to take in the future. He has no special theory to advocate, and he promises no speedy renovation of society if only his advice be taken. He knows too much to be a visionary; he has too firm a hold on the actual to be carried away by the merely ideal or fanciful. He finds no fatal flaw in the present social system; he does not see, in fact, how, given human nature as it is, things could be very different from what they are. At the same time he is an earnest believer in progress; but he thinks that progress depends more upon individual adaptation to necessary conditions of existence than upon any cunningly contrived devices for an improved distribution of the products of industry. In a word, he is a man whom the devourer of contemporary socialistic romances would find a little dull, but whom the practical man of business would find both interesting and instructive in the highest degree. As a large part of Mr. "Wells's book appeared originally in the pages of this magazine, we may presume that many of our readers have a more or less vivid recollection of the course of his argument. What Mr. "Wells set himself chiefly to do was to trace to its cause or causes the present disturbed condition of the world from an economic point of view. Given such a problem, a writer who wished to create an immediate sensation would bring forward some theory about the land, or about the currency, or about monopolies, or about the waste involved in competition, and would declare with much emphasis and vainglory that he alone had the true key to the whole situation. Mr. Wells is more modest. All he professes to see is that the rapid pace of invention and discovery in the modern world is sufficient to account for enormous vicissitudes both in the money market and in the labor market. Capital has been destroyed in huge blocks and recreated by new methods; labor has been forced to quit one employment after another and find new openings for itself. The course of business has become more and more difficult to calculate, and only the stronger heads and more resolute wills have been able to hold their own amid the changes and chances of the hour.
Mr. Wells does not deal in mere generalities. He treats separately each aspect of his subject, and under every head gives facts in abundance—"modern instances," as Shakespeare expresses it. He shows what has been done in the way of opening new routes; and, in the case of the Suez Canal, he traces to that one cause the most momentous results as regards the course of trade. He discusses very fully the effects of the cheapening of transportation by land and by sea, showing how, to this cause, must be attributed much of the agricultural depression existing in different parts of the world. He dwells on the inventions and discoveries by which manufactures have been cheapened, and labor constantly displaced and again provided for. He shows how improved methods of farming render less efficient ones unprofitable, and how little good has been done to the farming population by the homestead and other exceptional laws passed for their benefit—nay, how they have been injured by the overzeal of their friends in the Legislature. He discusses the effect of restrictions on trade, and shows in what idle fashion the governments of the world, with one or two exceptions, handicap their own commerce in the effort to injure that of their neighbors, and how the effect of the whole protectionist madness is simply to place a heavy drag upon the industrial energy, not to say upon the conscience, of mankind. We can not pretend, however, in this place to give even the most rapid summary of the contents of Mr. Wells's volume. Suffice it at present to say that he has described with great fullness and, so far as we can judge, with great accuracy, the conditions under which the business of the world is now being carried on, and the circumstances that have
