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64CIVIL WAR HISTORY social mobüity and provided a route to prosperity and independence equal to that provided by the frontier and the ownership of agricultural land. Grund, a German nobleman, was so impressed with American industrial prospects that he became an American citizen and successful businessman. Some of the foreign observers , especially TocqueviUe, were also very perceptive of the pitfalls ahead for American industry. They saw that the condition of workers was likely to decline as industry matured, that overproduction and cyclical variations would bring distress, that even the Eden of the Lowell shops would be upset by strife between workers and managers, and that an ultimate outcome might be a centralization of power to operate a bureaucratic welfare state. The combination of many comments on the American scene produces some repetition , some observations of dubious accuracy, and some flights into unjustified optimism. More attention might well have been given to the importance of immigration and to the refutation of the Cochran thesis on the Civil War as a retarder of industrialization. These are, however, minor flaws in a valuable description of the American industrial scene in the decades from Jackson to Lincoln. George B. Engberg University of Cincinnati Pioneers and Profxts-.Land Speculation on the Iowa Frontier. By Robert P. Swierenga. (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1968. Pp. xxviii, 260. $7.50.) As Professor Swierenga points out in his introduction, the subject of land speculation is due for a dispassionate treatment free from the old polemical framework that treated land investment as "speculation" and other capitalist enterprise as "business ." This book is a good beginning. Iowa land speculation is presented in a fair, readable and generally careful manner. The mechanics of land disposition and land speculation are especially well handled, and the reader interested in the detaüs of land disposition in Iowa wiU find a wealth of data in this work. Further, the operations of one major non-resident land speculation enterprise (Easley & Willingham of Halifax Court House, Virginia) are detailed in one chapter, and estimates of the returns on Iowa land speculation are presented in another. In short, the author has fulfilled the goal he set forth in the introduction and has analyzed voluminous data related to Iowa land speculation. With so much to recommend the book it is regrettable that two shortcomings reduce its value. The first defect results from careless and inadequate editing. In readability and style this book is most comparable to a well-written dissertation. Some spots are overwritten, with too many conclusions wrung from a limited amount of data; other paragraphs were slipped through without enough attention to the possibflities presented by the data. The dissertation committee even shows through, as evidenced by occasional paragraphs that detaü unrelated, though interesting , side topics. The second shortcoming, involves statistical techniques or, on occasion, lack of them. At least three statistical failings can be documented. First, Tables 4.1 and 4.2 (85—86) are offered by Professor Swierenga as evidence that large speculators purchased different proportions of prairie and timber land than did other purchasers, yet the author fails to demonstrate that these differences are statistically significant. In fact, the ones checked are; but this reader would be happier if the author had indicated that he had conducted the appropriate tests. Second, on page 120, the author confuses an upper bound estimate with a lower bound. After suggesting that entries by local land agents can be separated into two categories, personal speculation and credit sales, he states: "Of the sales recorded . . . only . . . 28.5 per cent were clearly not credit entires. Of the remaining 71.5 per cent, most had likely been entered [as credit sales] for other buyers. . . ." BOOK REVIEWS65 Third, in several instances the data analyzed were selected from only two counties in the relevant region. At first glance, this technique of selecting two random or representative counties for detaüed analysis appears reasonable. But experience in selecting a sample of southern farms from the manuscript census teaches that the selection of only a few counties can lead to gross errors, the reason for these errors being quite simple. A detailed analysis of two counties appears to involve a large quantity...

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