comparable with this has had so wide a sale or taken so high a rank within the last half century. It deals with so vast a range, both of fact and opinion, that criticisms in detail were to have been expected; but such criticisms have always rested upon a foundation of high praise for the intelligence, fairness and splendid comprehensiveness of the work as a whole. In a second edition, which followed soon after the original publication, a large number of minor corrections were made.

Meanwhile Mr. Bryce was quietly engaged in a careful revision of the work as a whole. The first volume, as thus completely revised and brought up to date, appeared early in 1893, and was noticed at that time by the REVIEW OF REVIEWS. This volume, we may remind our readers, is devoted to an account of the national, state, and local governments, both as to their formal structure and also as to their practical working. It constitutes a treatise upon our entire constitutional and political system, which is without a rival for scope and proportion, and which is eminently superior to all other works on American government in the quality of philosophical comparison with political systems elsewhere. The second volume is devoted to a study of American life and institutions apart from the formal and legal arrangements which give rise to certain relationships. The divisions of this second volume are entitled "The Party System," Public Opinion,' ," "Illustrations and " Reflections," Social Institutions." Under these main titles Mr. Bryce has given us several scores of chapters treating of the most varied aspects of our actual contemporary political and social life.

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It is this volume which naturally aroused the liveliest interest when the work first appeared; and it is its reappearance with considerable additions and alterations that will bring the revised work most prominently under discussion. This portly volume of 880 pages, an advance copy of which the REVIEW OF REVIEWS has obtained by the courtesy of the publishers, will have made its appearance by the middle of January. Its delay for nearly two years after the appearance of the revised Volume I, has been due on the one hand to Mr. Bryce's habit of thoroughness, and on the other, and chiefly, to his absorbing preoccupations. In response to an editorial request from the REVIEW OF REVIEWS in behalf of American readers, Mr. Bryce, under date of December 11, explains that the long delay has been primarily due to the large amount of work which his office as a member of the British cabinet has entailed. Mr. Bryce's portfolio is that of President of the Board of Trade, a cabinet position not precisely analogous to any in our American cabinet, but comparable perhaps with the French Ministry of Commerce. The post involves oversight of the administration of the railways laws, of the laws affecting marine transportation, and of a vast range of affairs belonging to the most highly commercialized nation the world has ever known. Moreover, Mr. Bryce has served in former cabinets in the department of foreign affairs; and his advice is now so highly valued that much of his time must of

necessity be given to general cabinet duties. But in addition to all this, as he himself explains, his chairmanship of the Secondary Education Commission has entailed upon him a serious amount of labor in connection with the attempt to reorganize and improve the system of English intermediate instruction.

No one, unless he has had some experience in the revision of a book, can form any just conception of the amount of labor entailed in the collection of accurate information. Mr. Bryce is dealing with subjects which are constantly affected by legislative and other changes, and he has endeavored to bring the whole great work up to the most recent possible date. He has succeeded so remarkably well that his new edition would seem to combine something of journalistic freshness, and up-to-date omniscience, with the careful perspective of a standard historical work. He calls our attention to the fact that there are four important additions to the volume. One of these is a chapter on "The Home of the Nation," which, as he informs us, is "a consideration of the physical geography of the states in its bearing with their economic development and history." Second comes "A Sketch of the South Since the War," this being an entirely new feature; and third, a concise account of the present condition of the negro population and of the various aspects which the negro question presents. Fourth, a study of Tammany in New York City as an instance, to quote Mr. Bryce, "of the power of political organizations, a study in fact of one of the perversions to which democratic government in great cities is liable by the abnormal development of party methods." To quote further:

This last chapter had its counterpart in the former edition of the "American Commonwealth" in Mr. Frank Goodnow's article on the Tweed ring. This article is now omitted and the new chapter takes its place, thus bringing three similar subjects into line, Kearneyism in California, the gas ring in Philadelphia (these two are treated in chapters which had a place in the old edition), and Tammany, the last being brought down to give an account of the ring of yesterday as well as the ring under Tweed, and to study its problem as a whole.

