266 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
Prohibitory legislation has succeeded in preventing the manufacture on a large scale of distilled and malt liquors within the very limited area covered by it ; but has not succeeded in preventing the sale of such liquors. Many social evils, as evasion of lew, hypocrisy, and bribery, have been aggravated by this legislation. Local option has had a fair success in towns generally opposed to the saloon if they were near enough license towns to get intoxicants ! The provisions of the license laws which have been most useful in restricting the evils of dramshops are carefully described.
The committee distinctly shows that the South Carolina dispensary law lacks the essential feature of the Norway method : it does not remove the motive of private gain, because the salaries of dispensers are made to depend on the amount of business done in their respec- tive dispensaries. It is important that the public should understand that the failures of the Carolina plan cannot be charged to the Norway plan.
The non-legislative methods of diminishing the injuries due to the drink traffic are not considered in this report, but will be discussed by other subcommittees. The names of the investigators and of the directors are sufficient guarantee of ability, fairness, and scientific accuracy. The book is a model in all these aspects and should be carefully studied by all who have occasion to speak or write on the subject. C. R. HENDERSON.
Grundbegriffe und Grundlagen der Volkswirthschaft. Zur Ein- fuhrung in das Studium der Staatswissenschaften. Von DR. JULIUS LEHR. Leipzig : Verlag von C. L. Hirschfeld, 1895-
FOR its clearness and conciseness, for completely unbiased scien- tific judgment, and for the characteristic feature rare enough in most German "outlines" of economics of leaving aside matters of minor importance in order to devote all attention to those which justly claim consideration, this is the best outline of political economy that I have yet seen. It is questionable, however, whether the employment of algebraic proofs and illustrations offers any considerable help to the average reader in pursuing the anthor's arguments.
Of the 350 pages which the book approximately contains, about 60 are devoted to the concept of value, and about 130 to the regulation
