REVIEWS.
Outline of Practical Sociology; with Special Reference to American Conditions. By Carroll D. Wright, LL.D., United States Commissioner of Labor. " American Citizen " series, edited by Albert Bushnell Hart, A.B., Ph.D., Professor of His- tory in Harvard University. Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. XXV +431.
Colonel Wright could not fail to produce a notable book upon the subject to which he has devoted this volume. There is no equally avail- able compilation and classification of the information here organized. Like the author's more elementary book, Industrial Evolution of the United States, this work will doubtless soon become a constant reli- ance for Americans who are dealing with the classes of facts to which it refers.
The limitations displayed by Colonel Wright seem to me to be, in principle, two. The former he doubtless regards, not as a limitation at all, but rather as freedom from pedantry and artificiality. It is the " practical " man's disposition to allow short shrift to social philosophy. As he says in the introductory chapter (p. 6), the facts and conditions of which the book treats would be " only illustrations " in a scientific treatise on sociology. He is probably not conscious of the degree to which his exhibit of facts ignores the things which they illustrate, and which alone make the facts worth exhibiting. The teacher who uses the work as a text-book must accordingly be able to supply a social philosophy, or the contents will be of very restricted value to the pupil.
The reader is tempted to conclude that the editor of the series is not altogether free from the same embarrassment. The bibliography which he recommends has faults both of omission and of commission which an amateur in social philosophy would detect. For instance, if Spencer's Principles of Sociology is among the seven " sociological books most useful for a library collateral to this work," Spencer's Study of Sociology, which is not mentioned at all, is surely more germane to the purpose and method. Again, if a work of the abstract character of Spencer's First Principles is properly included in the "Larger
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