Further, as Mr. Bryce explains, "three chapters have been very much rewritten, especially that on elections, owing to the adoption of the Australian ballot, which is now practically a new paper. Among the others that have been a good deal altered is that on territorial extension in its relation to American and foreign policy, and that on the question of how far American experience is valuable for Europe."

These additions of new chapters and reconstructions of old ones bring not far from two hundred pages of entirely fresh additional matter into the revised second volume. We possess, therefore, in these additions, that which is virtually another book by Mr. Bryce upon American topics of practical social interest. His discussion of the South since the war, and the status and future of the negro, constitute what might be published separately as a very valuable monographic contribution to the literature dealing with the great section of our country that lies below Mason and Dixon's line. In like manner, the

Tammany sketch has fresh interest, and would be highly useful as a pamphlet for wide popular distribution; while the two chapters upon the home of the nation, and our territorial extension in its relation to domestic and foreign policy, would in an entirely different way, if published in large type as a separate volume, take its place as a notable new contribution to the study of American public policy. The additions to this volume therefore are important enough to be considered as among the prominent literary achievements of the present season.

Mr. Bryce's chapter on our election system makes note of the adoption in thirty-seven of our states of the Australian ballot system, remarking that the new laws of New York and Connecticut and New Jersey are the worst. He discusses the honesty of American elections with much frankness. Regarding bribery and corruption, instead of condemning us sweepingly, as many Englishmen have done, he expresses the following view :

Bribery is a sporadic disease, but often intense when it occurs. Most parts of the Union are pure, as pure as Scotland, where from 1868 till 1892 there was only one election petition for alleged bribery. Other parts are no better than the small boroughs of Southern England were before the Corrupt Practices act of 1883. No place, how. ever, not even the poorest ward in New York City, sinks below the level of such constituencies as Yarmouth, or Sandwich, used to be in England.

Upon the question of the lavish use of money in election expenditures, Mr. Bryce is not disposed to regard the United States as worse than England was up to about 1884. Since then, he thinks, the evil in the United States has grown rapidly. The recognition of this evil is stimulating interest in the enactment of laws against corrupt practices. He remarks:

A few states have now passed such statutes. Those of Missouri and California are described as likely to prove efficient; those of Massachusetts and Kansas, as less drastic, but fairly useful; those of New York, Michigan, and Colorado, as amounting to little more than provisions for the compulsory publication of certain items of expenditure. In Pennsylvania it would appear that the acts are seldom put in force. The practice, so general in America, of conducting elections by a party committee, which makes its payments on behalf of all the candidates running in the same interests, renders it more difficult than it is in Britain to fix a definite limit to the expenditure, either by a candidate himself or upon the conduct of the election.

He makes the following reflections upon the question of the value of such laws :

Although it is true that you cannot make men moral by a statute, you can arm good citizens with weapons which improve their chances in the unceasing conflict with the various forms in which political dishonesty appears. The value of weapons, however, depends upon the energy of those who use them. These improved ballot acts and corrupt practices acts need to be vigorously enforced, and the disposition, of which there have been some signs, to waive the penalties they impose, and to treat election frauds and other similar offenses as trivial matters, would go far to nullify the effect to be expected from the statutes.

As to the new interest in the United States in the question of referring contested elections of Congressmen and legislators to the courts, Mr. Bryce regards the idea with favor, and declares :

The experience of England, where disputed parliamentary elections have since 1867 been tried by judges of the superior courts, and municipal elections since 1883 by county court judges, does not fully dispose of this apprehension; for it happens every now and then that judges are accused of partiality, or at least of an unconscious bias. Still, British opinion decidedly prefers the present system to the old one. In the United States the validity of the election of an executive officer sometimes comes before the courts, and the courts, as a rule, decide such cases with a fairness which inspires general confidence. The balance of reason and authority seems to lie with those who, like ex-Speaker Reed, himself a hearty party man, have advocated the change.

