engaged in the industry than are needed; that 30,000 now employed in it "could be transferred to some other occupation, while the 110,000 remaining could produce the amount of coal needed to meet the market demand at remunerative prices." And yet in the face of this statement, the writer only three pages farther on again asserts that the syndicate "can so manage the industry that every honest worker. . . can get regular employment and be protected against the evils of surplus labor." How such conflicting statements can be reconciled it is difficult to see.

Other inconsistencies may be noted in the treatment of the relation between fixed charges and cost of production (pp. 33, 34); in the discussion of economic loss, in the chapter on accidents; and in the discussion of the estimated cost of strikes in Chapter IX. Some of these defects may, perhaps, be partially explained by the fact that the material is not well arranged; others by the fact that some of the material has not been well digested. One is constantly surprised to find certain phases of the subject discussed in the most unexpected places. Moreover, there is in most of the chapters, and especially in the last, a considerable amount of discussion that is trite and entirely irrelevant. The most elementary economic theories are often expounded at length before they are applied in explanation of simple industrial conditions; and various social theories are needlessly exploited to criticise or condemn the unwise actions of those engaged in the industry. The reader might have been credited with at least some knowledge of these theories. It is to be regretted that the author has not kept well to his main purpose, as set forth in the opening pages of the volume, and produced a thoroughly digested treatise on the economic aspects of the subject. JOHN E. George.

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY.

Die Ockonomische Entwickelung Europas bis zum Beginn der kapitalistischen Wirtschaftsform. Von MAXIME KOWALEWSKY. Vom Verfasser genehmigte Uebersetzung des Russischen Originals. Band I: Römische und Germanische Elemente in der Entwickelung der mittelalterlichen Gutsherrschaft und der Dorfgemeinde. Berlin, Verlag von R. L. Prager, 1901.

This volume is an attempt by a man whose learning has made him prominent for many years in the field that he explores to trace the sources of the law of real property in Europe. He states in the preface his conviction that this work can be accomplished only by

means of the comparative method. If this be true, it is to be feared that the work will never be satisfactorily done at all. M. Kowalewsky is, indeed, one of the very few living men whose vast accumulation of knowledge, acquired through long and arduous study of the early laws of many lands, would enable them to apply this method; and in his hands it is possible that it would lead to results more permanently acceptable than those, for example, contained in the works of Sir Henry Maine. In spite, however, of his expressed preference for this method, our author seldom reaches his conclusions by means of it; the numerous comparisons that his wide learning enables him to draw are used to illuminate a chain of thought, to illustrate conditions he would describe, rather than to convince us of facts about which he has no other proof. Even more than is the case with most other laborers in this field, M. Kowalewsky bases his conclusions upon the written sources of our information. He alludes almost in a tone of contempt to the efforts to explain the facts of settlement and development by means of the known psychological characteristics of a people, and on this ground he attaches no great importance to the conclusions reached by Meitzen in regard to the problem under discussion. It is, he says, the necessity for maintaining security, the desire to effect a social organization in accordance with the prevailing economic condition, that will determine a people's institutions. In this we agree with him; but it is just this that makes the comparative method which he advocates fully as inadequate as the psychological which he repudiates.

After all it seems, then, that in our search for the origin of modern institutions almost the only trustworthy materials adapted to our use are the laws, records, charters, cartularies—in short, the writings — that have come down to us from the time of the earliest beginnings. Now this is disheartening. For the collections of these materials available to the student are scanty, their form is often mutilated and their language ambiguous. Unless, therefore, considerable additions be made to these collections, much of what we should like to know about mediaval institutions must always be hidden from us, and much even of what we think we know must partake more or less of the nature of ingenious theories in which plausibility is substituted for proof. No book of recent years bears stronger testimony to this than the volume before us, not the least merit of which, indeed, is the author's candor in confessing in many cases that we can only guess at explanations-a candor that is equalled by his moderation in refraining from doing the guessing. Very numerous indeed are

the theories that M. Kowalewsky has punctured, and great is the havoc he plays with notions hitherto widely accepted. In case of no branch of the German people does he fail to find flaws in the investigations of previous writers concerning the history of landownership. But his work is not merely one of destruction. On the ground that he has cleared he is able to build anew, and this he does partly by means of material hitherto unused, partly by a new application of materials that have already done long service. The structure he erects is not so complete as the composite building which he destroys, but it is shapely and it seems to be firm and durable.

