414 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ness, strict probity ; shall men be expected 

 to manifest these first of all with regard to 

 a few things or to many things ? Our au- 

 thor has a passing word for "natural mo- 

 nopolies," and deems it desirable that they 

 be nationalized. In the current discussion of 

 these monopolies land always figures as the 

 chief, and the one way of escape from the 

 evei'-increasing exactions of the landlord is 

 declared to lie in his being superseded by the 

 Government. Of a different stamp from the 

 people who harbor this doctrine are the two 

 million families in this country who have 

 slipped from beneath the landlord's yoke, 

 through the undramatic agency of the build- 

 ing association. Homely and humdrum 

 enough is the virtue of thrift, but thrift 

 and its fellow virtues of industry and so- 

 briety mean trustworthiness. With its birth, 

 and only with its birth, can the attack upon 

 the obstacles to social reconstruction take 

 heart of hope. In its hands self-help holds 

 opportunities which, were they exhausted, 

 would not simply contract the area for cen- 

 tralized sway, but incidentally prepare men 

 to establish that sway in so far as it may be 

 gainfully done. 



Dr. Ward is too careful an observer to 

 miss as a trait of the American public its 

 distrust of governmental interference with 

 individual activity. That distrust has not 

 been unaffected by recent events. The Sil- 

 ver Purchase Act was an attempt to over- 

 rule the individual impulses of the people in 

 a way which was to create for them new and 

 gratuitous blessings as a community. At the 

 date of its repeal the act had involved the 

 nation in a loss of at least $400,000,000. 

 This sum, vast as it is, forms after all but a 

 solitary item in the cost of that more am- 

 bitious overruling of all for a few which 

 masquerades as protection. In socialistic or, 

 to adopt Dr. Ward's term, sociocratic legis- 

 lation there ever lurks the danger that the 

 interest of a band of manufacturers, mine- 

 owners, soldiers, or office-holders can be 

 made to appear identical with that of all. 

 Experience proves that legislators are apt to 

 form a class apart, separated from the pub- 

 lic in a fool's paradise of echo and subservi- 

 ency, and with interests often opposed to 

 those of the people whom they ostensibly 

 represent. At Albany and Washington a 

 minority of them cemented together by the 



pursuit of plunder have repeatedly defied a 

 majority whenever that majority has lacked 

 close regimentation. 



Dr. Ward adduces examples of species 

 which with swift pace have stridden ahead 

 on the artificial withdrawal of competition ; 

 he fails to refer to cases more numerous still 

 where the absence of competition has ended 

 in the degeneracy which overtakes the para- 

 site. In the author's own city of Washing- 

 ton attention last year was drawn, on the 

 floor of Congress, to the waste of public 

 money in the counting and recounting, the 

 polishing and labeling the pebbles of science 

 by officials in the borrowed garb of the ge- 

 ologist ; and last spring Secretary Morton, 

 in taking charge of the Department of Agri- 

 culture, found one of his first duties to lie in 

 setting adrift the barnacles which in four 

 short years had fastened themselves upon a 

 single, and not particularly inviting, ship of 

 state. 



Modern Meteorology. By Frank Waldo. 

 Contemporary Science Series. New York : 

 Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 460. Price, 

 $1.25. 



The chief aim of this treatise is, in the 

 words of the author, " to bring the reader 

 into closer contact with the work which has 

 been and is actually engaging the attention 

 of working meteorologists rather than to 

 present finished results." More than a third 

 of the volume is devoted to descriptions of 

 meteorological instruments and the meth- 

 ods of using them, with some account of 

 certain meteorological laboratories. The de- 

 tails of equipment and i-outine of the ob- 

 servatory at Pawlowsk, Russia, are given 

 with much fullness, and the author states 

 that he knows of no similar account of the 

 regular work of an observatory. A number 

 of views of observatory buildings and their 

 surroundings are presented, including several 

 mountain observatories in the United States 

 and Europe. The work of German meteor- 

 ologists is given large space in this treatise. 

 Thus the chapter on Thermodynamics of the 

 Atmosphere is mainly a presentation of the 

 ideas of Prof, von Bezold, as set forth in his 

 several memoirs recently communicated to 

 the Berlin Academy of Sciences. There is 

 also a history of the various theories of gen- 

 eral and secondary atmospheric circulation. 



