THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN.
The Man Farthest Down. By Booker T. Washington, with the collaboration of Robert E. Park. (T. Fisher Unwin. 6s. net.)— In the course of a seven weeks' tour of Europe Mr. Booker Washington found time to visit Austria, Italy, Denmark, and England with a view to studying at first hand the conditions among the poorest inhabitants. Though such an investigation must obviously be superficial, Mr. Washington has a considerable gift of observation, and his impressions are rendered the more interesting by his frequent comparison of European conditions with those of the American negroes. He draws some depressing pictures of the squalor and misery among the peasants :of South Italy and Sicily and of Bohemia, Hungary, and Austrian Poland, from all of which countries the greater number of American immigrants are drawn. With these he contrasts the prosperity of the agricultural population in Denmark, and he is enough of an optimist to see hopes of a similar prosperity in the future of the other countries which he visited. Though he is chiefly concerned with agriculture, Mr. Washington has some interesting obser- vations to make upon the town populations, and also deals incidentally with such questions as Socialism and Women's employment.
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