beneath. Whereas it would presumably be true to say that if every one of his reforms were carried, supposing that possible without a raising of moral tone among us, England would be hardly a whit the better off. The value of reforms is in exact proportion to the willingness with which they are conceded.

Mr. Stephens has, however, produced a book which will give a useful direction to the moral energy of people who are beginning to feel the pressure of the social problem. It is given to few men, as to Mr. Charles Booth, to gauge accurately the vastness of the mountain they have undertaken to remove, and it is hardly a just ground of complaint against Mr. Stephens if he should not be one of them. Most people have only the faith to remove mole-hills, and Mr. Stephens writes for most people."

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His book will give them a very fair idea of how they ought to employ their leisure as citizens, and what they ought to expect from their Parliamentary or County Council candidate. In the main his work consists of summing up the arguments for the reforms he indicates (without perhaps bringing into quite sufficient prominence the objections to be overcome). The two most original features of the book are the scheme for dealing with the unemployed and the treatment of the old age pension problem.

With regard to the first of these subjects, his proposal is a modification of the home colonies' principle. He would have local authorities buy up ground, and on it start new villages, not only giving employment to agricultural labour, but also setting up workshops and shops (where he suggests the women could be employed). The villages would, he think, soon become self-supporting. He answers thus the question whether a hundred unemployed from the East End of London "could be transformed into a community of producers, earning the means to get sufficient food, proper clothing, a healthy home-able, in short, to become in every respect members of the social body." Yes, he says optimistically. "For that hundred, if set to work, can produce by their labour, or obtain for it, the things of which they are in need. All that is required is that the hundred should be divided into groups of labourers and artisans in due proportion, so that each should give to the others what products of his labour he does not need for himself. . . . This is the way, in fact, in which every village has taken form" (p. 18). The chief obstacle which Mr. Stephens sees is the difficulty of organization. In answer to this, he points to the difficulties overcome in the organization of the International Exhibition and the School Board system. But surely it is not so much un-organization as incompetence which is the greatest

t

difficulty in the way of dealing with the unemployed. It is one thing to say that home colonies are the least wasteful form of philanthropy and another to suggest that they can be any final solution of the difficulty. Incompetence is the real sieve of the Danaids. It is always with us, and we must always be pouring into it, but it is futile to expect that we shall ever stop the leak. Moreover, the parallel between home and foreign colonies is inconclusive. Men may succeed in foreign colonies when they could not do so at home because the soil is more productive or labour is cheaper, or from some other natural advantages. But how is it to be expected that the worse land should pay when the better hardly does? Now, the reason why men go to the colonies is that the land left at home will not pay for cultivation. If it will not pay the comparatively competent to cultivate it, how will it pay the incompetent? Again, that the unemployed are so from incompetence or unwillingness to work seems to be shown by the great demand there is for agricultural labour. There is a district in Leicestershire where agricultural labourers are being paid at the present time over a pound a week to keep them from going off to the collieries. And with this agrees the experience of labour colonies abroad, which Mr. Stephens might have discussed more fully. In Germany these have become "receptacles for those who have suffered 'inward' as well as 'outward shipwreck,' and are shunned by respectable working men out of employment." In Holland they have become frankly charitable institutions, and the idea that they might be self-supporting has had to be abandoned. "They form an endowed institution where a privileged few of the Dutch poor live in more or less comfortable circumstances at a cost of about £23 per family per annum to the charitable societies of the country" (Blue Book on the Unemployed, C. 7182, p. 407). Moreover, the increased specialization of employment which is here suggested, even if possible (it is pronounced quite impossible by Prof. Mavor in the Blue Book quoted), would greatly increase the cost. Again, Mr. Stephens does not say how he proposes to keep the colonists from stealing the tools, etc., with which he is going to provide them. In the German colonies theft (even of live stock) is found to be so common that it has been thought it would be better frankly to make the colonists a present of the clothes which have hitherto been lent to them.

To pass to the scheme for old-age pensions. The proposal is that the annuity is to commence at fifty-five or over. Wage-earners of all classes are to contribute from 6d. to 1s. a month, according to age. The employer and the State are to contribute half as much again each.

The objection to this scheme once more is the fact of original sin— the rooted desire of the human mind to eat its cake and have it too. Mr. Stephens hardly hopes that more than one-third of the workers will be benefited by his scheme. This would leave the submerged and a good deal more entirely out of account. And there would be no improvement for twenty years. Finally, unless the workers did more than is here represented for themselves, they would only get 3s. a week when they came to claim their annuity. Still, it might be worth while to spend £750,000 a year, which Mr. Stephens calculates would be the cost to the State, to produce this result. The scheme ought in any case to commend itself more favourably to the Charity Organization Society than Mr. Booth's comparatively pauperizing proposals.

The book is, on the whole, a stimulating one. It shows considerable knowledge of the condition and needs of the working classes, though perhaps it hardly lays enough stress on the temperance question and the housing problem as the most pressing of modern difficulties. But Mr. Stephens has hardly sufficient grasp of the ethical side of his subject, nor does he seem to have made a very exhaustive study of the bearing of economic history on his proposals.

