846 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



relaxation of the law that forces us all to 

 keep our faculties in exercise it would be 

 difficult to say ; but, taking into account 

 what we know of average human nature, we 

 can hardly predict that the effect would be 

 good. It is easy to find fault with Nature, 

 but not so easy to put her aside and do the 

 work that she is doing. There are few in- 

 telligent men who do not recognize what 

 an advantage it is to them to be, in many 

 things, under the law of necessity ; and prob- 

 ably also there are few who have much rea- 

 son to pride themselves on what they have 

 done wholly apart from any such pressure. 

 When a man may either do a thing requir- 

 ing effort or leave it undone, the chances 

 that he will do it are not overwhelmingly 

 great. 



Mr. Graham criticises very effectively the 

 wilder suggestions of socialistic writers, but 

 he does not hesitate to express his opinion 

 that a certain infusion into legislation and 

 government of the socialistic spirit and of 

 socialistic methods is a present necessity. 

 " The state," he says, " has great power : 

 through its laws and institutions it can affect 

 the relations of classes. It can temper great 

 inequality. It can mitigate poverty. It can 

 check the strong oppressor. It can protect 

 the poor, their health, their lives, their prop- 

 erty. Many of these things it has already 

 done to some extent, and it has shown an 

 increasing tendency, within the past forty 

 years, to interfere in order to protect the 

 feeble workers and to restrain unscrupulous 

 employers. ... Its duty is more than the 

 protection of life and property. It has to 

 make just and beneficial laws respecting 

 property. It is its duty to enforce contracts ; 

 but it may also be its duty to narrow the 

 sphere of contracts in certain cases where 

 the contracts can not really be free." He 

 draws a fearful picture of what would have 

 happened in England had it not been for 

 the interference of the state in the passing 

 of factory laws and other similar acts. " We 

 should have had a proletariat of servile 

 workers, degraded in physique, in mind, in 

 morals ; mothers working in mines and fac- 

 tories, their sickly children dying without a 

 mother's care, or surviving with enfeebled 

 frames ; other children ignorant and lawless, 

 worked to death or growing up savages ; the 

 whole laboring population turned into mere 



human plant and instruments to make the 

 fortunes of masters, constantly becoming 

 more insolent and inhuman from impunity. 

 We should have had the slave gangs of the 

 Roman Republic repeated, only that the 

 slaves would have been the countrymen of 

 their masters, neither conquered in battle 

 nor born in slavery." This is strong lan- 

 guage, and to some the conclusion may ap- 

 pear somewhat too dogmatically stated. 

 Some such idea, we think, must have oc- 

 curred to the writer himself, for he hastens 

 to add, " That is a deducible consequence, 

 had the system continued in its strictness 

 and the hands submitted." It is worth re- 

 calling that so judicious and philanthropic 

 a man as the late John Bright was of opin- 

 ion that the factory laws had done more 

 harm than good. Prof. Graham's book is 

 one that ought to be widely read, as we are 

 persuaded that, whether the writer's own 

 conclusions are accepted or not, his candid 

 and able discussion of the various questions 

 comprised under the general head of " So- 

 cialism " can not fail to be helpful and bene- 

 ficial. 



The Draper Catalogue of Stellar Spec- 

 tra. Photographed with the Eight-inch 

 Eache Telescope as a Part of the Henry 

 Draper Memorial. Astronomical Ob- 

 servatory of Harvard College, Edward 

 C. Pickering, Director. Pp. 388. 



This volume contains a catalogue of the 

 photographic spectra of 10,351 stars, nearly 

 all of them north of 25 south declination. 

 Six hundred and thirty-three photographic 

 plates are discussed and 28,266 spectra 

 measured. Exposures of about five min- 

 utes were generally used for equatorial stars, 

 and somewhat longer exposures for northern 

 stars. Photographic plates eight inches by 

 ten were employed ; and at each exposure 

 the spectra were obtained of all the stars 

 of sufficient brightness in a region of 10 

 square. All stars brighter than the seventh 

 magnitude would generally give images of 

 sufficient intensity to be measured, unless 

 they were of a reddish color. Many stars 

 of the eighth magnitude or fainter appeared 

 on the plates with sufficient distinctness to 

 be included. The total number of spectra 

 on a single plate sometimes exceeded two 

 hundred. The plan of work was such that 

 the entire sky north of 25 S. was covered 