The subject of compulsory voting is commented upon, with comparisons of the actual percentage of votes cast in the United States and other countries, the conclusion being reached that abstention from the polls is rather less serious in America than elsewhere. Mr. Bryce makes the point that "it is not desirable to deprive electors, displeased by the nomination of a candidate, of the power of protesting against him by declining to vote at all. At present, when bad nominations are made, independent voters can express their disapproval by refusing to vote for these candidates."

The chapter upon Tammany is largely devoted to a clear narration of the development of the Tammany society, the rise and fall of the Tweed ring, and the recent political methods of Tammany under the bossship of Croker. The discussion comes down to the work of the Lexow Committee, and, in a foot note referring to the election of November, 1894, occur the following sentences:

This result, even more striking than the overthrow of the Tweed ring in November, 1871, seems to have been chiefly due to anger roused by the exposures of police maladministration already adverted to. Such a victory, however, is only a first step to the purification of municipal politics, and will need to be followed up more actively and persistently than was the victory of 1871. If the rowers who have so gallantly breasted the current drop even for a moment their stalwart arms, they will again be swept swiftly downward.

Upon the permanent reform of New York's municipal government, and the suppressing of the Tammany system, Mr. Bryce makes the following com ments which also have some bearing upon municipal reform in other cities:

Strongly entrenched as Tammany is, Tammany could be overthrown if the "good citizens" were to combine for municipal reform, setting aside for local purposes those distinctions of national party which have nothing to do with city issues. The rulers of the Wigwam, as Tammany is affectionately called, do not care for national politics except as a market in which the Tammany vote may be sold. That the good citizens of New York should continue to rivet on their necks the yoke of a club which is almost as much a business concern as one of their own dry-goods stores, by dividing forces which if united

would break the tyranny of the last forty years—this indeed seems strange, yet perhaps no stranger than other instances of the power of habit, of laziness, of names and party spirit. In such a policy of union, and in the stimulation of a keener sense of public duty rather than in further changes of the mechanism of government, lies the best hope of reform. After the many failures of the past, it is not safe to be sanguine. But there does appear to be at this moment a more energetic spirit at work among reformers than has ever been seen before, and a stronger sense that the one supreme remedy is to strike at the root of the evil by arousing the conscience of the better classes, both rich and poor, and by holding up to them a higher ideal of civic life.

The chapter on the home of the nation is a succinct account of our territorial resources and our conditions of topography and climate. It is for the most part intended to enlighten non-American readers, but incidentally its tone and conclusions have interest and value for Americans, as the following extracts will indicate:

Severing its home by a wide ocean from the Old World of Europe on the east, and by a still wider one from the half old, half new, world of Asia and Australasia on the west, she has made the nation sovereign of its own fortunes. It need fear 10 attacks nor even any pressure from the military and naval powers of the eastern hemisphere, and it has little temptation to dissipate its strength in contests with them. Thus it is left to itself as no great state has ever yet been in the world; thus its citizens enjoy an opportunity never before granted to a nation, of making their country what they will to have it. These are unequaled advantages. They contain the elements of immense defensive strength, of immense material prosperity. They disclose an unrivaled field for the development of an industrial civilization. Nevertheless, students of history, knowing how unpredictable is the action of what we call moral causes-that is to say, of emotional and intellectual influences as contrasted with those rooted in physical and economic factswill not venture to base upon the most careful survey of the physical conditions of America any bolder prophecy than this, that not only will the state be powerful, and the wealth of its citizens prodigious, but that the nation will probably remain one in its government, and still more probably one in speech, in character, and in ideas. The chapter upon the South since the war gives. perhaps, the best and fairest survey that has yet been made of the main characteristics of the reconstruction period. Justice is done to the motives of both sections, while the evils of the "carpet-bag" era are unsparingly set forth. As to the present condition of the South, Mr. Bryce writes in hopeful vein, and the following paragraph concludes his chapter:

Everywhere there is progress; in some regions such progress that one may fairly call the South a new country. The population is indeed unchanged, for ́ew settlers come from the North, and no part of the United States has within the present century received so small a share of European immigration. Slavery was a fatal deterrent while it lasted, and of late years the climate, the presence of the negro, and the notion that work was more abundant elsewhere, have continued to deflect in a more northerly direction the stream that flows from Europe. But the old race, which is, except in Texas (where there is a small Mexican and a larger German element) and in Louisiana, a pure English and Scoto-Irish race,

full of natural strength, has been stimulated and invig. orated by the changed conditions of its life. It sees in the mineral and agricultural resources of its territory a prospect of wealth and population rivaling those of the Middle and Western States. It has recovered its fair share of influence in the national government. It has no regrets over slavery, for it recognizes the barbarizing influence that slavery exerted. Neither does it cherish any dreams of separation. It has now a pride in the Union as well as in its state, and is in some ways more fresh and sanguine than the North, because less cloyed by luxury than the rich are there, and less discouraged by the spread of social unrest than the thoughtful have been there. But for one difficulty, the South might well be thought to be the most promising part of the Union, that part whose advance is likely to be swiftest, and whose prosperity will be not the least secure.

This difficulty, however, is a serious one. It lies in the presence of seven millions of negroes.

In the chapter which follows, the negro problem is discussed with due appreciation of its difficulties. After summing up the existing conditions, Mr. Bryce says:

We arrive, therefore, at three conclusions. I. The ne ro will stay in North America. II. He will stay locally intermixed with the white population.

III. He will stay socially distinct, as an alien element, unabsorbed and unabsorbable.

His position may, however, change from what it is now. Two changes in particular seem probable.

He will more and more draw southward into the lower and hotter regions along the coasts of the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. Whether in the more northerly States, such as Maryland and Missouri, he will decrease, may be doubtful. But it is certainly in those southerly regions that his chief future increase may be expected. In other words, he will be a relatively smaller, and probably much smaller, element than at present in the whole population north of latitude 36°, and a relatively larger one south of latitude 33°, and east of longitude 94° W.

This change will have both its good and its evil side. It may involve less frequent occasions for collision between the two races, and may dispose the negroes, where they are comparatively few, to acquiesce less reluctantly in white predominance. But it will afford scantier opportunities for the gradual elevation of the race in the districts where they are most numerous. Contact with the whites is the chief condition for the progress of the negro. Where he is isolated, or where he greatly outnumbers the whites, his advance will be retarded, although nothing has yet occurred to justify the fear that he will, even along the Gulf coast, or in the sea islands of Carolina, sink to the level of the Haytian.

In further conclusion of this matter he makes the following deductions:

There is no ground for despondency to any one who remembers how hopeless the extinction of slavery seemed sixty or even forty years ago, and who marks the progress which the negroes have made since their sudden liberation. Still less is there reason for impatience, for questions like this have in some countries of the Old World required ages for their solution. The problem which confronts the South is one of the great secular problems of the world, presented here under a form of peculiar difficulty. And as the present differences between the African and the European are the product of thousands of years, during which one race was advancing in the temperate,

and the other remaining stationary in the torrid zone, so centuries may pass before their relations as neighbors and fellow-citizens have been duly adjusted.

No chapter, perhaps, will have greater interest than that which deals with the question of territorial extension and foreign policy. As to America's general attitude toward international questions, the following remarks are worth quoting :

As there is no military class, so also is there no class which feels itself called on to be concerned with foreign affairs, and least of all is such a class to be found among the politicians. Even leading statesmen are often strangely ignorant of European diplomacy, much more than the average senator or congressman. And into the mind of the whole people there has sunk deep the idea that all such matters belong to the bad order of the Old World; and that the true way for the model Republic to influence that world is to avoid its errors, and set an example of pacific industrialism.

