The selection made by the Committee, then, represents its judgment of the works that are most useful and most instructive for the purpose of translation. It is its conviction that this Series, when completed, will furnish the American student of criminal science a systematic and sufficient acquaintance with the controlling doctrines and methods that now hold the stage of thought in Continental Europe. Which of the various principles and methods will prove best adapted to help our problems can only be told after our students and workers have tested them in our own experience. But it is certain that we must first acquaint ourselves with these results of a generation of European thought. In closing, the Committee thinks it desirable to refer the members of the Institute, for purposes of further investigation of the literature, to the “Preliminary Bibliography of Modern Criminal Law and Criminology” (Bulletin No. 1 of the Gary Library of Law of Northwestern University), already issued to members of the Conference. The Committee believes that some of the Anglo-American works listed therein will be found useful. Committee on Translations. Chairman, John H. Wigmore, Professor of Law in Northwestern University, Chicago. Ernst Freund, Professor of Law in the University of Chicago. Maurice Parmelee, Professor of Sociology in the State University of Missouri. Roscoe Pound, Professor of Law in Harvard University. Edward Lindsay, Of the Warren, Pa., Bar. Wm. W. Smithers, Secretary of the Comparative Law Bureau of the American Bar Association, Philadelphia, Pa. EDITORIAL PREFACE TO THE PRESENT VOLUME. By Edward Lindsey. Any adequate study of the phenomena of crime and of the criminal must take into account the economic phase—must consider the subject matter of the study from the economic standpoint; for while few will follow the socialist theorists in the controlling importance they assign to the economic factors of social life it is nevertheless manifest that these factors are powerful elements in the totality of social conditions and must be given due consideration in the survey of all societal phenomena, including that of crime. The work selected to represent this viewpoint in the Modern Criminal Science Series is that of one of the younger criminalists—an able and thorough study of the effect of economic conditions on crime and distinguished by the extensive and critical use made of a wide range of statistical data.