increase the cost of medical service and that benefits are, therefore, needed. Usually the benefit is 30 shillings; under certain conditions this amount is doubled. In 1916 more than 6 million dollars was expended for maternity benefits. The cost to the workers averaged about 63 cents per individual man and 20 cents for each woman. In 1910 Italy established the first national compulsory maternity insurance system. Under this law, wage-earning women may receive an allowance of $7.72. The recent French law provides for two types of benefits-a rest and hygiene benefit and a nursing benefit. The latter is intended to stimulate maternal nursing and thereby reduce the infant mortality. The women are not required to contribute to the pension fund. The laws in the smaller European countries are mostly of recent origin and follow the plans developed elsewhere.

A study of the legislation in these countries indicates that maternity benefits will constitute a permanent part of the insurance plan. They are generally regarded as successful, and voluntary systems are gradually being displaced by compulsory measures. The Children's Bureau does not advocate any plan for the United States but simply presents the operations of the laws in various countries, and Great Britain in particular, so that American readers may become conversant with this phase of social legislation. GEORGE B. MANGOLD.

MANES, A. Versicherungs-Staatsbetrieb in Ausland. Ein Beitrag zur Frage der Sozialisierung. Third edition. (Berlin: Sigismund. 1919. Pp. iv, 128.)

VATKE, H. Die Verstaatlichung des Feuerversicherungswesen. (Berlin: Author. 1919. Pp. 111. 4 M.)

WARREN, B. S. Sickness insurance: its relation to public health and the common welfare. (Washington: Supt. Docs. 1919. Pp. 15.) Annual cyclopedia of insurance in the United States, 1919. (New York: R. R. Caverly. 1919. Pp. 613.)

Fire insurance in New England for ten years, December 31, 1909-December 31, 1918, inclusive. Twentieth edition. (Boston: Standard Pub. Co. 1919. Pp. 253. $7.50.)

Industrial pensions. (New York: Russell Sage Foundation Library. 1919. Pp. 4.)

Premiums and losses in the various states of the United States, Alaska, District of Columbia and Hawaii, reported to the National Board of Fire Underwriters, showing the premiums written and losses incurred on fire and lightning business only during 1917 and 1918. (New York: Nat. Board of Fire Underwriters, Actuarial Bureau Committee. 1919. Pp. 164.)

Proceedings of the thirteenth annual meeting of the Association of Life Insurance Presidents. (New York: 1919. Pp. 192.)

Proceedings of the National Convention of Insurance Commissioners,

forty-ninth session, 1918.

1919. Pp. 213.)

(Columbia, S. C.: F. H. McMaster.

Report of departmental committee on old age pensions. (Washington: Treasury Dept. 1919.)

Report of the Pennsylvania Commission on Old Age Pensions. (Harrisburg. 1919. Pp. 293.)

Rijksverzekeringsbank. Wetenschappelijke balans op 31 December, 1917. (Amsterdam: State Insurance Institute of the Netherlands. 1919. Pp. 114.)

Workmen's compensation supplement to department reports of Pennsylvania. (Harrisburg: Dept. Repts. Co. 1919. Pp. 1010.)

Pauperism, Charities, and Relief Measures

Justice and the Poor. By REGINALD HEBER SMITH. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Bulletin No. 13. (New York: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. 1919. Pp. vi, 271.)

This report deals with the administration of the law as it affects the poor. Failure to obtain justice has tremendous effects. The author says, "It leads directly to contempt for law, and disloyalty to the government, and plants the seeds of anarchy." There is an amazing amount of injustice for which no redress is made, and as a consequence, the poor become embittered against law and American justice. The difficulties are not due to injustices in the body of the substantive law, which is fundamentally democratic, but to inequalities and defects in the administration of justice. There are three principal defects-delay, court costs, and fees and expense of counsel. Delay forces unfair settlements, prevents settlements, and often practically results in imprisonment for poverty. Court costs are not based on any definite principle. They deter the poor but not the rich. At best they are an anachronism. For the poor to appeal cases is an impossibility. Attorney's services are costly. The author estimates that 35 million persons in the United States are unable to pay any appreciable amount for such a purpose and that 8 millions live in the large cities where this inability may become a serious problem. Part II deals with the agencies established to secure a fairer administration of the laws. These are classified as small claims. courts, conciliation courts, arbitration, domestic relations courts, administrative tribunals, administrative officials, assigned coun

sel, defenders in criminal cases, and legal aid organizations. Each of these agencies is discussed with examples of its establishment and services in various cities or communities: e.g., the small claims courts have practically eliminated defects of administration of justice so far as small civil cases are concerned. Conciliation, which has been notably successful in certain European countries, has been introduced into the courts of several American cities, such as New York and Cleveland. Domestic relations courts are being established in many cities to cope with the domestic difficulties of the poor. These courts are more and more using the machinery of the criminal law, but not in its forbidding aspects. Their jurisdiction is being widened and they have developed a remarkable capacity for securing freedom and equality of justice. Administrative tribunals are typified by workmen's compensation commissions whose work has greatly reduced the need of costly attorneys. The poor accused of crime have been subjected to most serious forms of injustice. The author discusses the function of the public defender in behalf of the poor and concludes that this official furnishes the best immediate method for securing freedom and equality of justice to poor persons accused of crime.

