I mil 1 1 in iipiiniHinn \mmmw P i inn i tmiriiuii mi ttHmHnuittwtwmMinminimiMMHHMWiH! Hill ip< lit WSw 543 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF V, ,\, Hettrg W, Sage 1891 Ev*z~mxo<>3> yg^xY'fe «> 9755-2 f j * i h 13 J..TE MAY 31 1956 DO juH**4«£tt-^ Cornell University Library HD7125 .S43 Social insurance. olin 3 1924 032 478 194 SOCIAL INSURANCE A PROGRAM OF SOCIAL REFORM ^■M— ^-— AMERICAN SOCIAL PROGRESS SERIES EDITED BY Professor Samuel McCune Lindsay, Ph.D., LL.D. Columbia University A series of handbooks for the student and general reader, giving the results of the newer social thought and of recent scientific investigations of the facts of American social life and institutions. Each volume about 200 pages. 1. THE NEW BASIS OF CIVILIZATION. By Professor S. N. Patten, Ph.D., LL.D., University of Pennsylvania. Price $1.00 net. 2. STANDARDS OF PUBLIC MORALITY. By Arthur Twining Hadley, Ph.D., LL.D., President of Yale University. Price $1.00 net. 3. MISERY AND ITS CAUSES. By Edward T. Devine, Ph.D., LL.D., Columbia University. Price $1.25 net. 4. GOVERNMENTAL ACTION FOR SOCIAL WEL- FARE. By Jeremiah W. Jenks, Ph.D., LL.D., Cor- nell University. 5. SOCIAL INSURANCE. A Program of Social Reform. By Henry Rogers Seager, Ph.D., Columbia University. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York AMEBICAN SOCIAL PMOGBESS SERIES SOCIAL INSUKANCE A PROGRAM OF SOCIAL REFORM BY HENRY ROGERS SEAGER PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY The Kennedy Lectures foe 1910, in the School op Philanthropy, conducted by the Charity Organization Society oe the City oe New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1910 All rights reserved f'i 1*1 to COPTBIGHT, 1910, By THE MACMIIXAN COMPANY. Set up and eiectrotyped. Published June, 1910. WotillOOS 5IKB2 J. S. Cushlng Co. —Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. moomcations, six lectures delivered on tne jonn Stuart Kennedy Foundation in New York in Feb- ruary, 1910. Addressed to students of the School of Philanthropy, they treat of problems that in- terest particularly workers among the poor. The policies JteqflSlinal^y^J^aySaHai untried only in tnlft To the individual employee, this justifi- cation must take the form of high earnings and leisure for pursuits outside of working hours which will preserve him from becoming the human au- tomaton which his work tends to make him. The problem for the future is to secure these advan- tages for factory workers, and at the same time to develop to the fullest extent other occupations than factory employments. Encouragement of arts and crafts is especially [155] SOCIAL INSURANCE important in the United States, because there are certain circumstances which cause manufacturing with us to take too exclusively the factory form. Our principal advantage over our foreign com- petitors comes from our wealth of natural resources. It is raw materials, the products of our extractive industries, that constitute our chief exports. Next to these come the cruder forms of manufactures, bulky iron, steel, and copper products, coarse cot- ton goods, flour, dressed meats, canned foods, etc., which we can produce more cheaply than our for- eign competitors because we have cheap raw mate- rials and because we have talent for organizing capital and labor effectively. A third important group of exports is traceable to the inventive fac- ulty, which seems to be also an American charac- teristic. We export sewing machines, bicycles, typewriters, agricultural implements, and many other things which are in demand abroad, simply because we have invented them or improved them a little in advance of our foreign competitors. But, besides these three classes of exports, there are very few things that we can produce in free competition with foreign countries. We export almost no goods that are in demand abroad be- cause of the superiority of American workmanship. [156] NEXT STEPS IN SOCIAL ADVANCE On the other hand, a very large proportion of the articles which show superior workmanship or ar- tistic excellence, which we use, we import, and this in spite of our protective tariff which imposes an average tax of 50jaer cent or more on such articles. This is, of course, no proof of the inferiority of the American workman, as has sometimes been argued ; it merely reflects the fact that, so long as we can make such large returns in our extractive indus- tries and in the cruder forms of manufacturing, it does not pay us to give much attention to the development of handicrafts. But it is no less ominous for the future. Our situation tends to make us predominantly a nation of farmers, of miners, and of factory hands. Will successive generations, devoting their lives to these pursuits, be able to compete against trained foreign workers as our natural resources become exhausted and we have to adjust ourselves to competition on more equal terms with our foreign rivals ? The answer to this question seems to me to depend on the