Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/732

 7l8 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

close to $550,000,000. At least 15,000 negroes in the South are operating dry- goods and grocery stores. And the South is learning to what extent it is dependent upon its hiunblest citizen. — Booker Washington, Annals Amer. Acad., January, 1910. E. S. B,

The Problems of Town Development.' — Town-planning is a problem of the creation of value. Traffic streets should be developed far out into the country prior to demand ; thus promoting construction of residential streets. The high price of land is the cause of the five-story tenement. Land price might be stopped at a certain height by a tax on unbuilt-on land, beginning with low rates, 5 per cent, on sites sold up to 500 pounds per acre, and advancing gradually, i per cent, per every hundred pounds, then increasing by iHper cent, or 2 per cent. The production of houses is an affair almost exclusively between landowner and builder; the mass of the people have no direct share therein. — Rudolph Eberstadt, Contemp. Rev., December, 1909. E. S. B.

The Transmission of Disease by Money. — The average number of bacteria in each of twenty-one bills examined was 142,000. It is scientifically estab- lished beyond question that "money is a medium of bacterial communication from one individual to another." — A. C. Morrison, Pop. Sci. Month., January, 1910. E. S. B.

Criminal Procedure in the United States. — The faults are (i) cumbersome- ness, (2) slowness with which criminal trials are expedited, (3) importance given to technicalities, (4) too much latitude of appeal. It took thirteen weeks and the summoning of 10,000 veniremen at a cost of $40,000 or $50,000 to secure a jury in the Cornelius Shea case ; in England, scarcely more than an hour is ever taken to secure a jury. In the Iroquois fire case, it took three years and four months to bring the accused to trial ; and even then he was freed on a technicality. From 40 per cent, to 46 per cent, of appealed cases are granted re-trials; in England (1904), only nine out of 555 cases were reversed — new trials rarely being allowed on merely technical errors. The primary purpose of criminal procedure is to protect the innocent members of society, not to protect the guilty. — ij. W. Gamer, No. Amer. Rev., January, 1910.

E. S. B.

Effects of Industrialism upon Political and Social Ideas. — In the South, rural population is gradually transferring itself to the villages. Nearly every village in some parts has manufacturing enterprises which seek more than a local market. College graduates are turning to business. Political solidarity is being broken ; manufacturing classes can no longer be counted on to vote regularly. "Commercialism is doing what bayonets could not do." The negroes are failing to meet the test of industrial efficiency ; the new generation is less tolerant of them than the old was of the slaves. — Harold Thompson, Annals Amer, Acad., January, 1910.

The Evolution of Man and its Control. — Eugenics opposes war ; the south- em states are just awakening from the stagnation caused by the wholesale destruction of superior men in the Civil War. Although college-bred men and women are apparently failing to replace themselves, eugenics expects much from coeducation ; it warns against "flashiness" as over against honest worth ; it hopes that some pope will recognize celibacy as a suicidal institution and abolish it ; it raises the cry of race progress as distinguished from race sui- cide. By eugenics, the function of philanthropy is extended to include future generations. — Roswell H. Johnson, Pop. Sci, Month,, January, 19 10.

E. S. B.

A Healthy Race: A Woman's Vocation. — The chief causes of rejection of large numbers of men for public services are defective development and physical unfitness. The high death-rate for children under five years comes