subsequent multiplication and division.

Whether this feat was

performed by the Egyptians, with their gift for geometry, or by the Babylonians, with their gift for astronomy, has been warmly debated. Most "metrologists" have been inclined to give the credit to the Babylonians, and to suppose that from them all other nations borrowed. And the way in which the Babylonians arrived at their standard, according to one of the most distinguished of our authorities, Dr. Hultsch, was as follows: From the sun's apparent diameter they got the royal Babylonian ell. The cube of this gave them their maris, a measure of capacity. The weight of one-fifth of this in water furnished the royal Babylonian talent, which was divided into sixty minæ, and each mina into sixty shekels.

It was inevitable that sooner or later this elaborate and artificial structure should topple down. It was the creation of a generation which the action of the French republic had accustomed to the idea of a purposed establishment of a metric system, and which had been carried off its feet by the new discoveries in Chaldæa and Assyria. And surely the supposition that the world remained without standards of measurement until one day men said: "Go to, let us have measures. Suppose we take the sun's diameter, and then make cubes from it"- belongs altogether to what may be called the anteevolutionary period of archæology.

But although a critic could have said this, as a matter of fact no one did before Professor Ridgeway. To Professor Ridgeway belongs the credit of seeing that here is a field to which, somehow or other, the comparative method has never been applied. Everybody nowadays is going to the existing practices of savage or uncivilized tribes to find clues to the origin of everything, from religion and the family down to fairy stories; why not do the same for the origin of currency and measures? This is what Mr. Ridgeway has attempted with eminent success.

He points out that in early or barbaric society a currency arises out of barter simply from the great importance attached to whatever may happen to be the staple commodities, as, for instance, beaver skins in the Canadian North-West. Now the thing in most general request among all the Aryan (and among many non-Aryan) people was the cow; and consequently, as Mr. Ridgeway shows from evidence as different as Homer and the Brehon laws, the cow was originally the most important standard of value. There was, he argues, probably sufficient trade to attach to the cow everywhere on the European and Asiatic continent much the same estimation.

But the standard gold coin of most ancient peoples was, also, strikingly uniform in weight, varying only from 135 to 120 grains. The probability, therefore, is suggested-and Mr. Ridgeway adduces evidence which almost makes it a certainty-that the standard gold coin of the ancient world represented, and took the place of, the cow as a unit of reckoning.

But how was the gold itself weighed? Mr. Ridgeway shows us, from the usages still current over a large part of the world, that standards of weight usually start independently from the two ends, the very heavy and the very light, with at first no recognized connection between them. Thus many nations have for heavy burdens the unit of a man's load, and for light weights the seeds of some plant; and then at a later stage, or under the influence of other and more advanced nations, work out the arithmetical relation between the two. For the weighing of gold, wheat-corns or similar grains seem to have been almost universally used.

Mr. Ridgeway pursues the supporters of "the old doctrines" into the recesses of their arguments, and pours forth a wealth of learning with regard especially to the early Greek coinages, which will make his book hard reading to any but classical scholars. But, besides his main theme, he gives us much of miscellaneous interest concerning savage and barbarous currencies which even the non-classical reader can enjoy. He shows, moreover, in an entertaining way, that many of the "types" of Greek coins, which have hitherto been regarded as religious emblems, such as the tortoise of Aegina and the shield of Boeotia, were in all probability nothing more than the staple products of the respective localities.

The work is one which will arouse and which will need careful criticism in detail; but its main principles are more important than any of its specific conclusions and will doubtless find general acceptance. These principles are, that standards of weight and currency arise unconsciously and spontaneously from the everyday usages of primitive peoples; that such peoples employ for the purpose whatever nature furnishes near at hand; and that resemblances are due largely to the similarity of situation and need. Professor Ridgeway will enjoy the deserved repute of having been the pioneer in a new and fertile field of research,—of having written a work to which the much abused term "epoch making" may with complete justice be applied. And no student of social development can afford to be indifferent to a book which widens — as this does so greatly—the area of influence to be assigned to economic motives and forces. W. J. ASHLEY.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY.

Teoria della Trasformazione dei Capitali. Di CAMILLO SUPINO. Torino, Fratelli Bocca Editori, 1891.126 pp.

In the preface to this treatise, the author tells us that, while many economic theories are based upon the possibility of capital's passing from one form of industry to another, yet few writers who appeal to the principle "concern themselves with explaining how the movement takes place." A few ideas respecting it are found in the principal economic treatises; "but," he continues, "no one, that I know, has devoted a special study to the various methods of the transformation of capital, to the causes which determine it, and to the obstacles which impede it." To fill up this gap in economic science is the object of the present work, the author believing that such an investigation has practical and scientific importance, and great utility for both economics and finance. But, notwithstanding this practical importance, his work is wholly theoretical.

