MISCELLANEOUS ECONOMICS.*
MISS DODD has produced a very readable book on a technical nubjeet. Economists and statesmen are more and more realizing the necessity of recognizing the inevitableness of the lines along which civilization has developed. Marx and ether Socialist agitators lightly declare that money is a thing which they will not permit in the Socialist State. An analysis of present conditions of industry is sufficient to show that this is a hard saying, and the difficulty of such a policy will be still further emphasized by a very brief survey of the part played by currency and money in the industrial development of the world. Notwithstanding the errors and the crimes of Governments, the course of events has an appearance of inevitable cogency. Mr. Herbert Spencer used to say that but for the interference of Governments the great " moneyers " of commerce would have given us a satisfactory currency long before we received this boon from the efforts of legislation. The laws of currency, even in matters of detail, have a cosmopolitan range. " The study of the financial history of the past century," says Miss Dodd, "shows the predominance of the single standard as opposed to bimetallism, and the general adoption of gold as the sole standard of value in preference to silver." This is not the result of legislation, but is the inevitable nature of commercial things. The gold standard is the common language of exchange, and exchange is the pivot on which our industrial civilization turns. Miss Dodd's volume is a plain and interesting narrative of the aspect of our industrial life, and its importance is self-evident, without any further recommendation from us.
Mr. Jackson's volume is the work of an ardent co-operator, who tells the history of the co-operative movement in Bristol. He has collected some interesting incidents relating to the preaching of Robert Owen in Bristol. These have a general interest. The main part of the book is devoted to the detailed history of the Bristol Stores. This will appeal more parti- cularly to the local reader. The volume is illustrated by pictures of business premises and local managers, which, appropriately enough, are of an extraordinarily prosaic type.
Mr. Heath's new volume on British Rural Life gives us a
• (D The History of Money in the British Bisspire and the United States. By Agnei F. Dodd. London Longman and Co. [5s. net.]—.(2) A Study in Democracy : being on Account of the Rise and Progress of Industrial Co-operation in Bristol. By Edward Jackson. Co-operative Wholesale Society's Printing Works. [2s. 6d.]—(3) British Rural Life and Labour. By Francis George Heath. London: P. S. King and Son. [10e. 6d. net.]—(4) The Superstition called Socialism. By G. W. de 'Plumelmann, B.Sc. London : G. Allen and Co. [5a. net.]—(5) National Trade and the National Ideal. By H. H. G. Goldin. London: J. Murray. [2e. 6d. not.'(--- {6) The Great Oil Worn. By Truth's Investigator. London : T. Fisher IInwin. [5s. net.]
detailed picture of the conditions of the agricultural labourer'a life, his terms of employment, his home, his food and clothing, and his hours of work in the different parts of the Ignited? Kingdom. The account is based on Blue Books and also on Mr. Heath's own personal observation. He dwells on " the alarm- ing and increasing" depopulation of our rural districts, and: trusts that " my last five chapters will be found to provide an effectual remedy for the evils pointed out." The author is in favour of the establishment of small freehold proprietors and grants of public money to assist the cultivator. This policy, he thinks, would be "a solid rock against which the mad waves . . . of what is called Socialism would beat in vain." Is the assumption warranted that a proportionate decrease of bhe agricultural population is necessarily an evil, and that, if: so, it can only be combated by reversing the economic move- ments of population which at present tends to flow from the- badly paid to the better paid industries of the country ? The- opponents of Socialism who want public money for promoting- their own panaceas are not entirely convincing.
Mr. de Tunzelmann appears to be a lecturer for the Anti- socialist Union, and this volume is intended to be an aid to anti-Socialist speakers. It supplies us with an energetic, not to say truculent, denunciation of the Socialist theory. There is much excellent material in Mr. de Tunzelmann's work, and we hope it will prove useful for the purpose intended. It labours, however, under the difficulty that the author has ton show that money diverted from its natural course by tariff' reform or taxation for the "social reforms" of the Unionist party is admirable policy, but that similar depredations by Mr. Lloyd George and his Socialist friends are mischievous and ruinous to the welfare of the nation.
The same difficulty of maintaining an eclecticism of this. kind seems to us to render inconclusive the argument of Mr.
Goldie's National Trade and the National Ideal. His inquiry, he- says, shows us that "Great Britain is face to face with the ills that arise from the enforced idleness of labour-capital and with those that arise from labour conditions that have become im- possible." This we believe to be true in the sense that industry is hindered by the internecine quarrels of labour, the exclusion of unskilled, unorganized labour from seeking- employment in the skilled trades in which a monopoly is claimed by the trade unions, and by the insane endeavour to.
improve the conditions of unskilled labour by a policy of strikes and violence which destroys the conditions under which industry flourishes. Mr. Goldie's remedies hardly seem to us, adequate. He enumerates nine propositions, of which the- most operative are declarations in favour of universal military- service, an Aliens Act, a Small Holdings Act, tariff reform, and a parental fostering of industry by the State—a singularly hopeless programme in view of the want of confidence, security, and reasonable liberty which now prevails. What the- situation requires is a restoration of a belief in liberty as the basis of equity and of success in matters industrial.
The last book on our list is a vehement attack on the pro- ceedings of the Standard Oil Trust. The subject is one of much difficulty, and we cannot say that the title and the lurid cover of this volume make us confident of the judicial fairness of the writer. The subject was recently dealt with in these columns (May 20th), and litigation is still pending on the sub- ject. The volume before us is a statement by the prosecution— a necessary part of the controversy—but there is, of course, another side to the question.
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