James G. Smith

STARK, W. The Ideal Foundations of Eco nomic Thought. Pp. viii, 219. New York: Oxford University Press, 1944.

of ground. Beginning with short sketches of numerous utopias all the way from writers of the Old Testament to H. G. Wells, Dr. Laidler proceeds through Marxian Socialism, Fabian Socialism, German Social Democracy, Revisionism, French Syndicalism, Guild Socialism, Communism (?) in Soviet Russia, discussions of the socialist movement in more than a score of countries, recent socialist thought, consumer cooperation, and variants of socialism, such

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preference.&dquo; In the last chapter, &dquo;Social Objectives Related to Consumer’s Demand,&dquo; Dr. Norris discusses what she considers to be the &dquo;major defects in the way our societyAmerica today-meets its consumers’ demands.&dquo; It is the opinion of the reviewer that all readers will find the author’s discussion in this chapter provocative; especially will this be true of the growing group of economists who claim to be interested in the consumer. Part One and the majority of Part Two will interest only those readers who are thoroughly trained in economic theory. HELEN G. CANOYER

KUZNETS, SIMON. National Income and Its Composition, 1919-1938. Vol. I, pp. xxx, 387; Vol. II, 388-929. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1941.

use of class intervals. Other illustrations of frequency distributions also are given. On pages 177 and 179, however, correlation curves are erroneously labeled as frequency curves. In the discussion of averages and dispersion, a good collection of illustrative material is used. The text is better than most in giving illustrations of the H.M. and G.M. Interesting examples of leptokurtic and platykurtic frequency distributions are included.

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cal materials (p. 259). Most informative are Chapter XV, dealing with &dquo;Articles of Association of Collective Farms,&dquo; and Chapter XVII, which describes &dquo;Agricultural Administration and Remuneration of Farm Labor in the Soviet Union.&dquo; An evaluation of what collectivization has done for the peasants is based largely on individual letters written by members of collective farms in various

CROXTON, FREDERICK E., and DUDLEY J. COWDEN. Applied General Statistics. Pp. xviii, 944, xiii. New York: Pren tice-Hall, Inc., 1939.

rial, or the data of a quantitative nature that are introduced. With respect to the first, the contribution seems to the reviewer slight. Dr. Lunden depends almost entirely on secondary sources, and his handling of them does not appear to give any significant new insights. Some of the material is sketchy to the point of being misleading. The chapter on &dquo;The Medieval Guild and the Organization of Early Universities&dquo; is four and a half pages. A chapter on &dquo;Byzantine Culture and the Growth of Higher Education in Europe&dquo; has five pages. Actually there seems to be little analytical relationship between these early sections and the later tabular analyses. In stressing that the university is a social institution, Dr. Lunden is on sound and obvious ground, but the development of his sociological point of view is highly terminological. He does not make it clear just what gain comes from discussing the question of faculty promotion and turnover (which are good, accepted words) in terms of &dquo;institutional metabolism,&dquo; &dquo;transstratum migration,&dquo; and numerous other derivatives and variations. The reviewer is

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One of the most important changes noted is the large increase in the proportion of total income that is derived from the government. In this change is included bounties such as those involved in the agricultural adjustment program, but the statistics fail to show the amount of income produced for the tariff-protected industries in comparison to their income without tariff protection. Similarly, the great increase of income from government resulting from the transfer of activities from charities to government is not considered.

NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RE SEARCH. Studies in Income and Wealth. Vol. III, pp. xxiii, 479. New York, 1939.

KUZNETS, SIMON. Commodity Flow and Capital Formation. Vol. I. Pp. ix, 505. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1938.

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5.00. The author conceives of capital formation as the accumulation of commodities, either consumable or durable. Hence all intangible items are omitted from capital, such as good will of business enterprises, monopoly powers of business enterprises, and capacities of the members of the nation

MARTIN, ROBERT F. National Income in the United States 1799-1938. Pp. xv, 146. New York: National Industrial Conference Board, 1939.

written in simple, nontechnical language for the general reader, and its appendices present for the specialist forty-two pages of tables of costs and prices by items, groups, months, and cities. The number of items represented in each group (food, clothing, housing, fuel and light, and sundries) has been expanded since the 1918 study. A new base year, 1923 as against 1914, has been selected, and former indices refigured in terms of the new base. Most important are changes in the weights given the items in computing the total index: food is changed from 43.1 per cent to 33 per cent; housing from 17.7 to 20 per cent; clothing, 1f to 13.2 per cent; fuel and light, 5.6 to 5 per cent; and sundries, 20.4 to 30.0 per cent. Studies cited justifying the validity of this new practice are those of Ford employees, 1929; Federal employees, 1928; Piexotto’s topographers of San Francisco, 1921; and my Minnesota village families, 1926. It should be pointed out that most of these groups are atypical for this purpose. The Ford workers are for a boom year, and