Welfare Policy and Industrialization in Europe, America, and Russia.

In spite of its title, Professor Gaston Rimlinger's book is not concerned with welfare policy in a broad sense, and it deals with Europe mainly through the example of a single country. Its principal theme, as the author explains in his introductory chapter, is the development of social security, that is, of those policies and measures which are designed to relieve the specific economic hardships resulting from unemployment, retirement from work, accident, or sickness. The broader aspects of social welfare, such as education, housing, children's services, the provision of social amenities, and policies to deal with more general problems of poverty and of depressed areas and regions, are excluded from consideration. The comparison between countries which Rimlinger undertakes is more or less confined to Germany, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Notwithstanding these omissions, the comparisons which Rimlinger does make, on the basis of a very full account of social security legislation in the countries which he selects for study, raise some interesting questions. One of the comparisons is between the United States and the West European countries (although, as noted, the main emphasis is on Germany). Rimlinger points out that the resistance to social security measures was very much stronger in the United States, and that it was only in the 1930's, as a result of the economic depression, that major legislation was enacted to provide the kind of services which were already well-established in the European countries.