The Politician's Hand - book, by H. Whates (Vacher and Sons, 6s.),
is a digest of the Blue-books, and other Parliamentary papers and Government documents generally, that have appeared during the past year,—a great boon, we fancy, to secretaries, journalists, and others.—The Children's Labour Question (Daily News Office, 6d.) is a reprint of papers that have appeared in the Daily News, papers full of a sinister interest. "There is no mistaking," says the writer, "the greater average height, bigger bulk, and more healthful look of those children who do not go to work as com- pared with those who do." As we write, we see that there is a heavy majority of Lancashire votes against raising the age But this is a matter in which it is impossible to wait till the public opinion of the interested class is on the side of reform. When we turn from the labour questions of the present to those of the past the result is, on the whole, encouraging. England has worked its way, not without pain and loss, but without ruinous damage, through industrial difficulties without number. The story, in which there is a remarkable mixture of different elements, may be found told in some detail in Landmarks in English Industrial History, by George Townsend Warner, M.A. (Blackie and Son, Cs.) The villeinage of the manorial system, the social struggle that followed the Black Death, the terrible demoralisa- tion that was caused by the old Poor-law, the suffering that accompanied the ousting of hand-labour by machinery, all these seemed at the time to spell ruin. But the country has worked its way through them, and, though it is still very far away from the absolute best, is immeasurably better off than it was a thousand years ago. Mr. Warner tells a most interesting story of national progress.
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