Financial History of the United States. By Davis, Rich Dewey, Ph.D. London, New York and Bombay: Longmans, Green & Company, 1903—8vo, pp. xxxv+530. The task of writing a satisfactory text-book on the financial history of the United States is a difficult one, and gratitude is due the man who accomplishes it. Professor Dewey has been unusually successful. His book is more than satisfactory; it is excellent. Several features are especially noteworthy. An introductory chapter on "Suggestions for Students, Teachers and Readers" contains a well selected, annotated and classified list of books and periodicals on financial subjects, an account of sources, bibliographies and finding lists, and a section on special exercises and investigation, in which the author makes helpful suggestions to teachers and students who wish to really study the subject rather than simply read about it. At the beginning of each chapter there is also a list of detailed references to the various topics treated in the following sections. These reference lists are extremely useful, labor-saving devices, as well as an incentive to extensive reading and thorough work. The charts and statistical tables constitute another characteristic feature of the book. There are eighteen of the former, and a large number of the latter. Without exception, however, they elucidate the text, and are easily comprehended. A number of the statistical tables have evidently been compiled especially for this work. The book is also comprehensive and well planned. Its twenty-one chapters cover the entire period of our financial history from colonial times to the twentieth century, and include a discussion of the most important events and measures which fall under that head. Indeed, Professor Dewey has given a liberal interpretation to the phrase "financial history," and has accordingly discussed many topics relating to our coinage, banking and general economic history that a narrower interpretation of his subject might have excluded, but that, nevertheless, are essential to a complete treatment of it. A chronological arrangement has been followed in the main, but no attempt has been made to draw sharp lines between periods. The Colonial Epoch, the "Revolution and the Confederacy," the period characterized by the formation of the constitution and the "Establishment of a National System," and the Civil War period stand out clearly in Professor Dewey's treatment; but for the most part the titles of the chapters are determined by financial events which do not always follow each other, but overlap in such a way as to make a strictly chronological treatment inadvisable. gain, just as he is relieved of all possible loss, by virtue of the contract securing to him a fixed and certain interest. The effect of any monetary system on the distribution of wealth, particularly as between the employer and the employee, is thrown out of court. The author contends that money ought not to be employed as a socialistic weapon, and that it is no part of its function to create or change the distribution of wealth. In our opinion the book might have been strengthened by closer analysis of the contractual agreement. Every contract involves forecasts of the future. If these forecasts are falsified through a change in the monetary standard, then that standard is at fault, and not otherwise. A good standard is one which minimizes the uncertainties of these forecasts. It is not necessary, therefore, that money should be constant or stable in value as long as it is dependable. A money which appreciates or depreciates at a known rate (in exchange value or cost value) is a better standard than money whose value remains constant, if the community are all the time expecting it to change. It is not the actual change or lack of change in the monetary standard which is solely to be regarded, nor is it the expected change: it is rather the agreement or disagreement between the actual and the expected which is the important consideration. If the distinction between a stable and a dependable standard be kept in mind, it will be seen that an ideal money may be different to different classes in the same community. The agricultural interests would prefer contracts based on the average value of agricultural commodities to one based on a general average of all commodities, including silk goods and top hats. It would seem, therefore, that Professor Marshall is right in stating that the first step toward improving the standard of contracts would be to afford the necessary statistics for such index numbers as would enable various contracting parties to select their own "tabular standards." In short, it seems to us that Mr. Walsh makes a mistake in his latest book similar to that which we believe he committed in his earlier work, in seeking and claiming a single solution of his problem instead of admitting the possibility of several. In our opinion there may be more than one valid method of averaging prices and more than one valid standard of deferred payments. But, whether or not this objection is well founded, the high value of the work as a critical history of economic thought cannot be doubted. I. F. Financial History of the United States. By Davis, The task of writing a satisfactory text-book on the financial history of the United States is a difficult one, and gratitude is due the man who accomplishes it. Professor Dewey has been unusually successful. His book is more than satisfactory; it is excellent. Several features are especially noteworthy. An introductory chapter on "Suggestions for Students, Teachers and Readers" contains a well selected, annotated and classified list of books and periodicals on financial subjects, an account of sources, bibliographies and finding lists, and a section on special exercises and investigation, in which the author makes helpful suggestions to teachers and students who wish to really study the subject rather than simply read about it. At the beginning of each chapter there is also a list of detailed references to the various