FACULTY PUBLICATIONS

MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES IN AMERICA, by Malcolm Keir. Ronald Press, New York.

The outstanding feature of this book is its readableness. The matter has a wide appeal— as the title of the book suggests, its range is great enough to interest nearly all of us; the manner is crisp, homely, Franklinesque. The author's list of industries treated, iron and steel, cotton manufacture, woolens, leather, boot and shoe, paper, and miscellaneous industries, the latter including cement, brick and pottery, glass, wood products, manufactured food, shipbuilding and clothing, .has omitted certain prominent manufactures, notably the production of all types of machinery, but this omission, which one regrets, one can well understand in view of the fact that Professor Keir was writing but a single volume.

The book is quite non-technical. He who runs may read, and the tired business man may find enjoyment as well as profit in its perusal. Not that its lightness lies in its weight, but in its lucidity. The author has few theses to defend or refute, the treatment is annalistic, a chronicle of facts covering the whole period of the given industry's history in this country, with an emphasis upon environmental influence. The history of an industry shows certain geographical movements of its center. These are due in the main to changes in the environment and may be foreseen by an accurate survey of the significant features of that environment. So runs the argument.

The environment which is significant varies according to the industry, in one industry being propinquity to market; in another, to raw materials, or power; in a third, to an effective labor supply; in another, the important element in environment is climate. One wonders if the influence of environment has not been overworked. Possibly, one suspects, inertia and the law of comparative advantage have played, and do play, a somewhat larger part in the determination of the sites of an industry than Professor Keir admits. Thus he says that Massachusetts' greatest resource lies in her skilled labor; and contrasting Massachusetts with Pennsylvania, he supposes their people to be blotted out by some great catastrophe. Pennsylvania, he says, would soon thrive again as a result of her natural resources, but New England would be ruined for ever. But it is at least arguable that Massachusetts' industries created and attracted her skilled labor quite as much as that her labor created her industries. Comparative advantage rather than absolutely favorable environment was, I suggest, the important factor here, and might even operate in the future as in the past.

What seems to me the same excessive emphasis on environment appears in the first chapter on the "Resources of the United States and Their Relation to Opportunity," in which opportunity is put forward as the resultant of resources (natural?) divided by population. This has an attractive air of mathematical precision, but is it true? Is it not refuted by such populous, prosperous, and, as regards natural resources, poor, countries as Switzerland or within our own Union, New England? Opportunity, in fact, may be created, if one has knowledge, and energy, and will: it is not fixed, but flexible; and dependent as much upon man's adaptation to and of his environment as upon the environment itself. Of course, if the author means that other things being equal, opportunity depends after a certain point, directly upon the size of the country and the character of its resources, and inversely, upon the number of inhabitants, he could not be disputed, but he would then be begging the question. He fails to allow for such factors as intelligence, skill and education, though, conceivably, he would trace even these to environment.

One further word. In his last chapter Professor Keir says that manufacturing, by fostering immigration, "has had the effect of lowering the average intelligence (of the country) through the influx of the uneducated," and he supports the assertion by statistics of illiteracy. All that these statistics show, however, is the degree of illiteracy, not of intelligence, and they furnish no reason whatever for the conclusion that our general intelligence has been lowered. If that were so, we would have been permanently injured by this immigration; but if our general average of illiteracy only has been lowered, this may be cured by concerted effort in a generation or so.

The foregoing remarks apply largely to the first two and the last chapters of the book— the only chapters which furnish an opportunity for that delight of the reviewer's soul—a rebuttal with no surebuttal to follow. The bulk of the book, describing historically and analytically the industries of America, makes most interesting reading and indicates trends in industrial development with which any entrepreneur would do well to keep in mind.

—F. D. G.

A HISTORY OF THE ATLANTIC COAST LINE RAILROAD. Howard Douglas Dozier. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1920. (Ihe Hart, Schaffner and Marx Prize Essays.)

For the fourth time the Hart, Schaffner and Marx Prize Essay has been won by a Dartmouth professor. The first successful Dartmouth competitor was Dr. H. S. Person, Director of the Tuck School; later the prize was won by Mr. J. N. Stockett, for a short time instructor in economics; and in more recent times by Professor Graham and Professor Dozier.

Professor Dozier has confined his study closely to the history of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. In order to understand the forces which lay behind the building of the railroads in the Southeast, however, he wisely devoted attention to general economic conditions. The study, therefore, becomes an investigation into portions of the general economic history of the region east of the Mississippi and south of the Potomac, so far as they are related to the problem of transportation.

He early discovered that a considerable number of short railroads were built to connect the "fall towns," Fredericksburg, Richmond, Petersburg, Weldon, and others; that the general economic development of the region made necessary the consolidation of these lines following the Civil War into a north and south system—the same process that took place in other parts of the United States, and from similar reasons; and that consolidation made possible further economic development which has been of great advantage to the southeastern coast.

The most striking example of the process is found in' the truck garden industry of the coast. It appears that the so-called "winter garden" of the Northeast is a narrow belt running from southern New Jersey to Savannah, Georgia. Only rapid transportation was needed to connect the gardening region with such northern cities as Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Providence, and Boston. To bring this about the Atlantic Coast Line Despatch was established and equipped with special fruit and vegetable cars. The advantages of the arrangement further hastened consolidation, which came about chiefly during the decade after 1893. In 1902, the Atlantic Coast Line purchased a controlling in the Louisville & Nashville, which served the Lower Mississippi valley.

Professor Dozier's study is decidedly worth while. A series of studies like his, covering the entire country, would enable economists, political scientists, and historians to understand much better than they do the development of the United States during the generation following the Civil War.

C. R. L.

Prof. William Stuart Messer is the author of "The Ex-Service Undergraduate," which appears in the April number of the Educational Review.

"Legislative Compacts with Foreign Nations," by Prof. Albert H. Washburn has been reprinted in pamphlet form from the January-February issue of the American Law Review.

The issue of School and Society for April second contains an article by Prof. H. T. Moore, entitled "Educational Research and Statistics, Three Types of Psychological Rating in use with Freshmen at Dartmouth." Professor' Moore is also the author of "The Comparative Influence of Majority and Expert Opinion" in the March issue of TheAmerican Journal of Psychology.

Professor W. K. Wright is the author of McDougall's Social Psychology in the Light of Recent Discussion" in the Journalof Philosophy for March 17.

The Blue Book Magazine for June, 1921, contains a story, "Dicky's Decision," by Percy Marks.

Mr. Neafie Mitchell has written the music for "A Dream of Faerieland," by Nina Knoeller. The premier performance will be held at Williamsport, Pa., May 28. There are eleven numbers in the musical score, eight of which are songs, and three dances. The final song in the production is Mr. Mitchell's "Little White Home in the North Country." Nine of the numbers will soon be printed.

The Journal of Philosophy for April 8, 1921, contains Urban's Axiological System" by A. T. Brogan. This is rather an extensive criticism of some of the recent essays on value by Prof. W. M. Urban.