In the execution of his task Signor Supino has given us a wellarranged and systematic treatment of the leading phenomena in the movement of capital, which is always "tending," in obedience to the law of self-interest, towards the more productive employments. His explanations of the principles involved and their working are always lucid, and his style is always clear. If there is little or nothing new in the way of facts or principles, the author is entitled at least to the credit of having skillfully grouped them about a central thought, thus bringing scattered truths together in a connected whole. The various classes of phenomena are treated in separate chapters, and each group is analyzed with more or less detail; but it is not pretended that the analysis is exhaustive or the treatment complete.

Chapter I traces the transformation of wealth into capital, and shows how this is facilitated by the use of money. Then in the three following chapters are treated respectively: The transformation of capital through the agency of monetary capital, or the movement of "momentarily disposable capital"; the transformation of capital employed in industries, or fixed capital whose placement is influenced by prices and profits; the transformation of capital employed in investments, as lands, houses and public values, or fixed and movable capital whose transformation is effected only through purchase and sale. Then follows a chapter on the causes of the transformation, which are principally, though not wholly, technical or economic; and finally, the last chapter treats of the obstacles which impede the transformation. These are either

inherent in the employments, as differences in risks, attractiveness and aim; or external influences - obstacles of a moral, economic or juridical nature.

On some minor points, which do not affect the general argument, exceptions might justly be made. For instance, the statement that "the custom existing in certain countries, of giving long credits, retards the circulation of capital" (page 58) is hardly true without qualification. No doubt it retards the flow of money. But does it of capital? Possibly the statement is due to the author's strong inclination to regard money as capital. At any rate, he says, it is "latent capital" (page 24). Again, counteracting influences are overlooked in the statement that the existence of any given railroad is an obstacle to the building of another running in the same direction. This may be true of the European railroad system, as it may be the dictum of the highest economic interest of the public; but the parallel roads in this country have demonstrated that a speculative mania will defy the public interest for a selfish gain, and convert the "obstacle" into an incentive. Still, as a "tendency," or indeed as a rule, the statement may be conceded.

A more questionable position, though supported by the high authority of Pantaleoni, is the distinction made between cultivated land and building sites in cities. The latter are regarded as capital a part of the cost of the buildings, but their value does not depend on fertility, and hence is not subject to the law of diminishing returns. Having a monopoly value, their rent is a monopoly rent. On the other hand, cultivated land is not capital, because not a product, does depend on fertility, and so is subject to the above law. And further, it yields differential rents (page 64).

It is difficult to see the ground of these distinctions. If the cost of a building site is part of the total cost of a building, and any increased income is but "the normal interest of the increased value of the capital"; and if the proof of this is found in the fact that in selling the owner capitalizes this increased income (page 68); the same is true of the increased income from cultivated land near a city. Both alike will capitalize the increased returns; but for all that, to the owners these returns are alike differential returns, or rents, due to monopolistic advantages, and are not the normal returns to capital in the strict sense. If in the one case increased returns are to be considered as only the normal interest of the increased value of capital, the same must be true in the other case, and then the whole phenomenon of rent at once disappears. To a purchaser the

whole return is, no doubt, normal interest on capital invested; but any increase, economically considered, is a rent due to a differential advantage of a monopolistic character, as is the case with all rents, including the quasi-rents of capital, labor and the entrepreneur. But since the monopolies differ in character, they may be greater or less hindrances to the movement of capital. STEPHEN F. WESTON.

COLUMBIA COLLEGE.

People's Banks. A record of Social and Economic Success. By HENRY W. WOLFF. London, Longmans, Green & Co., 1893. — xvi, 261 pp.

That amiable weakness of the French people for impracticable ideas, has, we are constrained to admit, stamped itself upon their practice of coöperation. So when Mr. Wolff seeks to chronicle "a record of social and economic success" in that same illusive form of masquerading socialism on which an emperor has smiled, he has had to abandon Gallic soil, as the home of mere theories as beautiful, but as finely spun as Venetian glass. His book, accordingly, is a study of German and Italian methods for the accomplishment of those startling results in credit coöperation, the statistics of which, for the continent, reach in dollars to ten figures annually.

While no one has satisfactorily defined the word to which Robert Owen gave currency, it is universally recognized that there are three forms of the practice of coöperation, viz., for distribution, for credit and for production. But it would be easy to demonstrate that neither the English "wholesales" nor the "people's banks" involve real coöperation; though there is no doubt that both are useful and astonishing aids to civilization. Coöperation for production, then, is the only form which can satisfy a scientific definition, and it is now many years since cautious economists have pronounced that form, on which they founded such high hopes, to be a lamentable failure.

But the point at which the French began Schulze-Delitzsch hoped to attain only after a long series of successful experiments, and him the Italians have followed, more tedesco. To this fact only can the pæan of Mr. Wolff's book owe its reason. There are two plans of campaign which have influenced the growth of the people's banks that of Schulze and Luzzatti, which may be characterized in M. Léon Say's phrase as seeking the "démocratisation du crédit"; and that of Raiffeisen and Wollemborg, which is essentially in a line with that naïve and priestly attempt (so deliciously French) to