At the same time, no doubt, capital (including soil) and labor get differential gains, as between themselves, on the margin or elsewhere. But the differences are minor compared with the differential gain of land, and Hobson's criticism on Marshall for calling them "quasirents" seems not well taken. Hobson is chargeable in general with confusion between capital and limitations on capital. He strives to controvert General Walker's assertion that different rates of remuneration on capital are owing, in part, to "disguised rents, disguised profits and commercial goodwill," and in so doing he lapses into a popular concept of interest and profits. He says, "Inasmuch as this 'specific rent' [i. e., 'disguised rent '], appears as interest and cannot conveniently be separated from genuine interest, it is rightly regarded as an element in the specific differences of forms of investment" (p. 176). Again, the exceptional opportunity open to lawyers and bankers for profitable investment " may not unfairly be claimed as a 'rent of capital'"' (p. 177). Again, "the power vested in owners of valuable patents, and even in those who, without legal protection, have exclusive control of any market or of the sale of any class of goods, is of a similar economic character, and enables the capital invested in such business to get a specific interest" (p. 179). Protective tariffs, bounties, etc., also give "capital rent.”

Now, in all these cases, the differential advantage or monopoly privilege is both legally and commercially separable from the capital invested. This can be brought to a practical test. A business man does not first invest capital and then get a patent upon it, but he first gets his patent and then applies capital and labor to develop it. The patent is the basis, and the productive agents, capital and labor, are the "doses." The number of doses depends upon the height of interest and wages and the extent of the market controlled by the patent. So with all these other social privileges, like franchises, trade-marks and the good will of a business. The separation is clearly made. It is essential to business success, and it conforms to the theory of "dosing."

This brings us to another defect in method. Hobson has no particular place for the entrepreneur. He treats him usually under the head of labor, but latterly brings him in as the main beneficiary of the forced gain (p. 350-1). This omission of the entrepreneur is more remarkable, since Hobson conceives a "composite margin of employment" for land, labor and capital. It would seem that a margin implies something margined. Otherwise we are floating in a limbo of pure geometry. Now the entrepreneur is the centre of business. He is the "bargainer" who sets prices. He is the organizer who employs capital and labor and guarantees against risks. He controls

the

the patents, franchises, good-will, monopolies and trusts, i. e., opportunities for investment. These opportunities, it would seem, are the true basis to which the dosing of capital and labor applies. That which is true of them is also true of land. They are the bases of the forced and differential gains enjoyed by the entrepreneurs. By taking the standpoint of the entrepreneur, and noticing his relation to these differential privileges, it is possible to avoid confusion regarding the true nature of capital.

The practical conclusions of the book seem to lose strength with the theoretical analysis. The author apparently advocates almost any kind of taxation and almost any kind of trade-union forcing of wages, holding that higher taxes and higher wages, wherever first laid, will hunt out and rest upon these forced and differential gains. His reasoning here is ingenious, but he seems to be too indifferent to the lack of resisting power of unorganized labor and the obstacles to capital-saving.

Notwithstanding these points of disagreement, which pertain really to matters of emphasis more than to logic, I am quick to acknowledge, as at the beginning, the remarkably keen analysis and searching criticism which Mr. Hobson has contributed to this live subject.

Bureau of Economic Research, New York City.

JOHN R. COMMONS.

Anthropogeographie. Erster Theil: Grundzüge der Anwendung der Erdkunde auf die Geschichte. By Dr. FRIEdrich Ratzel, Professor of Geography at the University of Leipzig. Second edition. 8vo. pp. 604. Price, 14 marks. Stuttgart: J. Engelhorn, 1899. Since the appearance of the original edition of this work in 1882, Ratzel has brought out revised editions of his Völkerkunde and his Politische und Wirthschafts-Geographie der Vereinigten Staaten, has written the second part of his Anthropogeographie, and published his Politische Geographie. That is, he has been able to work over, in the light of current criticism, the whole field embraced in the present volume, from its foundation in anthropology to its latest development in the formulation of the principles of political geography. The result of this thorough going-over is found in the volume before us, which is therefore much more than a revision of the first edition. The book as it originally appeared, represented the first really fundamental and comprehensive statement of the laws underlying the relation of man to his environment; it was a road-breaker in its way, from its nature therefore subject to limitations. We have now a new statement of the author's opinions from a point of view at once

widened, deepened and matured. The book leaves the impression of thoroughly digested material, and of a sane, conservative attitude on the part of the author towards his subject. Far from claiming too much for his science, he warns over and over against making it a blanket theory to explain any and all problems of history and civilization. He makes nice distinctions in defining the relation of geog. raphy to history, gives a discriminating analysis of the mediate and immediate influences of geographical conditions, pointing out that the indirect influences are most important though most difficult to trace, and hence run the greater risk of being assigned to some other than the right factor. As to method, he explains the peculiar combination of analysis and synthesis which geography demands-analysis after the manner of ethnography to get the detailed facts, and synthesis to get the larger, geographical point of view which regards peoples, not as races, but as humanity distributed over the earth's surface. Geographical location, with the large content of that word as the author understands it, is substituted for the narrower conception of environment, which was the point of departure for the earlier anthropogeographers. Situation is the most vital geographical concept; it outweighs all other geographical facts in the life of a people, so that the location of a country ought to be considered the most potent factor in its history. "Many illusions and disappointments as to the results of geographical conditions would have been avoided had this principle been taken to heart. All the details of natural conditions which can be cited in regard to Greece, sink into insignificance in comparison with the fact of Greece's situation at the threshold of the Orient."

