a system of private property and free transfer of property" (330). This description might lead us to conclude that justice is the preserver of property, but it might be turned as in the Republic of Plato into the reductio ad absurdum "justice is a thief." J. BONAR A Dividend to Labour: a Study of Employers' Welfare Institutions. By NICHOLAS PAINE GILMAN. (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company. Sold by Gay and Bird, London. 1899.) MR. GILMAN, the author of a very lucid and well-arranged treatise on profit-sharing between employers and employed, which appeared in 1889, has now written a book giving a mass of details, some of which possess considerable interest, concerning institutions maintained by employers for the benefit of their workpeople, apart from any plan of dividing profits with employees, and supplying at the same time a certain amount of information serving to bring up to date the account of systems of profit-sharing contained in his earlier volume. In Mr. Gilman's view, the "Welfare Institutions," to which he refers, "form an intermediate stage between a wages system, under which the workman receives his agreed wages and nothing more, directly or indirectly, and a profit-sharing agreement according to which he would receive, directly and regularly, a certain share of the profits made by the establishment." The examples of employers' benefactions adduced by Mr. Gilman show that their generosity takes very various forms, and includes the establishment of sick, accident, and pension funds, the provision of cheap houses, free baths, contributions to insurance funds, gifts of educational facilities, libraries, recreation halls, &c. The countries dealt with in the book comprise Germany, France, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Hungary, Denmark, and the United Kingdom, as well as the United States. In his chapter on "British Employers' Institutions" Mr. Gilman gives a description of the benefits provided for their workpeople by Lever Brothers, the soap-makers, Cassell and Co., and Hazell, Watson and Viney, printers and publishers, the Graphic and Daily Graphic newspapers, the Clarendon Press, Smieton and Sons, jute manufacturers, Cadbury Brothers, the cocoa manufacturers, Tangyes, the Birmingham engineers, several railway companies, and a few other firms. The examples given by Mr. Gilman make no claim to be exhaustive; and in fact the author would not have found it possible to compile a list of British firms, which have founded "Welfare Institutions," giving anything like an adequate idea of the liberality of British employers, because there is an almost complete dearth of published information on this subject. A certain number of somewhat meagre details (many of them probably now out of date) may be found in Answers to Schedules of Questions issued by the Royal Commission on Labour (C. 6795, VII., VIII. and IX. of 1892). But, with this exception, I am not acquainted with any publication which could have been consulted by Mr. Gilman; and if the account of British Employers' Institutions, which he gives, is extremely imperfect, this fact is not due to any fault of his. It is, however, proper to point out that institutions of various kinds maintained by British employers for the benefit of their workpeople are, as any diligent reader of our newspapers will be aware, very numerous. If, as Mr. Gilman says, "in England such institutions seem to be comparatively few," the reason is, that carent vate sacro-no one has thought it worth while to write a systematic account of them. success. With regard to profit-sharing (as distinguished from other forms of "Dividend to Labour"), it is of interest to note that in the United States systems of this nature appear to have met with very little The best practical test of the success of profit-sharing is the number and importance of the firms, which have had a scheme of profit-sharing continuously in force for, say, ten years or upwardsfirms, that is, which have given the system a fair trial, and have found the results sufficiently satisfactory to induce them to retain it. Now Mr. Gilman's list of profit-sharing firms in the United States includes no more than nine firms,1 which are stated to have introduced profit-sharing before 1890, and which he records to have profitsharing still in operation. DAVID F. SCHLOSS Wages in the United Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century. Notes for the Use of Students By ARTHUR L. BOWLEY, (Pp. 1-148, with 5 tables. Cambridge University Press. 6s. net.) IN the present volume we have a further contribution to the complete history of wages in the nineteenth century. The groundwork of the book formed the Newmarch Lectures for 1898; but the material has since been so revised and expanded, that, for ordinary purposes, enough is given to provide a fairly complete view of the course of money wages in certain industries, from the time of Eden and Young to the present date. The author, however, regards this as only a preliminary contribution, and his work in this field will not be complete until he has finished his great scheme of a wage index-number throughout the century, and of which, so far, only those for agriculture and compositors have been published, in the Statistical Journal. 1 Including one firm (Porter), with a scheme of which the nature is not stated, but excluding the Riverside Press, because the share in profits given to the employees is not "fixed in advance" (as is expressly required by the definition of profit-sharing adopted by the Profit-sharing Congress at Paris in 1889 and confirmed by the International Co-operative Congress at Delft in 1897); Rand, McNally and Co, because the share in profits is received by the employees simply as the holders of shares which they have purchased; and Rumford Chemical Works, because the employees merely receive extra wages for length of service ("without regard to the profits actually earned; " Gilman's Profit-sharing, p. 328). The theoretical portion of the book will probably be of most interest to readers of the ECONOMIC JOURNAL. The general object is stated to be an examination of recorded facts relating to wages, from the purely statistical side, with a view to showing "the various ways in which the material can be handled, the exact meanings of the wordswages, earnings-and the special methods applicable for obtaining out of the scattered and vague data available, accuracy and definiteness in the result." The author considers the two methods of dealing with wage statistics, viz., the "statical" and the "kinetic" (a new and appropriate adaptation of this terminology to statistical method), and decides that though the "statical" method is perfectly sound in theory, its limitations are so great that its advantages are few when compared with the "kinetic," which is adopted throughout, and which "has the double advantage of making it possible to use all the material we have, and so to obtain comprehensive results, and also of bringing into play special causes, tending to an accuracy which the statical method lacks." The use of the word "all" in this connection implies