyler may be commended. Psychological aspects of family relationships are discussed in a scientific and stimulating way in the published “Proceedings of the International Women Physicians’ Conference, 1919.”

K. A.

RACIAL MINORITIES

No author or group of authors has yet attempted to treat in any systematic and comprehensive way the position and the problem of the several racial minorities in the United States. A perfect bibliography of existing materials on the subject would be most helpful, but it could not make good the existing shortage of fact, and of thoughtful interpretation.

The anthropological phase of the subject is discussed with authority by Franz Boas in “The Mind of Primitive Man” (Macmillan, 1913), and by Robert H. Lowie in “Culture and Ethnology” (McMurtrie, 1917). Some information on racial inter-marriage is to be found in Drachsler’s “Democracy and Assimilation—The Blending of Immigrant Heritages in America” (Macmillan, 1920). Among recent reports of psychological tests of race-difference, the following are of special interest: “A Study of Race Differences in New York City,” by Katherine Murdock, (School and Society, vol. XI, no. 266, p. 147, 31 January, 1920); “Racial Differences in Mental Fatigue,” by Thomas R. Garth (Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. IV, nos. 2 and 3, p. 235, June-Sept. 1920); “A Comparative Study in the Intelligence of White and Colored Children,” by R. A. Schwegler and Edith Winn (Journal of Educational Research, vol. II, no. 5, p. 838, December, 1920); “The Intelligence of Negro Recruits,” by M. R. Trabue (Natural History, vol. XIX, no. 6, p. 680, 1919); “The Intelligence of Negroes at Camp Lee, Virginia,” by George Oscar Ferguson, Jr. (School and Society, vol. IX, no. 233, p. 721, 14 June, 1919); and the Government’s official report of all the psychological tests given in the cantonments (“Memoirs of the National Academy of Science,” vol. XV, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1921).

The most important single source of information on the present status of the coloured race in the United States is “The Negro Year Book,” edited by Monroe N. Work (Negro Year Book Pub. Co., Tuskegee Institute, Alabama); the edition for 1918–19 contains an extensive bibliography. Brawley’s “Short History of the American Negro” (Macmillan, rev. ed., 1919) presents in text-book form a general narrative, together with supplementary chapters on such topics as religion and education among the Negroes. The Government report on “Negro Population, 1790–1915” (Washington, Bureau of the Census, Government Printing Office, 1918), is invaluable. Important recent developments are treated in “Negro Migration in 1916–17” and “The Negro at Work During the World War and During Reconstruction” (Washington, Dep’t of Labour, 1919 and 1920 respectively). Some notion of the various manifestations of prejudice against the Negro may be gathered from the following sources: “Negro Education” (U. S. Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1916, nos. 38 and 39); “The White and the Colored Schools of Virginia as Measured by the Ayres Index,” by George Oscar Ferguson, Jr. (School and Society, vol. XII, no. 297, p. 170, 4 Sept., 1920); “Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889–1918,” and “Disfranchisement of Colored Americans in the Presidential Election of 1920” (New York, National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, 1919 and 1921 respectively). A few representative expressions from the Negroes themselves are: “Up from Slavery, an Autobiography,” by Booker T. Washington (Doubleday, 1901); “Darkwater,” by W. E. Burghardt Du Bois (Harcourt, 1920); The Messenger (a Negro Socialist-syndicalist magazine, 2305 Seventh Avenue, New York); and the “Universal Negro Catechism” (Universal Negro Improvement Association, 56 West 135th Street, New York).

A great body of valuable information on the Indians is collected in two publications of the Government, the second of which contains a very extensive bibliography; “Indian Population in the United States and Alaska, 1910” (Washington, Bureau of the Census, Government Printing Office, 1915), and the “Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico,” edited by Frederick Webb Hodge (Washington, Bureau of Ethnology, Government Printing Office, 1907–10, 2 vols.). An annual report containing current data on the status of the Indian is published by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Francis Ellington Leupp, who held this title from 1905 to 1909, was the author of a volume which presents in popular form the results of official experience (“The Indian and His Problem,” Scribner, 1910).

