The question of taxation for road purposes is less fully discussed; and it is to be regretted that our author has not paid more attention to the method of raising the money that will be required to pay for good roads. It is no easy matter to say where the money is to come from, so long as American prejudices prevent a development of our system of taxation. The burden of local taxation seems about as great as most localities can stand. Some new sources of revenue must be opened up if our schools, roads and other needed improvements are to receive adequate attention. The growth of local taxation has been much more rapid than that of national taxation, while the sources of national revenues are increasing more rapidly than those of towns and cities. In spite of inherited prejudices we must readjust our system of taxation so as to equalize its burden. The time must soon come when the nation will aid in the improvement of the localities of which it is made up by taking a part of the burden upon itself, just as all other civilized lands have been compelled to do.

In an appendix is contained an excellent tabular digest of the principal provisions of the road laws of our states and territories, prepared, under the direction of Professor Jenks, by Dr. Robert Weil of New York city. SIMON N. PATTEN.

A Compilation of Constitutional Provisions, Statutes and Cases relating to the System of Taxation in the State of New York. Prepared by JULIEN T. DAVIES at the request of the Committee on Taxation and Retrenchment of the Senate, etc. The Troy Press Company, Printers, 1888. — 8vo, cxi, 494 PP.

No one can form an idea of the complexity and confusion of the statutory provisions governing the subject of taxation in our American commonwealths until he has attempted to reduce the chaos to order. It is almost as difficult to discover what our system is, as to offer detailed suggestions for its improvement. Mr. Davies, therefore, has earned the thanks of every economist and student of administrative law for publishing in exceedingly convenient form a complete compilation of the existing law in our most important commonwealth. The original compilation was published in 1886 as a small pamphlet intended principally for the use of the legislators. The volume before us is practically a new work of a most comprehensive nature.

Mr. Davies, it must be said, is not an economist but a lawyer. We must not expect to find in the work any economic disquisitions, nor even an acquaintance with accepted economic truths. It is not surprising, therefore, to find in the "general statement" the ancient error that "taxation is the correlative of protection." Mr. Davies studiously avoids

all economic discussion and contents himself with a plain statement of what is, without seeking to analyze its effects or ascertain its causes. A careful perusal of the work has failed to disclose any important error or omission of fact; and the book is marred by a very few misprints only, as, e.g., "interstate" for "intestate" laws on page 229. Every statute still in force is given section by section, and a collection of the cases interpreting doubtful clauses is appended to each section with a fulness that leaves nothing to be desired. In this matter, the precedent which the compiler has established is an excellent one, and its general observance is greatly to be desired. Some other American commonwealths have published more or less complete codes of tax laws, but none has furnished the statutory provisions accompanied by the judicial interpretation. Mr. Davies deserves the heartiest commendation for his laborious work, which has so smoothed the path of every student of American finance.

E. R. A. S.

Report and Testimony taken by the Select Committee of the House of Representatives to inquire into the alleged Violation of the Laws prohibiting the Importation of Contract Laborers, Paupers, Convicts, etc. Washington, 1889. — Three Reports: 6 pp. 5 pp. and 1 p. Testimony: 799 pp. Reports of Consuls: 157 pp.

The report of the committee on immigration is not worth serious consideration. The majority, after enumerating the various abuses which they have found, come to the conclusion that

the effect of the present unrestricted system of immigration, as applicable to the conditions under consideration upon the industrial situation of this country, has been very bad; and the committee believe that the time has come when immigration should be more effectually regulated; that persons who immigrate to the United States should at least be composed [sic] of those who in good faith desire to become its citizens and are worthy to be such.

The bill accompanying the report proposes a great variety of restrictive measures: a tax of five dollars; consular certificates; limitation of the number of passengers to one for each five tons of ship's burden; exclusion of anarchists, socialists and polygamists, besides paupers, criminals, contract laborers, persons intending to labor here for only a limited time and then return, etc. The minority consider these measures too drastic; and one member (General Spinola), while

prepared to go any length in advocacy of the passage of a proper measure to furnish absolute protection, in order to shut out paupers, lunatics, idiots, cripples and thieves, as well as all other evil-doers, who come here to practice their wickedness, and fill our poor-houses and prisons, . . . [is] unqualifiedly

opposed to the passage of any law that will, in any way, check or stop the influx of honest immigration, believing that our happy and prosperous country will in the future, as in the past, continue to receive with open arms every honest, industrious man who may seek a home amongst us for the purpose of improving and benefiting his condition in life, whether such comer may be worth one dollar or one million of dollars.

But while the report itself is inane, not to say ridiculous, and is written in atrocious English, the testimony is of very considerable value. The patient searcher after truth (for the testimony is carelessly printed and vilely indexed) will find important evidence on the following points, viz.: That immigration increases the burden on our poor relief and charities; that paupers and even criminals are "assisted" to come to this country; that this assistance comes mainly not from the governments but from societies and philanthropic individuals; that there is now a considerable immigration of persons possessing a very low and undesirable standard of living; that the facilities for inspection of immigrants at Castle Garden are inadequate; and that the law against the importation of contract labor is constantly evaded and at best is difficult to enforce.

