Karl Brandt

CUMMINGS, RICHARD OSBORN. The American and His Food. Pp. xii, 267. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940.

dressed primarily to &dquo;leaders of thought&dquo; in the Carolinas. It states a problem and offers a solution in the hope of stimulating and directing efforts to remedy a longacknowledged evil. While his purpose is propagandistic, Dr. Simpson has not permitted his desire for reform to destroy his objectivity or to color his presentation of facts. His most eloquent plea for remedial legislation is to be found in the cold figures for rates of charge paid by more than 2,200 borrowers in the Carolinas, 93 per cent of whom were charged interest at rates in excess of 200 per cent a year. He makes no claim that regulation and public supervision of the small loan business would elim-

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more thinly, with a few pearls hidden here and there. They represented a conspicuous effort at co-operation and consultation in agricultural research. A large number of experienced researchers contributed suggestions for research projects, their scope and methods, to furnish a sort of guidebook for less experienced teachers and students in agricultural colleges and experiment stations, telling how to do research work and on what. Since the con-

BLACK, JOHN D., AND BRUCE D. MUDGETT. Research in Agricultural Index Numbers —Scope and Method. Pp. viii, 152. New York: Social Science Research Council, 1938. 75¢

ductory chapter on Principles and Practices of Co-operation. One is at a loss how to divide encomiums between Carleton R. Ball for his painstaking research, and the Bureau of Public Administration of the University of California for making this exceedingly important publication possible. It is a work that will be found valuable to economists, sociologists, administration officials-public and private, students of public affairs, editors, and all interested in administrative problems.

GARRIGOU-LAGRANGE, ANDRÉ. Production agricole et économie rurale. Pp. 211. Paris: Librairie Générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1939:

It is not much more than a century ago that Europe first began to be considered somewhat of a unity in its political, economic, and humanitarian philosophies. But at present it looks doubtful whether we ought longer to continue to look upon Europe as a conglomeration of peoples whose ways and means of organizing their industrial and agricultural activities can be surveyed and summarized under one caption. Yet with this doubt as to the immediate present and future in mind, it still seems permissible to trace broadly some of the common traits of European policies adopted and pursued during the last two or three generations. In doing so we must exclude Russia, because even in the Tsarist era her agricultural structure was different from that of the occident. We may properly include, however, the northern and western successor states, Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, because these, since the revolution of 1917, have adopted west-European policies and have emphatically emancipated themselves from the course chosen beyond the western boundary of the Eurasiatic Soviet Empire. Within the non-Russian group of twenty-seven European nations, despite all their wide differences in economic and political development and their wide range of organizations and policies, we may discover a degree of unity as to our topic of land use control. In order to find the common traits we will have to ignore ephemeral details and seek out the aims and the spirit behind the numerous judicial decisions and the codified legislation. In many a European country, even the topic of land use control may not be known. And yet no country could possibly escape establishing, from earliest history on, very definite rules and laws regulating the use of land by the community, the family, or the individual. In predominantly agricultural countries, the statutes referring to the control of the use of land may even be the core of their legislation. The reshaping of the customs and laws comprising the agrarian structure has been a most powerful influence behind the continuing