THE NEW YEAR BOOK A COMPENDIUM OF THE WORLD'S FOR THE YEAR 1912 EDITOR FRANK MOORE COLBY, M.A. ASSOCIATE EDITOR ALLEN LEON CHURCHILL NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1913 PREFACE The NEW INTERNATIONAL YEAR BOOK differs in scope from other annual publications. It is intended to be an encyclopædia of the year. It therefore includes departments which are not to be found in any other single annual volume. It is enabled to do so first by its large size and second by its exclusion of information not pertaining to the year or not derived from the latest sources available. Among the departments that are either not to be found or are less fully treated in other annual publications, are Biography, Agriculture, Political History Societies and Religious Bodies. American subjects are, of course, far more fully treated than in any of the British annuals. At the same time owing to its international scope it necessarily devotes more attention to foreign affairs than do the other American publications. The plan of the work requires that the text shall be new each year and no part of it carried forward and merely revised. There has been a slight deviation from this rule in the present volume in that the paragraphs on Manufactures in a few of the articles on the States in the 1911 volume have been in part repeated in order to admit of comparison with the statistics of manufactures for the other States which are now for the first time included in this volume. The PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, marking as it did a new turn in American political history, required unusually full treatment. Nearly fifty pages have been given to it and especial pains have been taken to insure comprehensiveness and impartiality. Among other subjects ,which have required special attention are the TITANIC DISASTER and the question of SAFETY AT SEA; the Balkan War, which is treated under the title TURKEY AND THE BALKAN PEOPLES; RAILWAY ACCIDENTS; ELECTORAL REFORM; MINIMUM WAGE; WORKING MEN'S COMPENSATION; SYNDICALISM; SURGERY; SYNTHESIS OF RUBBER; PANAMA CANAL; AQUEDUCTS; CITY PLAN NING. FRANK MOORE COLBY. |