704 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
The Case Against Socialism. New York. Macmillan, 1908. Pp. 529. This is a popular handbook for speakers against socialism; it is not a cool and critical analysis, nor a balanced historical state- ment. It claims to examine the socialist theories of production and distribution and show that their application would be disas- trous; that individual liberty would be destroyed; that the family and religion would be subverted ; that morality would be impossible.
C. R. H.
History of Caste in India. Vol. I. By Shridhar V. Ketkar. Ithaca, N. Y., 1909. Pp. xv+192.
This is one of a series of monographs projected by a highly educated Brahman who keenly realizes the burden the caste system imposes upon a fifth of the human race. The one before us deals particularly with the evidence from the Law of Manu as to social conditions in India during the third century a. d., but is prefaced by a very compact discussion of the nature, theory, and psychology of caste. Another chapter dealing with the "Philosophy of Caste" sets forth the doctrines of Karma, transmigrations of souls, and purity and impurity.
Small though it is, the book represents painstaking research, and sheds more light on the subject than any other work known to the reviewer. The author is scientific and objective in his attitude toward the phenomena, and has the gift of pithy statement. Bias is nowhere evident. That he is a shrewd observer appears from the signs of incipient caste he detects in American society. Thus, in the popular mind, Americans are graded as follows: "(i) the blue bloods; (2) the New Englanders; (3) the born Gentile Amer- icans; (4) the English and Scotch immigrants; (5) the Irish;
(6) Gentile immigrants from other countries of Western Europe;
(7) 'Dagoes'; (8) Jews; (9) Mongolians; (10) Negroes." He lights up the Hindu occupational castes of the third century by pointing out how in America particular groups are becom- ing associated with certain occupations, e. g., Chinese laundry- men, Irish domestic servants, Negro porters and waiters, Russian- Jewish second-hand dealers, Hindu palmists and fortune-tellers. After explaining how the doctrine of transmigration made the caste system somewhat elastic by holding out to those of
