BOOK REVIEWS [ l6l ] education, labor reform, fire protection, and civil rights. Much of the focus of the radicals' interest centered on New York City. They felt that significant reform could not be expected from the city politicians and that state intervention was necessary for its accomplishment. The suspicions of the Tammany Democrats in the city and the Democrats in the state legislature were strong that the real motive of the Republicans was state control of the city, and thus they opposed most of the radicals' proposals. In the light of present-day struggles between New York City and the state government, one can easily sympathize with the Democrats' fears and wonder if the author has not ascribed too much altruism to radical reform bills. Nevertheless, Professor Mohr has written a significant and successful work which sheds additional light on the workings of state politics in New York. Moreover, this book puts the Radical Republicans in another perspective and allows them to be studied in a context outside of the arena of national reconstruction politics. The book is important for all who wish to understand this most significant period in American history better. robert E. ziebarth, SuffolkCounty Community College TRAMPS AND REFORMERS, 1873-1916: THE DISCOVERY OF UNEMPLOYMENT IN NEW YORK By Paul T. Ringenbach. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973. Pp. xv, 224; intro., illus., select biblio., index. $10.50.) In 1915 Charlie Chaplin appeared as the Little Tramp on the silent screen, an endearing character who fought valiantly and often unsuccessfully against social forces largely beyond his control. Chaplin's portrayal symbolized the emergence of the tramp as an understandable and even sympathetic figure. Public opinion of unemployment, as Paul T. Ringenbach reveals, had undergone a positive transformation since the depression of 1893. The many tramps of the 1870s and 1880s who rode the rails, begged at farmhouse doors, and slept in police station basements had evoked ominous images within middle-class society. Fears of riot and revolution became associated with the "great standing army of professional tramps!' Social commentators warned that indiscriminate charity would intensify rather than relieve those personal weaknesses that made men vagabonds, and the society responded with vagrancy laws and other repressive measures to protect itself. The utter economic chaos of the depression of the 1890s, however, undermined the old theories that blamed unemployment on drunkenness or "hereditary pauperism" rather than industrial conditions. Reformers organized to aid the victims of the depression and to prevent any chance of social upheaval from below. Members of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of