to apply for the purchase of such as are absent.

* * * * *

The Local Government Act of 1894, commonly called the Parish Councils
Act, which constituted out of chaos a system of local government for
rural England, gave the Society an opportunity for practising that part
of its policy which includes the making the best use of all forms of
existing legislation. Mr. Herbert Samuel was at that time a friend,
though he was never a member, of the Society, and the first step in his
successful political career was his candidature for the typically rural
Southern Division of Oxfordshire. He was good enough to prepare for us
not only an admirable explanation of the Act, but also Questions for
Parish Councillors, for Rural District Councillors, and for Urban
District Councillors. Probably this was the first time that an analysis
of a new Act of Parliament had been published at a penny. Anyway the
demand for it was considerable, and over 30,000 copies were sold in five
months. Then it was revised, with the omission of temporary matter, and
republished as "Parish and District Councils: What they are and what
they can do," and in this form has gone through many editions, and is
still in print. The tract states that the secretary of the Society will
give advice on any obscure point in the law, and in this way the Society
has become an Information Bureau; hardly a week passed for many years
after the autumn of 1895 without a letter from some village or small
town asking questions as to housing, common rights, charities, the
duties of chairmen of councils, the qualifications of candidates, and so
on.

Similar tracts were published describing the powers and duties of the
London County Council, the London Vestries, and the Metropolitan Borough
Councils, established in 1899, while one giving the powers of various
local authorities for housing (No. 76, "Houses for the People") has gone
through many editions and still has a steady sale.

* * * * *

The Workmen's Compensation Act, 1897, afforded another opportunity for
this sort of work. Our penny tract (No. 82) describing the rights of the
workmen under the Act was reprinted thirteen times in eight months, and
over 120,000 were sold in the first year of publication. This tract
offered free advice to every purchaser, and the result has been an
enormous amount of correspondence which during seventeen years has never
entirely