promptness with which we appreciate the impor- tance of industrial education and the intelligence with which we introduce such training into our public educational system. Up to the present time we have done less than [ 157 ] SOCIAL INSURANCE any other industrially advanced country to give adequate training to our manual workers. In consequence, there can be no doubt that our skilled trades, such as our building trades, are relatively undersupplied with competent workmen, while unskilled, and especially factory employments, are relatively oversupplied. One has only to compare the wages paid in our building trades with those paid in the same trades abroad, and the wages paid in our mills with what foreign mill hands earn, to be convinced that this is the case. Naturally, it has been in the skilled trades, also, that labor unions have had their highest development, and their desire to advance the interests of their mem- bers has led them to work with, rather than against, the forces tending to keep down their number. Just what forms industrial education should take, when it should begin in our public schools, and when it should end, and how it should be related to the industries themselves, to carry on which it endeavors to train boys and girls, are technical questions which I shall not attempt to answer. Long since, we appreciated the importance of special training for those who are to take directing positions in connection with the world's work. We developed agricultural schools for the sons of C 158 ] NEXT STEPS IN SOCIAL ADVANCE independent farmers, and they compare favorably with those of any country. We developed mining and engineering schools. Latterly, we have begun to develop schools of commerce and finance and even schools of journalism. But all of these are for the fortunate two percent or so of the sons of the republic who can continue their education after they have left the high schools. In our free public educational system we have, it is true, broken with the traditional notion that education has to do primarily with 'books, by introducing the kin- dergarten at one end and the manual-training high school at the other, but we have left a wide gap between, where manual training largely ceases, and we have done all too little to relate manual training to the practical requirements of the work- ing life. The objection that is most commonly urged against the introduction of industrial training into the public schools is that it will make educa- tion more material. The assumption behind this objection, that is, that training hand and eye is more material than training mental faculties through books, seems to me quite unwarranted. But even if there were truth in it, I think indus- trial training that would enable wage earners to [ 159 ] SOCIAL INSURANCE command higher wages would still be desirable. After all, there is nothing that tends to materialize and brutalize more than the blind struggle for existence in which those who enter industrial life without special training for it are too often involved. When it is remembered that sound industrial education should not only increase the earnings of wage earners, but should develop higher stand- ards of workmanship and increase the pleasure to be derived from work, the case for it seems conclusive. Our public schools cannot remain satisfied with merely preparing boys and girls to live rational, useful, and happy lives. They must also train them to command the earnings with- out which such lives are impossible. One aspect of industrial education suggests the third next step in social advance which seems to me important. It should serve to deepen the sense of social solidarity that binds different classes to- gether and to quicken the appreciation of common as distinguished from individual interests. For, as individualists like to point out, our present industrial system is ideally a great system of cooperation. Each is working for his own interest, but in so doing he is also advancing the interests of others. No one can live to himself alone. Each [160] NEXT STEPS IN SOCIAL ADVANCE labors and produces for others, and consumes goods which others have produced. The trouble is that this cooperative aspect of modern industry is little understood by the majority of those who take part in it. Industrial education, by tracing the historical development of different industries and showing the relation of different processes and different branches of production to one another, should help the wage earner to understand his true relation to industrial society. Monotonous tasks, repeated hour after hour, would be less irksome if the doer of them appreciated that by his work he was help- ing to gratify the wants of others, perhaps in dis- tant lands, and that others were at the same time doing monotonous tasks in order that his wants might be gratified. The importance of the serv- vice that the employer performs would also be more clearly appreciated, and there would be more chance of