asked to advise about the laws applicable to these matters. By order of the Quartermaster-General of the Army, uniforms for soldiers cannot be worked upon in any tenement house or dwelling. Home Service workers give valuable help in the enforcement of the order by making it known to the families with which they have to deal.

Home Service Sections are systematically avoiding the practice of thrusting women into industry who can serve the family better at home. Before family allowances made earning outside the home less necessary, they were assuming extra financial burdens cheerfully in order to keep mothers with their children and this is important to safeguard home life on this side.

The Red Cross believes that it owes consideration to the agencies in each locality which are carrying permanently the responsibility for social service. At its annual meeting in December, 1917, the Red Cross adopted a resolution which in substance is as follows: That while the Red Cross needs and must use immense sums of money for unusual purposes, it does not wish to receive that money at the expense of the permanent social work of this country but desires that the support of the Red Cross shall be in addition to that work. The Red Cross believes that the work of the local social agencies in each community must continue during the war, not only with full vigor, but with increased resources, in order to meet needs that are becoming greater; and the Red Cross holds that these local agencies must be ready to do their full part in social reconstruction when the war is over. It is the purpose of the Red Cross that the awakening sense of social responsibility shall be utilized by the agencies which are permanent and necessary, and that these organizations shall increase in membership and resources during the war, as their needs may require. The desire of the Red Cross, especially in its work of Home Service, is that every where there be the most cordial coöperation.

TRAINING OF HOME SERVICE WORKERS

Successful Home Service work depends, indeed, not so much upon the extensiveness of the knowledge and experience of those relatively few persons who will be actively engaged in it, as upon their ability to utilize the knowledge and experience of others. They levy a claim upon the expertness of the whole community to which.

the possessors of special knowledge and skill have been only too glad to respond with enthusiasm, once it has been made clear that the Red Cross intends to do its fair share and that it makes good that intention.

In order that there may be a larger number of trained and competent executives for Home Service Sections, the Department of Civilian Relief has established at twenty-five strategic centers, representing every section of the country, Home Service Institutes. The Institutes are open to executives and members of Home Service Sections, and to other qualified volunteers. The courses of the Institutes require the full time of those who attend for a period of six weeks. The programs of all the Institutes are practically the same. They are prescribed by the Red Cross and are given under its auspices. The course includes four hours of lectures and discussion each week, required readings, and the balance of the time-about twenty-five hours each week-is spent in supervised practical field work in the Home Service of the Chapter in whose city the Institute is held and in the local societies that do similar work. The membership of each Institute is limited to twenty-five, in order to assure adequate personal attention in classroom discussion and in the field work. A certificate is granted by the Red Cross to those who complete the work with credit and, in the field work, show qualities fitting them to assume responsibility in Home Service and aptitude for it. Wherever possible, the Institute is affiliated with a well-established University, College, or Training School for social work.

For those unable to attend the Institutes, Chapter Courses are held in those cities where competent instruction and field work are available. These courses conform to a general standard prescribed and published by the Red Cross, but which may readily be adapted to local conditions and needs. Chapter Courses are always related intimately to the work of the local Chapters. Many Chapters have conducted such courses and many more are planning to do so. The Red Cross strongly endorses the organization of such courses. and believes that the volunteers connected with Home Service Sections will work longer and do more if they are given such training. The eager response which has been made to the Chapter Courses and to the Institutes proves that people no longer feel that

good intentions are qualifications enough for Home Service. They want to learn how to do this work in the best possible way.

Those who have taken up Home Service have been quick to see that it requires a familiarity with new problems and a facility in dealing with them which can be acquired only through training. To be sure, the Home Service Institute, to say nothing of the Chapter Course, does not make social workers, but it does make informed people in the communities from which the students come. In short, the Red Cross, realizing its responsibility and its opportunity, is trying to fit itself to discharge that responsibility by beginning at the obvious point of departure-through a campaign of education. It is the earnest hope of the Red Cross, as it is the test of its standards, that through Home Service in coöperation with other agencies, the family of no soldier or sailor shall suffer a lowering of its standards nor lack any essential thing within the power of the nation to give. Home Service is solicitous about the welfare of the families of men in the service because it realizes that upon the success achieved in this task depends the kind of problems that will confront the nation when the war is over. It is the hope of the Red Cross that its Home Service may help to awaken a national spirit of social responsibility so that when the war is ended, America shall have not a new social problem, but instead a new and greater social force in working out its destinies.