Such abstinence from Old World affairs is the complement to that claim of a right to prevent any European power from attempting to obtain a controlling influence in New World affairs which goes by the name of the Monroe Doctrine, from the assertion of it by President Monroe in his message of 1823. . . The slave-holding party sought to acquire Cuba and Porto Rico, hoping to turn them into slave states; and President Polk even tried to buy Cuba from Spain. After the abolition of slavery, attempts were made under President Johnson in 1867 to acquire St. Thomas and St. John's from Denmark, and by President Grant (1869–73) to acquire San Domingo, -an independent republic,-but the Senate frustrated both. None the less does the idea that the United States is entitled to forbid any new establishment by any European power on its owa continent still survive, and indeed constitute the one fixed principle of foreign policy which every party and indeed every statesman professes. It is less needed now than it was in Monroe's day, because the United States have grown so immense in strength that no European power can constitute a danger to them. Nevertheless, it was asserted in 1865 and led to Louis Napoleon's abandonment of his Mexican schemes. It would have been asserted had the Panama canal been completed. It is at the basis of the claim occasionally put forward to control the projected Nicaragua inter-oceanic canal, and it is supported by the argument that a water-way between the Atlantic and Pacific is of far more consequence, not only in a commercial but a military sense, to the United States than to any other power.

As to the question of an American navy, Mr. Bryce's point of view must of necessity have been that of an English statesman, as the following sentences will show :

The cry which is sometimes raised for a large increase in the United States fleet seems to a European observer unwise; for the power of the United States to protect

her citizens abroad is not to be measured by the number of vessels or guns she possesses, but by the fact that there is no power in the world which will not lose far more than it can possibly gain by quarreling with a nation which could, in case of war, so vast are its resources, not only create an armored fleet but speedily equip swift vessels which would destroy the commerce of its antagonist. The possession of powerful armaments is apt to inspire a wish to use them. For many years there has been no cloud on the external horizon, and one may indeed say that the likelihood of a war between the United States and any of the great naval powers is too slight to be worth considering.

Upon the question of Canada's future, Mr. Bryce says plainly that England will consider Canada perfectly free to choose her own destiny, and he holds that the United States will never, under any circumstances, be disposed to bring pressure to bear for Canadian annexation. He points out the circumstances which are developing a growing friendliness between the Americans and Englishmen, and is of opinion that the future of Canada, whatever it may be, will not involve English-speaking countries in strife. He exonerates the United States absolutely from any disposition to make territorial conquests in the European imperial spirit, although he evidently considers that manifest destiny will bring about a crumbling of Mexico, with corresponding gradual accessions to the United States on the south, comparable with our acquisition of Texas. He looks forward to the extension of the United States as far south as the Isthmus of Panama. He discusses the Hawaiian question with frankness and fairness, although in our judgment he underestimates the strength of American sentiment in favor of annexation. He makes it clear, as regards the Sandwich Islands, that "Americans would not stand by and see any other nation establish a protectorate over them," and he also holds that it is certain that the future relations of the United States with the western coast of South America will be far more intimate than those of any European states, and that the sphere of political and commercial influence that opens up before the United States in South America is a vast one.

Mr. Bryce's views upon other topics of permanent and current interest might be profitably quoted; but we have sufficiently indicated the attractive and valuable character of the new matter contained in the revised edition of the "American Commonwealth," and can but recommend the study of the entire work to all citizens, old and young, who would broaden their views as to our own institutions, and as to the facts and philosophy of political and social organization in general.

CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES IN GREAT BRITAIN.

MR. J. M. LUDLOW, who wrote in the last issue

of the Atlantic Monthly a striking article on the influence of England over America, contributes to the January number of the same magazine a paper on "Co-operative Production in the British Isles," which has many instructive facts concerning the actual operations in this field. It is largely a review of Mr. Benjamin Jones' volume on "Co-operative Production."