success if the attempt should be made to dispense with the employer and substitute formal cooperation, directed by a committee of workmen or a hired manager, for the spontaneous coopera- tion that results from the division of labor and production for the market. This deepening of the sense of social solidarity [ 161 ] SOCIAL INSURANCE and quickening of appreciation of our common interests is indispensable to the realization of any program of social reform. Only by a change of attitude and change of heart on the part of the whole people can we hope to curb our rampant individualism and achieve those common ends which we all admit to be desirable but which are only attainable through our united efforts. As soon as we begin to think of government as some- thing more than an agency for maintaining order, — as organized machinery for advancing our com- mon interests, — we appreciate how far we still are from being a truly civilized society. If our social consciousness had advanced beyond the rudimentary stage in its development, many questions which trouble us now would almost solve themselves. Take such a simple, common need as that of having clean streets. Every one will admit the desirability of clean streets, and yet it is the exceptional citizen who feels personal responsi- bility for keeping the streets clean. As individ- duals we throw papers and other rubbish about with reckless disregard of the consequences, and then find fault with the street-cleaning department because our streets do not present the tidy appearance of the Strassen of Berlin or the boulevards of Paris. [162] NEXT STEPS IN SOCIAL ADVANCE Or consider the perennial question of the right of the police to secure exact means for identifying persons who for any reason come under their sur- veillance. The rational answer to that question is not that the police records should be confined to persons who have actually been convicted of crime, but that there should be in some depart- ment a complete and accurate registry of all per- sons in the city which could serve as a ready means of identification, and which, for example, would protect respectable persons who fall ill on the streets from the risk and humiliation of being arrested for drunkenness. Without such means of identification our police are constantly making stupid blunders, arresting and even clubbing inno- cent persons, and allowing criminals to escape. We require automobiles and even dogs to be licensed and registered, and yet we refuse to give the police department the most obviously requisite means for accomplishing its work — full and complete information about the persons whose lives and property it is expected to protect. When we make unfavorable comparisons between our police and the police, for example, of Berlin, we must not for- get this important difference. The same lack of appreciation of what our com- [163] SOCIAL INSURANCE mon interests require is shown in more subtle ways in connection with great public questions, such as, whether Congress should have power to impose an income tax, whether trusts should be required to obtain federal charters, or whether we should have a postal savings bank. After holding in repeated decisions that Congress had power to tax incomes, the Supreme Court de- cided in the nineties that such taxation, as applied to personal incomes, was unconstitutional. Both parties agreed in favoring an amendment to the Constitution which would clearly give the federal government this power. Such an amendment was framed by President Taft's advisers, adopted by Congress, and submitted to the legislatures of the different states. Several states ratified it, but when it reached New York, Governor Hughes, with whom I am proud to agree on most public questions, recommended its rejection by the legislature, on the ground that under it Congress might tax incomes from state and municipal bonds, and thus hamper the borrowing powers of subordinate branches of the government. This objection, which is understandable as coming from a cautious lawyer, has been accepted by the news- papers of the country as an utterance of wise and [ 164] NEXT STEPS IN SOCIAL ADVANCE far-seeing statesmanship. 1 But is it compatible with a proper appreciation of the importance of our common interests? The Congress of the United States is not a foreign power against which citizens of New York must be carefully protected. Its acts are the acts of representatives from the dif- ferent states, as jealous of the interests of their localities as Governor Hughes himself. Is it probable that they would approve a use of this taxing power that would embarrass the sub- ordinate branches of the government in which they are equally interested ? Or, if an occasion arose when the national interest seemed to require the taxation of all incomes, from whatever source, is it desirable or statesmanlike to oppose our selfish, sectional interests to this national need ? To be- lieve so seems to me to deny that we are in a true sense a nation with common interests and common purposes. It bespeaks a distrust of the repre- sentative character of Congress, a willingness to subordinate larger national interests to smaller state and local interests, and is another form, I cannot but think, of the exaggerated individualism to which I have frequently referred. 