BOOK DEPARTMENT

THE BUSINESS MAN'S LIBRARY

BANKING INVESTMENTS AND FINANCE

KEMMERER, EDWIN W. Postal Savings: an Historical and Critical Study of the Postal Savings Bank System of the United States. Pp. viii, 176. Price, $1.25. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1917.

This book is timely for all who are interested in the thrift campaign. The subject matter is only indirectly related to Liberty Loan Bonds and War Savings Certificates, but facts of importance to any one concerned in the development of the thrift habit are set forth; for example, the facts underlying the establishment of the postal savings system, the classes of a community from whom these deposits-the result of saving-come, the circumstances affecting the increase or decrease of deposits, and the sections of the country in which the postal savings habit is most strongly entrenched. From the angle of thrift, this work is important principally for its clear presentation of suggestive facts, rather than for any deliberate conclusions predicated upon the facts.

There are pages of significance to the banker also. The book is undoubtedly one of the most lucid expositions of the practical operations of our postal savings system that has been published. Some of the tables might be of a more recent date in order to be truly representative of the condition and development of the system during the war period, although lack of such figures is probably to be attributed to inadequate statistical sources.

The author has attempted to give a balanced view of the postal savings system. As a consequence, he gives both viewpoints on any matter that has evoked discussion prior either to its incorporation or rejection as a part of the postal savings system. In style the work is expository and narrative, and is not an exhaustive critical analysis. The appendices include the original act and the subsequent amendments thereto of the United States and the Philippines systems.

FRANK PARKER.

University of Pennsylvania.

INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT

LEFFINGWELL, W. H. Scientific Office Management. Pp. 253. Price, $10.00. Chicago: A. W. Shaw Company, 1917.

Books on scientific management fall into two classes, one descriptive, the other philosophic. The first deals with practices, the second with principles. The number of books describing practices is legion; for example, a published bibliography is thirty-eight pages long, each page crowded with titles. There is little reason, therefore, for adding to works in this category, yet Leffingwell has done just that thing, and deserves commendation for it. The paradox is explicable when it is stated that the host of books deals with scientific management in fac

tories whereas Leffingwell goes into an entirely new field and shows the operation of the Taylor System in offices. There is only one other good book dealing with office management, consequently there is a real need for volumes such as Leffingwell has given us.

His work adds nothing new to the principles of management. He takes the Taylor System with its standardization, time and motion study, tasks and bonus schemes, and employment management, and applies it to office work.

As a whole, the book is suggestive; it gives a large number of hints to office managers that ought to prove valuable. It is well illustrated by photographs, but the charts fall into the error that is typical of all Shaw publications; namely, the originals are drawn on such a large scale that when reduced in reproduction the printing is well nigh undecipherable.

M. K.

STATISTICS

SECRIST, HORACE. An Introduction to Statistical Methods. Pp. xxi, 482. Price, $2.00. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1917.

BAILEY, Wm. B. and CUMMINGS, JOHN. Statistics. Pp. 153. Price, 60 cents. Chicago: A. C. McClurg and Company, 1917.

These two volumes, covering virtually the same field but written with entirely different purposes, must be judged by different standards. Professor Secrist has aimed to present a comprehensive but not too technical text primarily for the use of college students and business men, while Professors Bailey and Cummings have tried to produce a suggestive manual principally for social workers. The former must not be expected to sacrifice explicitness and detail for facile reading nor the latter to abandon emphasis of prominent principles for minute and technical description.

Secrist's volume may be roughly divided into three parts, dealing respectively with the uses and collection of statistics, their presentation and some mathematical devices for statistical study. The second and third portions are superior in treatment to the first, the author seemingly experiencing the usual difficulty in securing a satisfactory method of dealing with the subject of collection. It is submitted that no presentation which divorces principles and illustrations will ever be satisfactory, difficult as it may be to combine the two without obscuring the main ideas. Nevertheless even this section of the book is superior to other descriptions of the process and its principles. The space available in the Bailey and Cummings' book precludes any adequate treatment of this phase of the subject. On the other hand, this latter volume contains an important chapter on Ratios which points out many common errors in the use of statistics, especially vital and sociological. The suggestive criticisms contained therein must ordinarily be gathered by the laborious study of general principles, which often means that they are unnoticed or disregarded.

Secrist's book is especially to be commended in two respects; its emphasis on the application of statistical principles to business uses, a field in which a text has been urgently needed and the stress laid upon purpose as a predominant influence in collection, tabulation, averaging and graphic representation. The