Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/780

 758 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL wrongly answered (pp. 210, 219, 220). Our readers will judge for them- selves whether the question ofthis year's census ' Are you employer or em- ployed ?' could escape this condemnation. We are told that the registers, even after 1838, are far from complete, especially in regard to births, till we come to 1875 (when registration of births was made compulsory under penalties)(pp. 12, 13). Even now, in the Census at least, the ages of the very young and the very old are stated in a confused way which makes the exact figures unrustworthy (p. 8). Our neighhours are not before us in these matters. There are no Registrar's Returns for the United States as a whole (p. 57). The methods of enumeration adopted in the Census of that nation have sometimes been very un- favourable to accuracy. The number of immigrants recorded by the United States greatly exceeds the number of emigrants recorded by the countries from which they are declared to have come (p. xi.). When all the removable causes of error have been removed, or lessened (as, in our own case, they might be lessened by a Quinquennial Census), there would still remain, in more cases than that of the death- rate (p. 453), equations ' in which the number of unknown quantities would be itself unknown.' JAES BoyAR ' West Barbary,' or Notes on the System of Work and Wages in the Cornish Mines. By L. L. PRIcr., M.A. London: Oxford University Press. Tins work contains the results of an inquiry made for the Toynbe e Trustees in the years 1886-87. ' West Barbary,' is the term that used to be applied to that bleak and rugged corner of England described, it seems, by a writer in the time of Elizabeth as a 'foreign country on that side of England next to Spain.' Mr. Price has inves- tigated the economic condition of the Cornish miner with all his accustomed care and thoroughness. The miner is paid neither by the day nor by the ton. The work is put up to auction, and that body of miners which offers to do it for the least sum obtains the contract. This method is adopted as regards both the preparatory work and the extraction of the ore. Mr. Price finds that the system was in existence as early as the middle of the last century, and quotes some evidence to show that it may not have been unknown in the time of Queen Eliza- beth. The method of letting work by auction is not, however, a purely Cornish custom. Until very recently it was the usual method adopted in the Saarbriicken and Aix-la-Chapelle mining districts of Prussia. The right of doing a given piece of work was sold, as in Cornwall, to the miners who offered to do it for the smallest amount. The con- tract was made for one or three months. Mr. Price claims for the  In 1890 the enumerators were to be paid ' two cents. for each living inhabitant, two cents. for each death reported, five cents. for each surviving soldier, sailor, marire or widow of such' (p. 208).