The author sees in the present state of human society an extraordinary discrepancy between human power and resulting human happiness and analyzes the reasons for the present-day social unrest. He points to the complete breakdown of the Adam Smith school of political economists with their doctrine of “natural liberty” and laissez-faire. In asking “What of the future?” the author finds himself confronted with the phenomenon of modern socialism. This he relegates to the realm of beautiful but impracticable dreams and suggests as a mid-way course that the government should supply work for the unemployed, maintenance for the infirm and aged, and education and opportunity for children, and should enforce a minimum wage and shorter working hours. Contents: The troubled outlook of the present hour; Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; The failures and fallacies of natural liberty; Work and wages; The land of dreams: the utopia of the socialist; How Mr Bellamy looked backward; What is possible and what is not.
“Dr Leacock writes with great clarity and force. While the limits of the volume do not permit detailed treatment of any of the topics taken up, the reader will find every page suggestive and will be thankful for a chance to see the woods instead of the trees.” O. D. Skelton
+ Am Pol Sci R 14:522 Ag ’20 360w
“Written in a vigorous, easy, though not humorous, style, that will make it popular with those who seek a middle track.”
+ Booklist 16:262 My ’20
“The author of ‘Literary lapses,’ and all the rest of them, could not be dull if he tried. His new volume on the problems of modern life is fully as live as any of his humorous sketches, and nearly as readable.” I. W. L.
+ Boston Transcript p5 Mr 13 ’20 1250w + Cleveland p44 Ap ’20 50w
“A readable and frequently keen analysis of industrial society. Professor Leacock’s delicately manipulated scalpel cuts perilously close to the heart of the price system, in his perception of the paradox of value.... While the honest sunlight of criticism declares the insufficiency of individualist economics, the light that Professor Leacock throws upon socialism—taking Bellamy’s bleak vision of bureaucracy as sample—is almost a moonbeam from the larger lunacy.”
+ − Dial 68:404 Mr ’20 80w