Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 49.djvu/438

420 Book Company, 40 cents and 50 cents). Both are by Edward Eggelston, who has aimed to lighten the labor of learning to read by presenting stories containing enough spirit and movement to interest the young. He has also seized the opportunity to implant a love of America in the American child by drawing his subjects from what might be called the heroic age of the United States. We are glad to see such a master hand in writing "true stories" enlisted in the service of the young. The only improvement we could suggest would be to combine a love of Nature with a love of country. A combination of Eggleston and Burroughs, for example, would yield a product well-nigh perfect.

The Eighth Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of Illinois is devoted to taxation, and it shows how large property owners, especially in the chief city of the State, throw an unfair portion of the burden of taxation upon their poorer neighbors. This is accomplished by undervaluations often grotesquely small, and by assessing vacant land lower than land of equal value bearing improvements. While Chicago real estate receives most attention, considerable information concerning the property of railroad and other corporations in the State is presented. The Bureau recommends that State taxes be levied solely on site values of land, and advocates several changes in administration. An appendix contains information concerning the coal-miners' strike in 1894, and the decision of the State Supreme Court on the Sweat-shop Act. A compilation of the Labor Laws of the State of Illinois is included in the same volume.

In Statesman and Demagog, a pamphlet by Alphonse Allman, of San Francisco, a dynamical theory of money is presented, with many mechanical analogies and diagrams. Unfortunately, his analogies seem to run away with him in places, and in making his theory plain to those versed in mechanical principles he has obscured it from every one else.

In Bilder aus der deutschen Litteratur the student is given a bird's-eye view of the field, with many favorite ballads, some extracts from longer pieces, and the outlines of the chief prose works, but without too many dates and statistics. The author, Prof. I. Keller, of the Normal College, New York, has aimed to use language which the student can read at sight (American Book Company, 75 cents).

The Secret of Mankind (Putnams, $2) belongs to a class of books to which the name Utopian might be given, as it presents the (anonymous) author's ideal of human society in the form of a description of an imaginary state. Another favorite form of writing with a certain class of writers—conversations with the shades of the departed great—is also used. Metaphysics, ethics, government, and education are the chief topics discussed.

Under the title Light on Current Topics (Massachusetts New Church Union, Boston, $1) a series of lectures setting forth the teaching of the Swedenborgian Church on certain topics of present interest has been issued in book form. Among the subjects tieated by various lecturers arc, Theosophy and Religion, The Relation of the Church to the State and to Secular Affairs, and Pauperism and Crime.

The Interstate Commerce Commission has issued its seventh annual volume of Statistics of Railways in the United States, giving information about mileage, capital, earnings and other income, expenditures, and charges against income on account of capital covering the year ending with June, 1894. The year was exceptional in several ways. It included the last four months of the Columbian Exposition, which had an important influence on the passenger traffic, and it covered a part of the period of the recent business depression. The latter fact is apparent in all the tables, and especially in the unequaled percentage of the mileage of the country in the hands of receivers.

In its Report on Coal in Illinois for 1894, the Board of Commissioners of Labor of that State has presented statistics on the output of mines, value of the coal, cost of mining, number of employees, days of active operation, wages, the use of powder, casualties, and the ventilation of mines. This information is arranged both according to districts as reported by the several State inspectors of mines and in summary form. An appendix contains statistics of the coal-miners' strike of 1894 and of the world's production of