1 The soundness of Governor Hughes's views as to the scope of the amendment has been questioned by high authority, but this does not concern us here. [ 165 ] SOCIAL INSURANCE The question of requiring corporations whose business is interstate in character to incorporate under federal law, is of a somewhat different nature, and yet the arguments against the policy — so far as they are not constitutional — also ignore the great common interests at stake. Few will deny that the large corporations that we call trusts are national in the scope of their operations. Few are so ignorant of the facts as to maintain that the states can adequately control these giant organiza- tions as the public interest requires. And yet, when the issue is squarely presented of bringing these corporations under the control of the federal government, an invasion of state's rights is charged, and the cry is raised that the new policy will prove subversive of local self-government. Industrially, we have become a great unified nation; politically, we are held back by our inherited traditions in regard to state's rights, by our distrust of govern- mental action, and by our strong individualistic bias. The issue presented by the bill creating a postal savings bank now before Congress is more inti- mately related to the subjects we have considered in this course. Undoubtedly, one reason why wage earners are not more prone to save for future needs [166] NEXT STEPS IN SOCIAL ADVANCE is that the facilities for safeguarding their savings in many parts of the United States are quite in- adequate. It is not enough for those who deny this to show that sound and well-managed savings banks are found in our cities. Institutions for safeguarding the savings of wage earners must not only be sound but they must command the confidence of wage earners. Moreover, only about one third of the population of the country lives in cities. In small towns and country districts, particularly in the South and West, there are no savings banks, and it is not unusual for wage earners who are moving from place to place to buy post office money orders with their accumu- lations as on the whole safer than hoarding the money itself. Every one uses the post office to some extent. Backed by the credit of the govern- ment, a postal savings system commands the con- fidence even of the most timid and distrustful. Finally, post pffices are to be found everywhere, and it would be comparatively easy for every post office that is now organized to issue money orders to extend its operations to include receiving money on deposit. In view of these facts and of the successful operation of postal savings banks abroad, it would seem that no fair-minded person would [167] SOCIAL INSURANCE be found to oppose the principle of this new policy, however men might differ as to the best means of putting it into effect. And yet it is well known that the change is most actively opposed by the very men who might be expected to render greatest assistance in making it effective — the bankers of the country. Here, again, we have an illustration of inherited prejudices and individual interests making men blind to the common interests of the communities in which they live. These instances and many others that might be cited all illustrate the same moral. The gospel of love has as yet influenced very little our views on public questions. In business and in politics we are still individualists. We habitually put our individual before our common interests, and even when we are conscious of common needs we hesi- tate to intrust them to our common government. To correct these national characteristics is, in my opinion, the most important next step in social advance. And as we correct them, as our sense of social solidarity is deepened, and our appreciation of our common interests quickened, measures of reform will seem obvious and easy that now seem visionary and impracticable. I have presented political reform, industrial [ 1C3 ] NEXT STEPS IN SOCIAL ADVANCE education, and a deepening of our social con- sciousness as needed next steps in social advance partly because they are so desirable in themselves, but partly, also, because the degree in which we attain them has an important bearing on the policies advocated in the preceding chapters. What this bearing is I can best make clear by now briefly reviewing these policies. A vigorous campaign of accident and illness prevention and the organization of a national board of health were first advocated. As to acci- dent indemnity, a system of workmen's compen- sation, like that of the United Kingdom, was urged as, on the whole, best suited to conditions in