36
The Green Bag
conditions in New England in so far as his life was directly concerned with them. and he devotes many pages to the discussion of the business aspects of important legislation. His residence and frequent visits abroad, his life at Washington, where he maintains a
winter home, his family connections, his second wife being the daughter of General Preston, an eminent Kentuckian, and the marked social attentions which have been paid to him as the natural incidents of a dis tinguished career, lend to the account a broader and more human scope. It is a fascinating story of the life-work of an in ventor. man of affairs and publicist.
A PRACTICAL BOOK ON PENOLOGY The Crime Problem; What to Do About It, How to Dolit. By Col. Vincent Myron Masten. Star-Gazette Co., Elmira, N. Y. Pp 156. (81.50.)
HE author, who, is military instructor in the New York State Reformatory at Elmira, and has spent the greater part of his
life in working with criminals, writes this. book as a protest against three evils from which the American penal system suffers and with respect to which much is to be learned from the British system. He protests against the promiscuous herding of criminals and their subjection to a uniform treatment, against a too indulgent attitude on the part of society toward the criminal, and against the practice of imposing sentence for a definite period of imprisonment. The book is thus an argument for a more enlightened and pro gressive penal system, the chief features of which would be special institutions for differ ent classes of criminals, the careful grading of criminals, and the indeterminate sentence. Colonel Masten gives a good description of the English prison system, and in showing that some of its characteristics might well be imitated, he is performing a service which should be highly appreciated by the legal profession and by all interested in social prob lems. His recommendations with regard to prison reform are good, and deserve study. He has much to say, also, about improving the administration of prisons by equipping them with better trained officials. Inci dentally he speaks a good word for children's parole courts, which his system of graded punishment in fact presupposes. The author considers immigration largely responsible for the evils of crime in this
country.
Readers will not entirely agree
with this conclusion, nor with all of his recom mendations with regard to the further re striction of immigration and the placing of aliens on probation for several years before granting them naturalization, with the possi bility of the transportation of those dis covered to lie undesirable newcomers. But some of these suggestions stimulate thought, and they do not invalidate the substantial soundness of the writer's plan for penal re form. The book evinces keen sympathy for an insight into the lives of criminals and ex presses a humane spirit, while at once it rebels against the sentimentality which has foisted upon the American people in many parts of the country a crime-breeding system of institutions which are far from having a deterrent or reformatory effect upon the vicious impulses of their inmates. “We know of no British writer of standing," he says, "who will assert of the British system that it is crime-breeding," but “plenty of our best informed sociologists and penolo gists so bold as to our prison system." Colonel Masten's book is based upon prac tical experience rather than upon scientific theory. His ideas on prison discipline are admirable. The principles which should control the grading and classification of criminals are not outlined. However, it is probable that grading by an empirical method, by temporary confinement of all criminals, after sentence, in institutions where they can be kept under careful observation, would yield results quite as satisfactory, if not more so, and as morally just, as the application of definite
scientific
principles,
whether
or
not embodied in legislation. Hence readers should not be repelled by the fact that the writer's system is not built upon a scientific foundation. If the literary form and typography of the book cannot be heartily praised, the sub stance of its ideas is, as we have said, excel lent, and it is a book which deserves a wide circulation. '
HUDDY'S AUTOMOBILE LAW The Law of Automobiles. By Xenophon P. Huddy of the New York bar. 2d ed. Matthew Bender & Co., Albany. Pp. xxvi, 317+ table of cases and index 43. ($4.)
HE law of automobiles is developing rapidly and is moving steadily towards that stage of development at which it will
