subsequently original jazz composition; or the entire serious composition or a section of it is played—often as a novelty interpolated in a jazz scoring—in fox-trot time, with its melody dislocated, a new rhythmic trick at each half-chorus, low comedy on the high clarinets by Ross Gorman, and so on. The first use is unquestionably legitimate, the second unquestionably not. But, legitimacy aside, one is aghast at the lack of discrimination, the appalling ignorance of musicians who can think of these practices as a continuation of the job left unfinished by the serious composer, and expect Handel to enjoy and respect the use made of his theme in "Yes, We Have No Bananas"; who can, inasmuch as "nine-tenths of modern jazz music … is frankly stolen from the masters," chuckle over "lowbrows who say they can't abide classical music and highbrows who squirm when they hear jazz," and not realize that what the first enjoy and the second squirm at is the perversions of the serious compositions, not the originals; who can, therefore, pride themselves on stimulating with the perversions a taste for the originals, and wonder at the inconsistency of "the patrons of music in America who for years have been keeping good music barely alive … by artificial stimulation … while they lamented the lack of a musical public …" and yet do not "rejoice to see music rising like a wave and engulfing America, to see people music-mad."
It is all like that. Perhaps the other idiocies are more familiar: about jazz expressing America, its "composite essence," "fundamental emotion," "place and time"; about its having to create new forms to do it; about art that is too good for the mass being too good for this earth and not standing the test of time, since "beauty is emotion, not intellect—and emotion is universal." B. H. Haggin
History by Finance
This work is an extension of the author's well-known book called "Forty Years of American Finance." But whereas the former work covered a period in part coincident with the writer's early years and known to him only at second-hand, the present book is the fruit of the mature thought of one of the keenest analysts, and probably the best informed financial writer, in America. Moreover, for a full account of certain needed data the writer has had the first-hand assistance of Messrs. Carter Glass, Bernard Baruch, and Benjamin Strong.
"The War Period," though explicitly an account of American financial and economic conditions during the war and for some years afterward, might almost be regarded as a history, during those years, of our country, written not from a political or military standpoint, still less from the standpoint of a liberal, but from the view of an exceedingly well-informed, well-balanced, and rather conservative financier. The facts are given in such abundance, with such power of choice of the effective rather than the irrelevant, that the reader can readily discern the scene from his own philosophic or economic standpoint by a mere personal reinterpretation. The data are before him. Indeed, from the author's standpoint, it is almost impossible to exaggerate the keenness and breadth of his view. This book stands among the best histories produced by American writers. It is a book for reading first, for attentive study afterward.
It is not to be implied that the present reviewer agrees with Mr. Noyes in certain of his implications in financial history. Criticism of details is inhibited by the author's own statement that he has had, necessarily, to "treat the subject in broad perspective" and by his elaboration of this remark at some length in the preface. It is even possible to assent to the implied idea that the best standpoint from which a nation's activities may be viewed is the standpoint of its financial center. But it is impossible not to call attention to the fact that while in a book of lesser merit the total absence of any allusion to mighty sociological factors which have entered into American life in the years under discussion might be passed more or less unnoticed, in this work, because of its very excellence, one expected that no gross lacuna would appear. Thus, the growing divergences between commercial and industrial leaders on the one hand and financial leaders on the other is mentioned only incidentally in a somewhat contemptuous reference to the Pujo Investigation of 1913. It may fairly be argued the woman suffrage lies outside of the writer's purview, but, it his constant interweaving of political, economic, and massive social factors, the absence of one word (as far as the reviewer has discerned) on the subject of prohibition reveals a positive hiatus in the story of the grain markets. Of this movement itself, its initiation and its present control by the industrial and commercial leaders of the country, there is wanting even a fragment of discussion. It might be noted also that the index is unworthy of the book.
But these and similar matters put aside, Mr. Noyes has written a sketch of the leap of the nation from a debtor's position to holder of the economic hegemony of the world which deserves that rarest of praises when true—the book is really indispensable to him who desires authentic knowledge of the most important economic happenings in the history of civilization. Drew Bond
Books in Brief
Studies in Public Finance. By Edwin R. A. Seligman. The Macmillan Company. $3.25.
Any book upon taxation and the problems of fiscal science by Professor Seligman must be accorded special recognition. The present volume, a companion and supplementary to the "Essays in Taxation," represents a selection from such of the author's fugitive writings as have a pertinent bearing on contemporary fiscal problems. The most noticeable characteristic of the studies is their lack of academic longwindedness. With the exception of the first and last chapters, on Comparative Tax Burdens in the Twentieth Century and The French Colonial Fiscal System respectively, they are ex parte arguments, terse and cogent. If the reader finds himself in disagreement with any of the conclusions, he must turn back to Professor Seligman's theoretical first premises and content himself with denying the axiomatic quality of these assumptions, for the logical progression from premises to deductions leaves no chink for rebuttal. A criticism may be made against Professor Seligman's approach to one group of problems. Because of his interest in the tax problems of the Eastern States—particularly New York—and his valuable services in an advisory character to the legislatures of these States, he has failed to realize the divergence of fiscal interest between the creditor States where dwell the masters of wealth and the debtor States who view these capitalists as absentee landlords. Very naturally, the first group of States seek to base income taxes on the residence of the taxpayer, while the second group would make the source of his income the base. Professor Seligman's compromise solution of double income taxation turns out, upon analysis, to be a disguised insistence upon the principle of the residence of the taxpayer; it is not surprising that the New York Legislature adopted it, but it will hardly satisfy Wisconsin or the Dakotas.
The Wood-Carver's Art in Ancient Mexico. By Marshall H. Saville. New York: Museum of the American Indians Heye Foundation. Contributions, Vol. IX. $5.
This handsome volume is a sequence to the author's recent superb monograph on "Turquoise Mosaic Art in Ancient Mexico," also published by the Museum of the American Indian. "Wood carved and painted or gilded," says Professor Saville, "was extensively employed in the interior of houses and temples, in fashioning idols, for various articles of furniture, and
