The Workers' Handbook. By Gertrude IL Tuckwell and Constance Smith.
(Duckworth and Co. 3s. 6d. net.)—We cannot always accept the conclusions at which the authors of this volume have arrived, but we gladly recognise the industry with which they have collected facts, and the zeal with which they set themselves to expose abuses. Sometimes, it may be, they venture into regions which they do not know. One might go through many rural parishes without finding "the agricultural labourer's cottage where a family of ten, including father and mother, grown-up lads and girls, have nightly to dispose of themselves in two bedrooms." We do not deny that the housing is often insufficient, but it is much more so, by the way, in the villages where the cottages are in various ownership than in those where they are in the hands of a single proprietor. But the " grown-up girl" is almost a rarity in a village. The girls go out to service as soon as possible after leaving school. The average population in rural parishes is something like four to the dwelling. We do not wish to depreciate the value of this book in such matters to infant mortality, sanitation, conditions of labour, &c.
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