as the regular course of things in a given industry, the law will hold all businesses within it as private in their character. Under our constitutional system a distinction is made upon this line. In the public calling, regulation of service, facilities, prices, and discriminations is possible to any extent. Monopolistic conditions demand such policy; and at no period in history has this been more apparent than now. In the private callings no such legislation should be permitted. Competitive conditions require freedom, and at no epoch in our industries has it been more important to insist upon this. But wherever there is virtual monopoly in a business of public importance at any time and from any cause, the protection of the law is requisite, requiring that all shall be served at reasonable rates." Concerning this, it may be said that while it is doubtless true that all businesses in which virtual monopoly exists may, constitutionally, be regulated, it does not seem to follow, and the authors have not demonstrated, that no other businesses may be regulated. In discussing the question, two questions should be kept clearly separated; first, what callings by the principles of the common law have been held by the courts to be public callings and so subject to certain exceptional rules of liability; second-an entirely distinct question-how far may the legislature go, under our constitutions, in regulating businesses not previously regulated, or in regulating in new ways businesses previously subjected to control by the principles of the common law just referred to. It may well be that the common law judges, in laying down these principles of the common law, drew the line in the manner suggested by the authors, that is, by putting those callings in which virtual monopoly existed into one class and all others into another. Even granting this for the sake of argument, it by no means follows that the line between unconstitutional and constitutional regulations must be drawn in the same way. To contend that it must be so drawn is to make the unwarranted assumption that no other reasonable grounds for regulation can be found, for clearly if other reasonable grounds can be found, regulations would be constitutional. If the welfare of the community demands it, surely a business, hitherto unregulated, may be subjected to regulation even if the necessity for regulation depends on some other condition than the existence of virtual monopoly. That such may be the case seems clearly to be the view of the supreme court of the United States in Brass v. North Dakota, 153 U. S., 391, where the majority of the court expressly said that the right of the State to regulate grain elevators did not depend upon the existence of virtual monopoly at all, but upon the fact that it was a "business affected with a public interest," which, being interpreted, seems to mean nothing more than that the welfare of society required the regulation of the business in question, or at best that that was a reasonable view to take and therefore the regulation was not unconstitutional. In view of the fact that they cite Munn v. Illinois as supporting the virtual monopoly test, and also in view of the fact that the authors were obviously not unaware of the North Dakota case (see Beale and Wyman's Cases on Public Service Companies), the suppression of all reference to the latter case (which says that the decision in Munn v. Illinois is not to be understood as laying down the virtual monopoly test), seems to indicate that they are occupied at this point in supporting a theory rather than in stating the law as it is. Be this as it may, the reader who is not a lawyer should be put on his guard against accepting as settled this proposition of the authors. It may be that ultimately it will become the law-though the present writer sincerely hopes not; it may be that some or many State courts would act upon it today; but to assert that the line has been drawn at this point is to ignore both the decision referred to and-what seems greater in importance the whole trend of the decisions and opinions of the United States Supreme Court and some of our State courts. WALTER WHEELER COOK. (Philadelphia: American Our State Constitutions. BY J. Q. DEALEY. Academy of Political and Social Science. 1907. Pp. 98.) This study, by Prof. James Quayle Dealey of Brown University, is a valuable monograph which is published as a supplement to the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science for March, 1907. It is a comparison of constitutions as they stood at the close of the year 1905, and it is intended as a guide to the study of the fundamental law of the States, a purpose which it is well calculated to serve. Its 98 pages give a digest of the contents of State constitutions arranged by topics, so that the various provisions made by different States on the same subjects are contrasted, and reference is facilitated by a full index. It is a thoroughly good piece of work which is so serviceable as to lay all students of American institutions under obligations to Professor Dealey for performing what must have been a laborious task. Indeed, the work is so useful as a convenient manual that another edition to complete it by including the constitution of Oklahoma is desirable. HENRY JONES FORD. Robert Owen, A Biography. By FRANK PODMORE. Two volumes. (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1907. Pp. xv, xii, 688.) Much of Robert Owen's work seemed to end in failure. His great social experiments at New Lanark and at New Harmony, neither of them stood the test of time. His writings were of little value, and are now completely forgotten. His religious, or rather anti-religious views have passed into the limbo of forgotten things; and it might appear as though his life had been of little account in the social and moral progress of the nineteenth century. In fact the world has been ready to make this assumption, and it is only within the last two or three years that, after fifty years of neglect and even of contumely, attention has again been directed to the real accomplishment of this great and long misjudged man. Had Owen died before the twenty-first