Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/866

 8$2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

would, in a short time, give the South the best highways in the country" (p. 218). So blinded is he to the use of a prison system that, not considering the prisoner at all, he shows that this method would increase the wealth of the South, do away with the road-tax, and give a "corps of trained road-builders such as these convicts would speedily become." But no word about reformation or the les- sening of crime. For minor crimes whipping is suggested.

So hopeless is the negro's case that he goes so far as to recommend extermination as the patriotic duty of the American people (pp. 141, 363). But in another mood he says the negro can rise if he will (p. 365), and that in five years (pp. 83, 84.) For he informs us on p. 367 that the doctrine that human progress must be slow is a pernicious fallacy.

The book is thoroughly sensational, and the product of a distorted and immoral imagination. No rational ideal is given, nor is there a word, in all the 440 pages, concerning the bright side of negro life, except when he says something about himself (pp. xiv-xxi and 408). The treatment of his topics is clumsy. His style is verbose and intem- perate. The whole book would have been better written had the same material covered but 200 pages. RICHARD R. WRIGHT, JR.

Philosophic des Geldes. Von GEORG SIMMEL. Leipzig : Duncker & Humblot, 1900. Pp. xvi + 554.

THE Philosophic des Geldes stands alone in the literature on money. In its method of treatment it can perhaps not be compared with any- thing that has heretofore been written on the subject. Readers who are familiar with Professor Simmel's chapters on " Social Differentia- tion" will at once discover in the volume on the "Philosophy of Money" analogous points of view and methods of analysis, and throughout they will find themselves gravitating toward Simmel's theory of society. In the term "reciprocal action" we find the key- note to the entire work. The Philosophic des Geldes is at once meta- physical, economic, and sociological. It is metaphysical in its methods, economic in many of the elements of its contents, and socio- logical in the larger framework of human relations in which the whole finds its setting. Every page of the volume illustrates the power of keen analysis and an almost unlimited capacity for abstract thinking and hard work. No one will read this book for amusement, but he who brings to it diligence and care will find in it very much to repay him for whatever effort he may put forth.