Books in Brief

THE ORIGINS OF POLITICAL STABILITY: ENGLAND. 1675-1725, by J. H. Plumb. (Houghton, $6.00). This book, which is a printed version of the Ford Lectures at Oxford for 1965, is by way of being an overpriced bargain—overpriced because six dollars is too much for any ordinarily turned out book of two hundred pages, and a bargain at any price because it is quite possibly the most important book on English political history to appear since Feiling’s History of the Tory Party or Namier’s Structure of Politics. Feiling, it will be remembered, traced the conversion of the Tories from support of the monarchy to support of Parliament between 1640 and 1714. Namier, by eontrast, traced the political maneuverings of 1760 to show that there were no parties then. What Professor Plumb has shown, in these lectures, is the transition from the two-party system of the late seventeenth century to the one-party system of the mid-eighteenth. In so doing, he has argued that it was the destruction of the earlier two-party system, by judicious use of place and pension, and accusations of Jacobitism, as well as through the inherent contradictions in the Tory programs, that brought stability to English politics in the early years of the Age of Walpole. Whatever the merits of the case—which are persuasive—it is good to see a book of political history which explains as well as recounts, and doubly good to see one which does both so well. J. C. LOBDELL

THE KINGSPORT STRIKE, by Sylvester Petro (Arlington House, $5.00). ‘““‘We consider a scab to be stealing —stealing our jobs,” said one of the Kingsport Press strikers interviewed by N.Y.U. law professor Petro. Clearly, those on the picket lines at Kingsport, Tennessee believe that they own their jobs. In the strikers’ view, the “moral depravity” of the strike-breakers mitigates their own responsibility for the violence, for the dynamited houses and acid throwings. Unfortunately, their view is in effect written into the Wagner and Taft-Hartley laws and reflected in decision after decision of the National Labor Relations Board. Professor Petro cogently argues that wages and other working conditions are a matter of mutually satisfactory agreement between employer and. employee. Neither party has the right to compel the other to enter into a contract based on unacceptable terms. ‘Petro points out, in this hard-hitting case study of a strike that began in 1963 and goes on to this hour, that in a free society a job is necessarily a privilege—not a right. M. PETERSON

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THE ORIGINS OF POLITICAL STABILITY: ENGLAND. 1675-1725, by J. H. Plumb. (Houghton, $6.00). This book, which is a printed version of the Ford Lectures at Oxford for 1965, is by way of being an overpriced bargain—overpriced because six dollars is too much for any ordinarily turned out book of two hundred pages, and a bargain at any price because it is quite possibly the most important book on English political history to appear since Feiling’s History of the Tory Party or Namier’s Structure of Politics. Feiling, it will be remembered, traced the conversion of the Tories from support of the monarchy to support of Parliament between 1640 and 1714. Namier, by eontrast, traced the political maneuverings of 1760 to show that there were no parties then. What Professor Plumb has shown, in these lectures, is the transition from the two-party system of the late seventeenth century to the one-party system of the mid-eighteenth. In so doing, he has argued that it was the destruction of the earlier two-party system, by judicious use of place and pension, and accusations of Jacobitism, as well as through the inherent contradictions in the Tory programs, that brought stability to English politics in the early years of the Age of Walpole. Whatever the merits of the case—which are persuasive—it is good to see a book of political history which explains as well as recounts, and doubly good to see one which does both so well. J. C. LOBDELL

THE KINGSPORT STRIKE, by Sylvester Petro (Arlington House, $5.00). ‘““‘We consider a scab to be stealing —stealing our jobs,” said one of the Kingsport Press strikers interviewed by N.Y.U. law professor Petro. Clearly, those on the picket lines at Kingsport, Tennessee believe that they own their jobs. In the strikers’ view, the “moral depravity” of the strike-breakers mitigates their own responsibility for the violence, for the dynamited houses and acid throwings. Unfortunately, their view is in effect written into the Wagner and Taft-Hartley laws and reflected in decision after decision of the National Labor Relations Board. Professor Petro cogently argues that wages and other working conditions are a matter of mutually satisfactory agreement between employer and. employee. Neither party has the right to compel the other to enter into a contract based on unacceptable terms. ‘Petro points out, in this hard-hitting case study of a strike that began in 1963 and goes on to this hour, that in a free society a job is necessarily a privilege—not a right. M. PETERSON