An interesting feature of the Massachusetts bill is the provision that, in the taking of land for municipal purposes, if the price proposed is twenty-five per cent in excess of the valuation, the land must be taken by eminent domain. Provision is also made for direct legislation, and a separate bill is appended in regard to preferential voting. Primary elections are to be abolished and nominations for all elective offices are to be by petition only. Tenure of office is two years in Massachusetts, thereby avoiding necessity of the recall, but in New York it is in every case four years.

The two schemes are in agreement in several important respects other than as represented by the types of charters offered. It will be noted that councils are in all cases unicameral. Both bills, likewise, emphasize the prohibition of any city official from participating in contracts with cities. The method of adoption of one of the new charters is identical save that in Massachusetts the question may be submitted only at a general election and that there is a slight difference in the number of voters necessary in signing a petition for a new charter-the difference being merely that in Massachusetts signatures must be had from ten per cent of the voters registered at the last general state election, while in New York the same percentage is required from the number of votes cast. Both States rule that, once adopted, a charter cannot be changed for a period of four years after the inauguration of the first officers elected under its provisions.

The Massachusetts document, if it becomes a law, will furnish a charter with all the modern features, to be selected from the four generally-accepted standard types, for all cities in the States, inasmuch as Plan A of the bill is modeled after the present Boston charter. Its scheme has more simplicity and there is less duplication among the separate plans than is found in the New York act. It has also more features which will make their appeal to municipalities with progressive inclinations. The two bills would seem more assured of success than those which have been introduced in several other States to provide for the adoption of the commission form of government only.

ALICE M. HOLDEN,

Secretary Bureau for Research in Municipal
Government, Harvard University.

NEWS AND NOTES

PERSONAL AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL

EDITED BY JOHN M. MATHEWS

University of Illinois

The twelfth annual meeting of the American Political Science Association will probably be held at Washington, D. C., during the Christmas holidays. The program committee for the meeting consists of Prof. C. L. King, of the University of Pennsylvania, chairman, Prof. John H. Latané, and Prof. C. A. Beard. The American Historical Association will meet at Washington at the same time.

Prof. Charles A. Beard has been appointed supervisor of instruction in the Training School for Public Service, organized by the New York bureau of municipal research. Professor Beard will not give up his connection with Columbia University, where he has recently been promoted to the rank of full professor of politics.

Prof. John H. Latané, of Johns Hopkins University, recently delivered an address at Goucher College on "Problems of Neutrality Growing out of the Present War." The address has been reprinted in the March number of the Johns Hopkins Alumni Magazine.

Dr. J. David Thompson has resigned from the legislative reference division of the Library of Congress.

Dr. Charles McCarthy has severed his connection with the United States commission on industrial relations.

The death is announced of Prof. Charles R. Henderson, of the University of Chicago. Among multifarious activities he was formerly president of the National Prison Association, United States commissioner on the international prison commission, and since 1911 has been an associate editor of the Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology.

Prof. R. M. McElroy, head of the department of history and politics in Princeton University has accepted an invitation to spend eight months of the year 1915, in delivering a series of special addresses, upon the subject of "History of the Origin and Development of Representative Government," in the chief centers of China. Professor McElroy

and his family will sail for China on the SS. Mongolia, from San Francisco on June 12.

Prof. Paul Van Dyke will return from his sabbatical year in Europe early in September, and will resume his courses in Princeton University.

The department of history and politics in Princeton University has just issued a new plan of graduate studies in history and politics, leading to the degree of doctor of philosophy. The plan is an attempt to combine training in the intensive research methods in a special field, with a course of reading covering a very wide area. The plan of study appears in the Annual Register of the Princeton Graduate School, 1915-16, department of history and politics.

Prof. Dana C. Munro, will begin his work as professor of medieval history in Princeton, early in September. He will act as the head of the department of history and politics, during the absence of Professor McElroy.

Prof. Arnold B. Hall of the department of political science, University of Wisconsin, will teach in the summer school at Dartmouth in the coming summer session.

Mr. Herman C. Beyle has been appointed assistant in political science in the University of Wisconsin for the coming year; Mr. Harold S. Quigley fellow and Mr. H. Walter Thompson scholar.

Prof. Frederic A. Ogg, University of Wisconsin, has recently published one of the American Crisis Biographies, Daniel Webster. George W. Jacobs Company, Philadelphia, is the publisher.

Prof. A. B. Hall, University of Wisconsin, has gotten out a new and enlarged edition of Fishback's Elementary Law which Bobbs-Merrill Company will publish about May 1. The LaSalle Extension University will publish an Outline of International Law, with bibliography,

prepared by Professor Hall, about July 1. This volume is a synopsis written in non-technical language for the use of general readers.

Prof. F. A. Ogg of the department of political science, University of Wisconsin, will teach in the summer school at Columbia University in the coming summer session.

Prof. Payson J. Treat, of Leland Stanford University, has been promoted to a full professorship in that institution. He gives courses on comparative colonial administration and on the present governments of Japan and China.

The political science department at the College of the City of New York has been enlarged by the transfer to it of George M. Brett from the mathematics department and of Guy E. Snider from the history department.

Prof. H. B. Woolston, of the department of political science of the College of the City of New York, will give courses at the University of Chicago this summer.

Prof. W. F. Dodd, of the University of Illinois, has been appointed associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago.

Dr. Rasmus Saby, of the department of political science in Cornell University, will give courses on American government and comparative government in the University of Minnesota summer school this. year.

The Iowa Social History Series is a new line of publications undertaken by the State Historical Society of Iowa. The first volume to appear in this series is the History of Poor Relief Legislation in Iowa by John L. Gillin. Another volume which will soon appear is Social Legislation in Iowa by John E. Briggs.

Dr. Dan E. Clark, instructor in the department of political science at the State University of Iowa, is the author of The Government of Iowa, published by Silver, Burdett and Company.

Dr. C. R. Aurner is the author of a book on The History and Government of Iowa, published by the Houghton, Mifflin Company.

Text-book Legislation in Iowa is the title of a 60-page monograph by Mr. O. E. Klingaman recently issued by the State Historical Society of Iowa.

A pocket edition of the Constitution of Iowa, with historical introduction and index by Benj. F. Shambaugh, was recently issued by the State Historical Society of Iowa.

The Princeton University press has recently issued a new work by Prof. H. J. Ford entitled The Natural History of the State: An Introduction to Political Science.

Prof. Raleigh C. Minor of the School of Law, University of Virginia has completed the manuscript of a study of Federalism as Applied to World Peace.

Dr. William O. Scroggs, professor of economics and sociology at Louisiana State University, gave the first lecture of the 1915 series on the Phelps-Stokes Foundation at the University of Virginia on March 30. His subject was, "The Civic Status of the American Negro."

Dr. Charles Hillman Brough, professor of economics and political science at the University of Arkansas, will resign his chair at that institution at the close of the present session. He will be a candidate for governor of Arkansas in the forthcoming campaign. Prof. Neil Crothers will succeed him at the University of Arkansas.

D. Hiden Ramsey, formerly of the department of political science at the University of Virginia, will be a candidate for the office of commissioner of public safety under the recently adopted commission form of government in Asheville, North Carolina.

The next meeting of the University Commission on Southern Race Questions will be held on May 5 in Montgomery, Alabama.

Prof. W. M. Hunley of the University of Virginia was the official representative of that institution at the Conference on Charities and Corrections held at Baltimore, Maryland, in April.

A reorganization of the department of political science at Indiana State University has taken place. Prof. A. S. Hershey becomes head