The “American Jewish Year Book” (Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Society of America) is an extremely useful volume, and particularly so because one must refer to it for statistical information which in the case of the other racial minorities is available in the reports of the national census. In the American Magazine for April, 1921, Harry Schneiderman, the editor of the “Year Book,” assembles a great many facts bearing upon the relation of the Jews to the economic, social, political, and intellectual life of the country (“The Jews of the United States,” p. 24). Of special interest to students of the Semitic problem is Berkson’s “Theories of Americanization; a Critical Study with Special Reference to the Jewish Group” (Teachers’ College, Columbia University, 1920).

The standard works on the Oriental question are Coolidge’s “Chinese Immigration” (Holt, 1909), and Millis’s “Japanese Problem in the United States” (Macmillan, 1915). The Japanese problem in California is treated statistically in a booklet prepared recently by the State Board of Control (“California and the Oriental,” Sacramento, State Printing Office, 1920), and in a symposium which appeared in The Pacific Review for December, 1920 (Seattle, University of Washington).

G. T. R.

ADVERTISING

Expect from me no recommendation of the “scientific” treatises on advertising or of the professional psychological analyses of the instincts. Books, books in tons, have been written about advertising, and as far as I am concerned, every single one of them is right. Read these, if you have the hardihood, and remain mute. Read them, I should say, and be eternally damned. Read them and retire rapidly to a small room comfortably padded and securely locked.

J. T. S.

BUSINESS

Within the limits of this space anything like an adequate reference to the source books of fact and thought is impossible. All that may be attempted is to suggest an arbitrary way through the whole of the subject—a thoroughfare from which the reader may take off where he will as his own interests develop. For the foundations of an economic understanding one needs only to read “Principles of Political Economy,” by Simon Newcomb, the American astronomer, who in a mood of intellectual irritation inclined his mind to this mundane matter and produced the finest book of its kind in the world. For the rough physiognomy of American economic phenomena there is “A Century of Population Growth,” Bureau of the Census, 1909, a splendid document prepared under the direction of S. N. D. North. Katharine Coman’s “Industrial History of the United States” is an important work in itself and contains, besides, an excellent and full bibliography. “Crises and Depressions” and “Corporations and the State,” by Theodore E. Burton; “Forty Years of American Finance,” by Alexander D. Noyes; “Railroad Transportation, Its History and Its Laws,” by A. T. Hadley; “Trusts, Pools and Corporations,” by Wm. Z. Ripley; and “The Book of Wheat,” by Peter Tracy Dondlinger, are books in which the separate phases indicated by title are essentially treated. For dissertation, interpretation, and universal thought every student will find himself deeply indebted to “Trade Morals, Their Origin, Growth and Province,” by Edward D. Page; “The Economic Interpretation of History,” by James E. Thorold Rogers; “History of the New World Called America,” by E. J. Payne; “Economic Studies,” by Walter Bagehot; “Essays in Finance,” by R. Giffen; “Recent Economic Changes,” by David A. Wells, and “The Challenge of Facts and Other Essays,” by William Graham Sumner.

G. G.

ENGINEERING

Literature covering the function of the engineer in society, especially in America, is very limited compared with books of information on most subjects. Engineering activities such as are usually described cover the technical achievements of the profession. Useful material, however, will be found scattered throughout the technical literature and engineering society proceedings especially among the addresses and articles of leading engineers prepared for special occasions. A comprehensive history of engineering has never been written, although there are many treatises dealing with particular developments in this field. Among these may be mentioned Bright’s “Engineering Science, 1837–1897”; Matschoss’s “Beiträge zur Geschichte der Technik und Industrie” (“Jahrbuch des Vereines deutscher Ingenieure”); and Smiles’s “Lives of the Engineers.” On engineering education, the “Proceedings of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education” and Bulletin No. 11 of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, “A Study of Engineering Education,” by Charles R. Mann, offer useful information. Concerning the status of the engineer in the economic order, Taussig’s “Inventors and Money Makers,” Veblen’s “The Engineers and the Price System,” together with Frank Watts’s “An Introduction to the Psychological Factors of Industry,” will be found of value. On the relation between labour and the engineer, much can be found in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science for September, 1920, on “Labor, Management and Production.”

