LITERARY NOTICES. 



273 



ing at the same time the brevity which short- 

 hands in general possess, the use of it for all 

 purposes would be immensely advantageous to 

 mankind." A letter from Herbert Spencer 

 to his father, and one from his father to 

 him, both written early in 1843, are repro- 

 duced in photoprint, as specimens of con- 

 tinuous writing by this system. 



Wealth against Commonwealth. By Henry 

 Demarest Lloyd. New York : Harper & 

 Brothers. Pp. 563. Price, 2.50. 



The larger part of this book is taken up 

 with the detailed history of the Standard Oil 

 Trust, the facts being cited from records of 

 courts and from the testimony presented to 

 congressional and State legislative commit- 

 tees. While Mr. Lloyd has written an ar- 

 raignment, and is at no pains to conceal his 

 hatred of this trust, he offei's a mass of evi- 

 dence which in volume and significance is 

 fairly startling. Abating all that in his book 

 is due to the heat of a prosecuting attorney, 

 enough i-emains to show that aggregated 

 wealth in this country has been and is grossly 

 abused to the public oppression. The vast 

 power of the Standard Oil Trust began in 

 the dishonesty of railroad managers, who, 

 interested in the dividends of the trust, be- 

 trayed their own employers, the stockholders 

 in the railroads, and not only carried oil for 

 the trust at specially low rates, but at times 

 paid to the trust the cash taken from its 

 rivals in the shape of exorbitant rates. Ad- 

 vantaged by such plunder as this, the prog- 

 ress of the trust to colossal wealth was 

 rapid ; competition with it became impos- 

 sible ; and, passing from the carriage and 

 refining of oil to production, it is now in 

 possession of the principal oil fields of 

 America. With the true genius of con- 

 quest it soon discarded the railroads for 

 pipe lines, building these with the capital 

 placed in its coffers by the railroads them- 

 selves ; and if, as the more economical mode 

 of transportation, the pipe lines were inevi- 

 table, it is still true that their introduction 

 was hastened by the suicidal treachery of 

 the railroad chieftains. 



It is an everyday assumption that direct 

 pecuniary interest is an efficient check upon 

 the wastes and frauds of servants. This 

 assumption is contradicted in every page of 

 the history of the Standard Oil Trust. 



VOL. XLVI. 21 



Through supineness or through the bribery 

 of leading representatives the stockholders 

 of the railroads concerned have been abso- 

 lutely indifferent to the wholesale and re- 

 peatedly exposed theft of their property. 

 In two notable instances in Columbus, 

 Miss., and in Toledo, Ohio the communi- 

 ties withstood the trust manfully and suc- 

 ceeded. These two cases are the only ones 

 of importance where, by trusting each other, 

 the members of American communities have 

 managed to preserve industrial freedom 

 threatened by the trust. 



Mr. Lloyd has no remedy to suggest for 

 the abuses he describes with so much pas- 

 sionate force. He looks only to arousing 

 public indignation by a simple recital of the 

 facts. 



A Journey in Other Worlds. By John 

 Jacob Astor. New York : D. Appleton 

 & Co. Pp. 476. Price, $1.50. 



There are always some members of a 

 community who, like Grant Allen, prefer 

 their science dry ; but there are also others, 

 it is impossible to judge how large this class 

 may be, that like scientific truths flavored 

 and put up in palatable packages. To please 

 the latter is manifestly the purpose of this 

 book. The aim to arouse interest in the 

 wonders of Nature is a worthy one, and, on 

 Jesuitical principles, it may be allowable to 

 give hypodermic injections of science, but 

 the si.7ie qua non of all this is that pure sci- 

 ence only should be thus instilled, for if facts 

 be diluted with flights of fancy the recipient 

 may in the end fail to rocognize what is 

 truth and what is not. 



lu the romance before us we are intro- 

 duced to the world in the year 2000, and to 

 the office of a company whose business it is 

 to straighten the axis of the earth. This it 

 endeavors to do by shifting the superfluous 

 weight of water from the pole nearest the 

 sea to the one leaving it. The Arctic Ocean 

 is alternately pumped out and replenished, 

 the power being furnished by djTiamos at 

 Niagara and the Bay of Fundy. On the 

 Antarctic continent the crust is thin, so en- 

 ergy is obtained from sunken boilers which 

 supply superheated steam from the earth's 

 interior. 



Several friends " tired of being stuck to 

 this cosraical speck with its monotonous 