We say that M. Kowalewsky's work seems to be durable. The care with which he marshalls his facts, and the air of impartiality with which he weighs all his testimony, to us is very convincing. But so much depends upon the interpretation of materials which are acknowledged to be ambiguous and which few of us can examine for ourselves, that the reader is bound to see that many of the views he would most gladly accept are still open to attack. This is exemplified in the account of landownership among the Lombards. The only direct testimony we have about the manner in which the land in the territory overrun by these people was divided between them and their Roman predecessors consists in the work of Paulus Diaconus, and all acquainted with this writer will agree with what M. Kowalewsky says about the difficulty of his style and the vagueness of his meaning. Relying, however, mainly upon him, our author tells us that in the first arrangement between Lombards and Romans no radical changes were made in either the ownership or the possession of the land; the Lombards were content with diverting to themselves one-third of the produce of the soil hitherto paid over by the cultivators to their Roman lords. But with the establishment of the kingship in the person of Autharis there occurred a fundamental agrarian revolution. The Lombard nobles who felt the exactions of the king attempted to recoup themselves from the Romans, and this led to a new arrangement. Disagreeing with Vinogradoff and others, M. Kowalewsky thinks this new arrangement consisted in such a division of the coloni, together with their land, that no longer merely a part of the produce but a part of the land itself and its cultivators passed into the ownership of the Lombards. This opinion he bases mainly upon the use Diaconus makes of the words dividere and partire, the first of which he takes to mean any division, the second a division by which the shares pass into the permanent ownership of those receiving them. Other instances of hazardous textual

construction might be adduced, but this suffices to justify us in doubting that M. Kowalewsky has spoken the last word about facts on which he is willing to express himself most positively.

So much for our author's method, which, in spite of its limitations, has enabled him to make invaluable contributions to our knowledge of early institutions. It would be interesting to point out what these contributions are, but to array them in logical order would necessitate giving a rather full abstract of the whole book. It must suffice, therefore, to mention a few points of special significance.

The main purpose of the volume is to show what elements of feudal property were Roman and what Teutonic. To do this our author begins with a description of the agrarian organization in Italy and Gaul under the Roman Empire. Fustel's conclusions are pronounced to be one-sided and incomplete; for they are reached by attaching to the terms villa, massa, fundus, etc., the same meaning they bore in the classic age, which is shown to be wrong. Seebohm also is found to be in error in attributing to Roman influence the system of open or common fields with their intermixed strips; for amongst the Romans this system prevailed only in the colonies of veterans settled in the ager publicus. Real resemblances, however, between the Roman and medieval systems are pointed out tersely and graphically, and it is afterwards shown that many of these are not accidental. The second chapter gives an account of the economic conditions of the Germans in the time of Cæsar and Tacitus. Amongst them the land was in the ownership of the clans (Geschlechtereigentum); but it was abundant, so that each family might freely take possession of as much as was needed (freie Besitzergreifung) and hold it in temporary occupation without thereby abolishing community ownership. M. Kowalewsky then takes up in separate chapters the subsequent developments among the different branches of the German people. These developments were of course along very different lines, and we cannot find that the comparative method offers much assistance in the attempt to trace them. The Ostrogoths, during their short domination in Italy, effected no change except that the adscripti glebae acquired freedom from their attachment to the soil, a freedom that they afterwards lost under the Lombard rule. Among the Visigoths, especially in Spain and Aquitaine, all available evidence testifies to the complete triumph of the principles of the Roman organization. The Franks and the Burgundians modified in some degree but did not abolish the Roman system. them, as also with the Alemanni, it was chiefly the influence of the

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king and the church that led to a gradual substitution of the Roman law of private property for the Germanic system of community ownership. Among the Anglo-Saxons likewise development begins with the clan organization. Our author accepts Vinogradoff's explanation of the terms "Bocland" and "Folcland" and disagrees with Pollock and Maitland's opinion that the king ever required the consent of the ecclesiastical and lay lords in disposing of the former. For the alienation of Folcland at first the consent of the other members of the clan was necessary, but the influence of the king and the church broke down the principle of blood relationship and the consent of the king and the Witan was substituted for it. The free disposal of his holding by the peasant was foreign to the Anglo-Saxons; the principle was borrowed from the Roman law, introduced under ecclesiastical influence and eventually led to the inequality of the holdings within the village community.

Much of the volume is necessarily devoted to the discussion of social organization. Without following him into details, it should at least be remarked that he finds the medieval system of serfdom, the Hörigkeits system, incomplete anywhere before the end of the eighth century. It was formed from many elements, some free and some unfree, some derived from the Romans and some imported by the Germans. The free community in the earlier period actually existed and was no mere fancy, as Fustel and Seebohm maintained. In England in the eighth and ninth centuries the large estates the manors were just in process of formation, and the greater part of the peasants were still free.

It remains to be said that M. Kowalewsky's book is hard to read. Either the translator has done him little justice, or his style is diffi cult, intricate and very dull. There is much in the text in the way of comparison and even of evidence that would more appropriately appear in footnotes or appendices, where it would not so seriously divert attention from the argument. Especially are we entitled to condemn as an imposition on the ardor of the student the failure to provide such a book with any sort of summary, index or table of contents. He, however, that surmounts these difficulties will find that M. Kowalewsky has made the most important contribution of recent years to the literature concerning the beginnings of our civilization. THOMAS W. PAGE.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.