O. S. B., Jr.

NERVES

Complete works of Cotton Mather; also of Jonathan Edwards. Complete works of Dr. George M. Beard, notably his “American Nervousness,” Putnam, 1881. Medical publications of Dr. S. Weir Mitchell. Dr. George M. Parker: “The Discard Heap—Neurasthenia,” N. Y. Medical Journal, October 22, 1910. Dr. William Browning: “Is there such a thing as Neurasthenia?” N. Y. State Medical Journal, January, 1911. Dr. Morton Prince: “The Unconscious,” Macmillan, 1914. Professor Edwin B. Holt: “The Freudian Wish.” Dr. Edward J. Kempf: “The Autonomic Function and the Personality.” Complete works of Professor Freud, in translation and in the original.

Files of Journal of Abnormal Psychology, to date. Files of Psychoanalytic Review, to date. Files of Imago, to date. Files of Internationale Zeitschrift fuer Aerztliche Psychoanalyse, to date. Dr. A. A. Brill, “Psychoanalysis,” third edition. “Character and Opinion in the United States,” by George Santayana. “Studies in American Intolerance,” by Alfred B. Kuttner, The Dial, March 14 and 28, 1918.

A. B. K.

MEDICINE

No attempt is here made to give any exhaustive, or even suggestive, bibliography. Only specific references in the text itself are here given in full, so that the reader may find them for himself, if he so desires. But on the general subject of “Professionalism,” although it deals more with the profession of law than of medicine, some valuable and stimulating observations can be found in the chapter of that name in “Our Social Heritage,” by Graham Wallas (Yale University Press, 1921).

Bezzola: Quoted from “Preventive Medicine and Hygiene,” Rosenau, 1920, p. 340.

Clouston: “The Hygiene of the Mind,” 1909.

Cole: “The University Department of Medicine,” Science, N. S., vol. LI, No. 1318, p. 329.

Elderton and Pearson: “A First Study of the Influence of Parental Alcoholism on the Physique and Ability of the Offspring,” Francis Galton Eugenics Laboratory Memoirs, 1910, No. 10.

Pearl: “The Effect of Parental Alcoholism upon the Progeny in the Domestic Fowl,” Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 1916, vol. II, p. 380.

Peterson: “Credulity and Cures,” Jour. Amer. Med. Assn., 1919, vol. LXXIII, p. 1737.

Rosenau: “Preventive Medicine and Hygiene,” 1920.

Stockard: Interstate Medical Jour., 1916, vol. XXIII, No. 6.

Vaughan: “The Service of Medicine to Civilization,” Jour. Amer. Med. Assn., 1914, vol. LXII, p. 2003.

Vincent: “Ideals and Their Function in Medical Education,” Jour. Amer. Med. Assn., 1920, vol. LXXIV, p. 1065.

ANON.

SPORT AND PLAY

Mr. Spalding, the well-known sporting goods manufacturer, is also the publisher of the Spalding Athletic Library, which contains, besides rule books and record books of various sports, a series of text-books, at ten cents the copy, bearing such titles as “How to Play the Outfield,” “How to Catch,” “How to Play Soccer,” “How to Learn Golf,” etc. Authorship of these works is credited to famous outfielders, catchers, soccer players, and golfers, but as the latter can field, catch, play soccer, and golf much better than they can write, the actual writing of the volumes was wisely left to persons who make their living by the pen. The books are recommended, as a cure for insomnia at least. The best sporting fiction we know of, practically the only sporting fiction an adult may read without fear of stomach trouble, is contained in the collected works of the late Charles E. Van Loan.

R. W. L.

AMERICAN CIVILIZATION FROM THE FOREIGN POINT OF VIEW1

Frances Milton Trollope: “The Domestic Manners of the Americans,” London, 1832.