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The article focuses on the attempt to use the technique of the sociology of knowledge in an investigation of the life and writings of William Graham Sumner, professor of political and social science at Yale from 1872 to 1910. Throughout his work is found a constant emphasis on the desirability of the practice of these virtues--the constant renunciation of the present in favor of the future, human fore sight, hard work, self-denial, industry, temperance, prudence, frugality. So also a constant depreciation of these vices--an appetite for luxury, vice, sloth, dithyrambic rhetoric, lack of thrift, laziness. This complex of value-attitudes is the ethic of intra-worldly asceticism. The problem, then, of explaining the relationship between class position and intra-worldly asceticism in the life of Sumner is a social psychological problem. Intra-wordly asceticism becomes the dependent variable, class position an independent variable. His life represents a success story of social ascent, emancipation from a working-class milieu and the rise of an intellectual to the role of a nationally prominent political professor.

This article presents the author's views on philosopher Tolstoys' teachings. The author evaluated that no one in Russia at that period was so well equipped for discussing with laboring men the complexities of the system under which they suffered. He himself for many years had devoted much time to hard work upon his estate. Although he was a landed proprietor, he was not satisfied to enjoy his portion of the wealth that was produced without sharing in the exertion of tilling and harvesting. There is a new biography as well as a volume of his short stories on the booksellers' counters. These no doubt will be read by a large audience, particularly the short stories, for there is nothing quite like "The Cossacks" and "The Death of Ivan Ilyitch." However, the essays on labor problems and religion are necessary because they are not only instructive, educative in the best sense of the term but they direct the reader's attention to the basic defects in the system that has brought distress upon Mankind.

The article focuses on biographical sketches of Francis Neilson, a noted figure that shook twenty century. He had been a laborer, actor, journalist, dramatist, novelist, lecturer, politician and producer. Francis Neilson was born in Birkenhead, across the River Mersey from Liverpool, England in 1867. He came of an ancient English family and an old Scottish family. He was a Butters, a family that lived in England, the name is found among others familiar in Saxon times in the Domesday Book of William the Conqueror. An ancestor on this side was associated in the publication of the first modern newspaper. What his career has amounted to up to now, however, can be set out briefly as an effort to socialize the heritage of beauty and an attempt to realize a social order based on justice. Books, like man's other deeds, often outlive their creators. It is much too early to try to discover how far Neilson's effort and attempt have succeeded. It can be said that for the truth that is in him, at 80, he is still fighting valiantly, still waging an epic fight that for those who have come after remains an inspiration-and a source of hope.

The article reflects on the biographical details of United States economist Henry George. The death of his sister and the birth of a son made him a man who wanted to learn the ways of the world in terms of monetary gains. Although George was able to pay his debts and to send money to his mother, his investments seemed always to go wrong and any net saving was slight. After he had worked for more than a year on "The Sacramento Union," he had an altercation with the foreman, John Timmins, and was discharged. Two days later he was back in San Francisco, California looking for work. For five days he tried to sell clothes wringers, but, in spite of much walking and talking, he did not make a single sale. At last he got a job as substitute typesetter. He sent for wife and baby to join him. George's family took care of his wife in times of need, as she remained ill for a long period during her stay in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The article further presents his rise from his position as a typesetter to the world-renowned economist.