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During the year the officers of the Board of Customs and Excise have taken numerous samples at the ports with a view to giving effect to the provisions of Section 1 of the Sale of Food and Drugs Act, 1899, and Section 5 of the Butter and Margarine Act, 1907, as to the importation of butter, margarine, milk, condensed milk, cream, and cheese.

THIS number will appear at the beginning of the Leeds Conference. Although there is no evidence that the attendance will surpass the record attendance registered at the Birmingham Conference, there is every reason to believe that the attendance at Leeds will be very large. The year is one of importance in the history of the city, for it has marked the 300th anniversary of its charter. We hope that some of the festival spirit will survive into the week of the Conference. As a contributor has suggested on another page, we hope that all librarians who attend will do so with the determination to make the Conference one of the friendliest possible character. It has occasionally been pointed out that as the Association grows older it is liable to become more stilted and formal; that institutions and people become standardized and less dynamic. This, if it were true, would be a great pity.

Life studies are a rich source for further research on the role of the Afro‐American woman in society. They are especially useful to gain a better understanding of the Afro‐American experience and to show the joys, sorrows, needs, and ideals of the Afro‐American woman as she struggles from day to day.

The war against tuberculosis, which has been commenced under the auspices of HIS MAJESTY THE KING, if energetically prosecuted, must in the end result in placing that dread disease under a control similar to that which, among the more enlightened nations, is being gradually but surely established over many of the preventible diseases which have been the scourges of the human race. The establishment of Sanatoria, and the great extension of the more rational and scientific methods of treatment which the existence of such institutions will of necessity bring about, should lead to the saving of the lives of great numbers of sufferers who, under the old conditions, would have drifted inevitably to death. Cure is good, but prevention is better than cure, and it must not be thought that the war can be successfully carried on upon curative lines alone. It is now well known that there is a special predilection or idiosyncrasy in those who are attacked by tuberculosis; and, while relaxing no efforts to find and apply curative measures, attention to such enormously important factors as the nature and quality of the food supply and general hygienic conditions, must be fully maintained. A far more effective control than that which at present exists must be established over the milk and meat supplies of the people, so that the ingestion of the poison by those who are specially susceptible may as far as possible be prevented. Particularly will it be necessary to ensure that the supplies of milk and other food to the Sanatoria which are to be established shall be uninfected, and that they shall also be pure and of good quality. At the present time those terms are certainly not generally applicable to the supplies of most of our hospitals and large institutions, and it should be one of the first duties of those who will be concerned in the management of the new Sanatoria to see that no exception can be taken to the food supplied to the inmates.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

THE ANCIENT and royal burgh of Stirling, at one time the capital of Scotland, was at the turn of the century the county town of Stirlingshire and the centre of a thriving agricultural community. With the exception of a carpet and woollen mill and some neighbouring coal mines, there was little industry in the town. This was reflected in its social structure. There was growing up in the village of Raploch, beneath the castle rock, a sizeable Irish community of labourers and artisans, but of a population of around 20,000 in 1900, middle class businessmen and shopkeepers predominated. The town's structure in turn was reflected in the nature of the Town Council, which, although not always conservative in politics, was generally conservative when faced with innovation, be it a swimming pool or a modern town centre. This might explain why in Stirling the public library movement was late in starting, nearly 25 years after the Public Libraries (Scotland) Act of 1870 authorising the use for library purposes of 1 d. in the £ from the rates. It might also explain why there was some opposition from the Town Council to providing for the upkeep of the library after its foundation.

This paper explores the representation of consequential women in history within children's and young adult biographies.

The data pool was established by developing a list of women's names extracted from common textbooks and state social studies curricula. Early-grade (K-4th) and middle-grade (5th-8th) in-print books were selected for juxtaposition because these students have the least prior knowledge and are perhaps most dependent on the text. Two researchers independently engaged in qualitative content analysis research methods, which included open and axial coding.

Early- and middle-grade biographies aptly established the historical significance of, but largely failed to contextualize, each figure's experiences, accomplishments and contemporaneous tensions. The women were presented as consequential, though their advocacies were not situated within the larger context.

Limitations included a dearth of women featured in both state standards and biographies, limited audience (early and middle grades) and exclusion of out-of-print books. Comparable inquiries into narrative nonfiction, expository texts and historical fiction, which have different emphases than biographies, are areas for future research.

Discussion focused on the significance of findings for teachers and researchers. Early- and middle-grade teachers are guided to contextualize the selected historical figures using primary and secondary source supplements.

No previous scholarship exists on this particular topic. Comparable inquiries examine trade books' depiction of historical significance, not contextualization of continuity and change.

