to coordinate or integrate their effective components so as to be able to form some idea of the resulting organization. . . . The object kept in view has been to show that the various parts of the labor movement have common components, and that they are developing an organization of industry which will meet the conditions necessary for efficiency and for the welfare of the community. . . . The book will have served its purpose ... if it has indicated the manner in which social problems should be studied before changes in administration and legislation are attempted. . . . At the same time it must be remembered that the organization of labor is only one element, although no doubt a very important one, in the more general problem of the organization of society, which I shall consider in another volume." (Preface, pp. x-xi.)
Hobson's more restricted problem is stated by him as follows: "The method here adopted is to take for our intellectual objective one important factor in modern industrial movements, to study the laws of its development and activity, and by observing the relations which subsist between it and other leading factors or forces in industry to obtain some clearer appreciation and understanding of the structure of industry as a whole, and its relation to the evolution of human society. This central factor is indicated by the descriptive title peculiarly applied to modern industry, 'Capitalism.'" (P. 4).
Von Halle, as his title definitely indicates, confines his inquiry to a still more specific problem, viz., those combinations of capitalistic industry in the United States, which are known as "Trusts." (Introd. p. xiii.)
Taken together, these three volumes may be of great present service not merely as guides to the study of particular contemporary conditions, but as aids to the development, tentatively at least, of statical and dynamic portions of social philosophy. Mr. Dyer is not afraid of being written down as unscientific for reflecting upon a future or ideal social order, indicated in certain traits at least, in discoverable social potencies. This is the more gratifying from the fact that his training as a civil engineer cannot be charged with tendency to create a bias toward impractical abstract speculation. Mr. Dyer begins his preface as follows:
"Goethe prophesied that the great problems at the end of the nineteenth century would be the organization of mechanical industry, and the social and economic questions connected therewith. This prophecy
