Welsh Journals

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TOILERS OF THE HILLS. By Sir Edgar J. Jones. Hughes and Son, Ltd., Pontypool, 1959. Pp. 56. As a civil servant, Sir Edgar Jones became responsible, in 1915, for matters concerning the tin-plate industry and thus began a lifetime of work for the industry. Because of his experience he was appointed, after the war, to run a propaganda agency for the industry to extend sales of tin-plate. In this capacity he played a leading role in the formation of the National Food Canning Council in 1926, in the establishment of the Anglo-American Tinplate Agreement in 1928, and in the formation of the International Tinplate Cartel in 1934. As independent tin-plate controller, during the second World War, he operated an allocation scheme which continued, because of the post-war shortage of tin-plate until 1955. From a few random comments, it is clear that Sir Edgar Jones considered himself a doughty David defending the tin-plate industry from the Goliaths of the steel industry, but he does not sufficiently explain the issues involved. Indeed, much of this short book is taken up with the general history of the tin-plate industry in south Wales which has been better done elsewhere. This could well have been omitted. What should have been told in much greater detail is the part played by Sir Edgar Jones in the affairs of the tin-plate industry for forty years. May he yet tell us this story. W. E. MINCHINTON. Swansea. THE LATER LIFE OF BIsHoP OWEN. By Eluned E. Owen. Gomerian Press, Llandyssul, 1961. Pp. 574. 21s. THE RELIGIOUS ISSUE IN THE STATE SCHOOLS OF ENGLAND AND WALES, 1902-14. By Benjamin Sacks. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1960. Pp. ix + 292.$5.00. On I June 1920, in the presence of three archbishops, the Prime Minister and Welshmen of all denominations, Bishop Alfred George Edwards was solemnly enthroned on the palace lawn of St. Asaph as the first archbishop of the new ecclesiastical province of Wales. After sixty years of acrimonious conflict, peace seemed to be restored between the embattled forces of church and chapel. Lord Justice Bankes expressed the hope that the Church that had been disestablished by Parliament would now be re-established in the hearts of the people of Wales. So had arrived the bitter-sweet climax of the public career of Bishop John Owen of St. David's, whose life and work from his consecration in 1897 to his death in 1926 are outlined by his daughter in this ample and informative volume. Owen himself, the most formidable of 'Church defenders' in the past, who had railed at McKenna's 'mean little Bill' and poured ridicule on his 'freak theory of tithe', now prayed that a new Christian unity in Wales might prove to be the outcome. Yet, even at this supreme moment, that sectarian animosity which had provided the dominant thread during