In a recent issue of the Municipal Journal there appeared a short but apparently inspired article on the subject of London Government, in which is foreshadowed another drastic and apparently imminent alteration of the system of local administration at present in operation in the Metropolis.

HARROGATE will be notable as the venue of the Conference in one or two ways that distinctive. The Association Year is now to begin on January 1st and not in September as heretofore; and, in consequence, there will be no election of president or of new council until the end of the year. The Association's annual election is to take place in November, and the advantages of this arrangement must be apparent to everyone who considers the matter. Until now the nominations have been sent out at a time when members have been scattered to all parts of the country on holiday, and committees of the Council have been elected often without the full consideration that could be given in the more suitable winter time. In the circumstances, at Harrogate the Chair will still be occupied by Sir Henry Miers, who has won from all librarians and those interested in libraries a fuller measure of admiration, if that were possible, than he possessed before he undertook the presidency. There will be no presidential address in the ordinary sense, although Sir Henry Miers will make a speech in the nature of an address from the Chair at one of the meetings. What is usually understood by the presidential address will be an inaugural address which it is hoped will be given by Lord Irwin. The new arrangement must bring about a new state of affairs in regard to the inaugural addresses. We take it that in future there will be what will be called a presidential address at the Annual Meeting nine months after the President takes office. He will certainly then be in the position to review the facts of his year with some knowledge of events; he may chronicle as well as prophesy.

In commenting upon a recent action brought by a Mr. Soper for a libel published upon him in a trade journal in regard to the sale of adulterated boots, the Daily Telegraph makes some excellent remarks, which ought to appeal strongly to all manufacturers, no matter what trade they are engaged in, who are really desirous of conducting their concerns upon honest and straightforward lines. The Daily Telegraph observes that reformers are rarely popular with their rivals, especially when they expose tricks in the trade, and advocate raising the standard of commercial honesty. Mr. Soper, the plaintiff in the case in question, was in that position. He had started a crusade against the practice of adulterating the soles of boots with paper fillings, and advocated a standard mark, in order to distinguish what is genuine from what is adulterated. This was resented by the threatened interests. Mr. Soper raised up enemies, and, in consequence, the article complained of was written, accusing him of “knowingly” selling adulterated boots at his shop while he thus publicly denounced them. The libel lay in the word “knowingly,” for it appeared that adulterated boots were actually sold at Mr. SoPer's establishment. But this was because he had failed to detect their presence; he had taken all the precautions which he could take, and he had cut open a number of pairs; he demanded guarantees from the manufacturers with whom he dealt; and, moreover, he was willing to take back any pair from any customer which were found to contain paper. The boot trade does not emerge with credit from this investigation. It was admitted that adulteration had been going on for the last ten years, and one manufacturer's traveller, when asked whether he was not surprised that paper should be found in the soles of boots costing seven or eight shillings, frankly replied, “Nothing surprises me in the boot trade.” The public will share his truly Horatian attitude of mind. Some such standard mark as that advocated by Mr. Soper seems to be the only method of protecting the public, if, indeed, the public desires to be protected, which seems doubtful. The ordinary customer is as helpless in a boot shop as in a curiosity shop. He must trust the word of the shopkeeper. And in turn the shopkeeper has to trust the manufacturers. The excuses of some of the latter, that the use of paper instead of leather did not mean any profit for them, or that the workmen could not be stopped from using cardboard fillings, will not do. There would be no adulteration if it were not profitable to adulterate. Adulteration seems to be rampant in most industries. One might even say that in some it is no longer the exception, but the rule. Wool, for example, has been treated just as scurvily as leather. Woollen no longer means woollen, but cotton with a pinch of wool. One has to ask for “guaranteed pure wool”— and pay accordingly—to feel any confidence that one is getting wool. So, too, with flannel and silk, and even cotton is adulterated with minerals to give it an essentially false weight. The ingredients from which “shoddy” is made would terrify the future wearer of it if he could see the “devil” at work, tearing up the noisome rags. Ignorance in this respect is becoming more blissful every year. Cheap sweets, cheap jams, cheap table delicacies, and all kinds of foods, all of which are warranted pure by the manufacturers, are, as a matter of fact, adulterated with impunity, and are all, in reality, “nasty” as well as “cheap.” The impotence of Government departments and of the Legislature in face of this condition of things has been demonstrated ad nauseam, and while such efforts as are made by local authorities to detect and suppress adulteration should receive all possible support and encouragement, it must be admitted that there is only one effective way of dealing with the evil—namely, the supply of guarantees of an independent and authoritative type to retail vendors and purchasers.