Book Reviews [pp. 92-96]

BOOK REVIEWS
the foothills in Southern California. And on such
spots it is also true, alas, that green young Englishmen, who are anxious to learn farming and to wait until
their rich uncles from India die, are induced to settle.
It is unfortunate, but not surprising, that a State of
250,000 square miles should contain such desolate spots
as the book describes; it is also unfortunate that Miss
Harraden was sick when she essayed a Californian
story. However, as a simple story it is good reading
and interesting.
Hilda Strafford comes out from England, against
the advice of her friends, to marry a sickly young
Englishman, who has been "baching " and ranching it
in Southern California for the past year.
The girl is profoundly disgusted from the start, not
only with the country and the life, but with her husband. She confides the state of her feelings to one of
her husband's English chums, and after the bursting of
their irrigating reservoir, which tears up the lemon
trees and puts the ranch back a little matter of three
years or more, she informs Robert in language that is
remarkable rather for its strength than its kindness.
The blow kills the man,and the girl returns to her English
home, which ends the story, save that in the interval between the funeral and the sale of the ranch and her departure she falls in love and proposes to the other man.
Miss Harraden no doubt intends her book to serve as a
warning to adventurous young Englishmen who are
anxious to hibernate in a new country on a ranch while
their rich uncle from India is making up his mind to
shuffle off this mortal coil. To the American reader
who has seen something of English home life, the
strongest picture drawn without doubt an unconscious one- is that of the English girl of today,
marrying without love, and falling in love with the
first man she meets after the holy bonds are solenmnized. To Miss Harraden the picture is too common to
require comment and to the reader it requires none.
It is typical of too large a class of English society.
The book will be widely read and will amuse its
readers.
A Corporation Hand Book
MR. THOMAS L. GREENE'S book on Corpor-ation FIi nanzce is written by an able servant of capitalists and
millionaires, to protect their investments and advance
the interests of trusts and combines. It contains a
full description of every sort of bond and of the many
expedients by which they are foisted on the public, as
well as of the more doubtful methods by which their
repayment is postponed or avoided altogether. The
various means of falsifying railway financial reports
1Corporation Finance. By Thomas L. Greene, Auditor
of the Manhattan Trust. G. P. Putnam's Sons: New
York: 1897.
are pointed out and the wonder is that capitalists are
induced to trust their savings in such investments.
Mr. Greene is the advocate of trusts and corporations. He says that, "The blessings of cheaper cost,
higher wages, and better profits, can only be realized
by immense aggregations of wealth operated by men of
first rate administrative ability, and before the political and social economist can properly discuss their fair
share of the profits, good returns must be assured the
capitalist." According to Mr. Greene, the corporations
are treated inequitably by the public. He thinks that
they ought not to be forced to give watered stock to
conceal the fact that they are robbing the public to
the tune of ten, twelve, or fifteen per cent, when they
are entitled to five or six. He states that corporations
and trusts are as yet in the first stage of development
in the United States, and that he is not concerned with
the question of the fairness of corporation profits long
continued, because ordinary commercial forces may be
relied upon for keeping them down to a proper level.
He forgets that the tendency of trusts is to restrain
and neutralize those forces.
If it be conceded that trusts and corporations are
public benefits, then Mr. Greene's book is valuable, but
if we may judge of the effects of the more advanced
stage of developments by the outcome of the present,
its perusal should act as an additional reason for their
speedy overthrow. The formation of trusts and combines is assuredly a restraint of trade and a sacrifice
of public interests to those of millionaires. They tend
to establish monopolies, to absorb profits, and to depress wages. They impoverish the masses of the
people and sacrifice their welfare to the grasping few.
7. I. Stan/lard..
A Book for rliners.2'
JOHNSON'S'-aztica,7/ A/in/ig and.4ssa)ying-, is the
most complete and valuable handbook for the use of
the miner and prospector that has come to our notice.
The work is the result of fifteen years practical ex perience of the author in the mountains, mines, mills,
and the assay office. It is published for the use and
benefit of the prospector, the miner, and those who de sire to gain a general knowledge of practical mining
and assaying. In simple language it gives full and re liable information on ores of various kinds, describes
veins, lodes, contact and fissure veins, with the for mulae for different processes of treating and testing
ores; gives complete assay and other tables, and a syn opsis of the most recent mining laws. It thus em braces all the subjects most interesting and valuable to
the gold seeker. This practical character gives it a
value many times greater than the cost of the volume.
2Practical Mining and Assaying. By Frederic Milton
Johnson. San Francisco: I897. $1.oo.
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