Books in Review The Mrwt Primary in Idaho. By

Boyd A. Martin. Stanford Univer- sity, California, Stanford University Press, 1947. ix, 149 pp. 83.25.

An exhaustive study, covering the first enthusiastic adoption of direct primaries in Idaho in 1909 through a period of reversion to regulated con- ventions and back to direct primaries again in 1931 and down to 1945.

The smallness of the state made it possible to produce the facts rather completely, and the volume becomes a welcome addition to the source books on the subject. Appraisal of relative results is facilitated by the simul- taneous operation in some years of the convention system for some offices.

The author finds by answers to his questionnaires that party managements deplore the unpredictable and irres- ponsible fluidities that sometimes a p pear in the primaries, that more candidates try for office under the primary system, that candidates raise and spend more money under the primary system, and that newspaper editors favor the primaries while party leaders and officeholders would revert to conventions if they dared.

The author demonstrates that both systems are made unworkable anyway by the long ballot of eleven elective state offices and lengthy strings of county and local offices: both provide opportunities to the party voters to express opinions on the long array of candidates for obscure offices when they have for the most part no opinions to express. The author recommends shortening the ballot and providing closed instead of open pri- maries.

RICHAR~ S. CHEDS

The Web of Govexma~t. By R. M. MacIver. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1947. ix, 498 pp. $4.50.

A profound subjective analysis of the factors determining the evolution of government, historically and today, and the unsteady balance of individual liberty versus authority down the ages. With facile competence the au- thor evaluates such elements as the family, myths, the tendency to obey, status and social class, property and opinion, with government as the re- sultant diagonal of the conflicting pressures. All the recent and current perversions of democracy are scruti- nized against the comprehensive back- ground of analyzed history, and the conclusion is that democracy will never be neat or static but the free and ever-changing response to the fluid forces of human life on a spinning ball.

R. S. C.

SmaR COmmUnitiefi in Action. Stories of Citizen Programs a t Work. By Jean and Jess Ogden. New York, Harper & Brothers, 1946. xix, 244 pp. $3.

The efforts of 34 small Virginia com- munities to “attack their own problems and find solutions” for them, are pre- sented here. The stories are taken from the “New Dominion Series,” pub- lished by the University of Virginia’s Extension Division, for which the au- thors, says George Baskerville Zehmer, division director, in his Foreword, “were directly and chiefly responsible.”

The book is divided into five parts each containing several stories describ- ing “experimental approaches to demo- cratic living that are being tried effec- tively in various communities” : Mak- ing a Better Living, Planning for Health and Social Well-Being, Increas- ing Civic Awareness, Living a More Abundant Life and Implementing Com- munity Programs, with a conclusion, The Community That Can Do It, and a short bibliography.

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