Welsh Journals

mediate school was controlled by yet another body of governors appointed under the Intermediate Scheme. These three bodies were controlled from the County Offices, were independent of each other, often not particularly anxious for close co-operation, and in many cases there was much needless overlapping. The members were usually appointed on a representative basis as members of local bodies, and not in the first instance as persons of educational weight and experience. The Act of 1918 makes no substantial alteration except that it provides opportunities for the unification of the control of all forms of local education. Two principles may then be taken as governing our educa- tional administration. that of representation and that of co-option. But, as we have seen, the representation is of the vaguest kind. Few local representatives are now elected as a result of educational knowledge or of qualifications, whilst co-option also has obvious dangers. It is not a satisfactory democratic procedure, and it can and does lend itself to corrupt practices. Scottish Local Government. Scotland, ever alive to its educational possibilities, has never de- serted the principle of the ad hoc educational body. Thus, the Scottish Education Act of 1918 makes interesting and, for Wales. significant reading. By this Act the School Boards are abolished. In their stead, local education authorities are set up as ad hoc bodies elected according to the principle of proportional representation for every county and for certain towns. Thus the local education election- in itself a magnificent opportunity for educational propaganda-is preserved. The control of local education is delegated to school management committees, who manage schools or groups of schools. On these committees members of the education authority, parents, teachers and ministers have representation. Important too, is the fact that the local education authority has the power to raise its own funds in the form of an education rate." Thus finance and repre- "Six Centuries of Work and Wages: The His- tory of English Labour," by James E. Thorold Rogers. London: T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd. Pp. 314. 10s. 6d. net. This is the fourteenth edition of a book which was first published in 1884. Its author, Professor Thorold Rogers, died in October, 1890, when the book had only been through three editions. Since then it has apparently never been revised. This is to be regretted for two reasons. The general subject-matter of the book appeals to a growing body of readers who have no means of discovering the points on which Rogers needs correction. University students, on the other hand, so often hear his opinions on specific questions quoted in order to refute them that they are apt to assume that his writings may safely be dis- regarded. On the whole, the University student's loss is greater than the damage the unguided reader may suffer from embracing a few historical errors for Rogers is well worth reading. His book is partly based on his History of Agriculture and Prices in England," in which he published a great mass of price figures mostly drawn from manu- script sources. Such a collection, provided it is extensive enough, would provide a key to economic development, because movements in prices (as we now realise) are the cause of general unrest and stimulate sections of the community to take steps to protect their Standard of Life. To be of real service, however, more price figures have to be accumulated than one enquirer could collect in a life-time. This fact has been recognised by Vicomte Georges DAvenel, who was assisted by a number of collaborators in his great task of compiling an account of the history of prices in France. D'Avenel attempts to give his conclusions, or rather the conclusions forced upon him by the figures, in his" Decouvertes d'Historie Sociale" (1910). The book is comparable to that under notice; for Thorold Rogers, as he states in his preface, was also drawing on the material contained in his larger work. D'Avenel's small book is much more scientific; less discursive and strictly impersonal. It does not suffer from the intro- duction of so much general history as will be found in Work and sentation are educational, and as such are in continued and direct con- tact with the community. Of interest also is the establishment of councils acting as advisory bodies. Thus an advisory council, of whose members not less than two-thirds are to be representatives of educational bodies, is set up to advise the Scottish Department. Similarly, each local education authority is required to appoint local advisory councils representative of bodies interested in education which will advise the authority on all educational matters. These advisory bodies might well become of great importance, particularly if they were kept in touch with the public demand on the one hand, and the progress of educational thought on the other. The Scottish Act brings out two points of great interest. In the first place, Scotland has never lost its right of direct educational representa- tion. In the second, the advisory councils do appear to be a valiant attempt to obtain representation for those interests other than communal which the complex state of modern society has created, and which from the nature of things ought not to find a place on the repre- sentative body. The relationship of these two bodies to the community, the scope of their duties as well as their methods of co-operation, are problems of great interest. For in any case bodies of this kind should go a long way towards the creation of a healthy active public opinion-the ultimate basis of all real educational effort. In Wales, similar advisory bodies are already in being in connection with the Ministry of Health. But in education we have now an almost clear field. It is obvious that the decisions of the Departmental Com- mittee on Secondary Education must be influenced by the possibility and consequences of devolution. We suggest therefore that the oppor- tunity has now come for new and bold experiment, whereby the mode of educational government in Wales may be remodelled to meet the ever growing demands of modern society. The various possibilities of such government we propose to discuss in the next issue. S.H.W. REVIEWS Wages." The conclusions as to the course of prices are much more clearly set out, and they rest on much firmer foundations. It is time indeed that the work of Thorold Rogers was reviewed in the light of D'Avenel's researches. The fault of Work and Wages are obvious enough. It is unequal, Rogers is tempted by his special knowledge to give too much space to the Middle Ages and agriculture. Throughout the book he gives expression to his warm sympathies with the labouring people in a form which was laudable and even courageous when he wrote; but now that the battles have been won (for instance, economists do not now doubt the value of Trade Unions), or the issues broadened, Rogers necessarily seems a little old fashioned. It is generally known that his reading of fourteenth century economic history-in which he argued that com- mutation had gone so far before the Black Death that the landlords, after that pestilence had greatly reduced the population, attempted to reimpose labour services because they were now more valuable than the money for which they had been commuted,-is not supported by the evidence. The account of the confiscation of gild property in the reign of Edward VI. (see page 349) is seriously inaccurate. Examples could be multiplied if one took less important instances such as the nature of scutage and the effects of its exaction. But against all this should be set Rogers' real insight into mediaeval rural conditions. He writes of the manor as a man who knew the countryside, seeing, beyond the speculations about the scattering of the strips and mere legal status, the people at work in the fields, their houses, their stock, and their relations with one another. F. Rees. Baby o* Mine." Words and music by Mair Parsons. London Cary & Co. 2s. A song which should find favour with soprano and contralto singers, is a dainty new work by Mrs. Mair Parsons, of Craig Millar, Whit- church, Cardiff, some of whose poems have already appeared in the Welsh Outlook. Baby o' Mine" has an appealing theme-the lullaby of a mother to her sleeping child. The words, which are the