To Profit or Not to Profit. The Commercial Transformation of the Nonprofit Sector (Cambridge, 1998). Editor and contributor Burton A. Weisbrod (IPR-Economics) directed a coordi-nated set of studies of how fundraising for nonprofits has shifted from charitable donations to commercial sales activity—mimicking that of private firms—and the consequences of these changes. User fees and revenue from “ancillary” activities (unrelated to mission) are mushrooming, each having important side effects. User fees may price some of the nonprofit’s target group out of the market, while ancillary activities may distract it from its central mission.

These issues are examined from two perspectives. One focuses on issues that apply to nonprofits generally: the role of competition, a framework for analyzing nonprofit organi-zational behavior, the effects of distributional goals and differential taxation of nonprofit and for-profit activity revenue, the effects of changes in donations on commercial activity, and conversions of nonprofits to for-profit status. A second set of studies targets specific industries: hospitals, universities, social service providers, museums, zoos, and public broadcasting. The book concludes with recommendations for research and for public policy toward nonprofits.

Yankeys Now. Immigrants in the Antebellum U.S. 1840-1860 (Oxford, 1998). The first great wave of European migration to the United States before the Civil War transformed both the immigrants and their new country. The extent of this transforma-tion has been difficult to gauge without information on migrants before and after their departure from Europe. Joseph P. Ferrie (IPR-Economics) provides the first detailed look at how these immigrants were changed by their relocation and how the U.S. economy responded to their arrival.

Ferrie employs unique data on more than 2,400 British, Irish, and German migrants, who appeared in both passenger ship rosters and U.S. census records, to document the geographic, occupational, and financial movements of Europeans who traveled to the United States in the 1840s. Contrary to other studies of antebellum immigrants, Ferrie finds substantial mobility in all three contexts. The ability to follow immigrants from their arrival through several censuses enables him to compare the experiences of immigrants who remained in one location with those who sought opportunity in new places over the 1850s. The latter group's achievements, carefully traced in the book, account for most of the contrast with previously published work.

Using information on more than 4,000 native-born Americans followed through the 1850 and 1860 U.S. censuses, Ferrie finds little evidence that the immigrants' arrival negatively affected the country's labor force, excluding craft workers in the urban northeast. The findings demonstrate the American economy's ability to absorb additions to its work-force while also illustrating the range of opportunities available to 19th-century migrants drawn to the United States.

A Promise of Justice. The Eighteen-Year Fight to Save Four Innocent Men (Hyperion, 1998) In a travesty of American justice reminiscent of the infamous Scottsboro trials in Alabama more than half a century ago, four young men from suburban Chicago—boyhood friends with no history of violence—were convicted for a 1978 interracial kidnapping, rape, and double murder they did not commit. They collectively spent 65 years behind bars; two of the men were on Death Row.

When the bodies of a young white couple were found on May 12, 1978, the police were quick to arrest four African-Americans: Dennis Williams, Verneal Jimerson, Kenneth Adams, and William Rainge. The four were paraded in handcuffs before television cameras, and police assured the community that this vicious crime had been solved.

In trials marred by police and prosecutorial misconduct, perjured testimony, false forensic tests, and inept defense lawyers, the men were convicted. Two were sentenced to death, two to long prison terms. Although they continued to profess their innocence, the courts turned back their claims and civil rights leaders ignored their pleas for help.

Authors David Protess (IPR-Medill) and Rob Warden took the men’s stories seriously and came to believe in their innocence. They enlisted a group of Medill journalism stu-dents, a private investigator, a Chicago Tribune columnist, and a team of volunteer lawyers to investigate the case. The team gathered substantial new evidence that finally freed the four innocent men.

Paternalism and the American Welfare State. Economics, Politics, and Institutions in the South, 1865-1965 (Cambridge, 1998). Using the new institutional economics, Lee J. Alston and Joseph P. Ferrie show how paternalism in Southern agriculture helped shape the growth of the American welfare state in the century following the Civil War. Paternalism was an integral part of agricultural contracts prior to mechanization. It involved the exchange of “good and faithful” labor services for a variety of in-kind services, most notably protection from physical violence. The Southern landed elite valued paternalism because it reduced monitoring costs and turnover. Workers valued it because of the lack of civil rights. In order to maintain its value to their workers, the agricultural interests needed to prevent meddling from the federal government, which they accomplished through their disproportionate political power. The advent of mechanization and complementary technology in the late 1950s and early 1960s reduced the desire of Southern agricultural interests to fight the expansion of federal welfare programs.