the United States. Under it, employers are required to add the cost of caring for the victims of in- dustrial accidents to their other expenses of pro- duction, and the burden is thrown upon consumers, for whose benefit production is carried on. Provision against illness offers, it was admitted, greater difficulties. As a first step, it was suggested that encouragement should be given to fraternal organizations and trade unions which afford illness insurance. For illnesses due to well-defined trade diseases, the plan adopted by England in 1906 of requiring employers to indemnify the victims of [169] SOCIAL INSURANCE such diseases in the same way that they indemnify the victims of accidents was advocated. Finally, for illnesses not due to trade diseases, some system of compulsory insurance, like that of Germany, was urged as a goal to be sought so soon as public opinion should be prepared for it. Unemployment also presents a many-sided prob- lem. The measures proposed were: regulated pro- duction, a chain of employment bureaus which should register the names and qualifications of all unemployed persons in the state and to which em- ployers should apply whenever they require addi- tional hands, farm and industrial colonies for vagrants, trade-union insurance against unemploy- ment encouraged, if not subsidized, by the govern- ment, and training schools for the unemployed during periods of enforced idleness, as preferable to relief work. The final need, provision for old age, was to be met as regards private employees by old-age pension or annuity systems maintained by corporations, provided these could be arranged so as not to interfere unduly with the mobility of labor; by retiring allowances to superannuated public em- ployees; and by the encouragement of savings bank and commercial insurance against old age. [ 170 ] NEXT STEPS IN SOCIAL ADVANCE National old-age pensions were not advocated, as the need for them in the United States is not yet clear, but some of the more common arguments against them were answered. In choosing between different methods of dealing with these evils, it was necessary in nearly every instance to consider which was "best suited to conditions in the United States." And the con- ditions referred to are conditions as to govern- mental efficiency, the spread of sound industrial education, and the development of a social con- sciousness. I advocate workmen's compensation for industrial accidents on the English model. The Swiss, after devoting long years to a study of the problem, have just decided in favor of compul- sory state insurance as preferable. No doubt it is perferable for Switzerland. It involves, however, the creation of a state insurance department to enter into a difficult and largely untried field of insurance. Optimistic as I am about our political future, I cannot feel that we are yet ripe for such an experiment in New York. Compulsory illness insurance seems to me the only adequate solution of the problem presented by illness. Germany has operated such insurance for twenty-seven years, with a fair measure of [ 171 ] SOCIAL INSURANCE success, and her example has been followed by other countries. I cannot feel, however, that our social consciousness is sufficiently developed or our government sufficiently efficient in this country to make the introduction of compulsory illness insur- ance immediately desirable. The way to deal with the problem of unemploy- ment was sketched out with confidence so far as the economics of the matter were concerned. As to the politics of the matter, there is ground for some misgiving. Can our states operate effi- ciently the chains of labor exchanges through which alone we can organize properly the labor market ? With our small proportion of intelligent and trained artisans in a population made up so largely of farm workers, miners, and factory hands, will trade- union insurance against unemployment benefit any considerable number ? Finally, can we seriously contemplate undertaking the industrial education of the unemployed, when we have as yet taken only the first timid steps in the direction of the indus- trial training of the youth of the land ? Political reform and industrial education have important relations with the problems presented by accidents, illness, and unemployment. The degree to which the social consciousness of a community, [172] NEXT STEPS IN SOCIAL ADVANCE its sense of social solidarity, and appreciation of common interests are developed is the determining factor in connection with the problem of providing for old age. If we were truly imbued with the feeling that we are brothers working in a common vineyard, if we thought of the government as or- ganized machinery for caring for our common in- terests, nothing would seem more natural and proper than that the government should pay pen- sions to those who in the active period of their lives have, in the language of the New Zealand act, "helped to bear the burden of the Commonwealth by the