SOROKIN FINISHES NEW COLLABORATIVE WORK

The first volume of a series of three in a treatise "A Systematic Source Book in Rural Sociology," has just ben published it was announced yesterday by P.A. Sorokin, chairman of the Committee on Sociology and Social Ethics, one of the co-authors of the work.

Professor Sorokin recently finished the treatise in collaboration with C.Z. Zimmerman, associate professor of Sociology in the University of Minnesota, and C.J. Calpin, of the United States Department of Agriculture. It is designed to accomplish the purpose of making available to English-speaking students the most important writings on rural life and rural peoples in all languages, from the earliest times to the present day.

The volume which has just appeared contains an historical introduction to rural Sociology and a section on rural social organization in its ecological and morphological aspects. The other two volumes, which are scheduled to appear within the next two months, contain the third, fourth and fifth parts of the work. The second volume is a survey of rural social organizations in its institutional, functional, and cultural aspects, while the third takes up bodily, vital and psycho-social traits of farmers and peasants and rural urban relationships.

The present period is one of experimental agrarian legislation and of widespread interest in agricultural conditions, Professor Sorokin claims. The need for trained American sociologists with a broad acquaintance with rural conditions has been urgent, he said. The new book explains how older nations and races have long struggled to understand the human factor in agriculture, and how America's short experience will benefit from the experience of older nations.

Professor Sorokin came to Harvard this fall from the University of Minnesota where he had been professor of Sociology since 1924.