of August, 1817, when he was forty-six years of age, popular, prosperous, held in high honor by the bulk of the respectable class and by the most influential portion of the London press, and enjoying even the cordial respect and sympathy of many amongst the political economists and reformers who were definitely opposed to him, there would probably have been much written. about him, and he would have enjoyed a high reputation for enlightened philanthropy through the whole of the nineteenth century. But after his memorable and outspoken denunciation of all the religions of the world in the public meeting of August 21, 1817, his reputation and worldly prosperity began to decline. He gradually relinquished the management of the mills at New Lanark, though he did not sever his connection with them until 1828. From this time Owen devoted his life to propaganda on behalf of his socialistic theories, of which propaganda the New Harmony venture was the most ambitious and most expensive item. Thenceforth the name of Robert Owen was taboo to all respectable churchmen and politicians, and the enemies of the factory bill of 1818 endeavored to discredit this mild instalment of reform by reminding the house of commons that the measure had originated, not with Sir Robert Peel who had introduced it, but with Robert Owen. Hence it is that fifty years passed after his death without any adequate biography of this leader of English thought, and only since the opening of the present century has attention once more been directed to his work. Since 1902, however, four writers, a Frenchman, an American, a German lady and an Englishman have each published a book on Robert Owen. Mr. G. B. Lockwood's work, which was the first to appear, covered only the New Harmony experiment. The German life of Owen by Fräulein Simon, and the French biography, by M. Dolléans, both appeared in 1905, and Mr. Podmore's two volumes form at the present time the last of this new series and the only satisfactory English biography of Robert Owen. Mr. Podmore is a frank admirer of the character, the disinterestedness and the noble optimism of Robert Owen; but he is an equally candid critic of his many intellectual deficiencies. The crudeness of his ideas; his lack of acquaintance with the works of any of the great thinkers, ancient or contemporary; the domination of his mind by one idea, and his consequent uncompromising directness and self-sufficiency, are all deliberately emphasized. But these faults were incompetent to destroy the influence which Owen wielded through his living optimism, his unselfishness, his love for his fellow creatures, and his untiring faith in the possibility of human progress. Owen," Mr. Podmore writes, "that faith burned generous and uncontrollable as the sun, and like the sun most of its light and heat might seem to have run to waste. Perhaps his claim to our remembrance lies less in the things he did-substantial though his achievements were— than in the hopes which he inspired, the faith which his example kept alive. For the sun of that faith was never shorn of a single ray. When he published his New View of Society, he looked for the regeneration of the world to begin on the morrow; throughout his long life that high vision, ever receding as he advanced, was still before his eyes; and he died at the age of eighty-seven happy in the belief that the millenium was even then knocking at the door." The ideals, for which Owen stood, suffered eclipse through the middle years of the nineteenth century when the Manchester school of political economy was dominant. But at the opening of the twentieth century, as at the opening of the nineteenth, the discontent with the present order of things and the divine impatience with the injustice and misery suffered by so many of their fellow creatures are turning the thought of reformers and enthusiasts again to socialism as a remedy, and thus it is not without significance that within five years, after almost forty years of neglect, Owen should find a biographer in each of the four greatest countries of the world. As for Mr. Podmore's share in this work, the Life of Robert Owen was worth doing, and he has done it well. He has given a more vivid picture of the man than could have been expected, considering the remoteness of his subject and the scantiness of his material, and he has outlined Owen's opinions and theories clearly, modestly and without dogmatism. A. G. PORRITT. INDEX TO RECENT LITERATURE-BOOKS AND PERIODICALS1 COLONIES Books Barland, Maurice. L'organisation judiciaire dans les colonies françaises. Paris: Rousseau. Pp. viii + 92. Boeuf, Capitaine Le. Historique de la conquête pacifique des territoires militaires de Tunisie. Paris: Berger-Levrault. Davis, Richard Harding. The Congo and Coasts of Africa. New York: Scribners. 1907. Heydt's, v. der. Kolonial-Handbuch. Jahrbuch der deutschen Kolonial- u. Uebersee-Unternehmgn. Hrsg. v. F. Mensch u. J. Hellmann. 1. Jahrg. 1907. Berlin: Verlag f. Börsen- u. Finanzliteratur. Pp. xx + 233. Articles in Periodicals Algeria. L'enseignement public en Algérie. H. Lorin. Ques. Dip. et Col. October 16; December 1. Colonies. "Is Colonization a Crime?" Better Stated: Does the Constitution Follow the Flag? E. H. Randle. Am. L. Rev. September-October. Egypt. Administration of Justice in Egypt. ber. H. Goudy. Law Quar. Rev. Octo Morocco. L'affaire du Maroc. Morocco. L'affaire du Maroc. Morocco. L'affaire du Maroc. Morocco. L'affaire du Maroc. Dip. et Col. December 1. R. de Caix. Ques. Dip. et Col. October 1. Morocco. L'affaire du Maroc. Le livre jaune. R. de Caix. Ques. Dip. et Col. November 16. Morocco. Quelques réflexions sur le problème marocain. P. Duchesne-Fournet. Ques. Dip. et Col. November 16. Philippines. The Introduction of Representative Government in the Philippine Islands. Wm. B. Munro. Zeitschrift für Völkerrecht u. Bundesstaatsrecht. Vol. ii, no. 2. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW Books Arnollet, Paul. Organisation et procédure de la justice militaire en Allemagne. Preface de M. le général Langlois. Paris: A. Rousseau. The references to periodical articles are kindly furnished by Dr. Horace E. Flack. |