that isolated data relating to minor and decentralised industries may be utilised by this method; but it seems that even in its present fairly advanced stage there are many industries in which the variations of wages cannot be measured within any definable limits of accuracy, not because of the lack of data, but because of the impossibility of comparing them reliably. It would seem that limitations to the applicability of any method of measuring variations in wages exist wherever the industry is so carried on that no measure of collective bargaining, or no customary wage, prevails. The textiles dealt with in this book are cotton and wool,-two industries which could not be treated by the statical method with success, but to which the kinetic method is fully applicable. But hosiery and lace are not treated, and, so far as I am aware, never have been treated by Mr. Bowley. These industries have each been revolutionised several times; and though in the writing of Felkin, and in the "Returns of Wages," and the "Wage Census," a large amount of material exists, they almost defy the successful compilation of an index number for an earlier date than, at the earliest, 1860. Yet these industries are so centralised that a wage statement for one place will almost certainly apply, approximately, to the rest. The truth is vividly brought home, that unless wage statistics have a definite connection with each other over a period of years, they are useless for purposes of statistical measurement, no matter how plentifully they exist. A trade expert who is also a statistical expert might get order from this chaos, but one who is a statistician only would almost certainly fail to do so. Even the "kinetic" method has its limitations. If, however, success is not possible under such conditions, where the figures used are really what they are represented to be, i.e., averages, accurate and definite results can be obtained with only a few data. For instance, by weighting the calculated average wages of four sets of workmen, viz., London artisans, provincial artisans, town labourers and agricultural labourers, the author attempted (p. 70) a view of the general change in the average wage of the country. The accuracy of so apparently rough a calculation is seen on comparing the result with the index-number of average wages in twenty towns, published in the ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Dec, 1899, and which relies on at least a hundred figures for each year. The nearness of results obtained by two so absolutely independent ways of applying the kinetic method, places the value of that method beyond dispute. Other subjects treated in the book are the wages of agricultural labourers, seamen, compositors, and the iron trades; while the building. trades are exhaustively examined with a view to the elucidation of special difficulties. This latter chapter should be of great use to the students for whom the book was prepared. This usefulness is also increased by the inclusion of a select bibliography and a "list of events which have directly or indirectly influenced wages." A few slight errors mar the general good result: for instance, the Social Science Association Report on Trade Societies and Strikes is spoken of as the Report on Trade Unions in the Social Science Series (1860)," a description which might be termed accurate, but which might easily be confused with the Social Science Series published by Swan Sonnenschein and Co.; and on p. 43, line 13, the word "not" completely ruins the sense of what otherwise is a correct sentence. GEORGE HENRY WOOD The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. Vol. I., The East (1897); Vol. II., The West (1899). (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 12mo. Per volume, $1·25). Tramping with Tramps. Studies and Sketches of Vagabond Life. By JOSIAH FLYNT. With Prefatory Note by Hon. Andrew D. White. (New York: The Century Co. 8vo. $1.50). THESE volumes are very similar in character and purpose. Two young men of education and of well-to-do associations disguised themselves, to speak more accurately, converted themselves—the one into a day labourer, the other into a vagabond, and lived the life of these classes in order to secure a knowledge at first hand of their condition. The accounts which they give were in good part printed in American magazines before being put together in book form. Both are interesting in a high degree to the student of social questions. Mr. Wyckoff, now a member of the academic staff of Princeton University, transformed himself into an unskilled labourer, and as such worked his way without assistance of any kind from the Atlantic to the Pacific, beginning as one of a gang of labourers hired to tear down an old building at West Point on the Hudson, and ending his long tramp at San Francisco. His plan seems to have been to stop in no one place longer than sufficed to enable him to lay by enough to push on a stage further. His experiences were most varied. A day labourer at West Point, porter at a summer hotel, farm hand in Pennsylvania and later in various places in the West, timber cutter in a logging camp, truckman in a factory, hostler and man of all work in a stable, member of a mining gang,-these are the different sorts of employment to which he resorted. Our respect for the pluck shown in carrying out the weary programme is not lessened by finding that Mr. Wyckoff's earnest religious faith led him to frequent attendance at Sunday services, and so gave him a glimpse of the workman's relations to the church observances of the well-to-do. Perhaps the most striking fact, in all this varied experience, is the comparative ease and steadiness with which employment was secured. Unknown and unskilled, continually presenting himself for employment in new districts, he yet was able to make his way with surprisingly little hardship in a journey which must represent almost the extreme of difficulty in the way of securing employment. The only experience suggestive of wretchedness was in Chicago during the winter of 1892, where he did encounter a congestion of the unemployed, and found the struggle hard. Even thus, he succeeded before long in securing regular employment in a factory, and later in the operations for the great Exposition of 1893. Once out of the large cities, there seems never to have been any difficulty in securing employment at adequate As regards the social and intellectual life of the men with whom he consorted, Mr. Wyckoff's book is particularly interesting. It is not a cheerful picture, on the whole; and indeed could not be, since as a rule he consorted of necessity with the least fortunate of mankind. Especially in such episodes as the winter months in the Pennsylvania lumber camp, we see a life of unremitting labour, with coarse food and the roughest shelter, of which the proceeds are likely to be dissipated at the end of the season in a wild debauch at the nearest town. On the other hand, whenever a strictly agricultural region is reached, not only is there no difficulty in securing employment,-repeated offers were made of a permanent and comfortable |