Willson H. Coates

Book Review: Labor Conditions and Problems: The Rise of Industrial Society in England 1815–1885The Rise of Industrial Society in England 1815–1885. By ChecklandS. G.. New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc., 1964. xiv, 471 pp.

Professor Neufeld has tried to fit the problems of economic development (and of labor relations in developing countries) into a broader framework of political and social change. He has tried to develop a generally applicable pattern for understanding these problems. Everyone who reads the bookand there should be many readers-will thank him for a most stimulating and thought-provoking effort.

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are frequently acute. Moreover, although he thinks there are limitations in scientific reason in respect to moral knowledge, he also refuses to follow current philosophies of irrationalism which renounce the use of intelligence in any form as a guide to moral living. Dr. Fulton’s presentation of his central theses is nevertheless not convincing. At crucial points his writing has an inspirational rather than an analytic quality, and he never squarely states how the validity of moral &dquo;insight&dquo; is to be established. In particular, despite his professed allegiance to &dquo;reason&dquo; as a guide, he nowhere explains how, granting the ’inward&dquo; source of moral perceptions, the adequacy of moral judgments is rationally adjudicated, especially when such judgments are mutually conflicting; and he simply ignores the relevance of empirical knowledge for the evaluation of moral claims. In any event, his account of the inclusive moral ideal is fatally vague; and while his description of certain aspects of moral life and scientific endeavor is sometimes to the