The history of co-operative production in Great Britain dates from the end of the last century, when the Hull Anti-Corn-Mill society was established for corn-milling. This experiment was wholly successful. The society has had a life of a whole century, reaching its greatest commercial prosperity in 1878, when its membership was four thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven, and its annual sales £71,744. While these early societies were co-operative in intention, they do not seem to have allowed any share of the profits to workers. The earliest instance which could fill entirely the claims of co-operative industry was the Sheerness Economical, begun in 1816, which is still in operation, and during the past year did a business of £29,641, earning a total profit of £3,483, of which a little over 1 per cent. was apportioned to labor.

SOME HISTORICAL STATISTICS.

At present there are two great co-operative wholesale societies, one for England and one for Scotland, which are so much more important and extensive than any others that a consideration of them is practically a discussion of the whole field. Of these, the English society withholds from the worker a share in the profits and the Scotch society allows him this share. The figures and other facts relating to the English society are given tersely in the following paragraph:

"The present Co-operative Wholesale Society, Limited, was founded in 1863, as the North of England Co-operative Wholesale Society, Limited. For nearly ten years it confined itself to the business of purchasing articles wholesale and selling them retail to cooperative societies and companies, whether members or not, at a small profit, which is divided half-yearly among all customer-societies in proportion to their purchases, mere customers receiving only half dividends, customer-members whole. Its sales in 1865 (the first complete year of its working) were £120,754. In 1872 these had reached £1,153,132. The society now began to turn its attention to production, purchasing some biscuit works, and starting in Leicester a boot factory in 1873, then soap works in 1874, other boot works at Heckmondwike in 1880. Leathercurrying was entered on in 1886, a woolen mill taken over in 1887. Cocoa works were opened in 1887, a

ready-made clothing department in 1888 (clothing having been already made up in two branches as an adjunct to the woolen cloth and drapery departments); a corn-mill was opened in 1891, jam-making entered on in 1892, and a printing department undertaken, besides building departments in the society's three English branches-Manchester, London and Newcastle (there is also a branch at New York). In addition to these there is a shipping department, the society having quite a little fleet of its own. During the quarter ending June 30, 1894, the society purchased a factory at Leeds for the manufacture of ready-made clothing.

"The success of the society as a whole has been prodigious. Its business in the distributive departments during the last quarter (ended June 30) was £2,272,-946, or at the rate of upward of £9,000,000 a year, making it one of the largest commercial establishments in the world; although the quarter's business was 1 per cent. less than in the corresponding one of last year, and the profits were nearly 18 per cent. less.... In its manufacturing departments the sales amounted for the quarter to £196,407, or at the rate of nearly £800,000 a year, an increase of not far from 12 per cent. on last year. But the society has not been uniformly successful in its ventures upon the field of production, and a considerable loss incurred in the working of its flour mill has reduced the net profits, of the quarter by over 79 per cent. on last year.

THE SCOTCH SOCIETY.

"The Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society was established in 1868. It entered upon production in 1880 with a shirt factory, followed in the same year by a tailoring department (the two were united in 1888), by a cabinet factory in 1884, boat works in 1885, currying works in 1888, a slop factory in 1890, and a mantle factory in 1891. A printing office had been opened in 1887, to which business ruling and bookbinding were afterward added. Preserve-making and tobacco-cutting have also been entered on. Many of the productive departments have been grouped together on twelve acres of land at Shieldhall on the Clyde, about three miles from Glasgow. The requisite buildings have been put up by the building department of the society, as well as several of its warehouses; and latterly a large flour mill at Chancelot, near Leith, I believe the latest productive venture of the society, has been built by it.

"The Scottish Wholesale Society has paid bonus to labor since November, 1870. The principle on which such bonus has been granted has varied, but by an alteration of rules made in 1892 bonus is credited to all employed at the same rate on wages as on purchases, half the bonus remaining on loan at 4 per cent. What is more, a Co-operative Investment Society has been formed for enabling those who are employed, if