Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/755

 REVIEWS 739

applying this punishment, and the "international conscience" is opposed to it.

The chapter on imprisonment as a corrective measure is chiefly occupied with its history and with the reasons for using it as seldom as possible. Police-court missions, probation officers, truant schools, fines, and other substitutes, should be employed.

Very interesting is the account of English industrial and reforma- tory schools given under the head of corrective institutions. The schools of similar kind in the United States are briefly mentioned. It is shown that the children treated in these institutions have generally been improved.

But the author shows that all these methods at their best do not touch the primary causes of habitual crime, which are in the economic, domestic, physical and educational conditions which surround and form the life. The author might have made more of the influence of hered- ity on the production of crime. If juvenile offenders are so defective as his statistics show, and if personal treatment of these in prisons, reformatories, and schools have little influence in checking crime at its source, it ought to start inquiry as to the degenerate families which breed such persons. Education, industrial reforms, better housing and sanitation, may do much to mitigate the evil and yet crime may increase in spite of all these agencies if the degenerates are not segre- gated and prevented from producing multitudes of the same kind. His argument carries us beyond his conclusions and compels thought of abysses below those directly opened to view.

The author writes, naturally, from the English point of view, yet in the most catholic spirit and with a mastery of the sources of knowledge for all modern nations. As chaplain of Wandworth prison and a patient student of criminology and penology, his recommendations bear the stamp of a high degree of authority. The treatment is thorough and exact, but so free from all technical difficulty that the literary form is popular. The book will be indispensable for every serious student of the child-saving problem. C. R. HENDERSON.

Economics. An account of the relations between private prop- erty and public welfare. By ARTHUR T. HADLEY. G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. xi + 496. $2.50. THIS book attempts to explain modern industries objectively