Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/486

 47 2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

the development of the ecclesiastical system, the Holy Roman Empire, the rise of monasticism, the Crusades, the Communes, the national monarchy, the Reformation, the author fails either to convince or to satisfy. No one of these movements was without wide-reaching and important economic results. But in his effort to prove his law the author has strangely misplaced cause and effect. The Reformation particularly is beyond him. He mistakes the slime and silt and froth and filth, the accompaniments of the flood, for the rising tide itself.

The book can do harm only in inexperienced hands. But unfortu- nately just at this time inexperienced hands are reaching out for such books, and witless heads are only too ready to accept anything that fans the prevailing discontent, or seems to justify the proscription of those who by their skill and energy and industry have enriched society.

BENJAMIN S. TERRY.

Classes and Masses. By W. H. MALLOCK. Imported by Mac- millan & Co. Pp. 139.

A CLEVER writer is Mr. Mallock, and his sentences are transparent as crystal. He knows how to present the optimistic view of our indus- trial order to people who have never been hungry in a most satisfac- tory style. He knows how to sum up the results of a century of class struggle, of heroic sacrifice, of earnest philanthropy, of patriotic legis- lation, so as to make it all appear the " natural product " of forces outside human choice and effort. Wealth "distributes itself." The minimum of humane living is determined by the amount which can be produced on the poorest acres of cultivable land. The actual rate of wages depends on what consumers are willing to pay for goods, not on what the workmen demand. The census shows that the con- dition of the great majority of the people is comfortable and is improving. The discussion aims to break the force of the socialistic demand for governmental help by showing that great and rapid advance is made without the interference of the slow and clumsy agency of the state with the delicate machinery of private enterprise.

The triumph of the book is too easy. Its success depends in part upon suppressing many notorious facts. One may be quite in sym- pathy with the purpose of the author, and believe that his statements are reliable as far as they go, and yet conclude that a deeper apprecia- tion of the defects of our civilization would give the argument a more