Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/724

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and during his stay abroad three parties of Indians, brought over by other persons, were exhibited under his management. His "Notes in Europe," describing his experiences, is singularly interesting, especially the parts telling the impressions of European customs gathered by his Indians. In 1852 Mr. Catlin was overtaken by financial disaster, and his gallery and museum were seized, but were released by Mr. Joseph Harrison, Jr., who shipped them to Philadelphia, where they were stored till 1879. From 1846 to 1874 several unsuccessful attempts were made to persuade Congress to buy the Catlin collection. Finally, in 1879, Mr. Thomas Donaldson solicited of the executors of Mr. Harrison the gift of the collection to the Smithsonian Institution, which was speedily effected. In 1852 Mr. Catlin went to South America, visiting the Indians of the Orinoco and Amazon regions, and crossing the Andes to Lima, whence he sailed northward to Panama, California, British Columbia, the Aleutian Islands, and Kamchatka. Returning southward, he visited Yucatan, and, after a trip to France, continued his explorations in Uruguay, Paraguay, and the country south to the Strait of Magellan, and also made some geological observations in Venezuela. These travels are described in his books, "Life among the Indians," "Last Rambles," and "Lifted and Subsided Rocks of America." He went to Europe in 1858, where he remained, painting his "Cartoon Collection," till 1870, when he returned to the United States, and exhibited the collection till his death. The "Catlin Cartoon Collection" consists of copies of some of the original gallery, with a large number of North and South American Indian portraits and scenes, in all six hundred and three pictures. It is now the property of Mr. Catlin's three daughters. A large part of Mr. Donaldson's monograph consists of a catalogue of the Catlin Gallery, interspersed with biographical material from Catlin's books and other sources, concerning the famous Indians whose portraits are therein preserved, and with copious notes on the landscapes, sporting scenes, manners and customs depicted in the views. The plates which illustrate the paper are reproductions of the paintings. The catalogue is followed by the "Itinerary of Mr. George Catlin, 1830 to 1871, with Notes." The concluding portion of the volume is a sketch of the Indian policy of the Government from 1776 to 1886, with statistics, and includes a map showing all the Indian reservations in the United States in 1885, and another, on a large scale, of the Indian Territory. It is rare that so readable a volume comes from the Government Printing-Office.

Principles of the Economic Philosophy of Society, Government, and Industry. By Van Buren Denslow, LL. D. New York: Cassell & Co. Pp. 782. Price, $3.50.

The dignity of a science is readily claimed for political economy by those who talk or write about it. Yet the application of scientific principles to the investigation of the subjects embraced under that head, or a suggestion to enforce practically the results of a purely scientific investigation, is scornfully rejected by the whole of one of the great schools of economists. Hence, the author, who writes from the point of view of this school, is capable of saying that "political economy has thus far been conducted in a way that makes it a body of fault-finding and carping, by men innocent of any connection with government and but slightly acquainted with business, as to the effect of that legislation whose responsibilities they have never borne, upon that industry toward which they maintain a parasitic rather than a controlling relation." Among the men thus ungraciously snubbed are such authorities as Adam Smith, Mill, Bastiat, Jevons, Cairnes, Bonamy Price, Fawcett, Thorold Rogers, Sumner, John Bright, Prof. Perry, and others, to whose lucid and convincing expositions of the solid elements of national prosperity the world at large has been glad to give an attentive ear. So, "apprehending that political economy must needs teach the functions of government concerning industry, it next follows that the economist must no longer be a member of a mere sect of anti-government critics. Political economy can not attain its true dignity as a scientific expositor of the relations of government to industry so long as the statesmen of the world monopolize the ability to see things as they are, and to do things in a way that is practicable, while the economists indulge in the mere imaginative occupation of theorizing in the