payment of taxes and by opening up its resources by their labor and skill." Such pensions could not fairly be called non-contributory. As Lloyd George pointed out in defending his old-age pension bill before the House of Commons: "As long as you have taxes upon commodities which are consumed practically by every family in the country, there is no such thing as a non-contrib- utory scheme. If you tax tea and coffee, and partly sugar, beer, and tobacco, you hit everybody one way or another. Indeed, when a scheme is financed from public funds, it is just as much a con- tributory scheme as one financed directly by means of contributions arranged on the German or any [173] SOCIAL INSURANCE other basis." This is perfectly true if the social consciousness of the people under consideration is so developed as to lead them to view taxes as fairly apportioned contributions to a common fund to be used for the common benefit. If, on the other hand, taxes are looked upon as forced levies ex- acted by an alien power, — • and this I fear more nearly describes the common view of federal taxes in the United States, — it is not true. The whole issue turns on the state of the public mind. In a country where the sense of social solidarity is strong, gratuitous old-age pensions may be just and wise. In another country, in which individualis- tic conceptions dominate, they may appear as a device for compelling the prudent and thrifty to support the careless and improvident, and the jealousy and hatred which they engender may more than offset any benefits they can confer by relieving old-age poverty. The thought suggested by these considerations may appropriately conclude this discussion of needed social reforms. There are no hard and fast answers to the social problems that have been touched on in these chapters. Solutions that would be true and wise in one time and place would be quite unworkable in others. On the [174] NEXT STEPS IN SOCIAL ADVANCE whole, however, these United States are progress- ing. Government is becoming more efficient, we are growing more social, our absorption in our in- dividual interests is giving way to deep and in- telligent appreciation of our common interests. Under these circumstances, policies that a short time ago would have been quite unsuited to our conditions come each year within the range of practical poli- tics. I am sufficiently optimistic to think that this progress is going to continue, and that any social policy that is sound and wise for a people suffi- ciently developed to make use of it will one day be sound and wise for the United States. Let us not be frightened by phrases, by the bugaboo of "de- stroying local self-government," of "projecting the United States into the banking business," of "undermining individual thrift," or of "social- ism." With open minds, let us rather examine each new proposal on its merits. This is the truly scientific attitude toward a field of phenomena where all is change and development. It is also the attitude which will contribute most to that betterment of social conditions which is the purpose of every program of social reform. [175] AMERICAN SOCIAL PROGRESS SERIES Edited by Samuel McCune Lindsay, Ph.D. A series of handbooks for the student and general reader, giving the results of the newer social thought and of recent scientific investiga- tions of the facts of American social life and institutions. Each volume about 200 pages. 1 — The New Basis of Civilization By Professor S. N. Patten, Ph.D., LL.D., University of Penn- sylvania. The Kennedy Lectures for igOJ Cloth, $1.00 net; by mail, $1.06 2 — Standards of Public Morality By Arthur Twining Hadley, Ph.D., LL.D., President of Yale University. The Kennedy Lectures for 1006 Cloth, $1.00 net; by mail, $1.06 3 — Legislation and Administration for Social Welfare By Professor Jeremiah W. Jenks, Ph.D., LL.D., Cornell Uni- versity. (/« preparation.) 4 — Misery and Its Causes By Edward T. Devine, Ph.D., LL.D., Columbia University. The Kennedy Lectures for igoS Cloth, $1.35 net ; by mail, $1.36 Books ot Related Interest The Care of Destitute, Neglected, and Delinquent Children By Homer Folks, Commissioner of Public Charities of the City of New York. Cloth, l6mo, $1.00 net; by mail, $1.06 "Among our experts none stands higher than the cultivated author, and in this work he writes out of the memories and studies of a fruitful life, and gives to the public wise and reliable counsel." Professor Charles R. Henderson in The Yale Review. Books of Related Interest— Continued How to Help By Mary Conyngton. A Manual of Practical Charity. De- signed for the use of non-professional workers among the poor. Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 net Constructive and Preventive Philanthropy By Joseph Lee, Vice-President of the Massachusetts Civic League. With an Introduction by Jacob A. Riis. Cloth, i6mo, $1.00 net " Mr. Lee has brought together in a small compass, and in ex- tremely lucid form, a vast body of facts which speak for themselves, and his standpoint is that of modern progressive pedagogy, which recognizes that institutions must fit children and youth instead of forcing the latter to fit institutions." — G. Stanley Hall. The Development of Thrift By Mary Willcox Brown, General Secretary of the Henry Watson Children's Aid Society, Baltimore. Cloth, i2tno, $1.00 " A very strong argument for organized charity . . . treated, and well treated, by OHe who has had experience and brings to her subject a mind inspired by intelligent research and scientific study." — Catholic Mirror. Friendly Visiting among the Poor By Mary E. Richmond, General Secretary of the Charity Or- ganization Society of Baltimore. Cloth, i6mo, $z.oo " A small book full of inspiration, yet intensely practical, was needed for the growing company of workers who mediate between dependent families and the comfortable public. Miss Richmond has brought together, from careful reading and successful personal experience, a body of instruction of the highest value." — Professor Charles R. Henderson in American Journal of Sociology. PUBLISHED BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Sixty-four and Sixty-six Fifth Avenue, New Tork By EDWARD T. DEVINE, Ph.D., LL.D. General Secretary of the Charities Organization Society of New York City Efficiency and Relief A PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL WORK Being the inaugural address of the Schiff Professor of Social Economy in Columbia University, with an Introduction by Presi- dent Nicholas Murray Butler. Columbia University Press. Cloth, i6mo, $. J5 net " Rich in thought-productive suggestions for those who read with open mind." — Record-Herald, Chicago. " There are certain books, the message of which is so helpful, im- portant, and far-reaching, that not only the individual, but the community and the State as well, sustain a serious loss if they are left unread. ... It carries an appeal, commanding the careful consideration of every true and loyal citizen." — Baltimore News. " The little book is packed with ideas." — The Dial. " Dr. Devine has previously laid the public under frequent obliga- tions to him by his clear-sighted discussion of social needs. But he has never heretofore reached the high note that sounds clear through this discourse like the trumpet of a prophecy." — Atlantic Monthly. Economics Cloth, i6mo, $1.00 net A discussion of the economic man and his environment, the social conditions of an economic society, consumption, prosperity, the standard of living, value, the distribution of products, the organi- zation of credit and industry, obstacles to social progress and the disposition of the social surplus. Originally prepared for the American Soci- ety for the Extension of University Teaching PUBLISHED BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Sixty-four and Sixty-six Fifth Avenue, New York By EDWARD T. DEVINE, Ph.D., LL.D. Schiff Professor of Social Economy in Columbia University General Secretary of the Charity Organization Society of New York City Editor of Charities and the Commons The Principles of Relief cioth, $2.00 net " Text-books of sociology which are at once theoretical and prac- tical, aiding alike the citizen who seeks to fulfil intelligently his duty toward the dependent classes and the volunteer or profes- sional worker in any branch of social service, are rare enough ; and Dr. Devine's book is a valuable addition to this class of liter- ature. . . . Comprehensive in scope, and masterly in treatment, the book shows thorough knowledge of all phases of the relief problem of to-day ; and it combines with the student's careful presentation of facts as they are, the humanist's vision of what they yet may be." — Boston Transcript. " A distinct contribution to the literature of scientific philanthropy. It marks a step in the development of that literature, for in it are brought to consciousness, perhaps for the first time fully, the un- derlying principles on which the charity organization society move- ment is based. Moreover, it undertakes to give a comprehensive statement of the elementary principles upon which all relief giv- ing, whether public or private, should rest ; and it correlates these principles with the general facts of economics and sociology in such a way as to leave no doubt in the mind of the reader that the author has mastered his subject. The point of view of the book is constructive throughout, as its author evidently intends ; and it is safe to say that for many years to come it will be, both for the practical worker and for the scientific student, the authoritative work upon the 'Principles of Relief.'" — Annals of tke American Academy. " Independence, eminent common sense, a logical mind, and com- prehensive knowledge of subject-matter, make ' Principles of Re- lief an important book." — Boston Advertiser. PUBLISHED BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Sixty-four and Sixty-six Fifth Avenue, New York I !l! I'M ' i ii Hi! ' '