But besides these points (where the evidence is only corroborative of what had appeared probable before), the testimony elucidates in a new and startling way the process by which the competition of steamship companies has stimulated immigration and turned a social movement of the gravest political and economic importance to individuals and communities into a mere question of brokerage. This process may be described as follows:

Stress of competition led the steamship companies to establish agencies in this country for the purpose of selling prepaid tickets. Thus the Inman line has no less than 3400 agents here, and 33 per cent of its steerage passengers come on prepaid tickets. The Anchor line has 2500 agents, and 50 per cent of the immigrants come on prepaid tickets. These agents are selected from among the so-called bankers (exchangers), the boarding-house keepers and others who come in contact with the immigrant, and they are paid by commission. It was perfectly natural that they should use their endeavors to persuade immigrants to buy tickets and send them back for the use of their friends, the agent often sacrificing a part of his commission or selling the ticket on credit. The next step was to have a correspondent on the other side of the water to sell these prepaid tickets. These correspondents held out glowing accounts of the conditions of employment in America. They personally conducted the emigrants to the port of embarcation and promised that the "man" in New York should meet them and find them work. In some cases they persuaded the peasant to sell his little vineyard or

farm; in others, they advanced the passage money, receiving in return a promise to repay a much larger sum out of the immigrant's first earnings in this country. The immigrants land penniless or deeply in debt; in either case relying for employment upon the agents on this side of the water. These men exploit them in a variety of ways. They board and lodge them, making enormous rents out of tumble-down tenement houses; they sell them bills of exchange and prepaid passages for their families; they find them employment, receiving a bonus which is euphemistically termed a "present to the boss"; they furnish laborers to railroad companies, receiving the contract to board and lodge them, in which case the company deducts the board money from the wages of the laborers. So numerous are these sources of profit that it seems as if the agents were not particularly concerned as to the repayment of the original passage money, lest their victims should escape from their influence and control. It appears from the testimony that, although there were three or four thousand Italians in New York unable to obtain work, yet the agents were constantly bringing over others. In the case of immigrants from South Italy there has thus been established a complete system of "induced immigration" on the basis, however, of pure freedom of contract. A mass of contradictory evidence yields in this case an important practical result; and other portions of the testimony, if rightly treated, would yield similar results.

It is to be regretted that this committee, after undertaking the responsibility of an official investigation, and after compelling so many persons to attend and testify and, in many cases, to disclose their private affairs, should not have had the ability or the disposition to give us a scientific analysis of this great social movement and its underlying causes. If the only result reached by such a committee, armed with all the powers of the law and expending so much time and money, is denunciation of manifest evils and the proposal of impossible remedies, the general public may well despair of finding any solution of the problems which our complicated civilization forces upon us. Such investigations should be undertaken seriously and in the true scientific spirit, or they should not be undertaken at all.

RICHMOND MAYO SMITH.

Arnold Toynbee. By F. C. MONTAGUE.

Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, 7th Series, I. Baltimore, 1889.70 pp.

It was a happy thought on the part of Professor Adams to request, and it was a wise decision on Mr. Montague's part to allow the publication of this sketch of the life of Arnold Toynbee in the Johns Hopkins

Studies. England and America have both to gain by a closer sympathy and fellowship between the economists and social reformers of the two countries. The very appearance of this memoir, and of the account of Toynbee Hall in London and the Neighborhood Guild in New York by which it is accompanied, is a tacit confession that the circumstances of the Old and New Worlds are no longer so dissimilar as they but lately seemed to be.

Mr. Montague has performed his labor of love faithfully and with delicacy. Purposely avoiding strong contrasts of light and shade, and using the quietest colors, he has painted for us the picture of a man who even in our own time, though breathed upon by all the influences of the modern spirit and restrained in all his work for his fellowmen by the scientific conscience, could yet live the saintly life. It is the highest praise that can be given to the memoir to say that it is not unworthy of its subject.

Yet welcome as it is, it fails, in the judgment of the present reviewer, to bring into due prominence those features in Toynbee's life and action wherein above all lies his importance in the recent history of English thought. Toynbee is important, not so much as a philanthropist or as an example of unselfishness, still less as a "church reformer," but as an economist, as the initiator of a new and fertile development in English political economy. To many even of his personal friends, and in no place more than in Oxford, this is a hard saying. So much was expected of him and he left behind so little! What fragments of his writings and teachings were put together after his death are so disjointed, so full of apparent inconsistencies and changes of opinion! It is so clear that both in his discussion of theory and in his practical proposals he did but follow other men-Comte, Cliffe Leslie, Walker, Bagehot, Mundella, Sedley Taylor! Even his historical work might after all seem rather an indication of what he might have done than in itself any considerable achievement. But a man's importance is to be measured not by his consistency nor by the bulk of his writings, but by the impression he has been able to produce. That impression in Toynbee's case may perhaps be defined somewhat as follows:

First, at a time when the study of political economy had sunk to its lowest point in England, he did perhaps more than any other man to create a new interest in it, a new belief in its seriousness as a scientific discipline, a new hope that in it might be found some help in the solution of pressing economic problems.

Secondly, he turned this new interest in the direction of the historical investigation of social development, and of the direct examination of existing phenomena. His merit in this respect is none the less because he himself spoke with diffidence of the historical method and did his