LAWRENCE PHILLIPS.

DIALOGUE ON MORAL EDUCATION. By F. H. MATTHEWS, M.A. [257 pp. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. Sonnenschein. London, 1898.]

This book is really a treatise on educational reform, but its author has chosen to give it a more popular character by presenting his ideas under the form of a dialogue. Unfortunately, for while it contains much that is both interesting and suggestive, there are few people who could appreciate over two hundred pages of conversation restricted to one subject, and it is perhaps inevitable that the style should become both tedious and diffuse.

But, setting this on one side, we can find many valuable ideas in the views of the doctor, clergyman, and schoolmaster, who, with their wives, discuss this important subject. One of the main points in their scheme is that boys and girls should be educated together, the present. method of separating the sexes being condemned as both unnatural and harmful. The advantages of this reform are stated in the following passage:

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"Each sex will develop some of the virtues of the opposite. present we brutalize boys, and make them still more empty of the gentler virtues by separating them from the influence of women, while we rob girls of all chance of shaking off the timidity and want of self

management and independence to which they are by nature so prone, as we give them no opportunity of seeing anything of a world where these virtues are held in high regard. You know the old story of the preacher who in his sermon urged the young women to be brave and the young men to be chaste. A member of his congregation remonstrated with him afterwards, and wanted to know if he had not misplaced his words. Ah, no,' he replied, 'Nature has taken care that young men should be brave and young women chaste. Our aim must be to cultivate in each sex precisely those virtues in which they are deficient."" The age at which children should receive definite instruction in their religious duties produces some sensible remarks from one of the wives. That most children are taken to church too young to appreciate or understand the services would be generally admitted. But few seem to realize the harm that may be done by making religion become a wearisome task, as the result of expecting a development in the spiritual nature of a child far more advanced than is ever expected of his intellect. The moral influence of art in training the eye and ear to value beauty of form and sound is emphasized; and all are agreed that the true aim of education should be "the furnishing of a clue which shall always show the right." For, that most wrong-doing, especially among children, is the result of ignorance rather than of deliberate purpose is a principle which should be recognized by all educators.

Many people would disagree with the author's opinion, that children should not be taught to apologize when they have done wrong. He allows that it is perhaps the hardest task to a self-respecting being, and that such confession is a wonderful moral discipline, but will not have a child taught this seemingly obvious duty in case it should become an artificial means of escaping punishment. As the duty of apologizing is not necessarily at all connected with the question of punishment, this reasoning does not seem applicable. Much of the conversation is concerned with the educational ideas of various writers -e.g. Professor Adler, Pestalozzi, and, to some extent, Herbert Spencer. The doctor, whose views are certainly the most original among the party, bases all expectation of improvement in the conventional methods of education on the hope that people may be forced to think about the subject, saying truly of this, as of all reforms, "It is to get people to think that is the supreme difficulty."

That all classes should be educated together, so that all advantages may be equal, necessarily implies the intervention of the State, but no attempt is made to grapple with the difficulties and drawbacks that are already a characteristic of State-educational methods.

Many other subjects connected with moral education are discussed at more or less length, such as the relation of morality and religion, the question of unreasoning obedience, and the formation of the habit of truthfulness.

It would have been interesting to have the author's views at greater length on the value of games as a training in self-discipline. Finally, it must be admitted that, admirable as much of this scheme is, nothing can ever be so effective in the teaching of morality as the influence, generally quite unconscious, of a high moral character. The value of such a book as this is indirect-to teach people to think about the subject rather than to adopt the details of the scheme. The author himself admits this truth, that for practical reform the best of theories is powerless before the force of personal example.

W. M. MAMMATT.

OVER-PRODUCTION AND CRISES. By KARL ROdbertus. [140 pp. 8vo. 2s. 6d. Sonnenschein. London, 1898.]

This is a well-executed translation of an interesting pamphlet. It is an open letter from Rodbertus to his friend, von Kirchmann, not the least valuable part of which is an analysis of von Kirchmann's own view as to the origins of crises. Both writers mark a tentative advance from Ricardo, yet both retain, in spite of attempts at something like an historical handling of the subject, the characteristic method and the characteristic defects of their predecessor. Still, both make a vigorous essay to go back behind generalizations to the complexity of elements which underly any given economic situation, and both try to explain a practical difficulty by bringing distribution and production into closer relation. Unfortunately neither writer has a sound theory of distribution to offer, nor does the problem in question -which, after all, is highly special and caused mainly by the growing complexity of exchange-admit of solution by any reconstruction of society such as Rodbertus desires. Thus neither writer, in spite of a laudable effort to broaden the question, has contributed positively to the theory of crises, while each has suggested fertile lines of general economic research.

Von Kirchmann's analysis is based upon an insufficient knowledge of facts, is, indeed, theoretic in the worst sense. He believes that crises are the normal result of unfair distribution, together with a determination on the part of capitalists to "productive" industry; though society is richer, individuals grow more and more poor; since on the one side the labourers have their determined share in the product, on the other the thrifty capitalists blindly devote the toil of labourers