CURRENT LITERATURE.
Industrial Evolution of the United States. By Carroll D. Wright, LL.D. (Gay and Bird.)—We need hardly say that this is an interesting book. Dr. Wright is a " Commissioner of Labour " in the States, and while he discusses the historical part of his subject with the authority of one who has carefully studied the authorities, he is able to regard the present condition of affairs from the standpoint of an expert. With his theory we do not always find ourselves in agreement. Machinery, for instance, cannot be said to have the absolutely beneficial effect that Dr. Wright finds in it on the character, moral and intellectual, of the artisan. The division of labour, for instance, has, on one side, a dis- tinctly narrowing and depressing effect. The workman who in old days made the whole of a pin, was in some respects in a better position than the workman who now goes through with a wearisome iteration one of the eleven or twelve processes which go to the making of the article. Of course, it is idle to .complain; the change is inevitable; but it is still more idle to exult. Much of the information with which the volume furnishes us is highly interesting, and it is put in a forcible and picturesque way. One of the latest press machines now at work in New York, "run by one pressman and four skilled labourers, will print, cut at the top, fold, paste, and -count (with supplement inserted if desired) 72,000 eight-page papers in one hour. To do the presswork alone for this number of papers would take, on the old plan, a man and a boy, working ten hours per day, one hundred days." The daily would become a quarterly,—hardly that. There is a particularly interesting account of the American labour organisations.—With this may be noticed The Growth of the American Nation, by H. P. Judson (same publishers). Here, of course, we come across various matters of which we naturally take a somewhat different view from Mr. Judson's. The impartial historian might, we think, take into consideration in estimating the British policy during the Napoleonic wars the frightful strain of a conflict for existence in which our whole energies were engaged. The United States, of course, regarded the matter very differently. They might have even profited, or thought they would profit, had we been crashed by Napoleon. But we were fighting for life, and naturally thought all methcds fair.
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