topics treated in the following sections. These reference lists are extremely useful, labor-saving devices, as well as an incentive to extensive reading and thorough work. The charts and statistical tables constitute another characteristic feature of the book. There are eighteen of the former, and a large number of the latter. Without exception, however, they elucidate the text, and are easily comprehended. A number of the statistical tables have evidently been compiled especially for this work. The book is also comprehensive and well planned. Its twenty-one chapters cover the entire period of our financial history from colonial times to the twentieth century, and include a discussion of the most important events and measures which fall under that head. Indeed, Professor Dewey has given a liberal interpretation to the phrase "financial history," and has accordingly discussed many topics relating to our coinage, banking and general economic history that a narrower interpretation of his subject might have excluded, but that, nevertheless, are essential to a complete treatment of it. A chronological arrangement has been followed in the main, but no attempt has been made to draw sharp lines between periods. The Colonial Epoch, the "Revolution and the Confederacy," the period characterized by the formation of the constitution and the "Establishment of a National System," and the Civil War period stand out clearly in Professor Dewey's treatment; but for the most part the titles of the chapters are determined by financial events which do not always follow each other, but overlap in such a way as to make a strictly chronological treatment inadvisable. Bundesstaat und Staatenbund. Von Professor Dr. Louis LeFur und Dr. Paul Posener. Erster Band: Bundesstaat und Staatenbund in geschichtlicher Entwickelung. Breslau: J. U. Kern's Verlag (Max Müller) 1902-pp. xv, 384. Professor LeFur's work, État fédéral et confédération d'États, was originally published in French as a single volume in 1896. In the new and revised edition, appearing in German with the collaboration of Dr. Posener, the introductory, historical, part is published as a separate volume, leaving the juristic theory of state compounds to be treated in a later volume. As the attempt is made in this modest-sized book to give a concise account of the constitutional history and law of every federal state, confederacy, or union of ancient and modern times, it is obvious that the subject can only be presented in broad outline and no very thorough knowledge is to be obtained from this volume. The work is, however, of decided value as an introduction to the study of compound states, both in giving a general view of the entire subject and in pointing out the way to more detailed study. Of especial value for the latter purpose is the extensive and at first sight almost exhaustive bibliography, which appears not only in groups in connection with each subject, but also in a complete alphabetically arranged register at the end of the volume. Numerous as are the works referred to, there are nevertheless some striking omissions, as, for example, Burgess's Political Science and Constitutional Law, and Preuss's Gemeinde, Staat, Reich; and apparently there is no indication given that the reports of the Supreme and other courts are sources of American constitutional law. Quick and Garan's Annotated Constitution of Australia (1901) perhaps appeared too late for inclusion. Unlike many German books, this one is well indexed. E. V. RAYNOLDS. RECENT LITERATURE. "The Story of Ab, a Tale of the Time of the Cave Man," by Stanley Waterloo (Doubleday & McClure Co., New York), is a curious and entertaining little sketch of life in the prehistoric period. There are exaggerations and inaccuracies, but in the main the conditions appear to be portrayed correctly enough for the purpose. Every boy should enjoy it, even if he cannot understand it all; and it should at least awaken in his mind an interest in the life and occupations of this far-off time. The story differs from those of Jules Verne, which have so often fired the imagination of the young, in that it depicts conditions which, to the best of scientific knowledge, have actually existed in the life of the race. It is, for the most part, free from the sentimentality that disfigures, for example, Moorehead's "Wanneta, the Sioux." A noteworthy bulletin of the Bureau of American Ethnology is the "Natick Dictionary" of James Hammond Trumbull (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1903). An Announcement includes a brief biographical sketch of Mr. Trumbull, who died in 1897, and whose manuscripts, we are told, were generously given by his widow to the American Antiquarian Society. A short introduction is provided by Dr. Edward Everett Hale, who devotes a large part of his space to a eulogy of John Eliot; he remarks that for the scientific study of Eliot's Bible, "Dr. Trumbull's vocabularies constitute the most important contribution . . . which has been made since that wonderful book was published." Much praise is accorded to the philological gifts and acumen of Eliot; other tribes of the Algonquian stock have little difficulty, we are told, in recognizing the terms as set down from the Natick by the great missionary. "In the spring of 1899," says Dr. Hale, "I placed before a Chippewa boy in the Hampton (Virginia) school words of the Massachusetts Indian language. He recognized at once fifteen of them, giving to them their full meaning; and with a little study he made out almost all of the remainder." The resumption of publication of the Bureau's Bulletins was authorized by Congress early in 1900. Printed copies are to be made to the number of 8000, of which somewhat more than half are reserved for Congressmen, the rest being destined for general distribution. The present manuscript received the expert care of Dr. Albert S. Gatchet of the bureau staff. The "Sketch of Linguistic Conditions of Chicago," by Carl D. Buck, is a valuable number in the Decennial Publications of the |