9. That there is a beneficial exchange of magnetism between the sexes in Shaker marriage.

10. That nursing a child after twelve months tends to produce brain disease in the child and deafness and blindness in the mother.

11. That midwives, as well as physicians, should be permitted to impart contraceptive information.

12. That Christianity has set back the progress of women by a thousand years.

For many of these statements she offers no authority other than her own. Even where plausible evidence is offered, her cause is not helped by attacking Christianity and the male sex. Whether or not Mrs. Sanger wants their co-operation, the support of men and of the churches is very essential to the new morality of parenthood.

She ignores those arguments-like those from immigration or industry-which have also been used with some plausibility by the advocates of larger families. Hoffman (the "prudential" statistician) would turn in his gravity to find anything he wrote used to support birth-control!

Her general fallacy is the common one of confusing an indispensable cause with an exclusive cause. She follows the chain of causation in each problem only until she finds her pet link.

But, most fundamental, her entire point of view (insufficiently offset by two or three scattered pages) seems essentially selfish. She emphasizes the emancipation of women rather than the welfare of the family or of the child, which she calls a more selfish interest. The "feminine spirit" for which she pleads, is but a projection of her own protest against economic, political, and other domination. To the reviewers, it would appear that what she is striving for in this respect is the basic rights of human nature rather than of specifically feminine

nature.

A more constructive and positive approach to this problem is being worked out from the standard of organic welfare, including both sexes, family and society, worthy childhood, and voluntary parenthood. Men, also, have been degraded, kept ignorant. Why not develop fathers as fathers, quite as much as develop mothers, whether as mothers, as women, or as humans?

It is hard to blame Mrs. Sanger for the shortcomings of this book: we might feel as she, were we to read as many letters like those she publishes. Doubtless, however, she does not hear nor see so much of the happily married. To understand and pardon does not, however,

warrant approval: the cause is so fundamental and worthy that it must be defended even from its friends. One may admire the courage and value the sacrifice of a pioneer and yet refuse to recognize her as a wise leader. Sensationalism may already have seriously handicapped the movement by associating it in the public mind with the outré and morbid. Possibly a reading of Aristophanes' marriage-strike might restore a sense of humor to the subject.

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

S. W. AND T. D. ELIOT

What the Workers Want A Study of British Labor. By ARTHUR GLEASON. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe. Pp. 518. $4.00.

A panorama of the contending and thinking forces affecting or being affected by the labor movement in Great Britain is presented by the writer in all its human aspects. There is a sincerity and lack of artistry in this book that gives the reader a much clearer portrayal of the situation than would be possible had the author set out to give a systematic analysis of conditions instead of presenting facts and opinions as they are at work in the labor movement.

One is particularly impressed by the personalities that lead the labor movement as portrayed by Mr. Gleason, and to supplement his own descriptions the author makes the leaders speak for themselves. That the special chapters written by the various labor leaders fail to correspond to the descriptions given of them is only reasonable, but in presenting one's moving ideas and ideals the interpreter does well to step aside and let the subject make his own plea.

The reports of the various labor conferences appended to the book are of immense value, as they give the trend of the labor thought and movement in the clearest possible outline and without them the book would be incomplete or even misleading.

Mr. Gleason has a keen eye for essentials and a sense of perspective that makes this seemingly bulky volume teem with human interest, without losing sight of the fact that nothing is final and that all is still in a formative and progressive stage. There are no positive predictions, although we are not left in the dark as to the direction in which things are moving. There is no effort to give the impression that the masses of English labor are more intelligent or farseeing than American labor; but that leadership is evidently more keenly alive to the possibilities of

economic reconstruction and the mass of workers is more willing to listen to those whose social ideals are grounded in the more complex philosophy of the state than is generally conceded to the ordinary labor leader in this country is made clear.

Mr. Gleason's style is vitalized by a deep interest in his subject and his direct contact with the movement and the leaders with whom he deals. A short chapter on old England is of particular interest because of its quaint charm and its masterful description of peaceful England in contrast with the contending forces of labor and capital.

No one interested in the labor movement can afford to forego the advantage of examining this work. The English labor program that came into being during the war and which attracted so much attention in the United States was indicative of the influence that the labor movement abroad must have upon conditions in this country. Whatever the future of the movement in England, it is bound to have its effect upon American labor.

CAROL ARONOVICI

BELVEDERE, CAL.

Readings in Rural Sociology. By JOHN PHELAN. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1920. Pp. xiv+632. $4.00.

