Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/561

 REVIEWS $47

unions, it is placed to the credit of the employe's in proportion to the amounts of their several contributions. Compulsory saving on the part of any laborer would cease when his credit reached 100 M. In case of unemployment for any reason the laborer is permitted to draw on his savings. In the volume with which we have to do, Professor Schanz answers the many criticisms advanced against this plan, and fortifies his position by a careful examination of the experience gained since the publication of his earlier work.

In the first chapter of this book, Professor Schanz answers hi> critics and reasserts that neither "compulsory insurance" nor volun tary insurance through labor organizations is a solution of the prob- lem. Then follows an examination of the various plans for insurance tried or proposed in St. Gall, Basel, Berne, Cologne, Bologna, Stuttgart, and elsewhere, an account of the "out-of-work" benefits provided by the labor unions of the several European countries, a statement of the attitude of the several German political parties toward state insurance, and an analysis and interpretation of the statistics of unemployment obtained by the German government by its two censuses of 1895.

The St. Gall plan has been abandoned, after being in operation only eighteen months, because the feeling of social solidarity was not sufficiently strong to induce the better class of laborers to make the sacrifice which the plan involved. None of the other plans provides a solution of the problem, for they all fail to reach all classes of laborers, or are inequitable or otherwise faulty. The book gives us much good material on these points, but it is impossible to present any of it here. The substance of the several plans will be found in a paper published in this JOURNAL, May, 1897. Neither do the labor unions offer any solution of the problem. Many of them have no "out-of-work" fund. Then, too, relatively few of the laborers are to be found in the labor unions, and these are of the class least needing any provision of this kind.

The German political parties have as yet given little attention to the question, and most of them have taken no position in regard to it. The socialists are uncompromisingly opposed to any form of compul- sory insurance or saving as a scheme designed for the benefit of the "capitalists." The "deutsche Volkspartei" favors compulsory state insurance as a logical extension of the insurance against sickness, accidents, and old age ; while others have shown some favor toward Schanz' plan of compulsory saving.