The book, the author suggests, will serve the double purpose of a practical business manual, and a treatise in economics. “Stated briefly, the subjects of study in this volume are the methods or proceedings and the forms or documents of foreign-trade settlement, banking, and financing. Belonging with these, the international movement of gold and the measures taken to influence it are examined at length.” (Preface) A partial list of the contents is: Means of payment and commercial paper; The negotiability of commercial paper; Discount and interest; Commercial banking; The rates of exchange; The bank credit and letter of credit; Foreign money market factors; Speculation in exchange; The mint price and the market price of gold; Standard money; Monetary systems of the leading nations; Specie shipments; Addendum and index.
“This volume is probably in many ways the most satisfactory that has appeared up to the present time on foreign exchange.” M. J. Shugrue
+ Am Econ R 10:370 Je ’20 450w R of Rs 61:447 Ap ’20 120w + Springf’d Republican p13a Ap 18 ’20 80w
WHITAKER, CHARLES HARRIS. Joke about housing. *$2 Jones, Marshall 331.83
20–6282
Housing is here treated as a problem of land values. The remedy for present conditions is “for the state to put an end to the frightful waste involved in our present riotous development of land, and thus make the house a stable element of our national life, free from the destructive effects of speculation in land which forces speculation in building and which always brings communal disaster in its train.” The subject is discussed in seven chapters: Why do we have houses? The house and the home—a world program; Houses and wages; The employer and the housing question; The two plants; What are the possible ways out of the dilemma in housing? The general problem of land control. In the appendixes two prize essays on the solution of the housing problem are reprinted. The author is editor of the Journal of the American Institute of Architects.
“The style in which the book is written should make this book one of the most popular works on housing. Like all books devoted to the presentation and emphasis of one fundamental idea the work suffers from lack of perspective in so far as its use as a work upon which a thoroughly constructive housing program could be built.” Carol Aronovici
+ − Am J Soc 26:244 S ’20 370w Booklist 16:301 Je ’20