scriptions given in the text. Illustrations are freely used, and the figures are all drawn with the author's own hand.
Natural Law in the Business World. By Henry Wood. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1887. Pp. 211. Price, 75 cents.
In its way, and so far as it goes, this is an excellent book. It is in no sense original, the truths it teaches being already familar to students of economics. Indeed, the author makes no claim to originality, but characterizes his work as "an honest effort to trace out the working and application of natural law, as it runs through the economic and social fabric, in a plain and simple, though, it is hoped, practical manner." He speaks of himself as having had only a practical business training, though it is evident that he is familiar with the standard economic writers; and his literary style, if not so polished as some, is characterized by clearness and a certain epigrammatic point which makes some of his expressions very effective.
Mr. Wood is a thorough disbeliever in social nostrums and in all plans of reform that run counter to natural law. He says: "The ills of our social system, the hardships of labor, and the inequalities of fortune, can not be got rid of by any short-cut route of social revolution or industrial transformation. Circumstances and conditions may change, but principles never. Wealth has always been the natural sequence to industry, temperance, and perseverance, and it will always so continue." He calls attention to the fact, so obvious to all thinking men, but so often overlooked or ignored by agitators, that brain-labor is far more important to the world than hand-labor, and consequently that the assertion so often made, that all wealth is the product of manual labor, is not true.
Of course, the author condemns socialism in unsparing terms; but he evidently has no fear of its being practically adopted. He is also strongly opposed to labor-unions, and seems to think there is almost no good in them. He declares that "their entire action and effort are in the direction of vainly trying to combat the natural principle of supply and demand" (page 53). He also condemns them because they interfere with the free action of the individual laborer, are tyrannous toward non-unionists, and antagonistic to capital. In what he says on this subject there is much that is true, and would be profitable for labor agitators to read; but, like all who take a similar view of the matter, he seems to forget that the labor-unions themselves are a product of natural law just as truly as corporations are, and that they would not have grown up and lasted so long if there were not some solid foundation for them.
The author has done well to call attention once more to the reign of natural law in economic affairs; and if his work is not quite satisfactory, it is because he has too much overlooked the reign of moral law in the same field. We can not prosper economically unless we conform to economic laws; but neither can we unless we conform to moral laws, so far as these are involved in the production and distribution of wealth. On one point of business morality, indeed, the author speaks out in emphatic language in regard to the conduct of railway directors in speculating in the stock of their roads. His view is that "railroad managers control a valuable trust, and, if they profit by their superior knowledge, to the detriment of other stockholders, it is a moral wrong, which it seems proper to make a legal offense." If this principle had actually been applied in our industrial history, many of the colossal fortunes now existing in the country would never have been accumulated; and this shows the importance of moral law in the business world.
Henry Draper Memorial. First Annual Report of the Photographic Study of Stellar Spectra, conducted at the Harvard College Observatory. Edward C. Pickering, Director. Cambridge: John Wilson & Son. Pp. 10, with Plates.
Mrs. Henry Draper, early in 1886, made a liberal provision for carrying on the photographic investigation of stellar spectra at the Harvard College Observatory, as a memorial to her husband, who did the first work of this kind in 1872, and continued it with great skill and ingenuity till his death, ten years later. The results of the year's work have been so encouraging, that Mrs. Draper has decided greatly to extend the original plan of work, and have it conducted on a scale suited to its importance. The
