told of the moonlight, the moonlight took on a new beauty. His description of a bird's song in the night gave to it a celestial melody, the story of the superstitious old negro held you spellbound, and over all that he touched with his ever busy pen, there hung an atmosphere of glorified beauty. Although the lines of his stories were written in the style of prose, the great master could not conceal the poetic temperament which dominated his work, and hence the artistic and the poetic were visible upon every page of his wonderful books.

BOOK REVIEWS

THE STATE TAX COMMISSION: A STUDY OF THE DEVELOPMENT AND RESULTS OF STATE CONTROL OVER THE Assessment OF PROPERTY FOR TAXATION. By Harley Leist Lutz, Ph. D. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1918. 673 pp. 8vo. $2.75.)

As one reads page after page of this book, written by a professor of economics in Oberlin College, the impression accumulates that the author has performed an important task and that he has done his work with excellency. He has, to be sure, not said everything that might be said about the administration of the assessment of property for taxation in our various states, but what he has said is adequate for a clear understanding of the history of our efforts to assess property for taxation purposes. Dr. Lutz enters a field that has not hitherto been considered as a whole, and he comes forth with a large and clear understanding of it. His book fills a big gap in our knowledge of a vitally important subject. It is a big book; and it will become at once the standard of our knowledge on this subject.

Dr. Lutz has traced the development of the administration. of the assessment of property for taxation from the highly decentralized local system to the present State Tax Commission, which has become, in some of our states at least, a large and useful institution both for the state and the local units of government, which enables them to obtain more adequate revenue from their taxpayers for their progressive needs and in a more equitable manner. No one can read the two chapters dealing with the various state boards of equalization and assessment without coming to the conviction that the system of assessment for taxation in practically all of our states has been one of great inefficiency and injustice, and that state equalization of assessments made inadequately by inefficient local officers can do but little to make our system more adequate for the needs of government finance and government justice.

Neither can one read the several chapters devoted to the growth of the idea and organization of the State Tax Com

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missions in a good many of our states without coming to the conclusion that much improvement in government has come to these states from an increase in the centralization of control over assessments. The story is uneven in its interest. This is not the fault of Dr. Lutz's statement of it, but the fault of the various state efforts in the field of assessment for taxation. For instance, the chapters on the State Tax Commissions in Wisconsin and Kansas bring us hope and promise of really efficient administration in the system of state and local taxation in the United States, even though these chapters cast some shadows on our ideals of efficiency and fairness. The chapter on the State Tax Commission of Wisconsin is particularly hopeful. Dr. Lutz has written it in good form. The material was available; the career of the Commission has been so notable for its courage and constructive plan and work, even though at many points it has been unable to do by any means the perfect thing.

Another impression which one is bound to receive from reading this book is that, however capable and courageous the State Tax Commission may be, the constitutional requirement in many of our states that all forms of property, of whatever nature or degree of tangibility to the assessor's eye, shall be taxed at the same rate-for state and local purposes—makes it impossible to secure adequate fairness to the various taxpayers. One may correctly draw the inference from Dr. Lutz's book, that we need a capable and courageous State Tax Commission in each state, whether it separates its taxable property for state and local purposes, whether it makes classification of its taxables with different rates depending upon their economic nature and tangibility, or whether it has an income tax as a substitute for a tax on a good many forms of its personal property. A study of the efforts in our various states to assess general property by local officers only, by local officers with state equalization of their assessments, or by local officers under effective state supervision and control, drives one to the conclusion that those of our states which still have the uniform ad valorem system of the assessment of all forms of personal property as well as all forms of real property-of all forms of intangible property as well as all forms of tangible property

must make fundamental changes in their constitutions before they can have anything like a reasonably efficient and fair system of taxation.

But when these constitutional changes have been made, a large task still remains for the legislature of each state to perform. It must make provision for a centralized control that has capacity over the local work of assessment. It must also preserve the local interest in such vital matters as the assessment of property for taxation purposes. It must work to secure the benefits of an efficient state control over the local units of government in matters of assessment and taxation, but it must not make this state control so autocratic as to discourage local interest in such matters or as to eliminate local interest from some participation in such matters.

University of North Carolina.

CHARLES LEE RAPER.

Women and the French TrADITION. By Florence Leftwich Ravenel. Illustrated. The Macmillan Company: New York, 1918,-ix, 234 pp. $1.50.

In "Women and the French Tradition" Miss Ravenel republishes five essays on Arvède Barine, George Sand, Madame de Staël, Madame de Sévigné and "Great Women's Daughters." Under the title of the "Riddle of the Sphinx" she studies the character of Madame de Lafayette. The introductory essay on "The Eternal Feminine" is reprinted from the Unpopular Review. An essay on "French Women of Today" completes the book.

As we are told in the Preface, the author is chiefly interested in France and in feminism. These interests are blended in this book in the choice of the subjects and in the emphasis given to feminist considerations. In a broad way the careers of the five woman writers discussed constitute in part the French tradition. They exemplify that French women have a distinguished share in French civilization, not only because they are French, but especially because as women they have their own share in the finer things that enter into national life. Such careers as these are not to be denied. Their characters and their lives, with their limitations and their failings, raise

the issue of the age, an issue tragic or irritating, light or grave, according to the temperament or viewpoint of the individual, but one not to be denied. Perhaps the rapid march of our age has carried us beyond even the stage of society to which Arvède Barine belonged, not to speak of Madame de Sévigné. It is one thing to study their lives and their works as a part of modern French history, social and literary: it is at times quite another to study them from the present day feminist viewpoint. In the narrow compass of the essay it is not possible to treat exhaustively subjects so complex, in a way at once historical and special. The literary reader will feel that literary considerations are extremely compressed and that the effect is to somewhat isolate these charming figures from the literary tradition in which he is wont to view them. The feminist may feel that in retelling the human story the feminist thesis is not always kept to the front. It is partly the limitation of the essay form and partly the author's way of entertaining us on two topics at once. Not that Miss Ravenel lacks feminist convictions: the touch of conviction is as persuasive as her enthusiasm is infectious. She is simply inclined to be candidly interested without going beyond a certain conservatism that belongs to criticism rather than propaganda. She quotes Faguet alone on feminism. Faguet shrank from no topic in the last decade of his life, in which the literary critic and historian became the many-sided philosopher of modern life, a philosopher who exposed many shams, destroyed many idols, but left his worshippers (chiefly feminine) a brilliant series of paradoxes rather than a doctrine.

To tell the story of these lives, to appraise these literary figures, to treat them from the feminist viewpoint in a series of essays is no light task. To maintain a high level of criticism without being erudite, to write with conviction and enthusiasm and at the same time with the light grace of feminine conversation is to write with charm. This Miss Ravenel has done. If the narrative pages have a distinctly lighter touch than the occasional pages of earnest criticism, the effect is agreeable.

The concluding essay on "Women of France" embodies in speculations in regard to the feminism of the future some observations about French middle class women, French women