In a volume of more than six hundred pages the author has brought together under twenty chapter headings almost 150 brief articles, addresses, and excerpts or abridgments from writings which bear upon this subject. The first four chapters furnish an excellent historical perspective for an understanding of present-day rural problems. Then follow chapters devoted to the various aspects of the rural life of today. The place of farming in our national life, the economic, the mental and moral, the health and the recreational aspects of country life, transportation, police protection, the home, the school, miscellaneous educational agencies, the church, the village, the rural survey, rural organization, rural leadership, and rural sociology suggest the plan of organization under which this vast amount of material has been brought together.

Those who use this volume will wish that the author had arranged the chapters in a different order, or, better still, that he had grouped them under larger divisional headings. The first four chapters are largely historical; chapters v, vi, x, and xviii treat of the various economic aspects of rural life; chapters vii, xi, and xv have to do with health, recreation, and education; while the remaining chapters deal with the important social issues. Some five or six well-chosen divisional

titles would no doubt have had some influence on the particular selections to be included in the book. As one runs through the titles, however, he finds little that even the busy student would wish to exclude.

A second criticism which one is tempted to suggest, even though the volume purports to be only a book of readings, is the absence of introductory and interpretative discussion by the author. Nothing in rural education and rural sociology is more needed just now, after a full decade of popular enthusiasm, and educational, social, economic, and religious propaganda in behalf of rural life, with the flood of investigation, research, and legislation, and the greater flood of every type of literature that has accompanied the movement, than a clear interpretation of just what it has all been about. In this connection the author's principal contribution is his chapter and subchapter headings, together with well-chosen chapter bibliographies. After reading, selecting, and classifying such a mass of material as the author must have handled, the reader will regret the absence of this feature which would have added a total of only twenty or thirty pages at most.

The book is a pioneer attempt, however, to bring some order out of the chaos of material in this field, and even with the absence of the features above suggested leaves one with the impression that the rural problem is a very real problem in American life, and that as a field for careful and scientific study it is not entirely adrift. One is pleased to find the names of Thomas Nixon Carver, Frederick J. Turner, Booker T. Washington, Eugene Davenport, Charles W. Eliot, Sir Horace Plunkett, James Bryce, and Theodore Roosevelt associated with the names of the few men who have made it their principal life business to mine out this field of rural sociology.

The book has made available, in good form, a valuable body of literature, which, previous to this, no one person could hope to find, and by so doing will add impetus to the movement for a better rural America. Almost everybody has read some portion of the book as it appeared in magazines or books, but few have realized the amount of substantial study that has been devoted to the subject. To this end the book will be very informing, to say nothing of the important need it will fill in the university and normal-school classrooms and in the hundreds of circulating county libraries and school libraries throughout the country.

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

J. B. SEARS

The Woman Who Waits. By FRANCES DONOVAN. Boston: Badger, 1920. Pp. 228. $2.50.

The Woman Who Waits is an interesting account of Mrs. Donovan's nine months' experience as a waitress in the restaurants of Chicago. It is a book which at the same time that it provides an evening's entertainment offers a great deal of information of undoubted value to the student of social conditions. The very readable style in which it is written adds to the vividness of the picture which Mrs. Donovan aims to draw and in no way detracts from the scientific worth of the work. The most striking feature of The Woman Who Waits is the intimate knowledge of all the details of the waitress' life which it conveys to the reader. The process of getting a job and being fired, the necessity of "jollying along" the guests for the much-desired tip, the making of dates with patrons, the advantages of belonging to the Waitress' Alliance or the Waitress' Union-these and other phases of the waitress' existence are described from a sympathetic point of view which lends more than a semblance of reality to the printed page. It is this very humanistic point of view which enables Mrs. Donovan to enter so completely into the joys and sorrows of her companions and to describe them so vividly and accurately.

It must not be inferred, however, that Mrs. Donovan's keenness for details and sympathy for human problems blinds her to the more general aspects of her investigation. While she understands the waitress' love of pretty clothes, her vulgar conversation, and the freedom of her sex relationships, she also evaluates these from the social viewpoint. She concludes that the waitress is typical of the great mass of women wage-earners who, in spite of their lack of educational advantages, etc., are becoming an increasingly important factor in shaping the affairs of society. Their economic independence has brought them an equality with men which has given them the same freedom even in the sphere of sex relationships. In addition, it has brought them new responsibilities which with the aid of their organizations they are training themselves to meet.

NEW YORK CITY

PHYLLIS BLANCHARD

Wealth From Waste: Elimination of Waste a World Problem. By HENRY J. SPOONER. London: George Routeledge and Sons, 1918. Pp. xvi+316. $2.50.

The engineering profession has long been impatient with the excessive wastes of contemporary social conditions. Since the Great War,