American Economic Association

Essays on Population and Other Papers by James Alfred FieldReview by: A. B. WolfeThe American Economic Review, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Dec., 1931), pp. 785-787Published by: American Economic AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/536 .

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1931] Population and Migration 785

thereof, and sections 205, 219-j and 219-1, with all amendments to the end of the legislative session of 1931. (Albany: N.Y. State Tax Commission. 1931. Pp. 154.)

Population and Migration Essays on Population and Other Papers. By JAMES ALFRED FIELD.

Edited by HELEN FISCHER HOHMAN. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. 1931. Pp. xxviii, 440. $3.50.)

Professor Field published all too little during his life, which was so prematurely cut olf in the summer of 1927, but the papers he did pub- lish gained immediate recognition as the work of a thorough and care- ful scholar, and of a man whose command of the English language gave to his style a clearness and elegance reminiscent of the best writers of the Victorian era. His first considerable published paper, the well known "Early propagandist movement," read at the meeting of the American Economic Association in St. Louis, December, 1910, showed the trelnd of his interest and brought to notice a young man who did not fear to choose as a field of research a subject which had hitherto commonly been regarded as one barely respectable.

The brief biography of Field provided by Mrs. Jiohman will be wel- comed by all who had the good fortune to know him, as well as by those who did not but who will catch glimpses of his personality between the lines of the papers here published. One wishes that the biography were fuller. For one thing, it does not indicate when or through what influ- ences Field's interest in population, and specifically in birth control and its history, began.

The long essay on "The Malthusian controversy in England," which is here published for the first time, dates from 1906 or, as the editor notes, probably somnewhat later, and indicates that Field already at that time, while he was still an instructor at Harvard, had made a rather searching and critical study of the literature. Following out the cur- rents and cross currents of Mal-thusianism and anti-Malthusianism from the end of the eighteenth century to the end of the Victorian era, he nat- urally came upon the early neo-Malthusian movement as an integral part of the gradual change in sentiment and reasoned propaganda during the nineteenth century. The essay here mentioned is a valuable supplement to the St. Louis paper, since it puts the early birth-control movement in proper perspective with regard to the whole movement of population thought in England. While the St. Louis paper was, up to the current work of Norman Himes, the best, and in fact the only, scholarly study of the early birth-control movement in England, the essay on the Mal- thusian controversy is the most considerable contribution in the present volume, despite the fact that it was not published during the author's lifetime.

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786 Reviews and New Books [December

The essay on "Paradoxes of population problems," compiled by the editor from Field's manuscript notes and lectures, is by far the most thoughtful paper in the whole collection, and it is in this paper, espe- cially, that Field shows the characteristics of being fonder, to quote Bonar's foreword, "of putting questions than of giving the answers." Had Field lived, he doubtless would have given answers to some of these questions. Others he raised, well knowing that no scientific answer is pos- sible in the present state of our knowledge.

Another of Field's early papers, that on "The progress of eugenics," first published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, in 1911, is similar to the papers above mentioned, in that in it Field is again the historian of a movement. It is evident that to understand the current meaning of a movement, intellectual or social, Field felt that he had to knlow its history. In this he was in line with the genetic economists, except that he perhaps confined himself too closely to the literature of the move- ment and did not give sufficient attention to the institutional and other influences and accompaniments. To infer that he was a mere literary antiquarian, however, would be very far from the truth. This paper also revealed a second interest-that in the quality of population, differen- tial fertility, and eugenic possibilities-which was to be one of his major concerns to the end, although in his more mature years the idea of a "science" of eugenics had been put to enough critical tests, and the eugenics movement itself had embodied enough vagaries, to give even those most cordially inclined toward it some pause. There is indication that Field's mind in his later years was much fuller of doubts with re- gard to eugenics as a mode of social reform and a means of bettering the quality of population than it was in 1911.

Two other papers grew out of Field's interest in eugenics-those on "Eugenics and demography" and "Eugenic worth and economic value." Three minor papers reflect his active and continued interest in the Amer- ican birth-control movement.

Two papers not dealing with population are included in the collection, one an address on "The place of economic theory in graduate work," and the other the long paper on logarithmic scales. An outline of Field's course on "the standald of living," and a list of books and pamphlets on population in his library, complete tlle collection.

Not only Field's former students and friends will be glad that this volume has been published, but students of population everywhere. It is to be regretted that he did not leave more connected and completed manuscript material. That he did not was probably due both to the precision of his scholarship and his ability as a lecturer. The lasting contribution which he made to the study of the population problem was both in his historical studies and in his critical and questioning attitude.

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1931] Population aind Migration 787

He was perhaps not to be classed as an economic theorist, and one will look in vain in his work for either an analytical or a statistical treatment of the economics of the population in its current dynamic and world aspects. Had he lived this doubtless would have come.

This review cannot be closed without a word of appreciation for Mrs. Hohman, who has performed the task of compilation and editing, in this case more than ordinarily difficult, with admirable judgment and suc- cess.

A. B. WOLFE Ohio State University

An Hypothesis of Population. Growth. By EZRA BOWEN. (New York: Columbia Univ. Press. 1931. Pp. 238. $3.75.)

The keynote of this dissertation is the hypothesis developed in Chap- ter I and completed in Chapter XIV that "in a capitalistic civilization population size tends to vary directly with the aggregate supply of wealth and inversely with the height of the prevailing standard of liv- ing." The author meets the objection that this is a mere truism by as- serting that "nowhere in the literature of population growth, from Mal- thus to East and Pearl, does there appear evidence of constant con- sciousness of the 'obvious truth' (truism) stated here." Nevertheless, the reader may feel that there is too much laboring of the readily accept- able.

With the above hypothesis as the connecting thread, succeeding chap- ters deal with the doctrines of Malthus and his critics; the theories of East, Pearl, and other post-war students; the life struggle of man; the biology of population growth; birth rates, death rates and migration; and the dysgenic trend.

Probably because of working, particularly on birth and death rates recently, the reviewer is most critical of these chapters. The discussion of the effect of race and nativity on infant mortality rates on pages 140-141 would be much more to the point if actual rates for native whites, foreign whites, and Negroes were used instead of rates for the total population of certain states. On page 144 it is stated that "adult death rates have declined fairly steadily since the Middle Ages-but un- til very recent times the decline has been tediously slow." This gives a general impression quite in conflict with the evidence presented by For- syth, Sydenstricker, and others of a rising death rate or decreasing ex- pectation of life in seveeral adult age periods during recent years. In connection with the discussion of the death rates of native and foreign- born whites on page 148, where the crude death rates of Maine and Vermont are used to show the bad mortality status of colonial stock, it should be pointed out that age composition is a most important factor.

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