Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/811

 REVIEWS The London Programme. Sonnenschein, nd Co. By SIDNEY WEBB. London: Swan, MR. WEBB has written a very instructive and useful book on a subject on which accessible information is not easily to be had. The London Programme is the name usually borne by a series of extensive and important reforms proposed for the better government of the metropolis, by the Liberal representatives of the constituency in Parliament andin the County Council, and Mr. Webb gives an exposition and justification of these reforms which must be commended at once for mastery of the facts, for clearness of statement, and for moderation and practical judgment. He has a very good account of the anomalies of the present situation, of the helplessness of the new County Council, of the chaos of Vestrydom, of the gas and water supply, the markets, the police, the hospitals, the tramways, the docks, the poor, the ground rents, the guilds and so on: and though as a Socialist he has no doubt a doctrinal partiality for municipalisation, he recognises plainly enough the natural limits to the efficiency of municipal management prescribed both by the amount and by the kind of the work to be performed. The burden of all London's collective concerns would be, he says, too much for any single body such as the County Council. For some, like the docks, he would prefer to create a special board, composed of persons with more direct personal interest in their good management, than the ordinary members of the City Corporation or the County Council can be expected to be, and representing the labour as well as the commercial interests involved. Other things, like the tramways, he would be content to see the Council owning, but leasing to private companies to be worked. Several chapters of the book deal with London finance, and propose find new sources of local revenue in the taxation of ground-rents, the appropriation of the unearned increment on real property, and the imposition of a municipal death-duty, also on real property. These are all naturally controverted matters, in which my own sympathy lies very much with Mr. Webb, but on which it is unnecessary to enter here, and those who differ nost from him must at least acknowledge that he always presents his case in a reasonable, interesting and concis way. JOHN RAE German History Century. Edition. Socialism and Ferdinand Lassalle : a Biographica of German Socialistic Movements during this By WLLXM H.RBVTT DXWSON. Second London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co. IT is well to have a good account of German Socialism, because it is certainly the most important manifestation of Socialism the world has seen. It embodies a specific theory woven it may be out of