Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/853

 REVIEWS 837

The photographic illustrations of unfit tenements give the reader almost everything but the foul odor of noisome cellar and closet. The graphic devices make statistics impressive. The tabular pre- sentation gives the report the value of a primary document. All these systematic and even dramatic pictures of the nude and repulsive reality are used to introduce a practical program for improvement, a definite policy which is the ripe product of long study of the world's experience.

The use of the phrase " sociological work " is queer, for it i interpreted as including records of death, contagious diseases, tuber- culosis, and density of population. This careless expression is out of place in a book of such high value, and it illustrates the vague way in which the scope of sociology is conceived even among intelligent persons.

The principal social interests actually treated are those of health and cost, the former being predominant; but the administrative organization is analyzed with fine precision, and the bearing of habitation on morality is more than once placed in a strong light. The method of expelling prostitution from the dwellings of honest wage-workers is worthy of imitation in other cities. Altogether the report stands in the front rank of its kind and deserves careful study.

C. R. HENDERSON.

Annual Report of the State Board of Charities for the Year 1903. Volume III : " Charity Legislation in New York, 1609- 1900." Albany: O. A. Quayle, 1904. Pp. 1300. No previous publication has placed before the student of the history of public relief such a body of reliable materials. The archives of the state of New York have yielded rich documents, and the secretary of the State Board of Charities, and his assistants, Mr. E. H. Leggett and Mr. W. D. Ives, are entitled to great credit for the vast achievement. The compilers in the preface frankly tell us what they have done, and challenge the historians of the subject to connect the documents in a causal series. They have effaced themselves in the steadfast determination to let the primary record offer its own message, without taking space for their own opinions. Even as the materials stand in chronological order, they are inter- esting and intelligible. The natural periods are : the Dutch Colony of New Netherlands, 1609-64; the English Colony of New York, 1664-1776; and the State of New York, 1776-1900.

C. R. HENDERSON.