to be strangers. In making battlefields of their custom-houses, ethnic dislike has, doubtless, served to stimulate commercial jealousy among the people of Europe, and this in its turn fans the animosities which endanger peace.
While their neighbors have been indulging in costly tariff reprisals upon each other, the British, Dutch, and Swiss, firmly holding to freedom as the right rule of trade, have, perhaps unconsciously, borne testimony to economy and ethics being fundamentally one. Theirs has been the chief progress not only in wealth, but education, the abatement of crime, the lengthening of life. Russia, at the other extreme of fiscal policy, aiming at nothing short of the prohibition of foreign trade, finds her markets depressed and her treasury depleted. The oblique form of protection known as the bounty system has been tried with results which, as traced by Mr. Wells, must have surprised the experimentalists. France and Germany, in artificially stimulating the production of beet-root sugar, have only succeeded in taxing themselves heavily to provide their chief rival in manufactures, Great Britain, with an important raw material at less than cost. The British industry in jam and sweets, expanded by cheap sugar, now employs more people than those needed to refine the sugar consumed.
The general fall in prices during the recent past has been a source of much embarrassment and perplexity in the world of commerce. Among the theories proffered in its explanation that of the bimetallists has been prominent, and Mr. Wells riddles it thoroughly. He shows that whereas the cost in labor of producing gold has varied but little for ages, silver during this generation has been discovered in prodigious deposits; therefore any legislative attempt to maintain a hard-and fast relation between the values of gold and silver must be vain. He points out that the gold reserves in the banks of the world are to-day, proportionately to capital, larger than ever. Furthermore, that the demand for gold constantly diminishes as banking facilities overspread the world with their telegraphic transfers, clearing-houses, and other devices for the economy of coin. But if it be demurred, Does not a debt incurred, say, ten years ago, require to-day more wheat or iron for its satisfaction than the sum could have bought when first borrowed? Certainly, but the wheat or iron represents no more labor now than it did ten years ago, and its increase in quantity stands for the new efficiency which applied science has bestowed on toil. Let the fall in the rate of interest be noted as evidence that, among sufferers from reduced pay, capital ranks as chief.
In every page, whether considering the eight-hour movement, the transportation problem, the gigantic cost of protecting American iron and steel for a decade, or any other of the manifold lines of his inquiry, Mr. Wells's analysis is transparent and impartial. In tracing the bearing of economic development on the welfare of man he rises by breadth of mind and sympathy to the dignity of a philosopher.
A Popular Treatise on the Winds. By William Ferrel, Ph. D., late Professor and Assistant in the Signal Service. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Pp. 505. Price, $4.
Several essays bearing upon the mechanics of the atmosphere have been published by Prof. Ferrel at various times since 1856, but, as they were of a very mathematical character, they were adapted only to those well-trained in mathematics. The present volume is of a more popular nature, although the simpler mathematical operations involved in the presentation of the subject are retained. After a general description of the constitution and nature of the atmosphere, the effect of the earth's rotation in the dynamics of the atmosphere is explained, the general circulation of the atmosphere is described, and its climatic influences are pointed out. This circulation is shown to agree with the laws governing the movements of gases and vapors acted upon by heat and other forces. The rest of the volume is devoted to descriptions of the various kinds of winds, monsoons, land and sea breezes, cyclones of several varieties, and tornadoes, and explanations of their special causes. Thunder-storms water-spouts, hail-storms, and cloud-bursts, with various other allied phenomena, are also explained. The author offers his book to general readers interested in the subject, and to lecturers on meteorological subjects before college classes or other audiences.
