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The authors have done their work well, and the book certainly makes in the direction which they intended. It takes its place with that growing body of literature which everyone must read who has a real part of any sort in the making of social life. It is not merely of local interest. Of course, a book about Boston, and especially about the oldest part of Boston, is attractive to thousands who care nothing about social problems. On the other hand, few whose chief interest is in civic amelioration, though they be in Minneapolis or San Francisco, will resist the temptation to indulge in the dissipation of a look into the old town of Boston as pictured in the opening chapters. Not a line of the book is dull to one who has the rudiments of civic con- sciousness. Every chapter, with the possible exception of the first two, would help citizens in nearly every large town in the United States to understand their immediate situation and the problems that it presents. They could not assume that details are mixed in just the same way in their own city, but this book would show them factors that are everywhere in some form and proportion.
The book as a whole is a panorama of the process of racial admixture and assimilation which is taking place under varying circum- stances throughout our country. My first thought on reading the title was that credit must be due to Mr. Riis for having suggested it in his phrase "the making of an American." If one chapter may be named as more instructive than another, it is the sixth, on "Traffic in Citizen- ship." Amateur political reformers would know better what sort of campaigning they must prepare for if they would read this chapter attentively. Every American who wants to understand his surround- ings, and especially everyone who wants to do some of the public work that our situation demands, would find it profitable to read the
book from beginning to end.
A. W. S.
Our Benevolent Feudalism. By W. J. GHENT. New York : The
Macmillan Co., 1902. Pp. 202.
THE general view presented by Mr. Ghent has already been devel- oped in Professor Veblin's Theory of the Leisure Class and in the writings of socialists. The familiar story of combinations, trusts, and centralization of industry and commerce is retold, and a very dark prospect is presented. We are drifting, he believes, toward a social state in which a few magnates will practically control the nation, dic- tate legislation, own the judges, time the sermons, crack the lash over