Nearly one half of the report is devoted to legal aid organizations and their work. There are 41 of these agencies in the United States and they represent five distinct types, as follows: private corporation societies, public bureaus, departments of organized charities, and bar associations or law school societies. These organizations are conceived of as a second line of defense, constituted to protect the poor if the various special courts are unable to perform this function with unqualified success.

The field of legal aid work is constantly expanding, but certain subjects, such as divorce matters, should be avoided. When a clash occurs between assistance to the poor and competition with the bar, the interests of the poor should be given priority, nor should justice be denied if the person cannot pay the price fixed. In the cities the annual legal aid clientele numbers about one for every 75 inhabitants. It seems that the public bureaus approach a higher standard of efficiency than the other types of associations, but all suffer from lack of funds. The work also suffers from the lack of centralized control and effective leadership. The bar as a whole has been quite indifferent and has given little financial support. Laymen not lawyers have made the growth of legal aid

work possible. The movement must grow and perform an important function in securing justice for the poor.

This report is most timely in calling attention to one of the serious problems of the day. The wrongs and injustices from which the poor suffer are responsible to a considerable degree for the current social unrest. It is well, in this day of repressive measures, to obtain some information about the legal problems and difficulties of the poor that lead to bitterness and resentment. The author presents a dispassionate account of the forms of injustice and proposes a series of measures for the alleviation of these wrongs. The report should stimulate better methods of providing legal protection for all.

St. Louis, Mo.

GEORGE B. MANGOLD.

NEW BOOKS

NOBLE, J. The law of charity trusts under Massachusetts decisions. Second edition. (Boston: A. C. Getchell & Son, 185 Franklin St. 1919. Pp. 112. $2.)

Organized love. Forty-second annual report of the Charity Organization Society of Buffalo. (Buffalo, N. Y. 1919. 1919. Pp. 38.)

Socialism and Co-operative Enterprises

Matériaux d'une Théorie du Prolétariat. By GEORGES SOREL. Etudes sur le Devenir Social, XV. (Paris: Marcel Rivière et Cie. 1919. Pp. 413. 7 frs.)

In this last publication of this remarkable man we see still more clearly his passion for metaphysical justification. The book is made up of articles mostly in print before the war. It had been rumored that Sorel had lost faith in syndicalism and had passed into tory reaction. How little this appears in the present volume may be seen in brief comments written as the war draws to an end. He says the events are too overpowering for any present estimate or measure. They have brought problems "que je n'oserais pas aborder en ce moment." But the victory of the Allies is the triumph for la plutocratie démagogique. They could not finish up their job "without trying to suppress Bolsheviks who filled them with terror. Even if the plutocracies crush the revolutionaries, shall we not have again the blood of the martyrs more fecund than ever? He reminds us that the massacres of 1848 and again in 1871 (which also crushed revolutionaries) had for result the

principle of class struggle in France. This "bloody lesson of events" is now given us again. But it is a world influence teaching the proletariat in all countries their real mission. Then, true to his syndicalist tradition, M. Sorel defines this mission as "l'idée de constituer un government de producteurs." With no hint of New Guild improvements, he closes "le cri: 'Mort aux Intellectuels,' si souvent reproché aux bolcheviks finera peut-être par s'imposer aux travailleurs du monde entier. Il faut être aveugle pour ne pas voir que la révolution russe est l'aurore d'une èra nouvelle."

In a preface of 50 pages and a longer chapter on l'Avenir socialiste des syndicats, are but restatements of ideas already familiar to readers of Sorel's books. He admits that the syndicalist leaders are not "tres grandes philosophes" but they are men "de sens et d'experience" and know how to defy present political organizations as well as philosophers.

His scorn of Fabianism and of all socialism that has made itself respected burns with its old fire. Socialist literature, he says, is vague and more débridé than that of ordinary politicians. Socialists are now furnishing these politicians with material and with arguments to confuse every subject with which they deal. They are creating myths and illusions with which the bewildered masses. are to be led they know not whither.

As in Gustave Le Bon's recent study of psychology applied to revolutions, we have a sharp reaction against the whole rationalist method of dealing with social changes and upheaval. Revolution is indeed a kind of fatalism or religious madness. This reveals the most dangerous weakness in this syndicalist philosophy. It treats the masses as children to be fed on myths. To think so ill of the "crowd-mind" and of Le Bon's "collective tyranny" is the most serious impeachment of the masses ever given us; serious because they never could know or select a leadership except of fanatics or of demagogues.

JOHN GRAHAM BROOKS.

NEW BOOKS

BRASSEY, LORD. Co-partnership in mining. Experiments in profitsharing and co-partnership no. 3. (London: Labour Co-partnership Assoc., 6 Bloomsbury Sq. 1919. Pp. 16.)

BULLARD, A. The Russian pendulum; autocracy, democracy, bolshevism. (New York: Macmillan. 1919. Pp. xiv, 256.)

COMPÈRE-MOREL. Le programme socialiste de réformes agraires. (Paris: Rivière. 1919. Pp. 70. 1.25 fr.)