ness record of each candidate and intent upon making to him a candid statement of the qualifications of that candidate? Did the newspapers in the city pursue the same rational plan for the enlightenment of his puzzled mind? For answers to these questions look into the speeches delivered and the articles written. There was first the claim that the candidates of the party of virtue and ability were models of integrity and capacity; and next, that the candidates of the party of vice and incapacity were monsters of iniquity and inability. If, as sometimes happened, nothing could be urged against a candidate personally, he was charged with being either a goldite or a silverite, and therefore unfit to be mayor, or an alderman, or a school commissioner. At the same time this discussion of the merits and demerits of the several candidates was carried on with a heat and often with an absurdity of argument that made the discovery of the truth about any subject or any man absolutely impossible. Is it any wonder that the voters elected some men notoriously unfit, and defeated others of the highest character and ability?
If these statements of the problem of municipal government and the method adopted to solve it were open to question, then an enlargement of the amount of business to be done through politics might not be so absurd. But nobody impeaches their accuracy. The advocates of municipal ownership are not less vigorous in their denunciation of the evils that we have tried to describe than the opponents. When their attention is especially directed to these evils their speech becomes a prolonged jeremiad. It is only when they come to advocate what they are pleased to call in clumsy phrase the "municipalization" of gas works or streetcar lines that they become optimistic and insist that cities can undertake these new duties without an aggravation of the very evils they deplore. They seem to believe that by some hocus-pocus an enlargement of the sphere of politics will transmute its inherent and unavoidable vices into virtues.
SPECIAL BOOKS.
The purpose of Mr. Israel C. Russell's Volcanoes of North America[1] is to make clear the principal features of volcanoes in general, and to place in the hands of students a concise account of the leading facts thus far discovered concerning the physical features of North America which can be traced directly to the influence of volcanic action. The account is comprehensive as to what it includes, and accurate so far as present knowledge extends. Regarding the western hemisphere as divided into two portions, the author assigns Central America to the northern division, because its relations as to volcanoes are closer with North than with South America. For a similar reason operating inversely, the volcanoes of the Windward Islands are regarded as South American. Much of the work is derived from the results of personal observation; but, of necessity, in so large a
- ↑ Volcanoes of North America. A Reading Lesson for Students of Geography and Geology. By Israel C. Russell. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 346. Price, $4.
