Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/860

 846 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

equal suffrage, for if the votes of the men and women are compared there can be no doubt but that the larger vote is cast by vicious men than by vicious women" (p. 85). One of the grounds on which women are claiming the right of suffrage is that it will purify poli- tics, and therefore, to say that where equal suffrage exists the vote of vicious women is not quite as large as that of vicious men is not wholly convincing. On the whole, the evidence here given is neutral rather than decisively for or against equal suffrage. The person not deeply interested in the suffrage would get no very strong reason from this experience of Colorado for granting women this right, unless he considered a vague broadening of their interests and an opportunity for a few women to exercise distinct ability in public office strong reasons. To the person deeply interested in the suffrage as a question of some social importance, the most significant and striking thing about this Colorado experience is how much more the women of Colorado might have accomplished by a more unified, organized, and consciously worked-out effort to use their possi- bilities. Much has been done there and a few have rendered dis- tinguished service, but a detailed program for steadily improving things, from party machinery to factory inspection and who shall vote, has been wanting.

The book is prefaced by a labored Introduction of 36 pages, by another writer, in which Miss Sumner's facts and conclusions are interpreted beforehand for the reader, in which the reader is told just how to understand the book, and in which a distinctly partisan argument in favor of woman's suffrage is advanced. It is an un- fortunate reflection upon an otherwise impartial and valuable study.

Frances Fenton

The University of Chicago

La defense sociale et les transformations du droit penal. Par A. Pruis. Bruxelles, 191 o. Pp. 170. Professor Pruis, one of the founders of the International Crim- inalistic Association, the Belgian delegate to the International Prison Congress at Washington in 1910 has shown in this recent volume his appreciation of the emotions and tendencies of the American move- ment for prison reform. His treatment of the subject of the abnormal offender is especially noteworthy. In his earlier great work on criminal law he urged the same thesis of "social defense," and he returns to the argument with fresh illustrations. The author