IN reality the title of this article gives little indication of the nature or content of the medley of books under review. It is true that all purport to be of interest to the student of economic theory, but many fail to achieve their goal. Perhaps the most stimulating volume is that by Mr. J. A. Bowie,' who attempts to solve the problem of profits. He holds that the existence of profit is a necessary condition for enterprise and initiative; and examines the claim of profit-sharing as a possible solution of present industrial warfare. He defines profit-sharing as an agreement between employers and employed by which the majority of the employees receive, in addition to their wages, a predetermined share of the profits realized by the business in which they are engaged (p. 50) and discusses the basis and conditions of several existing systems. He comes to the conclusion that profit-sharing neither sweetens social relations nor promotes efficiency of production, and attributes this lack of success to the smallness of the bonus, the lapse of time between the receipt of the reward and the putting forth of extra effort, the irritation caused by a decrease in the bonus, and the fact that profit-sharing, being a movement on the part of employers to raise wages, is regarded with suspicion. by the workers. In its place he advocates co-partnership (he frequently uses the unpleasant word co-partnery), that is to say, profit-sharing plus the ownership of capital and the control that ownership implies, and he compares the two types of co-partnership as practised at Messrs. Lever Bros. at Port Sunlight, and Messrs. Taylors at Batley, greatly to the disadvantage of the former scheme. Mr. Bowie suggests that the keen animosity between wage-earners and profit-takers should be eliminated by making wage-earners participators in profits, not through an act of grace on the part of employers, but by constituting them more or less independent'shareholders. To this end he argues that the shares should not be gratuitously distributed, but that the workers should be given specially favourable conditions to buy shares in the business in which they are employed. To give them freely would lead to their being undervalued, and owned by those who are not interested, while unless specially favourable terms were given it is unlikely that the desire to invest would be stimulated, and the