In its general plan, also, this volume differs from its predecessor. The chapter on the position of geography in the hierarchy of the sciences has been cut out, as this point has been fully discussed in the past decade. There has been an excision of much matter, too, relative to political geography, which, it became apparent to the author, did not belong strictly to the science of anthropogeography and which he has, therefore, embodied in the meantime in his political geography, thus bearing witness to that process of differentiation which means development. On the other hand, subjects like location, area and boundaries, in consequence of greater clarification of his scientific ideas, have been amplified and pushed into the foreground. One long chapter, entitled "Historical Movement," has been added. In this are considered the mobility of nations, the trend and intensity of their movements, the origin, directions and routes of such migrations, and their various differentiations. The whole subject, in its every aspect, whether the movement of a family, clan, tribe or nation, is treated in a fullness of detail not found elsewhere.

Its

full significance is appreciated only when the reader passes on to the succeeding chapters on area and boundaries. Then he realizes that the author's dictum, that mobility or movement is the measure of life in a people, finds its geographical application in the importance attached to boundaries as the indices of the strength of that movement, which shift with the degree of activity. In a people's boundary are detected the first signs of growth or decay, according as it advances or recedes.

Then follows the consideration of the different forms of the earth's surface as constituting man's physical environment,-the influences of seas, rivers and lakes; of the various continents with their peculiar features of size and location; of peninsulas and islands, of mountains, valleys, lowlands and steppes; and the influences of each of these upon different stages of civilization. The concluding chapters discuss flora and fauna as phenomena of the earth's surface in relation to man, and finally the effect of climate. Citations in the text are not numerous, but this, if a defect, is remedied by a carefully prepared bibliography which is appended. This bibliography alone should render the book invaluable to the students of anthropogeography, as it is the most complete we have yet seen. Cross references and a full index further contribute to the helpfulness of the volume.

ELLEN C. SEMPLE.

Louisville, Ky.

The Distribution of Income. By WILLIAM SMART. Pp. xv, 341. Price, $1.60. London and New York: The Macmillan Company, 1899.

Professor Smart's treatment of the problem of distribution has many of the merits and also many of the defects of the writings of the Austrian economists, with which his admirable translations have made English readers familiar. His style is clear. His illustrations are vivid. In spite of a marked preference for short words and sentences, short paragraphs, and even short chapters, he does not hurry the reader along too rapidly, but takes plenty of time to make his meaning plain. Like Professor Böhm, "at the hazard of being tedious," he indulges in many a backward glance before pushing forward to his conclusions.

The work is divided into two parts, treating of (1) the National Income and (2) Distribution. The twelve chapters of Part I explain, at greater length than is usually deemed necessary, the nature of the income to be distributed. Starting out with a summary of the income tax returns for the United Kingdom, the author traces the connection

between this money income and the real income, and shows that the latter consists of a continuous flow of services, embodied and unembodied in material forms, rather than of a fund of wealth. Chapters on "Income which Escapes both Notice and Assessment” and “The Limitation of Money Incomes by the Real Income" conclude this part.

Three points in this analysis of the national income seem open to criticism. In the first place the author may be accused of taking calculations of the money income of the United Kingdom too seriously. Attacking the problem of distribution from the side of pounds, shillings and pence commends itself to the business community and is therefore defensible; but arguing from an estimate of the money income and statistics of population to a conclusion in regard to the degree of general comfort that would prevail if each got his share" on an equal distribution," as he appears to do on pages 58 andior, is quite another matter. Fourteen shillings six pence a week, which the author estimates as the per capita income, will buy what it does under present conditions, because distribution is unequal. An equal distribution would give quite a different direction to the productive forces of the United Kingdom, and what the resulting per capita share of the national dividend would be is a question on which a careful economist may well hesitate to express an opinion.

The second point concerns the excursion into "thinner air than the economist is supposed to have lungs for " in chapter viii. "The rela tion of man to his world," says Professor Smart, "is primarily that of the animal to its world. He is visibly a part of nature and conforms to all her laws. He gets his living from the earth and air. For a time he builds himself up and grows, and then he sinks back and resolves into the materials from which he came. He is but a worm that fills its skin and draws its life from the earth which it passes through itself and leaves on the grass again. . . . Man is in the stream (of wealth)-like a trout lying with its head to the currentgetting its food from what the stream contains, living by that, and passing it through it again."

To discuss this view of the relation between man and wealth would be to write a treatise on philosophy. It may not be out of place, however, in a brief criticism, to inquire to what this analysis leads. If man is to all intents and purposes a worm" or a "trout" has not economic speculation-that of Professor Smart as well as of less "thinair" economists-been on an entirely wrong track? Is not the major portion of this and every other treatise on economics an attempt to show the results that follow from man's rational response to certain simple motives? Reasoning from motives to conduct, which is the